The closest analogy for how exhausting this lockout has been so far would be to compare it to watching a geriatric doubles tennis match. You won’t suffer any neck pains since they take forever to send the ball back to the opposing team. In fact, I am quite sure my popcorn is stale and fungus has formed in the remaining liquid of my already stale beer.

How can we make this exciting for NHL trading card collectors? Surely we can create a LHL product (LHL is the acronym for Lockout Hockey League).Hmm let’s ponder that below.

Autograph cards Source Material:

Given that a CBA that I found on NHL.com is 472 pages long, we can safely assume that there is more than enough paper material to create cut signature cards of the main players involved in this “debate”.  We could make 2 color autograph cut signatures since the rejected-CBA paperwork will have more than enough yellow and red highlights to keep this interesting. Just imagine the combinations! We could call them Paper cuts.

Autograph Checklist:

• Gary Bettman 1/1: We know his ego is so over inflated and clearly has issues connecting dots to create a linear line of alphabet that applies to his name only. After name designations won’t count and I am sure B.S isn’t in his vocabulary. After all Phoenix is a viable marketplace, right?
• Donald Fehr and his brother: The tagline would be “We have no Fear”. See what I did there
• Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechkin and Gary Bettman triple auto 1/1: Who signs the card first? Probably Ovie with that wicked laughter of his. Again another redemption that is not fulfilled as I can’t see either Sid or Gary sending this first to the other person to sign since that would be a sign of weakness in negotiation techniques. Right, that would be the same problem if we were to have Gary or Don 1/1 dual auto.
• Team owner signed cards: Not going to happen since these guys have all been assimilated into the Borg collective and Gary is obviously the first. Gary is awfully twitchy and robotic-like in public forums that he could pass for one of the replicators (See Stargate TV show). Let’s toss that idea aside. Actually Donald Fehr could have a card pictured with Gollum in the background. Almost every newspaper shot of Fehr shows his face hidden in the shadows. Sheesh!
• Bud Selig, Donald Fehr autograph card: Two heads are better than one would be the inscription.
• Chelios and Bettman dual?
• Sidney Crosby and Mario dual? We could call that one death by a thousand paper cuts.
• What about a multi card autograph of all current and former NHLPA heads? I am pretty sure Alan Eagleson will be left off the list. OR we can create some hype and have him sign some cards and release them into the market. Then the card manufacturers can say that they never meant to release them creating a massive surge on the secondary market or a wild eBay bidding swing on these cards that would put Jeremy Lin Rookie autograph cards sales to shame.
• Recently laid off employees? Now this would really fill the check list quite nicely. Not sure if the PA or the NHL realizes how much they are going to affect the bottom line for SO MANY people who rely on the NHL to put food on the table.
• What about an autograph subset called “where do we go now” featuring players who could not move up to the AHL because former NHLers are back there playing.
• What about a subset featuring the richest players stuck in the minors? Wade Redden? Jeff Finger? We could call this, CBA circumvention techniques.
• What about a subset called “Have your cake and eat it too” and feature players like Parise and the owner of that team who signed him to a long contract in hopes to get a rollback in the next CBA? Or could we call it “Hypocritical signatures”?
• Capologists autograph cards. The people teams hire to get them around the cap rules that they agreed to lol..

Negotiation used Materials:

• Tim Horton’s paper cups with autographs of the person who drank from it. What about used napkins? We can have a 1/1 napkin that Fehr and Bettman used to hide their laughter at each other CBA proposals. Wait, what about sweat stained suits cut up into cards with autographs? Oh right, they don’t stay in meetings long enough to allow for sweat to actually form. Plus we know that Fehr and Bettman would never admit to sweating in the first place. Calm cool collected right?
• I was going to suggest that we create cut up negotiation used pen cards but we know they haven’t signed anything yet, so that pen is still at the store waiting to be purchased for the grand occasion. Let’s toss that idea aside.
• Maybe we have the trading card manufacturers create name plate cards of each letter in “Collective Bargaining Agreement”?  They could have it numbered to the actual number of CBA proposals that were amended and resent to each party. What number are we at now? 5?
• Hotel Receipts? Taxi Cab receipts? Boring stuff, let’s move on.
• NHLPA union membership cards? Wondering if any players are busting to break the ranks after missing more pay cheques? I secretly hope not since I am on the player side of this whole debacle.
• Charity game used Jerseys: Lord knows that there will be enough of these floating around, should be more than enough jerseys to cut up into regular cards to fill up the products.
• KHL membership cards? Swedish Elite League membership cards?

A grand prize idea:

Let’s employ a redemption card lottery system that ranks how many times journalists are right in their predictions of when the lock out will end. A collector who has collected enough redemption points, can enter into a draw to pick the winning lock out ended agreement date and choose a sports journalist who was most accurate in their answer.

Ugh..This is my way of venting.. come on guys, if the CAW can reach a deal, surely you can.