I do quite like the SB Nation StoryStream system. Rather than waiting for the game to be over to write one long report, I can write 5-6 short posts to cover a game – a preview, a lineup, half-time and full-time reports, and quotes from the coach. It’s different than the traditional 600-words-on-deadline way of covering a game, but I don’t think it’s worse.

Here’s the effort for Saturday, as the Stars drew 1-1 yet again, with Edmonton (yet again).

This post appeared first at RandBall, your home for, uh, homes for stuff.

We’re one week away from the September 15th deadline in the NHL collective bargaining negotiations, after which it seems certain that the NHL owners will band together and lock out the players, stopping the hockey season from beginning on time. If nothing else, the sheer gall of the owners is impressive; seven seasons after canceling an entire year to break the players’ union and get a much more owner-friendly CBA, the men in the expensive suites are back at it again, demanding that the union take around a 20% cut in the share of league revenues that the players receive.

If this seems ridiculous, it’s only because it is. Had the players asked for a 20% increase in their share of league revenues, three owners would have died from laughing so hard that their hearts exploded. Nevertheless, we’re on the brink of yet another work stoppage – the third in the major pro sports in two years, on the heels of the 2011 NFL and NBA lockouts – with seemingly no way out.

What’s striking to me is that the era of real differences between players and owners in pro sports seem to be more or less over. MLB players spent much of the 1970s and 1980s attempting to get owners to stop treating them like chattel, and eventually baseball owners managed to stop colluding and trying to roll back labor relations to the 1930s. That was an era of real differences. The 1990s were filled with disputes about salary caps and luxury taxes, as owners tried to put a cap on spending and players tried to block these constraints. Those were real differences. But all three lockouts in the past 12 months – assuming the NHL’s does indeed come to fruition – are based on one thing: the owners want more money and they’re willing to blow up everything to get it.

On the one hand, I suppose this is a good thing. All four leagues seem to understand that on some level, players and owners are partners, and in order for the leagues to sustain themselves, it’s important for both sides to be guaranteed something. This is an improvement from the old days, and at some level it means that all these work stoppages are about is arguments over math.

On the other hand, the NBA and NFL players both just agreed to give back revenues from previous agreements, getting it down to around a 50-50 split between players and owners. The NHL will probably land in some kind of similar territory. And I guarantee you this: when those fresh agreements expire, you can count on one thing: the owners will trot out wildly false financial figures that claim they’re losing money. They will plead poverty. And then they will demand that the players take 40-45% of revenue. And so on down the rabbit hole.

*On with the links – and it’s somewhat crowded, given I missed last week:

*If the Wild don’t play this fall, we’ll just have to spend more time watching the Wolves. Near the end of the Olympics, Grantland broke down the NBA potential of new Timberwolves guard Alexey Shved.

*Seems like we’re all talking about Anthony Slama and his continued exile from the big leagues. Twinkie Town points out that he’s still getting strikeouts – but getting them in different ways.

*I loved this article from The Classical about 16-inch softball leagues in Chicago.

*Here’s Will Leitch writing about the new basketball arena in Brooklyn, and how it might affect both the Nets and the neighborhood.

*The Economist looked at the effect of grueling travel on sports teams, a post that includes not only data on cross-country American teams, but on the league with probably the worst road trips in the world: Super Rugby, which plays on three different continents on opposite sides of the Southern Hemisphere.

*The Classical writes about 22-year-old tennis player Michael McClune, who is enduring one of the hard transitions in sports: from junior star to grind-it-out-pro who has to fight his way up the rankings.

*And finally: it’s college football Saturday, so go read some Spencer Hall to get yourself in the mood.

Labor Day weekend caused a break in the writing action, so to speak, though I did write a quick post about the Stars game over the weekend, and another one on Wednesday about the NASL’s decision to make soccer in Minnesota even less viable next year.

Suddenly I am writing a lot about local soccer and a lot about local cricket and frankly I’m having an awfully good time.

