Throughout this NHL lockout, we’ve been posting stories each time the league cancels more games. They’ve been doing it every two weeks for months (oddly, I’ve been sitting in this exact same coffee shop every single time they’ve done it … maybe I should stop coming here) and we sit back and talk about how many games the Flyers have lost.
The league did it again today, canceling the schedule through January 14. And we could sit here again and say that the Flyers have lost 41 total games to cancellations now or whatever the actual number might be, but that would be completely irrelevant.
If there’s a 2012-13 NHL season — or, I guess, a 2013 NHL season now — it will almost certainly be a 48-game season, and it’ll almost certainly start somewhere around January 14. The current schedule that the NHL has now canceled in portions for months? It’s irrelevant. It’s not a thing that exists anymore. Every time you open your score app or whatever and see “canceled” next to that night’s previously-scheduled game, it doesn’t matter. The Flyers will almost certainly not be in Winnipeg on January 15, even if the season happens. The schedule will be rewritten.
So here’s what we do: Let’s not get depressed that another round of games have been canceled. Let’s look at the bright side — we now know when this thing will end, one way or the other. We will know the fate of the 2013 season in the next 30 days, if not sooner. This is almost over.
