It happens every time this year, which is of course reason enough for you head to another corner of Your Internet.

But it has extra meaning this year ... maybe.

This is the year that No Hockey-Playing Free Agent Will Receive A Dime Because This Time, By Cracky, The Owners Aren't Going To Tolerate It.

At least that's what everyone keeps saying, and using as their latest example Paul Kariya, the heart, soul and pancreas of the Mighty Ducks Of Disneyville, who was told to fish or cut bait, but to do it somewhere else if he can't accept something a lot closer to minimum wage.

And the terror, we are told, is everywhere. The unrestricted free agents started trolling for offers Tuesday at 12:01 a.m., and most people think they'll find the pickings mighty slim. The owners, you see, are preparing for their own nuclear winter, 2004-05. That is the year that either players go on strike, the owners lock them out, or Canada closes for renovation.

Since everyone believes that the strike/lockout/repairs will last a good, long, ugly time (and frankly, what better way to spice up a weenie roast like wealthy cannibals on the prowl?), the offers are all for one year, and they're all low-ball specials. Take it or leave it.

Well, OK, but we are all forgetting one thing: There are owners who spend like drunken sailors on sober players because they are pathologically bent that way. And you know who they are -- the Rangers, the Leafs, the Red Wings, the Flyers, and of course, the dueling Wal-Mart Boys in St. Louis and Denver.

They have wisely spent, and hilariously blown, more money than Donald Sterling has ever seen, and they have been the ones to coat the players' gravy train. After all, you can talk about evil agents all you want, but they can only whine about the money. They don't actually have it. Some blockhead has to give it to them.

See above.

Well, now, we are told, all the owners have been properly Wirtzified, a verb just coined in honor of Chicago owner Bill Wirtz, who once actually talked a nickel into cutting itself in half and becoming two dimes.

They have taken The Pledge. No more cash will be burned before its time, and its time will be in 2006.

Well, fine. It's your dough, boys, and if it's worth savaging the sport you all say you love so much, you go.

But maybe nobody noticed that the Wings just exercised their 2003-04 option on Dominik Hasek, who spent last season watching barnacles grow on his legs. Hasek's option for $8 million, which leads us to think that, even if they can find a taker for Curtis Joseph, who has been fingered for not being sufficiently Jiggy in the playoffs this past season, they still are going to burn a little cash this summer.

And if they are, you can bet that the other big spenders are going to start bargain-hunting as well.

Before you know it, there's a SALARY GAP, with a few haves and a lot of have nots, and the only way to make the game competitive for everyone is to destroy the system (i.e., crush the players union) and start again.

So who set up this system? The owners did. Who manipulated it? The owners did. Who chased good money with bad? Who voted in all the new owners who spend like their only heirs were crazed meth-freak maniacs who couldn't be trusted with a burned-out match, let alone a billion dollars?

Umm, errr, give us a minute here.

So we know who to blame, if that floats your boat. But we also know one other thing. The Spendin' Six have a hard time coughing up the words, "No, really, I can't spend another bite." Now maybe they got religion this time, at last. Maybe they finally decided that Billy Wirtz 'Til It Hirtz had it right all along. Maybe they can walk away from every Czech, Swede, Lett and lout that comes on the waiver wire.

But they haven't done it yet, so I, as your spiritual father, caution patience in the face of Skate-ageddon. It's easy to say no in July, but let's see how they do it when the sweat is running down their jowls and Sergei Fedorov and Teemu Selanne and Joe Nieuwendyk are still out there, and you're coming up a goal short, or your best faceoff man just went down, and Glen Sather's sent two more scouts to Uzbekistan.

Then we'll see how cheap is cheap. Then we'll see if Bill Wirtz is a visionary at last, or still the poor old sod nobody listens to who when he talks about the good old days, when players tended their livestock in the summer, and were treated like livestock in the winter.

We are available to be convinced.

Ray Ratto is a columnist with the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com