I ordinarily recycle the sports page unread . . . but this caught my eye today:

A recent study performed by Statistics Canada found that the NHL lockout is reducing Canada's gross domestic product by at least $17 million per month. That's not much on a national scale — Canada's annual GDP is $1.05 trillion — but it certainly matters to the money-minded corporations that are busy trying to plug the leaks.

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Interestingly, the parties at the center of the lockout — the owners and players — are hurting the least.

Most of the owners, several of whom are ranked on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans, are benefiting from not having to pay players' salaries and from holding a hard line in the negotiations. Teams will also receive $10 million from a special owners' fund.

The players are being paid $10,000 per month by a union fund that can reportedly last for two full seasons. While that amount is minuscule compared with a regular NHL paycheck, it can still fill a Zamboni to the brim with Sherwood sticks and “Slap Shot” DVDs.

The financial hurt, then, affects the companies that derive a portion of their profit from the league.

The most obvious is the brewing industry, which holds a symbiotic relationship with almost every sporting event on Earth.

[snip]

Losses are also being absorbed by other industries.

Sport Scan Info, a company that tracks sporting-goods sales, reported that the NHL sold $6.9 million worth of licensed merchandise in December — a decrease of 85 percent from December 2003.

On the other hand . . .

. . . USA Today reported earlier this week that ESPN2's replacement programming is averaging 0.4 percent of the cable TV households in America — double the average of last season's NHL games.

I wonder how minor league hockey's doing . . .