While the NHL and NHLPA furiously attempt to grind down toward a new CBA that will kick start the seasonor not so furiously since its taken 52 days of a mind-numbing lockout to get the point of a private negotiating session in New York Citythe number crunchers in Vegas continues to crank out their odds.
According to the fine folks at Bovada.lv the odds of the NHL canceling the entire 2012-13 regular season now sit at 12 (-200) while the oddsmakers are giving 32 odds (150) that there will be a regular season.
The email publicizing the odds arrived in the CSNNE.com email inbox at 3:28 p.m. and the latest NHLNHLA negotiating session was set to begin at 3 p.m. in New York City, so its difficult to discern whether Bovada is the beneficiary of some kind of inside information.
Were going to guess not, and that instead the oddsmakers are banking on a simple repeat history lesson for a hockey league thats shot itself in the foot more than once. That seems a pretty safe bet even if hockey sources have indicated to CSNNE.com that the league has a handful of shortened regular season contingencies including all the way down to a 36-game regular season prior to a full round of Stanley Cup playoffs.
The hope is still that the current round of talks this week will lead to real progress, and perhaps push toward a 64-game regular season set to begin on Dec. 1.