At a Sports Authority store in suburban Philadelphia, hockey merchandise sales have dropped to near zero.

“I bet we haven’t sold a hockey shirt in two months,” store manager Joe Tarantino said. “They’re not playing. Why are you going to buy a shirt and wear it for nothing?”

Hockey’s labor mess dates to the last player-owner negotiations in 1995, when the league agreed to a deal that put little restraint on player salaries. By last season, the average salary was $1.8 million — about $500,000 more than the average salary in the flourishing NFL.

“It’s crazy,” Islanders general manager Mike Milbury said. “Twenty years ago when I played, we didn’t have in the dressing room catalogs of ‘Christie’s Great Estates of the World.’ I mean, these (players) are wealthy people, millionaires.”

The only surprise of the five-month lockout came in its final days, when each side made a major concession.

The league backed off its demand for “cost certainty,” or tying players’ salaries to revenue. The union, in turn, accepted the idea of a salary cap, something chief Bob Goodenow vowed never to do.

But the two sides never closed the gap between the $42.5 million per team cap offered by the league and the union’s $49 million proposal.

Now, both sides are wondering if a sport whose U.S. TV ratings more closely resembled those of the WNBA and professional poker than the NFL or NBA will ever regain its casual fans.

“The game’s just suffered an absolute blow it’ll never recover from,” Carolina Hurricanes center Rod Brind’Amour said. “They’re totally underestimating the damage that’s been done. I’m just really disappointed and, to be honest with you, I’m embarrassed to be a player in the NHL.”

Teams are scrambling to mend fences with their season-ticket holders long before play resumes, offering free concert and game tickets, big discounts on souvenirs and other amenities to those who don’t cancel their seats.

Bettman, now under more pressure than ever to hit a home run for the owners, is all but promising the league will play a full 2005-06 schedule. But if a deal isn’t reached by next fall, the NHL can play only by declaring an impasse, allowing it to employ replacement players — a strategy that flopped in baseball and football’s past labor battles.

Seeking such a declaration is a risky gambit at best, especially since two Canadian provinces with NHL teams forbid replacement workers.

“There are so many uncertainties,” New Jersey Devils center John Madden said. “Are fans going to come in and watch replacement players? Are fans going to cross the line? Is any of this stuff going to happen? It’s all unknown, and it’s not good news.”

Mario Lemieux, who has a unique perspective as the game’s best-known player and also the Pittsburgh Penguins’ owner, said both sides got hockey into this mess — and both sides must pay as a result.

“The game is going to suffer for a couple of years and it’s going to take time to win back our fans and rebuild the business,” he said. “And the players are going to have to share in that.”

At Detroit’s Hockeytown Cafe, the small lunch crowd grew quiet for the NHL’s season-ending announcement. Waiters in Red Wings jerseys watched with somber faces. A manager shook her head.

Even these hockey-obsessed fans will need to be wooed back after such a deep freeze, admitted Red Wings general manager Ken Holland.

“Eventually, when we get a deal and back on the ice, I think it’s going to take a lot of work on our part to try to reconnect,” Holland said. “There’s going to have to be a healing process I think between everybody.”

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Matt York / AP

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