Kool-Aid© Effect Needs Some More Time to Wear Off

A Brief History Lesson: Jim Jones was a religious cult leader who started his own closed community called Jonestown in Guyana. But tragedy struck in 1978 when the compounded town was about to be raided by authorities and the loyal followers drank cyanide with a grape flavored soft drink. To this day, people get it wrong. The brand was Flavor-Aid, not the leading brand Kool-Aid. But today, the phrase "drinking Kool-aid" suggests that the person is a part of a cult and cannot disseminate their opinion from that of a group.

Some players in the NHL who refused to talk about any possibility of a salary cap were often accused of doing the grape Kool-Aid. Early in the lockout, Brian McCabe and several others spoke out and used their propaganda to rally. They showed where their loyalties lied... with the money. Now that the Players Union has been thoroughly smashed, the players who seem to have been drinking a lot of the unions Kool-aid, defends their boss' actions.

"I'm not bitter about the deal," New York Islanders player representative Adrian Aucoin told Newsday. "(Goodenow) did his job. He put up a fight. Sean Avery (of the Los Angeles Kings) said we were being brainwashed, but (Goodenow) had us prepared the right way. I think he did what he had to do."

Well, don't be too hard on Sean. He just had a public break-up with his supermodel girlfriend Rachel Hunter. I'd be really moody after that too.

"I've been disappointed in us as players," Mellanby told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "There has been a lot of talk about how Bob let everyone down. We as players let Bob down. For players to say we got a worse deal, we got a one-page fax in February with (a cap of $42.5 million) on it. The paperwork with the lawyers is a 600-page document. It's irresponsible with some of the reaction some of the players have had."

You've got to be kidding me, right? You mean you want to stay loyal to Goodenow even after you got reamed?

I guess it's going to take a long while before the reality sets in for some players who were so used to making more money than they knew what to do with. To them, they still believe it was worth continuing the lockout. Let's hope that the players, once they begin to go to camp, they will forget about the battle and move on to the future of the league.


[Via: CANOE - SLAM! Sports]