Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team.  Feel free to complain about it. 

You know when a player who really loves his team and city gets traded, and he gives an emotional speech about how sometimes you forget hockey is a business, and that sometimes makes it unpleasant? 

Let this lockout be a lesson that the same goes for fans. 

During that 113-day ordeal, you were repeatedly condescended to, taken advantage of, and lied to, by both sides of the argument.  But never forget that the contents of your wallet, like one of the podded-up humans in The Matrix, are nothing but fuel for a machine that cruelly exploits you. 

As of this writing, I know of just a handful of NHL teams that actually took the time to come out and apologize to its hundreds of thousands of fans for the nearly four months of torture through which it just put them.  Calgary Flames president Ken King issued a statement more or less as soon as the tentative deal was announced. 

"We're sorry," King said. " We regret what we've put them through.  It's just something that you would never, ever, want to put them through.  It's difficult saying that it was unnecessary, but it's something you would never, ever want to do with your core constituents." 

The Sharks and Blues both expressed their own regrets, while some teams, like the Capitals, Flyers, Canucks, Penguins, Coyotes, Wild, Kings, Bruins, and Stars issued statements or held pressers or conference calls about how great it is that the league is back — especially for the fans!!! —  but not once mentioning how sorry they were about it (though the Oilers came close). 

Sorry, but this kind of apology should come standard-issue from all 30 teams, especially those like the Flames and Bruins, who certainly led the charge for a lockout despite having massive fanbases, popularity, and most importantly, war chests. 

Never forget this was a lockout.  Never forget this was put upon you and the players and the sport by the owners.  Never forget the two biggest engines in all this weren't poor, put-upon teams in tough markets, but rather financial giants whose sole motivation was greed and the desire to squeeze just an extra dime or two out of every dollar spent.  They certainly accomplished their goal. 

The fact that as far as I can tell the majority of the league's 30 teams haven't so much as considered apologizing is beyond irrational.  Obviously, not every team wanted this lockout to happen, but those that stood idly by, hands in their pockets, while Gary Bettman, Jeremy Jacobs, Murray Edwards, and the rest of their villainous cohorts did this are as guilty through their inaction as any actual negative actors in this process. 

They should be down on their hands and knees, groveling for the fans to return to their arenas to buy seats and concessions and jerseys after all this.  Everything should be half-price.  Every purchase should come with the warmest "thank you" imaginable.  But of course, they don't.  Because the league doesn't give a rat's ass about its fans, no matter how much free Center Ice they throw at us. 

Oh yeah, fans are excited to have the NHL back in their lives and, if you like hockey, you can't really blame them.  I know many fans have already started buying tickets in a blind scramble to turn over more of their money to the oligarchs who just robbed them of their favorite sport for four months, and I know that all across the league, games will be played before packed houses sometime in the next few weeks.  It disgusts me, obviously, but that's the way of the world.  I'm sure the "Thank You (Again) Fans!"  that's painted at both blue lines will more than make up for it.  That's bridge-building for the NHL in 2013. 

This league, which seems content to have itself reduced to a national sports punchline every seven or eight years (clock's ticking on that opt-out work stoppage!),  has never cared about you, and will do so.  Not really.  Not as long as you're willing to throw wads of cash at it the second it gives you what it should have been giving you all along. 

Everyone's giddy now.  Many have lost any sense of reality they had throughout the process.  I still can't believe I'm seeing legitimate hockey reporters — and not just the dummies in the owners' pockets — saying stuff about how the NHL gave the Players' Association concessions at the 12th hour.