As if Columbus Blue Jackets fans haven’t had a hard enough summer, they’ve now got to root really hard that a lockout doesn’t dig too far into the season.
Aaron Portzline of The Columbus Dispatch reports that if a lockout does occur and goes too far into the regular season, the first big event to be cut out will be the NHL All-Star Game. Portzline says if the lockout even goes a month into the season, the event could be wiped out.
While that might cause concern for the Winter Classic as well, keep this in mind: You need games to be played to pick out all-stars, team rosters are already in place for the Red Wings and Maple Leafs. That’s why the NHL has up until the day of the Winter Classic, January 1, to cancel the event.
Back during the season that never happened in 2004-05, the All-Star Game was set to take place in Atlanta, but when the lockout got into November, the NHL called it off. Atlanta later got an All-Star Game in 2008 to make up for the one burned by the work stoppage.