The deep dive. The 2012 -13 NHL season lockout
shortened schedule. and historic streaks. Join
us for a fascinating deep dive into the 2012
-13 NHL season. We explore the bitter 119 -day
NHL lockout that threatened the sport, the intense
48 -game shortened hockey season that followed,
and the historic milestones achieved by the Chicago
Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins. Discover
the ripple effects of the new salary cap, sudden
rule changes, and the cancellation of major events
like the Winter Classic. Whether you are a diehard
fan brushing up on NHL history or just love a
story of high stakes negotiations and incredible
athletic resilience, this deep dive extracts
the most important insights from one of the most
unusual years in professional sports. Imagine
gearing up for an exhausting, physically punishing
82 game marathon. You spent your entire offseason
preparing. The fans are ready. The ice is fresh.
Right. You're totally dialed in. Exactly. And
then suddenly you show up to the arena and find
the doors literally padlocked. A complete standstill.
Yeah. And when you finally are allowed back in
months later, the schedule has been slashed nearly
in half. And on top of that, the very rules of
the game you play have been quietly rewritten.
It's a logistical nightmare. OK, let's unpack
this. Yeah. Because today our mission is to explore
one of the most chaotic. The 2012 -2013 NHL season.
It really is a year unlike any other. We are
pulling all our insights today directly from
Wikipedia's comprehensive breakdown of this incredibly
bizarre year in professional hockey. We're going
to guide you through the boardroom brawls of
a bitter lockout, the strange realities of a
48 -game shortened schedule. And the real -world
tragedies that force the game to pause. Exactly.
Plus... The historic streaks forged in this high
-pressure cooker by teams like the Chicago Blackhawks
and the Pittsburgh Penguins. What's fascinating
here is how extreme constraints, like a sudden
lockout and a drastically altered timeline, forced
both the league and the players to adapt in unprecedented
ways. When you take the traditional grind of
a pro sports season and compress it, you don't
just get less hockey. You get a completely different
psychological environment. I mean, every single
night suddenly carries the weight of a playoff
elimination game. But before we get to the on
-ice magic, we have to start in the boardroom.
Because the grim reality is that on September
15, 2012, the season didn't start with a puck
drop. It started with a work stoppage. A massive
one. NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, backed by
all 29 league ownership groups, plus the league
itself, which collectively owned the Phoenix
Coyotes at the time, officially locked out the
players. And we should point out, this was the
NHL's fifth labor dispute in 20 years. Fifth.
That is just wild. That statistic is staggering
when you put it in perspective. Between the strike
in 1992, lockouts in 1994 to 95, and 2004 to
05, and even a referees lockout in 1993. I'm
afraid about the referees. Yeah. The NHL had
more labor disputes than any other major professional
sports league in the United States and Canada
during that same period. So what were they actually
fighting over this time? The core conflict in
2012 really came down to revenue sharing and
contract limitations. The owners were demanding
a significant drop in the player's share of hockey
-related revenues. They wanted to pull it from
57 % down to 46%. That's a huge cut. Massive.
Furthermore, they wanted to cap player contracts
at a maximum of five years, eliminate salary
arbitration entirely, and extend entry -level
deals. Which, you know, from the player's perspective,
looks like a severe rollback of their earning
potential and their freedom of movement. But
what always stands out to me in the source material
is the paradox. of Bettman's argument. The Great
Recession argument. Yes. He openly acknowledged
that the previous collective bargaining agreement
was fair, but he argued that the owners needed
these new concessions because of the Great Recession.
Right. The contradiction there, which the players
and media heavily pointed out, was that the league
had actually experienced significant financial
growth during that exact same time frame. And...
We obviously aren't taking sides here, but looking
purely at the historical record, that contradiction
was the primary roadblock in the negotiations.
You had ownership claiming economic hardship
while the league was simultaneously reporting
record revenues. It just didn't add up for the
players. No, it didn't. And this fundamental
disagreement completely stalled the sport. It
stalled the NHL, sure, but it didn't stall the
players. They didn't just sit on their couches
waiting for a phone call. Locked out players
immediately started fleeing to European leagues.
