Lockout Architect Jeremy Jacobs to Be Inducted into Mass. Hockey Hall of Fame

Photo via AP

Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs will be inducted into the Massachusetts Hockey Hall of Fame in June, alongside Stephen Palmacci, former Washington Capitals forward and Needham native David A. Jensen, and legendary Boston University coach Jack Parker.

“My selection reflects the entire Bruins organization as well as the team’s true owners, its dedicated and loyal fans,” Jacobs said in statement. “Massachusetts is a great hockey state, and we are proud to play a role in the sport’s continued growth and development. I am tremendously honored.”

Jacobs, who has owned the B’s for the last 41 years and currently serves as chairman of the NHL’s board of governors, received the Lester Patrick Award last year in recognition for his “outstanding service to hockey in the United States.”

The irony in all this reeks like the inside of a hockey bag, given Jacobs’ role as chief aggressor in the league’s last two work stoppages, which served only to alienate loyal fans and humiliate the sport on a global stage. Following the most recent lockout, just before an opening night matchup between his Bruins and the New York Rangers, Jacobs blamed the players’ association for the four-month stalemate.

“Some of these lockouts make no sense,” he told reporters, as fans filed into the Garden to use their complimentary, consolation vouchers on…whatever this is.

This is the slice Jeremy Jacobs gave me #bruins pic.twitter.com/ZXJaNbAL

— Justin DOY (@JustinDOY) January 21, 2013

During the 2004-05 lockout, which wiped out an entire season and marked the first time since the 1919 Spanish flu epidemic that the Stanley Cup was not awarded, Jacobs relished every opportunity to lob potshots at the players, calling the notion that owners need players more than vice-versa “silliness.”

“It’s the drinking-the-Kool Aid sort of thing where you have guys out there who think, ‘We’re going to make it so bad for the owners that they’re going to want us back.’ The fact is this is getting worse, and it’s getting worse for the players more than it is for us,” Jacobs told the Buffalo News in 2005.

“I can see a lot of players quitting this game. I really could,” he went on. “I could see where they just don’t want to continue, especially guys that have been out there many years and were depending on this. I can see a different group of players coming to skate the next time we start doing that.”

Perhaps Jacobs can go celebrate the honor down in Wellington, Florida.