Is “Just Drop It” Something You Could Do?

NHL fans are angry, there is no denying that. I’m angry, I just want to watch some hockey, talk about hockey and heckle my Rangers fan co-worker but without the NHL playing, it is impossible to do any of that. We’ve lost nearly 45% of our season to this lockout and fans are getting angrier by the day. Is it a surprise that a group of NHL fans are advocating something called Just Drop It?

Here’s the video that was posted on YouTube:

So after watching, we are to understand that in 10 days’ time, if the lockout is still in effect, for every game we lose, we are supposed to take that from them when they do return to the ice. During said ban, we aren’t supposed to attend any games, watch any hockey (highlights included) on TV or buy any merchandise.

Would the hardcore fan actually do this? I would imagine the casual hockey fan might not return but those hardcore ones? Like I said, I am angry. And like I’ve said previously, I feel under appreciated by the NHL but the fact is this: Most fans, including myself are going to come back. We as fans are kind of stupid. We run up credit card debt in order to attend games or in order to buy the latest merchandise. I’ve know people who put watching a game on tv or attending a game in person above their responsibilities that have to their families. I’d argue that the bigger issue the NHL faces when play resumes is not fan loyalty but rather their sponsors. Will sponsor want to dump money into a league that doesn’t blink twice at locking out players and canceling games? What can the NHL offer to any of their sponsors that the NFL, NBA or MLB doesn’t already?  I’ve digressed.

This mission that these very loyal NHL fans are on has a few problems:

1)      We’ve been waiting for the NHL to end the lockout and return to the ice. If you lose 10 games between Dec 21^st and the end of the lockout, you’re telling me that you have enough discipline to not tune into opening night? I’m sorry, I don’t buy it.

2)      I don’t think there is any way that this will reach enough people that would follow through where it actually hurt teams. I’ve heard a lot of people willing to continue to watch on TV but give up their season tickets. That will be felt by the owners not a bunch of empty threats about not returning for a certain amount of time.

3)      By saying you’ll boycott X number of games and not buy merchandise during your X number of games boycott, you are basically saying eventually you will be back and eventually I will start running up my credit card debt to support my NHL habit, they’ll just have to wait X number of games. I say shit or get off the pot. You want to walk away from the NHL, go ahead and do so but saying you’ll going to walk away but return in 3 weeks’ time is kind of dumb.

I do applaud them for their effort. No one likes to sit idly by and wait, I just don’t think this will do much. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe come opening night, the NHL will be playing to an empty arena.

So I throw it to you. Are you going to boycott the NHL once they return?