01:00 AM EDT on Thursday, April 28, 2005

BY DAVID McPHERSON
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Working for Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, Mike O'Connell has learned to say no.

That was the answer to players who demanded salaries the team felt it could not afford despite criticism from Bruins fans hungry for a Stanley Cup.

"If every other team said no like we did, we'd be playing right now," O'Connell told a Providence audience yesterday.

The Bruins vice president and general manager spoke from a management perspective about the ongoing NHL lockout at yesterday's Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce's two-day Business Expo at the Rhode Island Convention Center.

O'Connell told a small audience of hockey fans that the NHL owners as a group finally said no to excessive salaries after losing $500 million collectively over the course of two seasons.

The result was the lockout, which was imposed by owners before the start of this season, when they could not reach a new collective bargaining agreement with the players' union, the NHL Players Association.

Before the lockout, the average NHL salary was $1.8 million, and owners say that was causing many teams to lose money.

Initially, O'Connell said, the players' union refused to believe the game was losing money as owners claimed. "I guess the players thought, like any other sport, the owners would cave," said O'Connell, a former Bruins defenseman and one-time Providence Bruins coach.

Instead, both sides refused to budge and the result was the cancellation of the 2004-2005 season.

Progress has been made in recent talks, O'Connell said, and he is hopeful the lockout will end.

The players, he said, "are starting to realize the economic system was not working."

O'Connell described a game that lacks national appeal, does not translate well to television and has become too defensive.

"We have to find a way to make it better on TV," he said. "We probably have to listen to the networks."

He predicted the advent of high-definition television will make hockey more appealing to watch, but said changes still are needed to increase scoring.

O'Connell also responded to recent comments on the lockout by Bruins legend Bobby Orr.

In a newspaper column, Orr called on NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and players association executive director Bob Goodenow "to either lead or get out of the way.

"Because of what has happened, our sport is in danger of becoming irrelevant unless both sides immediately put an end to this nonsense," Orr wrote for the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence, Mass.

O'Connell said he hopes Orr's comments have an impact, but the game's problems still need to be corrected.

"The more people who speak out, the better, but it's up to the owners to fix," O'Connell said.

Contact David McPherson at dmcpherson [at] projo.com