Welcome to a guaranteed LOSE-LOSE end result.
Yes, thanks to the 2 egomaniacs that were chosen to be their leaders, the owners and players are now locked into a war of mutually assured death and destruction. Can you imagine a President Bettman and Premier Goodenow heading up the U.S.A. and Russia during the Cold War ? ... The Earth would be a smoking cinder with both of them proclaiming victory in their bunkers.
Does anybody really believe that the small market U.S. clubs like Anaheim, Florida, Tampa, Nashville, Carolina, Atlanta, San Jose, Columbus, Phoenix and others aren't going to be severely damaged by a season without hockey ? Common sense tells you that when the game resumes, alot of soft interest fans in those markets will have lost interest which means they won't be coming back anytime soon. For a ticket revenue dominated league, that's death. Less revenues also means less money for salaries.
To emphasize the above, I had the good fortune in the playoffs a few years ago to drive down to Raleigh and see the Leafs play the Hurricanes in Game 2. I and a friend had the second best seats in the house. 1/3 of the sold out arena (new seating record) consisted of Leaf fans who had driven/flown down to Raleigh. I was sitting beside a guy who was attending his first hockey game. He didn't know what an icing was. He didn't know that there were 3 twenty minute periods in a hockey game ... well you get the picture. I might add that while down there, I was also told that as a promotional stunt years ago, the Hurriacanes paid some big name NASCAR driver to spend 3 days driving a Zamboni 60 miles to their hockey arena.
Now just imagine the possibility of part or all of another season of hockey going down the tubes. Even without that possibility, given the lost season, do you honestly believe that the Hurricanes aren't going to lose a big part of their ticket sales for years going forward ?
Hockey will come back strong for all of the Canadian teams because it is the number 1 sport in the country. Not so in the USA.
If ESPN terminates their involvement in April, there goes the only national t.v. coverage that the NHL has in the U.S.A. Sure, it's not alot of money but you know what, it still worked out to more than U.S. $2 million per team in revenue.
... In my books, the owners and players richly deserve the punishment they're both going to endure now. Looks good on them!
To quote Forrest Gump "STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES".