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Attention, professional-hockey sponsors and advertisers: The National Hockey League labour shutdown may actually be a good thing for business.

As disheartened hockey fans drift forlornly into the sixth week of the NHL owners' lockout of their players, the fear in some quarters is that any company associated with the frozen pond biz is starting to feel the financial pinch. The idea is that the arena crowds and television viewers are sitting at home, in the dark, pouting in their basements and gazing longingly at their childhood hockey-card collections. (My 1971 Dale Rolfe is looking a bit dog-eared, I must say.)

That kind of musing opens the door for an enterprising Canadian economist to step up, doesn't it? No huge surprise to find our old friend David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff + Associates leaping over the boards to join the fray.

In a note to clients last week, Mr. Rosenberg broke down the possible effects stemming from the lockout – some of them more tongue-in-cheek than others.

"We made a caustic remark a while back that it would be reasonable to assume that Canada will experience a surge in the birth rate come summer and fall of next year. I mean – it stands to reason."

However, on a more serious note, his analysis of previous lockouts suggest hockey fans, in the absence of high-priced game tickets and nights at the sports pub, may just spend their money anyway. Just on other things.

"Patterns of spending will be influenced, one would think, especially as it pertains to beer sales as well as the three P's — pizza, potato chips and pretzels. Pubs, grocery chains and drug stores (many of which look like food stores) are likely to take a bit of a hit this winter," he wrote. "But that, in turn, means more pocket change to spend on other things."

And previous NHL work/play stoppages suggest that hockey fans' spending still gravitates to businesses that routinely aim their advertising at, well, hockey fans.

"We do have the other two prolonged lockouts – 1994-95 and 2004-05 – to draw inferences from," he wrote. "Retail sales actually fared quite well – roughly a 7-per-cent annualized [growth] clip in both cases.

"While food and beverage stores did lag (3-per-cent average growth) and health/personal care as well (minus-1.4 per cent on average …), guys seemed to have dealt with their depression by going to the auto dealerships (13-per-cent average growth in vehicle sales) and spending their new spare time by fixing up the house, because home improvement and related purchases jumped at over a 17-per-cent average annual rate.

"Instead of watching hockey, it looks as though video games became the new fix on Saturday nights, because electronics sales rose at a decent annualized pace of 7.5 per cent on average."

Maybe they'll all be buying EA NHL Hockey 2013. Virtual hockey is better than no hockey at all.

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