Over at SB Nation Minnesota, I tried to imagine the rough time that Wild owner Craig Leipold is probably having when he meets with his fellow owners.

(Boston owner Jeremy Jacobs and Philadelphia owner Ed Snider ended up being the bad guys. I’m not sure why, exactly. I needed villains.)

For Twinkie Town today, I wrote something that, if placed into a category, would have to be called a short story. I’m not too sure it makes any kind of sense, but here it is.

Saturday night, I covered the Minnesota Stars game against FC Edmonton, writing about it at SB Nation Minnesota.

The result includes several reports, a postgame post, and some quotes from the head coach. I like the SB Nation format of these things – oft-updated and short.

Note: This post appeared first – and shockingly early in the morning – at RandBall, your home for tater tots.

In 2014, FIBA – the international basketball governing body – is changing the name of the world championships to the World Cup of Basketball. Rumor is, the NBA wants to turn the Olympics into an under-23 tournament – like soccer – and partner up with FIBA to create its own showcase (read: revenue-generating), quadrennial event.

I’m on board. When it comes to international competition, I’m always on board; I love the soccer World Cup and wish that every sport had a similar championship. Heck, I’m one of about four dozen people in the entire world that cares about the World Baseball Classic, and that number includes the rosters of every team in the tournament. I love it when sports – like soccer – end up too big for the Olympics; the more international championships we have, the more summers I have to look forward to.

I love international competitions because I love nights like last Wednesday. The USA men’s soccer team beat Mexico 1-0, the team’s first win in Mexico. Ever. 75 years, we’ve been sending teams to Mexico City, and not one time had the Americans won. In 24 matches, the USA had managed zero wins and one tie. That’s 0-23-1, which is the kind of record you’d expect to have if you were playing your five-year-old son in chess.

Sports fans and the internet don’t always mix well; no matter what team you follow, there’s always someone that’s a fan of a rival that’s louder, ruder, and meaner. But one of the things I like about sports is that it offers a chance for me to be part of a bigger community, and international competition expands that to the entire country. I like international events because for once, we all get to be on the same team; we can all come together to cheer on Kevin Durant, or Landon Donovan. So bring on the tournaments, I say. The more tourneys, the better.

*On with the links:

*I’ve read a lot about the at the Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, the group that’s been much in the news for its groundbreaking studies of deceased athlete’s brains, studies that show the horrible damage that those brains have sustained. But until I read this profile of football lover Dr. Ann McKee, the chief neurologist for the Center, I wasn’t that scared. Now I’m slightly terrified that my childhood football days have done me long-term brain damage.

*Staying on the concussion topic, Deadspin made a couple of other points in the discussion. First, they point out that – “concussion symptoms” or no – there’s not as much of a clear-cut line between concussion and no concussion as we’d like to believe. But secondly, they also point out – if NFL players (in this case, Troy Polamalu) don’t care about concussions, then why should we?

*LSU soccer goalie Mo Isom tried out as a kicker for the football team. She didn’t make it, but you should really read this Grantland profile of her, all the same.

*I really enjoyed Steve Rushin’s story of his wife digging her gold medal out of the safe-deposit box.

*And finally: The NHL lockout starts soon, and the good folks at Down Goes Brown have you covered, with a list of what the NHL apparently learned from the NFL and NBA lockouts. (Short version: nothing.)

Over at SB Nation Minnesota today, I’m wondering why the WNBA isn’t more popular.

(And if you still have a few minutes left, there’s time for a Twins-Texas series preview at Twinkie Town, too.)

That’s the beauty of SB Nation Minnesota – it gives me a place to write about Minnesota Stars soccer and drag racing.

This morning at Twinkie Town, I looked outside the Minnesota news sphere for once, at the things making news around baseball.

Since this is still me writing at Twinkie Town, though, I couldn’t help but add a few lists, one for each story, of seriously weak jokes.

If I had a tagline, it’d be, “Providing indignation, and very weak jokes, for 30 years.”

Also: Here’s a Twins-Oakland series preview.