I hardly doubt it'll go into next year. Gary Bettman (the league commish) just said they'd be back for next season for sure. Just this Sunday, players agreed on the main thing that caused the lockout in the first place: a salary cap. What finished off the season is that the owners wanted a 42 mil. cap and the players wanted 49. So, to make a long story short, you could say 7 million dollars cost hockey what could have been a short season, which really isn't that much. I'm not even much of a hockey fan, but this sucks for sports in general.