MONTREAL – Tom Koshelowsky grew up worshiping the Canadiens. He sips his Molson at Hurley’s, a popular hockey hangout, and says the excitement is gone.

“This is the shrine of the Original Six,” Koshelowsky said of Montreal, one of the National Hockey League’s founding franchises. “People can’t fathom Montreal without hockey.”

In a city that has won the Stanley Cup 23 times, there is no hockey. Montreal without hockey is like Philadelphia without the Eagles, New York without the Yankees, and Boston without the Red Sox. Canada’s national pastime, a $1 billion industry, remains in limbo. The owners have locked the players out until they get a salary cap in a new collective-bargaining agreement. Negotiations stalled in September and have not resumed.

“We won’t know what to do with ourselves without hockey,” said Bill Hurley, who owns the pub on Crescent Street that bears his name. “What do we do here? We go to games, we watch them, then we go to bars and talk about what we watched.”

More than 552,000 youngsters – 63,000 of them girls – play hockey across Canada, according to the International Ice Hockey Federation. In Montreal, the chamber of commerce has advised business owners that the lockout will cost the city $60 million to $80 million (Canadian). On October 13, the Canadiens would have been in Ottawa to play the Senators and the Vancouver Canucks would have been facing the Sharks in San Jose. The Edmonton Oilers would have opened the next night at home against Detroit, and Calgary and Toronto would have played separately that weekend.

Ali Hassan operates Souvenir Super, on busy St. Catherine Street in the heart of downtown Montreal. His store sells hockey apparel and souvenirs. On a typical game night, Hassan will sell three Canadiens jerseys at $109 apiece.

“Our hockey business is down already by 30 percent,” Hassan said. “We’re taking less orders on the phone and in the store.”

Hassan said he was upset with the players.

“They won’t face the reality and they are too greedy,” he said. “They make too much money.”

Crescent Street is in the nightlife district of Montreal. When the United States beat Canada for the World Cup of Hockey title in 1996, the area was jammed with partygoers until 4 a.m.

“I care deeply about this sport,” said Anna Audi, a government worker who is on strike. “Both sides are wrong, but the players make too much money. Not to have hockey tonight, well, Montreal is synonymous with hockey.”

In Ottawa, the Senators are the real game in town. Though there wasn’t an NHL game at the Corel Centre on the scheduled opening night, there was hockey – midget and peewee teams played from 4 to 10 p.m.

“This really hurts a small city like Ottawa,” said Tony Cuccaro, who owns Capone’s West, a popular Italian restaurant that caters to hockey fans as well as NHL players. Cuccaro keeps his kitchen open late at night to satisfy both the Senators and visitors, such as the Flyers, who frequent his place.

“My customers relate to players coming in here, and that won’t happen now,” Cuccaro said. “But the frustration that I feel as both a fan and business owner is that neither side is talking. Maybe in some cities this lockout isn’t a big deal, but in Ottawa it’s everything.”

Former Flyer Brad Marsh had to shut down his restaurant at the Corel Centre and relocate. There was no need for a restaurant at an arena that didn’t have games.

On TV, the CBC has replaced Hockey Night in Canada with Movie Night in Canada.

In Alberta, the signs leading to Edmonton usually promote the Oilers. Now, they are touting the new American Hockey League team, the Edmonton Roadrunners.

“No one is talking about hockey here and, frankly, some of it has to do with everyone more or less (seeing) this lockout coming four years ago,” said Terry Jones, a longtime columnist for the Edmonton Sun. “It’ll be different in the dead of winter when football is gone and there’s no Oilers.”

In Toronto, Michael Young, the general manager of Wayne Gretzky’s, a popular bar and restaurant, said people appeared to be “in denial.”

“They don’t seem that upset yet because they are optimistic the lockout won’t last,” Young said. “But things are different. The local storefronts removed the Maple Leafs jerseys from their windows. It’s either a Team Canada, NFL, or a baseball jersey now.

“If there’s no hockey, there’s no reason to buy a hockey jersey, right?” he said. “Also, we don’t have very much advertising in the bars from Molson’s like we normally would.”

Barry Sullivan, a businessman in Calgary, has had Flames season tickets for 25 years. He persuaded his wife to go to the Philadelphia Flower Show some years ago and ended up catching a Flyers game.

“It’s a given that the season is lost,” Sullivan said. “It is also a given that just like the NFL, there will be a season next year and the union will be either meekly toed into line or broken – choose your hemlock. People everywhere, even the dumb, know this is unsustainable from a player’s point of view, meaning salaries. Most of my friends are business guys. They treat this as just part of the evolution to sanity.”

In Vancouver, Canucks fans are still reeling from the embarrassment of a vicious check by Todd Bertuzzi last season and the team’s early ouster from the playoffs.

“It’s a downer here,” said John McKeachie, the popular morning host at MOJO Radio.

Jacques Hamou is the general manager of the Marriott Chateau Champlain hotel in Montreal. He told of his meeting with the Montreal tourism board.

“I see different reactions from people,” Hamou said. “Some people at the meeting were angry. They say they will not pay to see games ever again. Generally, people seem unhappy. But I’m not sure whether they are just unhappy with the players or players and owners.”

The Chateau Champlain, owned by a group including former Canadien Serge Savard, houses most NHL visiting clubs and is within walking distance of the Canadiens’ arena, the Bell Centre.On game nights, the hotel rents 30 rooms to the visiting club for $129 to $159 (Canadian). The Chateau Champlain could lose roughly $4,000 to $5,000 for every night an NHL club would have stayed during the Canadiens’ 41-game home season. On those nights, the hotel is 80 percent to 95 percent occupied.

“And that doesn’t include the fans who come with those teams from places like Boston, New York and Philadelphia,” Hamou said. “We’re going to lose business. We’re trying to replace those nights, but we can’t replace them all.”

In the economic game being waged between the league and its players, there are no winners. Only losers.

Even in Montreal.

Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun and Eric Duhatschek of the Toronto Globe & Mail (Calgary bureau) contributed to this article.