If you’re looking for the biggest stories in the hockey world over the past decade, you’ll have to look beyond the ice. Far beyond it. While the 2010s produced some of the most eye-popping and dynamic talent the game has ever seen, much of what we’ll remember about it the most happened away from the rink. Here are the top stories of the past 10 years:
10. 2012-13 Lockout
For the third time in NHL history, a season was disrupted when the owners locked the players out after failing to reach a collective bargaining agreement. The NHL, as always, was the big winner in the standoff, reducing the players’ share of revenues from 57 to 50 percent, and eliminated the ridiculously front-loaded contracts. Deputy commissioner Bill Daly said five-year term limits was, “the hill we will die on,” and didn’t get it. The players failed to enshrine Olympic participation as part of the deal, which paved the way for the league to pull out of the 2018 Games against the players’ wishes.
9. Return of the Winnipeg Jets
When the NHL needed an NHL-ready landing spot for the Atlanta Thrashers in the summer of 2011, it chose Winnipeg, a market without an NHL team since the original Jets left for Phoenix 15 years prior. Since then, the Jets have built a model franchise, accumulating assets through the draft and doing a good job of convincing them to stay on the Prairies. There has not been a ton of on-ice success and, despite being picked by The Hockey News to win the Stanley Cup in 2019, lost in the first round of the playoffs.