I wasn’t paying attention to hockey in 2004 when NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, with the full backing of team owners, led the league into a lockout which resulted in an entire season of hockey being cancelled. But it’s clear there’s been no love loss between Bettman and hockey fans ever since. Nearly seven years later, Bettman is still booed every time he makes a public appearance. And now I understand why.

The current lockout is still in the early days, but there are already ominous signs that the regular season won’t be starting any time soon: All pre-season games were recently cancelled; the NHLPA doesn’t seem to be making much progress in their latest series of meetings with the NHL; and some players are starting to express their rage over the impending regular-season lockout publicly.

The other night while watching Glee, I was fast-forwarding through the commercials, as I usually do, when the image of a few guys playing hockey caught my eye, so, I immediately rewound. It was just a hockey-themed advertisement, but, I still watched the whole damn thing, which is a sure sign I’m already starting to go through hockey withdrawal.

Another thing I miss are the wallpaper graphics the Canucks organization released monthly which featured a fun photo of a team member with a calendar of that month’s Canucks games. But the wallpaper image posted on the Canucks website right now features the Canucks mascot, Fin, dressed in a Johnny Canuck costume and a calendar for October that contains one event: Halloween. Another bad sign that this lockout won’t be ending anytime soon.

So I’ve decided to make my own NHL Lockout wallpaper for the month of October and share it with all of you! Just click on the image below to see the larger version. I think it visually represents how most of us feel about the Commish right now: what a little shit!

I’ll create a new NHL Lockout wallpaper image for every month this stand-off continues, so, for the sake and sanity of all hockey fans, I hope this is the first and last one I’ll have to make this season. Enjoy!