The Man Who Would Benefit Most From A Full-Season NHL Lockout

Head over to Google and enter nhl lockout cost. Take a minute or so and browse the first few pages of results, I'll wait. No doubt you've read all about how the the lockout will cost the players up to half of their wages, how the local economy in Long Island will miss out on $60 million, how the city of Nashville is going to owe, $8.6 million in operating costs, while Broward County has no way to make interest on their loan, and that could cost them millions, Raleigh will miss ticket sales, parking and concessions, arena district spending and advertising that amounts to, you guessed it, millions, and thousands of league, team and arena will lose out on work, probably to the tune of millions.

As an aside the scare mongers who talk about general municipal economic collapse should probably brush up on the studies that show work stoppages have no economic impact. (PDF WARNING)

The players are dead set on regaining leverage and the Owners are content to cancel the entire season again. NHL Owners are going to leave a wake of loss and destruction across the North American economic landscape, and everyone is going to lose and lose big. Except for one man.

Should the NHL choose to keep the players out for an entire season, no single person in the NHL will benefit more than Steve Tambellini.

Tambellini, steward of the worst team in the NHL since the lockout, and worst team in the NHL since he took over (by an enormous margin, no less), has had difficulties making effective personnel moves outside of walking to the podium in June to use the first overall selection he manages to each year. His list of personnel transgression is long and has been abused repeatedly in nearly every corner of the internet, as it should, but a full-season lockout represents a get out of jail free card for the Oilers' General Manager. Erasing this season makes a long list of some of the worst of Tambellini's transgressions disappear. To wit:

His terrible decision to keep Nikolai Khabibulin, one of the very worst goaltenders in the league, on the team, operating as Devan Dubnyk's backup? Erased.

Another year of the stationary Ryan Whitney on the blueline? Never happened.

Ryan Whitney's $5.5 million? Gone .

Andy Sutton's 2x overpay? Disappeared.

The second year (seriously, who gives talentless goons TWO years?) of the Darcy Hordichuk debacle? 86ed.

The decision to patch the worst defense in the league with a college free agent? Sayonara.

A fourth consecutive year in the bottom five? Hit the reset button.

A full-season lockout erases almost all of Tambellini's (current) worst decisions aside from the Sheldon Souray buyout payments, and even then, Souray's buyout payments don't count against a salary cap!

Now for the fun part. Rather than a season spent (hopefully) fighting for his job, Tambellini has his sins washed away and gets to start over. Is this a good a thing?