One of the most exciting times in the sports calendar is mid-October when baseball is into playoffs and moving toward the World Series, the NFL and college football are beginning to hit stride, and then, like frosting on the cake, the NHL and the NBA open their seasons.

Although many will feign not to notice, the National Hockey League did not open its season this month as scheduled due to a player lockout that has been underway for 42 days.

Clearly the lesser of all the majors, hockey still carries considerable weight in some parts of North America. Hockey played at its highest level — or played by youngsters on a pond — has that marvelous combination of beauty, power and grace that make all sport a wonder of human achievement. So it is with some considerable sorrow that I watch the latest labor/management struggle play out.

Some will argue that this lockout is only of concern to Canadians — and certainly the CBC covers the story like no one else — but keep in mind only six of the 30 NHL teams are located north of the border, and over the past three decades, youth hockey has grown considerably across the United States, especially in those Sunbelt cities that are now home to a considerable number of indoor rinks.

It is precisely in these cities that the players? lockout could have its biggest long-term impact — not because hockey is so important, but precisely because it is not. A hockey culture has yet to be established across the Sunbelt, and the sport is just beginning to capture a young following through the visibility of NHL teams in places like Tampa and Phoenix. If these teams disappear for a season, the loose grip hockey has there could be lost.

Even Stuart Evey, who provided ESPN?s early funding, admits he?s doubtful about the NHL?s prospects, but not because of the lockout. It?s just that the game doesn?t translate to television as well as, say, poker.

“The NHL is very, very difficult in terms of showing the intensity,” Evey recently told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. “You can’t see the puck and it’s tough if you don’t know the game that well. The ratings are horrible and I don’t think it will have the same kind of status it has over the years.”

In Canada, the lockout will operate with different dynamics. As with baseball fans in the United States, lifelong fans will feel betrayed, especially by the players who will be seen, no matter what the realities, as the cause of the troubles. That?s what happened in every baseball strike or lockout for the past three decades. Fans don’t distinguish between strikes and lockouts. They are viewed as the same and viewed, for the most part, as the responsibility of the players.

Canadians who grew up playing hockey are like Americans who grew up playing baseball. They played it with their buddies as kids, dreamed about playing it at the highest level, and the dream never fully died. Nostalgia blinds the fan who, in one set of memories, sees this kid’s game and wonders how someone could demand millions to play a game and call it work. Players are seen as ungrateful millionaires who ought to come and work a “real job” to see what it really means to earn a paycheck.

The absence of NHL hockey in Canada will not, however, do any long-term damage. There will still be plenty of games, from the juniors to the various minor leagues.

Unlike south of the border, this is the national pastime, tied to too-many local loyalties and rituals. The CBC?s Hockey Night in Canada, for instance, has been part of the national consciousness for decades. It began as a national radio show in 1933 and made the leap to television in 1952.

“[The absence of Hockey Night in Canada is] a crippling blow to a country when one in 30 people has to find something new to do on Saturday night,” Jim Boone, co-founder of the National Hockey League Fans’ Association, told CBC News Online.

To keep the attention of viewers, the CBC is now showing Movie Night in Canada, hosted by Hockey Night in Canada?s Ron MacLean. The CBC?s Dan Brown writes: ?The strategy also appears designed to remind viewers that, when the lockout ends, Hockey Night will return ? MacLean’s first outing on the new show had him broadcasting rinkside from Dave Andreychuk Mountain Arena in Hamilton, Ont., rhyming off the stats of director Steven Spielberg with the same acuity he reserves for discussions of the NHL’s elite.?

There is a sense of disbelief among diehard fans that anyone could be so dense and crude as to tamper with the national pastime. For the record, I still can’t believe that human avarice and pride was so gross as to cause the cancellation of a World Series. Ultimately you get over this, and rationally you know that sport is big business and entertainment. Still, it?s part of the heritage of a people and a national treasure that no one should be allowed to violate.

Especially over money. Owners claim they are losing money and that salaries are too high. Somehow they blame the players for this and expect the players to solve the problem. Unable to control their own spending and maintain a rational business sense, these brilliant businessmen are now demanding that the players save them from themselves.

From the outside, it?s also clear that salaries have outdistanced television revenues and ratings and income is not matching outgo. The question is by how much. The answer centers on the final calculations of profit and loss, assets and debits, and these always vary according to whom is doing the counting.

If a settlement is to be reached, each side must be willing to trust and verify, and each must commit themselves to the workings of the collective bargaining process. So far there is little evidence that either side is even close to do doing so. So we will wait to see if there is a hockey season and how much damage all of this will ultimately do to a sport whose hold on fans may not be as firm as some believe. Let’s hope the NHL is better at calculus than it is at math.