Getty ImagesHello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

Maybe we were all wrong. Most of us really did doubt the resolve of Gary Bettman and the Board of Governors' elder council of bloodthirsty owners.

The legal filings made on Friday afternoon at about 4:59:59 p.m., as a preemptive strike against the NHLPA doing the same at a slightly later date, seem to indicate as much.

Not that I fully comprehend all the legal wranglings contained therein, obviously, nor do most hockey writers — we're not lawyers — but my understanding is that it is asking a New York court to rule that the NHLPA, which it has been trying to smash to smithereens during this entire lockout, doesn't have the legal right to smash itself as a means of gaining leverage against the NHL in ongoing negotiations.

The threat of decertification has loomed large for more than a month now, and no one at league offices likes that prospect one bit, hence the filing. We've been told, repeatedly, that this kind of move prompted the NBA to reach a CBA agreement with its players in just a week, in time to get the season started on Christmas Day.

That's obviously not going to happen for the NHL at this point, but hopeful (see also: blindly optimistic people who can't have been paying much attention) say that New Year's Day might be a more reasonable target. If only the NHLPA were to cave under this latest legal threat.

And now, it seems there might be a pretty damn good reason for it to do so:

"The NHL requests a declaration that, if the NHLPA's decertification or disclaimer were not deemed invalid by the NLRB, and the collective bargaining relationship between the parties were not otherwise to continue, all existing contracts between NHL players and NHL teams (known as Standard Player's Contracts or "SPCs") would be void and unenforceable," the league's filing said (top of page 8).

Boiling that down to the simplest terms possible, the league wants the court, in the event of a decertification or disclaimer of interest, to make it so that all player contracts are null and void. Essentially, that means every player in the NHLPA, all 700-plus, would be a free agent.

(Coming Up: Teemu has lost his smile; Dustin Brown moves his family to Switzerland; Matthew Corrente done for the season; enough with the Justin Schultz-as-Paul Coffey stuff; Marian Hossa is cleared to play and promptly locked out; Stephane Robidas ate reindeer; who as the NHL's deepest prospect pool?; Mike Richter vs. the lockout; SF Bull pack in fans at the Shark Tank; Penguins fans aren't buying NHL gear; Jordan Eberle is bonkers.)

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I would love to believe there won't be a season at this point.

I would love to be able to rest secure in that knowledge, and then be able to go about my life without worrying about every breathless update from wherever the hell negotiations take place next week (the Moon!?).

I would love to be able to write off all the stupid and pointless posturing as being not worth anyone's attention.

But we all know, and have known all along in our hearts, that there was always going to be a season. All that talk from the NHLPA months ago about how the owners had a date in mind at which they'd end the lockout seemed to make a lot of sense, since there was no way they'd ever in a million years be dumb enough to torch a second season in eight years just to make more money for struggling southern franchises (or at least, you'd hope they weren't that stupid).

Of course, the League itself has always sworn up and down and around the corner that there was no drop-dead date, nor had it ever thought of determining one. Bill Daly reiterated that to Nick Cotsonika yesterday, saying, such a date "has never been considered."

Which seems like it cannot possibly be the case. I understand a lot of that is Daly, as usual, more or less stretching the truth (if we want to be kind to him here), because saying that the League has even entertained the idea would be something into which Don Fehr would sink his teeth and lock down like a pitbull.

Consider the real facts, and not the spin Daly pumps out.

Getty ImagesHello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

Well, the good news is that after two months of the NHL demanding that the players give and give and give some more in these CBA negotiations, Gary Bettman and Co. finally made a real and actual concession to the players.

I'm obviously not talking about the players getting something out of the League in terms of, say, contracting rights, or other givebacks, in return for the hundreds of millions of dollars they've given the league as part of this now-expired CBA compared with where they were in 2003-04, or the hundreds of millions more they'll eventually concede when they agree to the new one. This always remained a deal in which the owners got everything and the players got nothing in return for the mere potential of possibly-increased stability throughout the league. And that's if you don't allow for the "loss of momentum" teams in dying markets face as a result of this protracted and stupid lockout.

Not a very good chance of that happening, you have to figure. This is the kind of lottery Shirley Jackson warned us about.

No, what the league finally conceded in full view of the players and fans is that of course the concept of make-whole — that is, the 29 owners across the NHL paying every dollar of every contract they'd already signed with their players — was something to which they would never acquiesce.

Remember those comments Ryan Suter made about how maybe he had been a little naïve in signing his monster deal with Minnesota because it looked like Craig Leipold allowed it only knowing that he wouldn't have to pay the full value?

"It's disappointing," Suter said before running from the comments like they were on fire. "If you can't afford to [sign contracts] then you shouldn't do it. [Leipold] signed us to contracts. At the time he said everything was fine. Yeah, it's disappointing. A couple months before, everything is fine, and now they want to take money out of our contracts that we already signed."

