Who's missing the forest for the trees?

It looks like NHL players will not be paid their full salaries this year because the total of their percentage of league earnings is less than their combined salaries. How much they will be short (if any) depends on how well the league does over the next few months.

Recently Gary Bettman has enforced a rule that players selected for the All Star game who do not show up to its festivities must miss either the game before or after the All Star game. If a player is too hurt to show up for the All Star game (not necessarily play), then they are too hurt to play in regular season games surrounding it. (The "If you're too sick to go to school, you're too sick to watch TV" rule.) Some say this is ridiculous because players are preserving themselves for games that really matter. They say that Bettman is missing the forest--what really matters (regular season games), for the trees--the All Star game.

I think Bettman is exactly right. Right now, the marketability of the game is most important. What's meaningless is a regular season game that only a couple of hundred thousand people might care about. What matters is a game that several million people could tune into and see professional athletes in a new light, displaying their amazing talents. And it doesn't matter because hockey should make money, it matters because hockey is a great game and it needs more people playing it. What's for certain is that if hockey becomes expendable among the sports franchises of the USA, the players will really be playing for the love of the game--and nothing else.