How to prevent another NHL lockout

"How many fingers am I holding up?  That's how many lockouts the NHL will have suffered by time I'm done here.
You're welcome, David Stern!"

For the, uhh, millionth third time in the Gary Bettman era, the NHL faces the possibility of a lockout that would shorten, or worse-yet cancel another season of NHL hockey.  In case you didn't know, Bettman worked for David Stern in the NBA before becoming NHL commissioner in 1993.  The first lockout happened in the fall of 1994 (yes, right as MLB was finishing up a strike of their own) and forced the 1994-95 season down to 48 games.  But I'm not complaining, because there was a happy ending to that season.  Then, exactly 10 years later, the entire 2004-05 season was lost to a lockout.  So here we are in 2012, desperately hoping to avoid a third lockout in a 20 year period.  Gary Bettman told us not to be worried three weeks ago, but now says he's prepared for a lockout.  But this can all be avoided.  I've arranged a few helpful tips for the NHL and NHLPA to prevent another lockout.

• Well, the easiest way to settle the labor war is to lock Gary Bettman and NHLPA director Donald Fehr into a room, and whoever comes out alive after an hour gets whatever they want in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.
   
• Make sure the next CBA has a no-lockout clause, similarly to players' no-trade clauses.
   
• Have the NHLPA hire someone who's been in a sport that never locks out.  Okay, anyone but Donald Fehr...
   
• Tell Ryan Suter and Zach Parise that they won't be able to make their salaries...oh, right, they have massive signing bonuses that pay them even if this very sort of thing happens.  Never mind...
   
• Put Dany Heatley on the NHLPA's player committee and tell him that if there's no CBA in place, he can't inevitably request a trade to Edmonton.  Or Pittsburgh. 

Sources say: you just got scammed. #CONFIRMED

Chances are that if you have a Twitter and follow hockey, you've probably heard a rumor started by @HockeyyInsiderr, you just may or may not know.  For some reason, many people continue to follow him and believe his idiotic rumors.  In fact, the mysterious character that "HockeyyInsiderr" is has amassed over 21,000 Twitter followers.

Anyway, I usually ignore people like him.  I've never followed him, and I never will.  While I disagree with what he does, which is essentially trying to create rumors (like Brodeur for Semin two years ago and Parise for Malkin last summer) and inflate reports to boost his follower count, he doesn't force anyone to follow him.  If people follow him, that's their problem.

There was a little extra buzz surrounding him recently.  Why?  Well, usually when he's wrong about something, he's able to cover up and pretend that never happened.  He was unable to do that this past week.  On July 3rd, the night before Zach Parise and Ryan Suter signed with the Minnesota Wild, "HockeyyInsiderr" boldly tweeted that there was a 95% chance that Parise was heading to the Penguins and Suter had pretty much agreed to go to Detroit.  He was the laughing stock of Twitter the following day.  His sources must have misguided him.  Eventually, he got into some kind of Twitter dispute with some members of the media, including TSN analyst Darren Dreger.