A humorous take on all of the coping strategies that hockey fans useduring a lockout to try to both get their hockey fix and less-than-perfect (in their view) the substitutions for the time they used to spend watching NHL hockey, and the inevitable consequences of those activities later...say nine months?! Examples of coping mechanisms: Sex, the AHL, the Khazakstan Hockey League,therapy, sex, your son's hockey games, therapy, sex, old re-runs of the Stanley Cup finals, lawn bowling, sex.…Hell, it's not even fun to go to a sports bar any more! You may end up having to watch TENNIS!

Arpon Basu had said since the age of eight that he would one day make the National Hockey League. Any chance of that happening, came to a crashing halt when, at 15 when he realized he was completely devoid of any talent. He earned a graduate journalism degree from Concordia University and went straight to a sports-writing job with the Canadian Press. The first time he walked into the Montréal Canadiens dressing room as a giddy cub reporter, Basu nearly fell over as it dawned on him that, despite his ineptitude on the ice, he had in fact been telling the truth as a dreamy-eyed eight-year-old.Basu covers sports for the Canadian Press in Montréal and writes a weekly sports column for the Montréal Gazette. He is also editor of Montréal’s South Shore, The St-Lambert Journal.

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