Here we go again. Another lockout.

Another group of billionaire owners who keep handing out contracts that defy common sense demanding reparations. Another group of millionaire players fighting for their own “one-percenters” instead of the rank and file.

Oh, and Donald Fehr’s back. Great.

The NHL’s labor agreement expired at midnight Sunday, setting off the league’s fourth work stoppage since 1992. Factor in the other three major sports leagues and we’re approaching double digits in the number of work stoppages in the last 20 years. Neither the owners or players in any of those sports is poorer now than they were then.

The fans keep getting poorer, but we keep coming back once the two sides have resolved what share of our money each one gets.

And there’s always more money for them to divvy up. Maybe not right away, but we eventually open up our wallets and purses again.

No fan base has been treated worse than NHL fans. The lockout that wiped out the entire 2004-05 season pretty much clinches any argument. Yet attendance and television ratings went up and revenues grew from $2.1 billion to $3.3 billion annually under the expired deal.

It’s not enough for NHL owners that they have a bigger pie to split with the players. They also want a bigger slice of it. Originally, they wanted to cut the players’ share of hockey related revenues from 57 percent to 43. Their latest offer last week reportedly eclipsed 46 percent.

It’s hard to imagine the players accepting anything less than a 50/50 split, especially since the last lockout ended with them accepting a 24 percent rollback on all existing contracts and allowing the owners to implement a salary cap.

That probably wouldn’t have happened if Fehr was in charge of the NHLPA. He is now, and as anyone who watched him lead the MLBPA through baseball’s work stoppages in the 1980s and 1990s will tell you, he’s not afraid to get really greedy. In fact, there’s talk that a prolonged impasse could lead to him trying to have the salary cap repealed. If that happens, another entire season will probably go down the drain.

As it is, the most optimistic of prognostications have the two sides reaching an agreement in time for the season to start with the NHL Winter Classic on Jan. 1. That seems more like wishful thinking based on the NBA’s precedent of ending its impasse last year in time to start the season on its showcase day, Christmas.

Casual hockey fans will call “No harm, no foul” with a New Year’s Day return because that’s when they start paying attention anyway. What the NHL is counting on is that its hardcore fans, which it needs more desperately than any of the other leagues needs its diehards, will come back whether the Zambonis start rolling out again in January, February or next September.

Maybe a second season without a season in eight years will drive some hardcore fans to minor league, international, junior or college hockey. But anyone who is or knows a hardcore hockey fan knows that if two decades of Gary Bettman as commissioner hasn’t completely ruined the NHL for them, nothing will.

Assuming NHL is correct about its target audience, it would still be nice if the targets delivered some kind of message to the league when play resumes. Keep watching hockey, but trim some of the extras. Don’t subscribe to NHL Center Ice. Don’t watch or watch less games on NBC Sports Network. Buy tickets to less games, none if you can stand it. Don’t buy any merchandise. And do it again the next winter. And the winter after that.

If, as the players argue, the problem is revenue sharing among the teams and not the revenue split between players and owners, force the league to address the issue directly by giving them less revenue to share.

The only weapon the fans have is what the owners and players want most. Time after time, regardless of the sport, all they have had to do to get us to give it up again is offer a half-hearted “We’re sorry.” No one has actually been able to make them sorry in the long run.

If the most passionate among us, the hardcore NHL fan, has the self-discipline to make them truly sorry, it might start breaking the cycle of leagues taking fans for granted.

Randy Whitehouse is a staff writer. His email is [email protected]