I see baseball players get preferential immigration treatment all the time, but we are getting into the weeds, and there is no point in arguing about trivial differences.
I'm not as certain as you that the '04 NHL walkout was as potentially catastrophic. That simply is a difference of opinion. I do remember the hand-wringing about it, though, at the time.
In and of itself the walkout wasn’t catastrophic. Then ESPN opted out. Having already lost Fox broadcast they weren’t going to land on Fox cable, or if they were it would have been for pocket change. And understand they were in bad shape before the walkout, it was before then that they’d lost Fox and ABC and landed on NBC for a revenue sharing only deal. There were bad things happening in the revenue picture before the walkout, a lot of which necessitated the walkout, but then that went so poorly, and ESPN bailed. What’s amazing is how much VS decided to pay them, they really had the NHL over the barrel and offered more than ESPN had walked away from, plus tons of hockey related programs to try to build the sport (of course that wound being showing the terrible movie Youngblood twice a week). Now that the NHL is sitting with a $200 million a year 10 year cable and broadcast contract I don’t think you can really understate how much that VS contract changed the situation for the league.
It’s important to keep in mind nothing is set in stone when it comes to the popularity of sports in America. The MLB and boxing used to own this country, remember boxing? Yeah, neither do I. All of the major leagues we have now used to not be, all the major sports we have now used to not be. They’re as big as they are now because somebody pushed them in that direction and they caught the public interest and then they were pushed more. Soccer could become huge here, I don’t see it, but 10 years ago I didn’t see the NHL being this stable or the MLB bleeding this bad.