It's Christmas time. In Calgary, the hockey crisis has been front and centre since before the season opened, and grows steadily worse. The Flames aren't going to qualify for the NHL's currency equalization program unless they can sell 13,000 season tickets for next year. Meanwhile, dollar-sign droplets drip from every artery. But if at the end of the day there is no solution, simple economics will ultimately dictate the outcome.
People have other problems.
Let 'em ask Mark Messier or Alexander Mogilny. Let the players take a pay cut. Once, Canada needed hockey. Nation-wide, it filled the Saturday nights and the Monday coffee breaks. And that may no longer be true.