NHL lockout: Your daily hockey fix for Day 45

This is Day 45 of the NHL lockout, 2012 edition. We revisit one of Dustin Penner's best moments and one of Pekka Rinne's worst.

By Brian Stubits

Oct 30, 2012 at 10:12 am ET • 4 min read

NHLLockout This is Day 45 of the NHL lockout, 2012 edition. Every day, we'll serve up some CBA talk and help you get your hockey fix. Let's begin, shall we?

CBA roundup

• The lockout has eaten up a total of 423 games -- 97 preseason games and 326 regular-season games after the league announced the cancellation of the entire month of November. The good news is that we probably won't have any more games canceled for a few weeks.

• Games have been canceled, and your favorite players are overseas, but you can still see how your team would be doing. PredictionMachine.com utilizes its play-by-play technology to simulate each game from the original schedule and predict the outcomes. Just because the NHL isn't playing on the ice doesn't mean we can't play the games. So, here are the "results" from the games that should have been played Monday night:

Monday night's schedule
Winner		Winner record	Loser		Loser record
	Sabres 2	2-6-0		Bruins 1 (overtime)	7-1-1
	Maple Leafs 2	1-6-0		Ducks 0	4-5-0
	Devils 6	5-2-0		Hurricanes 0	3-6-2
	Senators 2	5-4-0		Islanders 1 (overtime)	1-7-1
	Flyers 2	6-2-0		Stars 0	3-6-1
	Blues 3	4-4-0		Kings 2 (overtime)	5-3-0
	Blackhawks 7	5-2-0		Coyotes 2	4-3-0
	Canadiens 2	5-4-2		Flames 1 (overtime)	2-6-3
	Oilers 5	4-4-0		Avalanche 0	1-8-1
	Red Wings 3	7-2-1		Canucks 2 (overtime)	6-3-1
	Predators 3	6-4-0		Sharks 2 (overtime)	3-4-2

• The biggest problem with the gag order that the NHL put on the owners is we don't know what any of them are thinking. Although the NHL probably prefers it that way, it helps keep up the image of solidarity. That's because the power rests mostly with three people: commissioner Gary Bettman, Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs and Bob Batterman (NHL's lead counsel). Nick Kypreos writes that trio probably doesn't represent the whole, and the quickest way to a resolution might be when the minority is finally heard.

With a philosophical agreement of a 50/50 split achieved, more than a handful of teams have told Bettman they can't afford to lose two entire seasons in a span of eight years.

...

From here on in the biggest question may not be the resolve of the players -- as it was in 2004 -- but rather how many owners will continue to sit on the sidelines when they already know they now have a deal on the table they can accept. (Sportsnet)

• Former union boss Paul Kelly is sitting out this lockout on the sidelines. However, he's watching from afar and he sees a pretty good avenue to try to reach a deal, one that has been brought up (and been supported by me) but shot down by the NHL: expansion to Quebec City and Markham, Ont.

"If the NHLPA hasn't raised it as a potential part of the solution, then it ought to," Kelly said. "Maybe they've tried and had the door slammed in their face from what we're seeing, but it really makes a great deal of sense." (The Hockey News)

• Bettman has no shortage of critics and detractors. It seems 99 percent of the hockey world doesn't want to see him as the commissioner anymore. The 1 percent that does, though, is the collection of owners that Bettman leads. Chris Botta notes how supportive the owners remain of Bettman and how that means he's not going anywhere. (Sports Business Journal)

• Martin Brodeur is a lockout veteran. This is, amazingly, the fourth work stoppage of his NHL career, so he knows how to get through this. But he's not so sure the fans in New Jersey and other markets will get through it just as well.

"You know what I’m worried about? I don’t live in a hockey-driven town, New Jersey isn’t like Toronto or Montreal or Detroit," he said. "And people now that I see don’t even think about talking to me about hockey. The first few weeks, yes, but now no one does. I don’t know if it’s because there’s not enough coverage in the U.S. about what’s going on, but I think it’s going to affect people tremendously, fans are going to move on and find a different source of entertainment. It’s going to take a long time for them to readjust and get back to hockey. Eventually I think people will because our sport is pretty special." (ESPN.com)

• Here's the latest "off-the-wall" idea to come from Jesse Spector to try to fix this lockout --a breakaway league.

If the problem with the NHL is the NHL, why not get rid of the NHL? Team owners did not get the money to become team owners by having their business practices dictated to them by their competitors, and it does not have to be that way in the hockey industry. In the rest of the world, in fact, it isn’t that way. (Sporting News)

Hockey fix

We're going back to the Stanley Cup champs and how the West was won. In Game 5, the Kings' Dustin Penner of all people found himself wide open in front of the net and he buried home the winner to end a contentious game. The handshake line that followed was certainly interesting, too.