One of the true misfortunes of living in our great city is our reliance on the National Hockey League as our sporting lifeline. Day-in, day-out we Torontonians are faced with countless hours of lockout coverage with every union meeting given more press than a Presidential Address.

The bottom-line is that there will be no NHL hockey this year. Those in and around the business have known this for years now. So why does the Canadian media continuously toy with our emotions? We are being played as fools, and Torontoist for one, is a "Player Hater."

Torontoist will be sick to our stomaches if we have to hear NHLPA President Trevor Linden’s name one more time. The guy has always been over-rated as a player, and he’s even worse of a negotiator. The owners and the players have zero intention of working out a deal. Respected sources such as 680News and the Fan590 were ecstatic that the two sides were meeting without bosses Gary Bettman or Bob Goodenow present. Linden’s secret meetings were constantly the lead story on the Toronto sporting scene. Molson and Coors didn’t reach their recent takeover agreement through the negotiations of a pair of line-workers - and Linden essentially is just a line-worker. But were people actually expecting a deal to materialize from this?

Today’s last-minute meeting will finally see Bettman and Goodenow sitting down together. Hopefully the two will finalize what has long been expected so TSN can allow Bob McKenzie to get back home to his Cheetos and Chocolate Milk.

It’s at times like these that Toronto should be more like Carolina, Florida, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Columbus, or Anaheim, where nobody cares about hockey. Oh wait! Perhaps that’s why we have a problem.

The one shining light through the cloud of the lockout has been Sega Genesis's NHL 95 and TV station The Score. The 24-hour sports network has boldly taken hockey out of the forefront in favour of the NBA season, the MLB off-season, and this Sunday’s Superbowl. Speaking of Superbowl, who's in for a bucket of KFC?