Dear NHLPA,

Please go back to work immediately. Accept the last offer of the owners and move on. While you will claim that owners will lock you out, and it is the practices of the owners that have led to the financial situation they are in today, it is you, the players, that are holding hockey up.

I know I sound anti-union but I am not. I grew up surrounded by a union that my mom walked a picket line in the snow so she could provide me with a better life. I appreciate the role and necessity of unions when it comes to working men and women having to negotiate with the upper class or government. People in powerful positions may listen to the problems of those less fortunate but will only react when those individuals band together to create their own power. When the NHLPA was created it was needed as an avenue so that issues of all players could be addressed at once instead of dividing them and leaving each player to deal with their respective owners.

I believe that the NHLPA still serves a purpose in the sense that it can do a quicker job of negotiating issues than leaving the players to their own devices. But now this union has become a union of millionaires trying to hold its own against a group of far richer owners. There is no class struggle.

Painting the owners as a group of greedy overloads makes for great reading but in the end they have every right to be that greedy. The owners take the risk in order to make profit. The players provide a service that is only as valuable as the owners make it. When the owners feel that the value of the service is overpriced, they have the capability to re-adjust that cost. Of course they run the risk of a strike, but for some owners this is preferable to playing a season at a greater lost due to costs. For those of you who run businesses I think you would be nodding at most of this.

Now for those of you who side with the players and say that the players deserve these paychecks because they at the top of their profession, people want to see their skills and owners have created these monstrous contracts so now they have to live by them, I say too bad. Legally, the contracts of each player can and will change. The owners have determined that their product is too expense and the fans who enjoy their product have also said that the product is too expensive.

Comparing professional sports unions to working class unions is a joke. You are comparing a want to a need. Hockey is not a need. I have little sympathy for a millionaires union. These men get to play a boys sport for lots of money because they choose to. If the Canucks ever win a Cup I will be overjoyed that they did their job to the highest level. I would hope that the nurse who someday helps save me after a bacon-caused heart attack gets 1/20th the benefits NHL players do.