Tie Domi, who did not want to address the possibility he may have played his final game as a Toronto Maple Leaf, nevertheless had plenty to say about the hardline and small-market National Hockey League club owners who have battled his friend, Leafs part-owner Larry Tanenbaum, during the lockout.

Domi, who was at the Woodbine Race Track yesterday to handle the draw for the North American Cup, the richest standardbred race in North America, also took a direct shot at NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and a more subtle one at National Hockey League Players' Association executive director Bob Goodenow. Bettman, Domi noted, called the lockout that cost the entire 2004-05 season, while Goodenow also had a role in it.

But his greatest ire was reserved for NHL owners such as Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs, Craig Leipold of the Nashville Predators, Peter Karmanos of the Carolina Hurricanes and Bill Wirtz of the Chicago Blackhawks. All of them, except Wirtz, are on the owners' negotiating committee, and some of them are thought to be among those who censured Tanenbaum, a moderate who was appalled at the loss of the season, at a governors meeting last winter.

"You look at a guy like Jacobs, for example, he had one of the jewels of the United States and he just let it go," Domi said. "He did nothing to improve his team, did nothing to market his teams.

"The same with the guy in Chicago [Wirtz]. He doesn't show his games on TV. How much do these guys really care about their teams and the game and about winning?"

Domi added that Tanenbaum, the chairman of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, is one of the few owners who takes the trouble to get to know all of his employees, not just the players. He also noted that hardline owners such as Karmanos created the NHL's economic woes by driving up salaries through his $38-million (all figures U.S.) contract offer to Sergei Fedorov, which the Red Wings were forced to match in salary to keep their star forward.

"The guy in Los Angeles [Philip] Anschutz, he probably doesn't even know his players' names," Domi said. "Larry [Tanenbaum] knows every player's name, and his wife's name and his kids' names. It's pretty special to be part of this group."

Domi was clearly bitter about how the lockout turned out for the players. He is not unhappy because the NHLPA has settled for a salary cap that ties salaries to revenues, but he is unhappy that it took so long to do so.

It appears a new collective labour agreement will be reached within a few weeks -- the sides met again yesterday in Toronto and the session will continue today -- but that may be too late for many of the older players. With a maximum salary cap of $36-million expected, and more than 400 free agents on the market, some older players will either be forced into retirement or forced to take huge pay cuts.

Domi will be 35 by the time training camps are to start in the fall. He is also an unrestricted free agent coming off a contract that paid him $1.7-million in its final year. As a player who earned his money for toughness and checking, rather than scoring, Domi will find it difficult to avoid a pay cut.

All Domi would say is that he expects to retire as a Maple Leaf and has not thought about any alternatives. But he admitted he thinks he has "two or three years" left as an NHL player, which leaves the possibility he could, however reluctantly, finish up somewhere else.

Either way, he says, he will go into the next NHL season still unhappy about a lockout that was waged for the survival of small-market teams in the United States, while the small-market teams in Canada such as the Winnipeg Jets and Quebec Nordiques were allowed to move during Bettman's watch.

"Why are they trying to save Nashville and Carolina? Why didn't they try and save Winnipeg and Quebec?"