There doesn't need to be a lockout. At least there doesn't need to be a long one. At least in theory.

NHL commish Gary Bettman and NHLPA boss Don Fehr have barely a week to make some progress. (Getty)Unlike 2004-05, when the NHL canceled an entire season, the structure of the sport is not at stake. The players are not challenging the salary cap. The owners are not challenging guaranteed contracts. The players have offered to take less money, just not enough to satisfy the owners. The owners have offered to increase revenue sharing, just not enough to satisfy the players.

There are other issues, important ones. But when it comes to the core economics, the shut-down-the-game stuff, the sides are generally working inside the same system. This should be about negotiations, about numbers, about finding the levels both sides can accept.

Though the sides are far apart, there should be enough common ground for the NHL and the NHL Players' Association to compromise and reach a new collective bargaining agreement – or, bare minimum, for them to sit down and talk about it.

Read More »from CBA silence: League, union on verge of unnecessary lockout

LONDON -- In all my years of covering hockey, I have never touched the Stanley Cup. I have stood next to it for pictures. I have leaned close to look at the names, my nose an inch away. I have fallen down on my duty as a father, holding my young son near it, failing to anticipate that he would reach out and grab the bowl. (Sorry, Ethan. You'll never win it. All my fault.)

It's really not that I'm superstitious, because I certainly lost all hope of winning the Cup myself long ago (like, the day I started skating). It's that I haven't earned it. It's that I'm a writer, not an athlete. It's that it's not mine to touch.

So when Rosie MacLennan held out her gold medal and offered me a chance to hold it at the end of an interview, I respectfully declined. I told her about the Cup. I said she was the one who had won it on the trampoline, not me. But she insisted, told me to go ahead, kept holding it out there, told me to go ahead again and … well, I couldn't resist. I held Canada's only gold

Read More »from London 2012 a blur of history, humilty, heartbreak, honour and highlight-reel moments

LONDON -- Eight years ago in Athens, Tonya Verbeek felt she had lost gold. She was younger then, a "little bit of a brat," in her words. "Oh, I wanted it all," she said, and when she lost the 55-kilogram women's wrestling final, she was bummed, devastated, upset.

Here in London, Verbeek had a different perspective. She was wiser now, 34 years old, almost certainly ending her Olympic career. Oh, she still wanted it all -- a gold to go with that silver and the bronze she got four years ago in Beijing. But this time, when she ran into the same brick wall in the final, three-time Olympic champion Saori Yoshida of Japan, she didn't feel like a failure.

"I stepped off that mat," she said, "feeling like I won silver.''

Experience the Olympics for long enough, and you understand everything is relative. Success is not defined strictly by medals -- for nations as well as individuals. You come. You compete. You see where you stack up. But what it means depends on the circumstances.

By one

Read More »from For Canada's Olympians at London 2012, success shouldn't only be measured by medals

LONDON -- "We did it!" they screamed. The proof was right there on the Olympic Stadium screen Saturday night -- Canada third in the men's 4x100-metre relay, behind only the Jamaican and American powerhouses. They had come to put Canadian sprinting back on the podium, and they had done it.

Gavin Smellie, Oluseyi Smith, Jared Connaughton and Justyn Warner celebrated their bronze medal, linking arms and huddling on the track, grabbing Canadian flags to carry on their victory lap.

This was one of Canada's proudest moments of the Games. The Jamaicans had set a world record of 36.84 seconds, the Americans had set a national record of 37.04 and the Canadians had been right behind at 38.07, winning a medal in this event for the first time since they had won gold in 1996 in Atlanta.

Then Connaughton saw the replay.

"I was a little worried," he said.

Then he saw it again -- his left foot stepping just outside his lane, by a toe or two.

"I said, 'Well, it's my fault,' " he said.

And they all saw

Read More »from Jared Connaughton's one misplaced step brought broken hearts instead of bronze to relay team

HADLEIGH, England -- She pumped her legs on the final climb, circled the Olympic rings on the grass and came back down the hill. She waved to some fans as she cruised to the finish, crossing the line all alone.

But Catharine Pendrel was not all alone because she had won the women's mountain bike race Saturday. She was not France's Julie Bresset, who blew away the field by more than a minute. She was not herself.

Somehow she was ninth, among the lonely also-rans rolling in one by one. The proud 31-year-old from Kamloops apologized to all the people back in British Columbia who had gotten up at 4:30 a.m. to watch her. She had no answers for them, or for herself.

"Well, what can you say?" Pendrel wailed, not crying, but shouting with emotion. "Definitely not what I expected today, not what I hoped for, not what we prepared for. I felt so exceptional yesterday, and today just didn't have it. … It's just what I had on the day, and unfortunately, this day only comes every four years."

[

Read More »from Catharine Pendrel deals with the pain of a disappointing day at the Olympics

LONDON – He hadn't slept before his race. He hadn't showered since his race. He walked into a media conference room in bare feet, still wearing his swimsuit under his skinny jeans, still wearing temporary tattoos of "21" on the backs of his hands, as if he were still in his race.

Welcome to the Olympics. One moment, you're Richard Weinberger, a happy-go-lucky 22-year-old Canadian university student. The next, you're a bronze medallist.

Richard Weinberger enjoys his first moments of Olympic fame with his bronze medal. (Getty)"I didn't know it was like this," Weinberger said Friday night in the Main Press Centre at Olympic Park, about five hours after finishing third in the men's 10-kilometre marathon swim. "Again, this is the first time that anyone has cared about me winning a race, to be honest. I didn't win, so I thought I'd have a chance to go back to the hotel even for five minutes. But I guess not."

He smiled, his medal draped around his neck, his leg shaking underneath the table because, somehow, he still had to burn off excess energy.

"It's actually

Read More »from Richard Weinberger swims into Canadian mainstream with marathon bronze

LONDON -- She called it the best day of her soccer life, and it was. Canada beat France. Canada achieved its goal of winning an Olympic medal. Christine Sinclair could be happy and proud, finally.

Still, she couldn't be satisfied. Because after the Canadians played for bronze Thursday in front of thousands of empty seats in Coventry, they had to bus two hours to London. They had to watch the United States play Japan for gold in jam-packed Wembley Stadium. They had to watch the Americans win.

"It was difficult," Sinclair said Friday. "Obviously we had won the bronze, and we were absolutely thrilled with that. Yet knowing that we were so close to being in that game, and knowing that we took the Americans to the absolute brink and they have the gold medal …"

She tsked.

"Still a little bitter."

Still bitter about the 4-3 semifinal loss. Still bitter about the officiating – the rare, by-the-book, delay-of-game call, which led to the handball call, which led to the penalty kick, which led to

Read More »from Christine Sinclair is still bitter, and is still standing by her words

COVENTRY, England -- They were lucky, and they knew it. They had nothing left after their controversial semifinal loss to the United States, and they were dominated by France in the second half, and after the goal post and the crossbar and the goal-line save and all the other close calls, they caught a miraculous break when the ball ricocheted off a French defender and fell right at the foot of Diana Matheson in the 91st minute.

But when Matheson kicked that ball into that gaping net Thursday, they believed everything changed. Somehow they slipped past France 1-0 and won bronze in women's soccer -- Canada's first medal in a traditional team sport at a Summer Olympics since silver in men's basketball in 1936. This is no longer the team that finished last in the World Cup a year ago, the team that fired its coach, the team that needed a turnaround.

"The beauty today is we've raised the bar," coach John Herdman said. "And that's what I loved about this tournament. We were either going to

Read More »from Diana Matheson gets a break and Canada grabs a bronze medal in Olympic women's soccer