.

It’s looking anything but up. For the NHL, that is.

You want to see the Stanley Cup banner raised at Staples Center on October 12th.

On that night, you want to see the final label to mark the Kings’ most prolific season, which was headlined by the NHL‘s most historic playoff run in it’s history. You want to see it put in writing to hang in the arena’s rafters for as long as time will allow. For that, you’re going need more than a rather pricey ticket.

You’ll need some luck.

And by the looks of it, any stroke of that luck for an on-time start to the NHL‘s 2012-2013 regular season campaign will be stumped by the ongoing dispute between the owners and the player’s association to reach a new collective bargaining agreement.

Although, “dispute” makes it sound like a 50/50 disagreement kind of ordeal. It’s anything but.

Let’s call it, or say, Gary Bettman and the NHL owners attempting to royally screw over the NHLPA. If there’s any adjustments made to make this bargaining successful, the deal-breaker type changes are going to have to come from the owners and the commissioner, not the players.

Good from the bad

The ironic thing here is that a delay to the start of the season could actually be quite helpful to the Kings. For the league, a delay is the worst I see this situation getting.

I really don’t see a repeat of the 2004-2005 season coming, in which the entire NHL campaign was cancelled due to a failure to come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement. That doesn’t necessarily mean the issues disputed this summer aren’t likely to cause a cancellation, but at the end of the day, a second cancelled season in eight years would be terribly detrimental to the league.

If I could picture a worst-case scenario, it would be what the NBA went through last season, which saw them lockout and start at the season’s midway point in December.

Considering what seems to be the inevitable – the season being delayed, but not cancelled, the Kings could very much pay off from such a situation.

We’re talking about a Kings roster that played 102 games this past season, the same roster that is 100% intact heading into this season. We’re talking about a roster that played up until the evening of June 11, which is shy of 10 weeks ago. Also, a roster that played 20 more games than 16 teams in the NHL last season, and more than a total of 28 teams.

But you may be missing something here. Not only are we talking an extremely short off-season for this Kings club, we’re talking an off-season that has involved a major amount of time dedicated to celebration. And what would you do after you won the Stanley Cup? That’s how it works.

If you were a part of the coaching staff and/or front office, this summer would not be the ideal offseason for your club. However, the success and bliss of victory overcome that feeling for the most part. The Kings may have an underlying gift brewing here.

That’s extra time, and time that quite frankly, is well-needed.

I’d be crazy to say I’d prefer a lockout over an on-time start to the season. I’d be insane.

But, it’s about taking the positive from the negative, no?

Health & stealth

Health is something that is often taken for granted until it is threatened, or taken from you. For the Kings, health was very arguably the biggest factor in the Kings’ dominant postseason run to the Stanley Cup. Only Kyle Clifford, who played in just two games in the playoffs, was the only player lost due to injury.

There have been some talks regarding Jonathan Quick‘s back surgery this summer. Quick’s operation was listed as a ‘minor procedure’, but the history of the aforementioned surgery doesn’t have a good reputation, especially for goaltenders.

Back surgery, on top of playing 89 games last season, is going to demand a little extra rest than the body may expect. Even if you’re Jonathan Quick.

This feeds into the Jonathan Bernier situation, and almost guarantees the Kings will not be trading Bernier before the February 2013 trade deadline. Bernier is much more than a tradeable asset now, there’s a very good chance he’s needed in a big way this upcoming season; whether it be long or short.

Fatigue hits the best of us, and it’s not just Quick, but the entire Kings roster, that is battling this right now.

As I’m sure you will be, I will be truly infuriated if the NHL season is delayed. Not just for a lack of hockey, but for the greed of the owners. It would be truly sad to see the league go through a second lockout in an eight-year span.

However, it couldn’t come at a better time for the Kings. It comes during a summer full of distractions filled with the bliss of victory, and to a roster that could use the extra rest – and more so than any other team in the league.

Winning on human-error

Losing on human-error

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