What a week for ice hockey! Canada wins the World Cup, then the NHL lockout begins. And aren't the gloom merchants having a field day!

I'm not personally going to go into much depth on this - I couldn't care less about ice hockey really - except to track a few perspectives on events, mainly from a Canadian angle.

On Tuesday night, Canada beat Finland 3-2 to win the World Cup of Hockey final in Toronto. See the Canadian Press report and a match report on the official WCH2004 website.

Midnight Wednesday night, and the National Hockey League commenced their lockout upon the expiration of the old Collective Bargaining Agreement. Can you believe that they have set up a special website devoted to "news" of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement? On the other side of the ledger is the players' union website. The NHLPA executive director Bob Goodenow issued a press release on Wednesday night at the commencement of the lockout.

Rick Salutin of the Globe and Mail has done an op-ed reproduced on rabble.ca. The CBC has put together a good section on the CBA and also have gone into their archives to look at past pro sport labour disputes.

From an American perspective, there is a report (in audio) from NPR's All Things Considered on Friday. Nashville, Tennessee, is about as unlikely a home for an NHL franchise as I could possible imagine. An Associated Press report on Friday tells us that:

Nashville taxpayers could be facing a loss of a couple million dollars if the NHL lockout wipes out the 2004-05 season.

Joe Biddle of The Tennessean has more to say about the likely impact of the lockout in Nashville.

I'll admit that I haven't formed an opinion on this yet. Perhaps I'll just sit on the outside and see how things develop.