This is actually really interesting.
Here in New York City, the city is trying to get a stadium built in Manhattan for the Jets and for the Olympics. Cablevision, who owns Madison Square Garden, is all freaked out about this. They've been saturating the airwaves with anti-stadium commercials, since a stadium in the city will hurt Madison Sqaure Garden, which Cablevision also owns.
Stay with me.
So now, Mike Bloomberg, New York City's mayor, who wants the stadium built, is going after Cablevision, who also own the Knicks and the Rangers. He told them to worry less about the stadium and more about the Knicks, who had a rough start to their season.
Then he said something really interesting. "Cablevision, along with other owners, have locked out the Rangers and the other NHL teams...So we don't have hockey here. That [keeping an NHL team in the city] was one of the reasons we gave them a tax break."
Now I'm sure this is all just talk, but what if around the country, cities started going after the NHL owners, telling them that if they're not going to field a team, they don't get any tax breaks on their arenas? What if all of these municipalities found that if the owners are going to destroy the local economy with a lockout, they should at least pay taxes on their arenas?
Maybe it took a basketball team and a football team to make the owners see that it's in their best interests to end the lockout.

So there actually was some NHL action this week.
Former St. Louis Blue Mike Danton got seven and a half years for trying to kill his agent. Even the judge said he has no idea why Danton did it.
And just to show you how disturbed Danton is, he said he expects to play hockey again. Will anyone play hockey again?
Speaking of not playing hockey, the Globe and Mail reports on the leaking of an NHL memo refuting the Players' Association's positions in the lockout. The NHLPA says the memo was leaked to cause dissent in the ranks. I'm sure a lot of NHL players were really shocked and shaken to learn the league disagrees with their union.
And check out rhubarb, a sports blog coming to you straight out of Detroit. It's really funny. Click the link for this line alone: "In non-basketball news, Garciaparra reportedly told friends he would consider playing second base. Apparently, all of his friends are sports journalists because I keep hearing and reading about it in the sports news. This move would allow the New York Yankees (or, as eleven-year-old me would say, the Screw Dork Skankees) to aquire him, and move one step closer to their goal of fielding an entire team made up of insanely, wealthy, superstar-shortstops, playing out of postion."

The Star Tribune has an amazing look inside the NHLPA's contract-tracking software. Called SCORE, it allows NHLPA agents to track what comparable players make in the league (login info.). The software even allows agents to see how teams tender offers, giving agents insight into if a club's final offer is really final.
The software and concept seem pretty powerful, and as NHL salaries will tell you, pretty effective. The NHL has a similar software, but they have to be careful about applying it, because if they share too much information, it could, potentially, enter the world of collusion.
But really, the whole process makes the case that the best way for the NHL to control player salaries is to train the owners and GMs to negotiate in a more sophisticated way. Even if the NHL gets a cap installed, I have every confidence agents will find a way to exploit its loopholes within a season.
Speaking of business, I wonder why the NHL isn't reaching out to more foreign markets (you know, when they actually play hockey in the NHL). The NBA is making some decent money selling their programming around the world. There are tons of hockey-loving countries (like England, the proud new owners of NHLers Scott Nichol and Eric Cairns). I wonder if the NHL is tapping into this revenue. It kind of seems like they're not.