Halfway Gone
No New Year's Eve game for Dallas Stars this year as NHL cancels games throughmid-January
Dallas Stars fans can go ahead and make other plans for New Year’s Eve. On December 21, the National Hockey League canceled all games from December 31 through January 14, 2013.
That means the Stars’ traditional New Year’s Eve game is gone. The Stars were set to host Nashville that night.
The Stars also lost their first five games for January, including home games with the New York Rangers, the Phoenix Coyotes and the Montreal Canadiens. The Rangers and Canadiens are typically good draws. The Stars have now lost half of their games for this season (41).
In an interview with Sirius XM radio on December 19, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said that he is confident there will be a season but admitted that mid-January was probably the latest a deal could be made to save it.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is the record as saying that the least the league will accept is a 48-game season, which at this point may not be possible. The NHL and the NHL Players’ Association are at an impasse on a new collective bargaining agreement. The NHL locked out the players in mid-September.
Talks between the parties broke off last week, and no new talks are scheduled. The major sticking point of negotiations is the split of hockey-related revenue for player salaries and benefits.
When the NHL locked out the players for the 1994-95 season, the parties reached a deal on January 11, 1995, and started the season nine days later. The NHL canceled the entire 2004-05 season due to a lockout but did not cancel the season until February of 2005.
