With no small inspiration from “8 OV deep and starting a bottle of Porte”, New Jersey’s Krys Barch took to Twitter Saturday night to address the current NHL lockout.  With the following quotes provided by the Globe & Mail’s Bruce Dowbiggin, if Barch is capable of this sort of thing while inebriated, the NHLPA needs to get him in front of a microphone (preferably while sober).

“No different than a truck driver, farmer or line worker, I have a shot and a beer,” the rugged six-year NHL veteran announced. “… I have made it through sweating, bleeding cut Achilles, broken hands, concussions, broken orbital bones, 8 teeth knocked out, etc. etc. etc.” With his two sons sleeping and his pregnant wife nearby, Barch wonders about his chosen profession and being a man out of time “when a word and a gun solidified and solved all problems.”

Then Barch asks if the owners “have endured any of the injuries that I or any other player in the NHL have endured.

Still, they probably sit their smoking the same brand of cigar, sipping the same cognac and going on vacation. To one of five houses they own. While we sit here knowing they want to take 20 per cent of our paychecks. One half to 3/4 of my peers will have to work for the next 50 years of their lives.”

After congratulating the “lucky select few” colleagues who are independently wealthy from hockey, Barch turns his critique on the NHL’s business plan (echoing National Hockey League Players’ Association head Don Fehr, no doubt). If the NHL wants to keep failing franchises in the south, Barch tweets, it needs to work with players to do that. “Or they need to start to move teams to the North where they still make money … The only way to stop the work stoppages long into the future is fix the root cause of the problems.

“The lockout is a procedure to take from the players to pay for the NHL mistakes. Let not allow the NHL to make more mistakes.”