Dallas' Razor Reaugh On NHL Lockout: "I putter around house like an old man."

Dallas Stars fans in DFW were treated to a little holiday gift this week the always loquacious Daryl "Razor" Reaugh filled in for Gordon Keith with the Musers. He was afforded a chance to talk a little hockey (or what passes for talking hockey these days). Here are the highlights...

"It's coming to a head," opined Razor Wednesday Morning of the lockout negotiations. "It's a drop dead month now to try to get this going. Most of the people I've talked to that I respect on both sides of it feel that this will get done and we'll have this shortened season and we'll get back at it."

Razor added earlier (before I could hit record, say sorry) his feeling that mid-January is the target date and the point at which a deal must be finalized to get 48 games in. Anything less, he said, would seem insufficient (paraphrasing).

"The biggest hope is that whenever they do sign [it's] a lengthy one. Eight years. Ten years. So you're not right back looking at this again in five or six years."

His co-hosts gave the requisite response: They wouldn't really lose an entire season again, right?

"That's what everyone seems to be holding hope to is the fact that they just did this eight years ago," responded Reaugh. "You can't just not hand out your league's trophy a couple of times in a decade. You can't do that and I think that belief and that fright has people believing that when push actually comes to shove they'll get something done here in January."

Razor giggled a jolly old Razor giggle when asked if he was doing community theater in his free time, a la Ralph Strangis. The reality is that the lockout seems to be boring him a trifle.

"You get everything done by nine," he said of a typical day. "You do! Everything is done at nine, and then you sit there - I'll walk from room to room in the house and putter around like an old man. I can lay out everything that goes on on television in the morning and then the soap operas come on at one after the noon news."

"It really is depressing," he added more seriously. "Because you don't have any reason to get up, and that's what I think frightens us all about retirement."

Mike Doocy then pointed out the potential damage another lockout is currently inflicting on a market like Dallas, which was already having trouble regaining its footing after some down years and the ownership change. Razor was quick with the kind of analogy that we've missed these long hockey-less months...

"I've used this analogy before, but it's like getting fat. You can get fat in a couple of months if you just gorge yourself, but you can't drop that weight in a healthy manner in a couple of months. It will take you a year. That's essentially goes on with these things. You have a work stoppage like this [...] and it's going to take a lot of work, a lot of energy in the market, and as you guys know in this market - winning."

"If we come back and we're good, and there's a very good chance that we will be because there's some really good prospects in junior hockey, college hockey, and in our minor league system, then we'll be good. And that has to happen. If they come back and they're pretty good then I think this sport will start to thrive here again."

Having Razor, one of the organ-eye-zation's greatest assets, back on television and radio with regularity (and soon) will help as well.

After all, we don't want him ending up in beard and bathrobe to watch those one o'clock soaps come March.