Flames fans are used to the idea of blaming Darryl Sutter. For every intelligent and well thought out move, like trading a second round pick for Mike Cammalleri or signing Alex Tanguay for absurdly cheap, he makes three or four extremely boneheaded moves, usually involving Olli Jokinen.

Unfortunately, it's time to start blaming Darryl for problems that are not just Flames specific. And the biggest problem we may have to blame him for? The possibility of the next lockout.

Let me explain- while you wouldn't say things were just peaches and cream between the NHL and the NHLPA, they'd been tiptoeing around each other politely since the lockout, avoiding upsetting the apple cart that is labor negotiations. This is in part due to constant turmoil within the NHLPA and in part due to the fact that nobody wants another lockout, since nobody benefits from it.

But last week that all changed. The NHLPA picked a boss, at least unofficially, and the NHL decided to finally show its fangs on one of those absurdly long term cap circumventing contracts, when it decided to kill the Devil's Kovalchuk deal. This involvement by the NHL, when it has allowed similar contracts over the past few years, is being seen as hypocritical and just plain ornery. (On a sidenote, you can't say "ornery" with out prefacing it with some sort of country phrasing). The NHLPA is not happy, and Donald Fehr, the new boss, is not a man to take lightly. That's not saying a lockout will be over contract length, but rather that this dispute is destroying all goodwill, and if Fehr wants to take a stand during the next CBA, he will, and it will be all Darryl Sutter's fault.

So how does Daz come into this? Easy- he invented the cap circumventing deal. Sutter signed Flames goaltender Miika Kiprusoff to a 6 year $35M deal for an average cap hit of $5,833,333. This is not an absurdly long contract (that idea was pioneered by Mike Milbury in all of his insanity and to absolutely no benefit to his team). No, it's a moderately long one that takes advantage of an AAV based cap hit, rather than salary based cap hit. So how does the deal break down?

'08-'09:  $8,500,000

'09-'10:  $7,000,000

'10-'11:  $7,000,000

'11-'12:  $6,000,000

'12-'13:  $5,000,000

'13-'14:  $1,500,000

And there it is. One year of $1.5M lowers the cap hit from $6.7M to $5.8M. Then Zetterberg happened. And Franzen. Pronger, Hossa, and Kovalchuk weren't far behind either. So welcome to the special hell of Flames fans, NHL. Go ahead and start blaming Darryl for the next lockout.

On a side note, the part that makes this more depressing for Flames fans is that we get screwed over twice. Sutter signs Kiprusoff to a cap friendly deal, but when we have higher cost deals to make, we don't take advantage of the system? We can't manipulate the system for Bouwmeester or Iginla? Of course not- not when the GM is Darryl Sutter.

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