That was such a smart move on their part. We
saw a massive wave of NHL talent signing with
the KHL, the Czech Astrologa, and the SM Liga.
Fans over in Europe were suddenly getting to
watch North American superstars in their local
ranks. This was a highly strategic leverage play.
By heading overseas, the players proved they
had alternative revenue streams and could stay
in game shape. It fundamentally threatened the
NHL's monopoly on top tier talent. While the
NHL was stuck canceling regular season games
block by block. Exactly. watching their leverage
slowly dwindle as the weeks dragged on. Well,
it dragged on for months until January 6, 2013,
when the two sides finally sat down for a grueling
16 -hour negotiating session. 16 straight hours.
You can only imagine the sheer exhaustion in
that room. But they birthed a tentative 10 -year
deal. The owners ratified it, the players followed,
and they established a stark new financial reality.
The team's salary cap was set at $64 .3 million.
And the strategic impact of that specific number
cannot be overstated. Prior to the lockout, the
league had projected a salary cap of $70 .2 million.
Oh, so general managers were already spending
based on that higher number. Precisely. They
had been signing players and building their rosters
for a $70 million cap. When the new CBA suddenly
dropped it to $64 .3 million, with a floor of
$44 million, by the way, it instantly forced
teams to dismantle their debt. There must have
been chaos in the front office. Total chaos.
You saw general managers scrambling to trade
away key third and fourth line players just to
become cap compliant before the puck even dropped.
It completely shifted team building strategies
overnight. OK, here's where it gets really interesting,
though. Because they didn't sign this deal until
January. The season officially kicked off on
January 19, 2013. The NHL announced a 48 -game
sprint, and the entire structure of the schedule
was radically altered. The bubble effect. Yes.
There was absolutely zero inter -conference play.
Think about that for a second. If you were a
team in the Eastern Conference, you never saw
a team from the Western Conference. Each team
played 18 games within its own division and 30
games against the rest of their conference. The
league created a structural bubble. It completely
isolated the two halves of the league from one
another until the Stanley Cup final. You say
it isolated them, but didn't that also mean teams
got incredibly sick of each other? If you were
only playing the same handful of regional rivals
over and over again in a compressed time frame,
the bad blood must have escalated exponentially.
Oh, the animosity was palpable on the ice. You
were seeing the same enforcers, the same agitators
multiple times a month. The localized rivalries
became intense. But the fans missed out on some
big stuff, too. They did. The league suffered
significant casualties due to the delayed start.
The 2013 winter classic. which was supposed to
feature the Detroit Red Wings hosting the Toronto
Maple Leafs at Michigan Stadium, was pushed to
2014. Such a bummer. And the 2013 NHL All -Star
Game in Columbus was also canceled. The league
lost its major midseason marketing tentpoles.
They didn't just change the schedule and cancel
events, they actually changed the rules of the
game on the fly. Sneaky but vital changes. Exactly.
When the new CBA was ratified, several rule changes
took effect immediately. For example, on faceoffs,
any attempt by a center to win the draw by batting
the puck with their hand resulted in an automatic
minor penalty for delay of game. To understand
why that matters, you have to look at the tactic
centers we're using. Prior to this, players would
intentionally tie up their opponent's stick and
just paw the puck backward with their glove.
Right, turning faceoffs into wrestling matches.
Exactly. Banning the hand pass forced players
to actually use their stick skills, which significantly
sped up the resumption of play. They also cracked
down on players intentionally sawing. A minor
penalty was introduced for any player who put
their glove on the puck anywhere on the ice and
closed their hand on it to force a stoppage.
That was a direct attack on fatigue management.
In previous years, a tired defender who was trapped
on the ice for a long shift could just fall on
the puck, smother it, and take the whistle to
get a line change. Removing that safety valve
forced the pace of play to stay high, even when
players were completely gassed. It made the game
faster and definitely more punishing. They also
tweaked player safety rules. Officials no longer
had to be certain that a stick made contact with
a player's hands to call a slashing penalty.
Furthermore, making contact with an opponent's
face mask became an automatic minor penalty.
