You can feel, hear, and smell the action... OK maybe smell is a bit much, but nobody will argue that going to see the Columbus Blue Jackets has its own unique aura.
Columbus Blue Jackets
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We watch all Chicago Bears football games; home and away. The Bears defense looks good, can the Chicago Bears score any points? We will see! Are the Chicago Bears playoff bound? We don't think 9-7 is going to cut it this season. Stick with us and follow all of the Bears games.
It's almost time for the NBA. Eighty-two regular season games with the Minnesota Timberwolves. The NBA is still one of my favorite domestic sports, but the attendance has been down the last few years. Hopefully, it will pick up for the Minnesota Timberwolves. Many fans claim the league has failed to produce new super-stars in the absence of Jordan. Shaq ain't bad and LeBron is on his way. Go Minnesota Timberwolves.
In puckthirsty cities like Detroit, which proudly dubs itself Hockeytown, such is the level of despair among fans whose loyalty looks less like sports obsession and more like family ties.
The Red Wings are to many what Motown once was to popular music -- the heart, the soul, the raison d'Fetre. Purchase Great Go to the Game with Blue Jackets Tickets. Team captain Steve Yzerman's multistory image hovers over the city square where three Stanley Cups have been celebrated.
But Joe Louis Arena is dark now, all because of the first full-season shutdown of a major North American pro sports league. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman on Wednesday canceled what was left of a season that never started, plunging the league into an entirely new and unpredictable ice age.
"I'm ashamed by what we did," Los Angeles Kings president Tim Leiweke said, invoking unusually blunt criticism of owners and players alike. "Smart people should have solved this by today."
There was still a glimmer of hope: The players' union said Thursday that the sides would get together again Saturday in New York, though there was no word on who would attend or what would be discussed.
The emotional damage from the NHL's suicide season ranges beyond the hockey faithful, and the economic destruction touches more than millionaires such as the Rangers' Jaromir Jagr, the NHL's highest-paid player last season at $11 million; and billionaires such as Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis.
Thousands of NHL club employees' pay and work weeks were slashed when the lockout began months ago. The 500 to 1,000 seasonal workers at each arena, from popcorn poppers to Zamboni drivers, will miss up to 41 game paychecks, not counting the playoffs.
And the minimum-wage-plus-tips workers at countless hockey-dependent restaurants such as Pittsburgh's Ruddy Duck, Boston's Halftime Pizza -- and yes, Detroit's Hockeytown Cafe -- had their very livelihoods blindsided.
"I'm sick when we go around to the restaurants," Columbus Blue Jackets president Doug MacLean said. "Some of the managers get mad at me: When are you playing? When are you playing? I don't blame them. It's devastating for them."
In St. Paul, Minn., where the city's honeymoon with the expansion Minnesota Wild is going strong after four years, officials estimate a loss of $369,000 in sales tax income during the months the team would have been playing.
Joe Kasel, who owns the Eagle Street Grille across the street from St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center, said he has laid off 28 employees since the lockout began. "We do what we can to get through it. It's all we can do," Kasel said between waiting and bussing tables, serving drinks and handling checks -- all part of his now 80-hour work week.
At 242, a bar down the street, no amount of effort could keep the business going. The owners have taped a note on the entrance: "242 will be closed, indefinitely, due to 'cost uncertainty' and high player salaries."