Turns out he was completely and totally and clearly right all along, even if he won't publicly admit it now.

(Coming Up: Sidney Crosby and Europe; Rick Nash leaves Davos; Braden Holtby is a fluke; BJ Crombeen spittin' hot truth; Claude Giroux on the mend; Bobby Ryan is thriving; Red Wings hold charity game; world juniors talk; Canadiens visit hospital; the Canucks could lose Alex Edler; more truth from Larry Brooks; and how to get Carey Price to the Flyers.)

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Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

Remember last week?

They said, "Hey we're pulling Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr out of these negotiations, and letting players and owners talk face-to-face about their views."

The purpose of this, we were told, was to find more common ground with less posturing.

And we all laughed. Well, most of us.

After all, the NHL's contingent, six strong, included super-hawk owners like Jeremy Jacobs and Murray Edwards. Lining up opposite however-many players — turned out it was a whopping 18 — with no legal representation didn't seem the most conducive environment to laying the groundwork for any sort of deal, did it? These were businessmen, shrewd and mostly battle-hardened from past labor skirmishes, against guys who likely had little to no business background, and, if rumors were to be believed, had already spent previous meeting snickering up their sleeves at whatever the players had to say.

Add in the fact that both sides were to be drilled by Fehr and Bettman as to what they should and should not say, and it seemed on the outside that the acrimony was just too thick and frozen over for even the most moderate representatives on both sides to crack.

This wasn't going to be an easy or particularly pleasant Tuesday for either side.

But then everyone started, in increments, to see things the other side's way. Against all odds, so it would seem. The hockey world lost its collective mind. Sid Crosby and Rob Burkle, who reportedly flew to New York City from Pittsburgh together, came in as a sort of unified front in trying to get a deal done when others might have wanted to be more combative. "The Penguins save the NHL!" and all that kind of stuff.

Consequently, the two warring factions met for hours and hours and hours, went to dinner, came back, kept meeting. Christ, there was even a joint press conference featuring Bill Daly and Steve Fehr, who just over a week prior had been accused by his counterpart in the league of intentionally misleading players and stalling an agreement for ends that, well, who knows what they were?

Unbridled optimism ruled the day, though many very curiously couched it as being "cautious" despite the fact that the reaction to it was anything but. It was closer, in fact, to being hysterical optimism. People started tweeting about comeback scenarios.

Had GMs told coaches to start working out some stuff for training camps? Had teams contacted players? How many games might there be in this season? How does that affect advertising dollars? When might this season start? What possible layout might the schedule itself have?

I was as guilty as anyone of getting caught up in the hoopla.

Finally, the NHL really and truly and definitely looked like it was totally and completely and finally going to come back after abandoning fans lo these past two months. Call your local cable provider, guys and gals, you'll be staying up until 1 a.m. watching west coast games before you know it.

It all seemed a little convenient to some, and that was understandable as well.

Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

If you've been reading What We Learned every Monday here on Puck Daddy pretty much since the lockout began, you've probably noticed that the Phoenix entry each week has more or less served as a chronicle of the city of Glendale's woeful fiscal irresponsibility.

Let's take the time, right off the bat, to remind you how broke Glendale actually is: very broke. Like, crazily broke for a city of its size. The city's outgoing mayor, Elaine Scruggs, left the guy who's taking over from her with a deficit— and I can't even believe this is a real number — of $1.2 billion. With a frickin' B.

And that's not including the $16 million a year on average over the next two decades the city council just voted to give Greg Jamison and the Phoenix -- I mean Arizona -- Coyotes. (Scruggs, to be fair, voted against the deal, along with one councilwoman, though that was a reversal of her previous position.)

The reason the vote took place now, by the way, is that the current mayor and more than half the city council got voted out of office pretty convincingly. And, in an attempt to pass through unpopular legislation by a lame-duck legislature not seen since Lincoln hit theaters, they decided that now was a perfect time to give a bunch of rich dudes millions of dollars per year in public funds. Which, by the way, they could ill afford to dole out.

Because, I don't know, having a hockey team is good for your civic self-esteem, even if (relatively) nobody goes to the games or cares about them. Libraries and public services not so much.

103117587Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

With the threat of the NHLPA's possible decertification looming and public sentiment once again churning back against ownership, someone had to do something.

That something, it turned out, was Bill Daly giving a lengthy radio interview.

Rather appropriately, on Black Friday afternoon, Bill Daly took to the airwaves of the Fan 590 to answer a few questions about how negotiations are going and basically act as if the NHLPA's decision to decertify would lead to the end of the season. And while that might very well be true — as Daly says, the legal process itself is rather time-consuming — the more captivating stuff came as the interview was wrapping up.