The margin of error for defenders got a lot smaller.
So imagine your workplace suddenly cutting your
project timeline in half while simultaneously
changing the fundamental day -to -day rules of
how you operate and telling you that you can
only communicate with a fraction of your colleagues.
It sounds like a nightmare. That is the pressure
cooker environment these athletes walked into
on January 19th. I remember Chicago came out
swinging in that environment, but how anomalous
was their start mathematically? The Chicago Blackhawks
start to the 2012 -13 season is a statistical
anomaly we may never see repeated. They set an
NHL record by earning at least one point in their
first 24 games of the season. 24 games. Yes.
In a 48 -game sprint, they went exactly half
the year without a regulation loss. Their record
was 21 wins, zero regulation losses, and three
overtime or shootout losses. Half the season
without a regulation loss is unfathomable. And
their goaltender, Ray Emery... became the first
goalie in league history to start a season with
12 straight wins. If you look at the locker room
psychology of that streak, it speaks volumes
about the constraints of the season. Because
the schedule was so short, there was no safety
net. Every point was magnified. Exactly. The
Blackhawks treated every single game in January
and February like a Game 7. There was zero time
for a slump, and that urgency forged a historic
level of consistency. They weren't the only ones
making history, though. Over in the Eastern Conference,
the Pittsburgh Penguins had a run that was equally
mesmerizing. The Penguins orchestrated a perfect
calendar month. From March 2nd to March 30th,
they won 15 consecutive games. Wow. They became
the first NHL franchise to win every single game
they played during a calendar month, sealing
that streak with a 2 -0 shutout against the Islanders.
Winning 15 games in a row against professional
competition, especially against division rivals
who are learning your tactics inside and out,
is phenomenal. It really is. The intensity of
the season reached an absolute fever pitch in
April. The playoff pictures were finalizing,
the localized rivalries were boiling over, and
the momentum was unrelenting. And then the real
world abruptly stepped in and paused the entire
machine. If we connect this to the bigger picture,
we have to talk about April 15th, the day of
the Boston Marathon bombing. It was a horrifying
tragedy that brought an entire city and the nation
to a standstill. And the NHL naturally had to
pivot immediately. The Boston Bruins were scheduled
to play the Ottawa Senators at TD Garden the
very night of the bombing. That game was postponed,
obviously, and eventually rescheduled to April
28th. Which was actually the day after the regular
season was originally supposed to end. Right.
And the disruptions continued as that harrowing
week unfolded. The Bruins had another game scheduled
against the Pittsburgh Penguins on April 19th.
But due to the citywide lockdown and the intense
manhunt for the bombing suspects, that game was
also postponed. pushed back to April 20th once
the lockdown was finally lifted. Exactly, which
created a domino effect that altered the schedules
of other teams, like the Sabres, later in the
week. We get so caught up in the stats, the streaks,
and the lockout drama, but moments like that
are a sobering reminder that at the end of the
day, it's just a game. It reminds us that sports
schedules, which normally seem so rigid and uncompromising,
dictated by television contracts, travel logistics
and arena availability, must immediately bow
to the gravity of real world events. Absolutely.
The resilience of the city of Boston during that
time became a profound emotional undercurrent
for the rest of the NHL season, heavily impacting
the narrative surrounding the Bruins as they
pushed into the playoffs. Speaking of resilience,
we really should talk about the fans. After a
bitter 119 -day lockout where ownership and players
fought over revenue percentages while canceling
half the season, you might expect the fans to
be completely alienated. You would think so.
You might expect empty arenas as a form of protest
against the business side of the sport. But the
source material shows the exact opposite happened.
The loyalty of hockey fans proved to be remarkably
steadfast. Despite the frustration of the lockout,
total attendance for this shortened 48 -game
season hit over 12 .7 million. If you look at
the Chicago Blackhawks, the numbers are almost
comical. They average 21 ,755 fans per game.
The stated capacity of the United Center for
Hockey is around 19 ,700. So they were operating
at 110 .4 % capacity. Yes. Which tells us that
standing room only tickets were selling out every
single night. The fans were so starved for hockey
and the team was playing at such an elite historic
level that the building was literally overflowing.
