Frozen Fury cancellation leaves Kings fans in cold

Because the hockey owners and players once again are arguing over revenue sharing like a couple of old hens, Frozen Fury XV between the Los Angeles Kings and Colorado Avalanche at the MGM Grand has been canceled. The puck was supposed to drop Saturday.

If you purchased tickets - and a lot of people apparently did, because the game was on the verge of selling out - you can receive your money back at place of purchase, probably with only a minor hassle.

Tell them Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr sent you. They'll understand.

(If you don't follow hockey, Bettman is the NHL commissioner, and this is the third labor-related stoppage under his watch. Fehr, who is representing the players, also was executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association from 1986 to 2009; I hold him mostly responsible for having paid $38 to sit in the right-field bleachers to watch the Cubs play the Padres on May 28. In 1975, when I was a senior in high school, the same ticket cost $1. Using an inflation calculator I found on the Internet, the bleacher ticket that cost a buck in 1975 should cost $4.01 today. Thanks, Don!)

A lot of people probably think it's no big deal that Frozen Fury XV has been canceled, that it was just another meaningless preseason game in which guys wearing jersey numbers in the 60s (though in hockey, a lot of guys now wear high jersey numbers) skate hard to earn a spot on the checking line so they won't be exiled to Manchester, N.H.; or Lake Erie, where the Avs' top farm club is called the Monsters; or worse, back to Saskatoon, or wherever it was they learned to play hockey while skating on a frozen pond.

But Frozen Fury is not your typical preseason hockey game.

For starters, it has the Kings. The reigning Stanley Cup-champion Kings, as strange as that sounds. Plus, it has Roman numerals.

I have been to a lot of Cactus League ballgames, in places such as Mesa and Scottsdale and Peoria and Glendale and Surprise and the old Phoenix Municipal Stadium, near the greyhound track. None had a Roman numeral. A lot had split squads. A lot were called 8-8 ties after nine innings because there wasn't enough pitching.

Frozen Fury also has its own Wikipedia page. Big League Weekend at Cashman Field might have the Chicago Cubs, or at least four or five of the Cubs' Opening Day starters (which isn't saying much). It does not have its own Wikipedia page.

And when preseason games through Sept. 30 were taken off the ice by the league office Wednesday, the headline on Yahoo! said there would be "No Frozen Fury, no Baltimore Classic."

(The Baltimore Classic is a preseason game between the Washington Capitals and Columbus Blue Jackets. It does not have its own Wikipedia page. Neither does the Kraft Hockeyville game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Columbus at Stirling-Rawdon, Ontario, which is sort of like Las Vegas, if Las Vegas consisted only of a Tim Hortons donut shop and an old Anglican church.)

"I think people have come to expect a great game between the Kings and Avalanche," MGM spokesman Scott Ghertner said upon learning the puck would not be stopping here. "From Rob Blake to Luc Robitaille to Patrick Roy to now, Dustin Brown and others, the Kings have always had players" local fans identify with.

And not just local fans. A one-paragraph statement on the LA Kings Insider website saying Frozen Fury had melted amid the lockout generated 104 responses from Kings fans planning to make the trip.

"I was so sad to hear Frozen Fury was canceled," wrote Azhiziam24. "I'll still be rocking my old-school purple and gold on the Strip."

(I have a suspicion that Azhiziam24 actually is former Kings goalie Rogie Vachon, who wore the old-school purple and gold from 1971 through '78.)

A poster calling himself Sammuch wasn't nearly as diplomatic. "I had a feeling this was going to happen. Fans go out of (their) way with hotels and all ...  you would think the players or owners would do something special in Vegas for (their) fans & put (their) differences aside!!!!! Never going to this event again, fans should protest Vegas next year "

(I also have a suspicion that Sammuch actually is former Philadelphia Flyers enforcer Dave Schultz, who strikes me as the kind of guy who wouldn't know the difference between "there" and "their.")

Ghertner has a better idea. Like Azhiziam24, he thinks Los Angeles and Denver hockey fans who bought tickets should come anyway - and stay an extra week and check out the NBA preseason matchup between the Clippers and the Nuggets at MGM sister property Mandalay Bay on Oct. 6.

But in times like this, I think not of the owners or the players or even the host hotel-casino, but of the father who bought tickets so he and his son, the one with Dustin Brown's poster on his wall, could go.

I think of the father trying to explain the concept of revenue sharing to his son, and the look of disappointment in the little boy's eyes.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.