(Though it is important to note that Daly seems only to view decertification and a resulting antitrust suit as being an impediment to the season taking place at all because of the time it would take, rather than the owners seeing that move as a sort of nuclear option that would force them to cancel the season outright.)

When mediation was brought up, and the League's openness to entering the process, Daly talked out both sides of his mouth, as you might expect.

His saying, "I've always said I'd be open to it. I'm not sure it's the best way to move the process forward," is very interesting for a number of reasons. The first and most obvious is that the league very obviously shouldn't be open to having a third-party mediator come into these negotiations because that person would be able to cut through all the spin and ask the very simple question: "What exactly are you giving the players here?"

That's likely why Daly and Bettman don't see that route as the best way to move this stagnant and frustrating process forward. They wouldn't like what the mediator had to say about things, at all.

But the very last question the hosts (John Shannon, Brad May and Darren Millard) asked Daly elicited the kind of maddening reaction the league has been spewing for weeks with little basis in fact. When asked if he thinks the union wants to make a deal here, Daly said:

"I've had my doubts and concerns at certain points in time. I would hope that the players want to play and want to have a season, but I'm not sure at the end of the day that, unless it's on certain terms, that union leadership necessarily shares that goal."

This is ridiculous and irresponsible for several reasons.

(Coming Up: Dave Bolland, Twitter dummy; Henrik Lundqvist rules Operation Hat Trick, while Marty Brodeur was a sieve; taking aim at Leafs, Habs owners; Roman Hamrlik fallout; awesome passing play; AHL history made; and a trade that would bring Brad Marchand to the Washington Capitals.)

Trending Topics is a column that looks at the week in hockey, occasionally according to Twitter. If you're only going to comment to say how stupid Twitter is, why not just go have a good cry for the slow, sad death of your dear internet instead?

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It seems like these days Gary Bettman can't go out in public without someone yelling at him, and in some ways that's fair enough.

After all, whether it's fair or unfair, he is the public face of this lockout, and if the NHL players are so blind or unwilling to see who's really driving it — between Twitter and the hilarious and not-at-all-childish "Puck Gary" hats, there's a case to be made that it's probably willful ignorance rather than the legitimate kind — then one can't really expect Joe Sixpack to pick up on the subtle nuances of big-money labor negotiations.

And so it was that the last two times Bettman has deigned to grace the media with a little bit of facetime, during which all manner of softball questions can be lobbed at him so as to better aid him in spin-spin-spinning the actual facts of this lockout, some angry fan has in some way confronted him about the pain Bettman is causing him and his brethren around North America.

The first time it happened was in Toronto, on the day Bettman and the owners turned down not one, not two, but three NHLPA proposals for a new CBA, on the basis that they were not put forth by the league itself and therefore not worth the paper upon which they were printed. A few hours prior to that, as Bettman and the league contingent of silent film-style villains entered the building, a well-dressed fan named Barry Murphy approached the commissioner and asked him some rather pointed questions about what the league planned to do to re-enfranchise all the fans it has disenfranchised throughout this arduous and frustrating process.

Not that it went well or anything, since Bettman lied right to the guy's face about getting a deal done in a timely fashion (as you might expect he would), but it was headline-grabbing and a mostly harmless interaction.

Not so much with the sweathog who started shouting at Bettman on Wednesday, who had some pretty dumb, not especially fleshed-out ideas about how the league could solve the lockout (putting the disputed difference in escrow? What does that even mean?) and generally made a fool of himself.

In cases like these, it's pretty easy to see why the league considers fans stupid and beneath its contempt.

Getty ImagesHello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend's events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.

When it comes to where the blame for this lockout ultimately lies, and where battle lines are drawn, I'm not so much pro-player as I am anti-league, and that's been reflected often throughout this lockout.

Because Gary Bettman apparently proposed a two-week moratorium on negotiations because of whatever dumb reasons he could come up with — and apparently based entirely on hearsay — everyone even remotely sympathetic to the players in this labor strife once again took the opportunity to climb their nearest mountaintop and proclaim the man deeply and truly inept, irresponsible, and worst of all, Bad For The Game.

[Related: Is Flyers owner Ed Snider the lockout's unlikely savior?]

But the truth of Bettman's role in this lockout, and in the League as a whole, is far more complicated than his being the guy who brought fans three lockouts in 18 years.

The simple fact is that when he's actually doing the day-to-day business of running the League, and not locking out the players at the slightest provocation, Bettman might be the best commissioner in sports. It's absolutely and 100 percent true. How much evidence do you need?

(Coming Up: Claude Giroux injured; Brian Burke on Luongo trade; Tomas Kaberle thinks the lockout will end soon; Alex Radulov. Malcolm Subban and Charlie Coyle are killing it; Toews and Janssen get charitable; Kirk Muller, golfer; and the Flyers and Penguins work together to save the lockout; great spin-o-rama pass.)