The players certainly delivered for those fans
when it came to individual performances. Let's
look at the hardware handed out at the end of
this cloudy sprint. Martin St. Louis of the Tampa
Bay Lightning took home the Art Ross Trophy as
the league's top scorer. Racking up 60 points
in just 48 games. Incredible pace. And over in
Washington, Alexander Ovechkin had a phenomenal
bounce back year. He won the Hart Memorial Trophy
as the league's most valuable player, and he
also took home the Maurice Rocket Richard Trophy
for being the top goal scorer, netting 32 goals
in that incredibly tight window. But the voting
for Ovechkin, that was something else. I have
to bring up this ridiculous quirk of the season,
because it involves Ovechkin's postseason accolades.
When it came time for the Professional Hockey
Writers Association to vote for the end -of -season
All -Star teams, there was total confusion among
the voters. Total chaos. Ovechkin was officially
listed on the ballot as a left wing, but he had
actually played the majority of his games that
season at right wing under his new head coach,
Adam Oates. So the voters completely fractured
their ballots. Some members diligently voted
for him as a left wing based on the printed ballot,
while others voted for him as a right wing based
on where he actually played on the ice. Because
of that split, Alexander Ovechkin was officially
named to the NHL first all -star team as the
right wing, and he was named to the NHL second
all -star team as the left wing. He literally
occupied two different positions on the All -Star
roster simultaneously because the writers couldn't
coordinate their votes. Even the Writers Association
later released a statement basically admitting
they botched the process. It is the perfect absurd
cherry on top of a season where the normal rules
simply didn't apply. Eventually, though, the
regular season did end, and the playoffs began
on April 30th, much later than a traditional
calendar year. And the playoff structure was
different, too, right? It was. Because of the
unique intra -conference regular season, the
playoffs utilized a reseeding format instead
of a fixed bracket. In the first three rounds,
the highest remaining seed in each conference
always played the lowest remaining seed. So there
were no set paths. The matchups dynamically adjusted
after every round. This format ensured that the
top performing teams from that grueling sprint
were consistently rewarded. Ultimately, this
setup gave us a Stanley Cup final between the
two teams that arguably defined the season the
most, the historically dominant Chicago Blackhawks
and the emotionally resilient Boston Bruins.
Two original six franchises going head to head.
In the end, The team that started the season
going 24 games without a regulation loss was
the team that lifted the cup. The Chicago Blackhawks
defeated the Boston Bruins in six games to win
the Stanley Cup. And Patrick Kane took home the
Conn Smythe trophy as the playoff MVP. It proved
that the Blackhawks' historic start wasn't just
a flash in the pan due to a shortened schedule.
It was the true foundation of a legitimate championship
run. So what does this all mean? We started this
deep dive looking at a season that began with
padlock doors and ownership fighting with players
over revenue percentages. It was frustrating
and it risked alienating the fan base. But once
the puck finally dropped, the sheer constraints
of the situation ended up delivering some of
the most intense, fiercely competitive hockey
in the history of the sport. It synthesizes a
core truth about performance. Constraints breed
urgency. When you take away the luxury of time,
you remove the safety net. In a typical 82 -game
season, teams know they can pace themselves.
They can afford a sluggish two weeks in November.
But in a 48 -game season against only your direct
conference rivals, the margin for error was completely
erased. Every single game mattered immensely.
And the players responded by elevating their
game to historic levels. It leaves you wondering,
as the NHL and other professional leagues constantly
look toward future expansions, potentially lengthening
the regular season even further to maximize revenue,
are they actually risking the very on -ice product
that makes the game great? Does physical preservation
and a condensed high -stakes schedule eventually
outweigh the financial growth of an endless marathon?
That's a great question. It's almost like scarcity
created a better product. It is definitely something
for you to mull over the next time you're watching
a sluggish Tuesday night game in the middle of
November. Thank you so much for joining us for
this deep dive into one of the strangest and
most thrilling years in sports history. Keep
questioning the consensus, keep looking for the
stories behind the stats, and above all, keep
exploring.