Which Maple Leaf—and NHL’er apart from the Leafs—would you miss watching the most if we have a lockout?

If we’re honest, we’d all acknowledge that we will be a bit lost, sports wise, if there is no hockey this fall.  We’d be frustrated, disappointed, angry, whatever word you want to use, but we’d certainly miss it.

In yesterday’s post I asked you when you thought the games would start again (I'm assuming there will be a lockout, but it's not a sure thing, of course).  Your responses ranged from: the season will start on time to ...we won’t see hockey again until October of 2013.  So while we’re all hoping against hope that we won’t miss the full schedule again—as we did just a few short years ago—a lot of us recognize the likelihood that the league will shut down at least a number of games this fall and maybe longer than that.

So yes, we’d miss watching the Leafs in action, but beyond that, we’d also be without the opportunity to follow the ebb and flow of the NHL season, which a lot of us (at least in part) build some of our “leisure time” around.

There isn’t much to say these days, Leaf and hockey-wise, unless we want to micro-analyze every verbal salvo that will likely soon start flying back and forth between the league and the NHLPA.   I don’t really want to do that here, at least on a daily basis—and there are plenty of sites that will provide much better and more insightful blow-by-blow analysis of the soon-to-be-messy talks than I could. Personally, I’d rather talk about hockey, so I have a question today which allows us to do that:  if we do have a lockout, a) which Maple Leaf player will you most miss watching and b) what will you regret most about not being able to see the Leafs in action (e.g. seeing Carlyle in charge with a full training camp behind him; monitoring how Reimer is doing; seeing if Kadri turns it up big time at training camp, etc…)?

Myself, I’m probably most interested in seeing how many of the “youngsters” are actually going to make the big club out of training camp.  And I am anxious to see Reimer back and healthy - and playing like he can.

As a bonus question, what NHL’er (not with the Maple Leafs) will you be most disappointed not to be able to see play this fall, if there are no games?

As they say, let’s talk hockey—for as long as we can, at least!