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Gallery: Scientists Discover 55 Day-Old NHL Lockout

An accidental sighting led to one of the most significant sports revelations of the year - that the National Hockey League isn't actually playing any games right now. At last, the men and women behind this miraculous find are taking their exciting news public.

By Dan Saraceni
  • AN ACCIDENTAL SPARK OCTOBER 1 – VonEspen's discovery came about innocently, during his breakfast. “While on a Mammoth dig site in Minsk, I was eating my muesli and reading the New York Times website. I was searching for a recent article about Sir Ranulph Fiennes' expedition across Antarctica when I accidentally clicked the incorrect hyperlink. Suddenly, I saw something I could not believe. I had been operating under the assumption that the League of National Hockey would be playing by now. But I was wrong.”
  • BRITISH BREAKTHROUGH OCTOBER 19 – Shaken by his findings, VonEspen and his team continue to investigate the disappearance of NHL hockey. “We looked at our initial evidence and isolated fertile spots that might possibly have more information about this hypothetical 'Lockout.' More information was hard to find since very few outside of the hockey community had heard of the MHL, ice hockey or this 'Lockout.'” Finally, a stopover in England provided a huge piece of the puzzle. “According to a report from the BBC, my hunch was correct. The Lockout was indeed real.”
  • A GLIMPSE INTO MAYBE An artist's conception of what a hockey game might look like if the sport had been playing now. The National Hockey League is believed to have lived from 1917 to approximately 2012, although scientists are not certain.
  • MOTHERS IN RUSSIA OCTOBER 27 – With a target in his sights, VonEspen feverishly gathers new information from a variety of locations. “I found myself back in Russia, but not to dig for fossils. We followed tales and legends of the Lockout to small towns across the continent. The people spoke happily of their boys coming home because of a “Komisar,” whoever that is. It was like their own personal secret that they didn't want to share with the rest of the world. But we persuaded them to talk through our sheer enthusiasm and thirst for more and more knowledge of the Lockout.”
  • LAND OF THE RISING NONE NOVEMBER 5 – After over a month of painstaking research and excavation, VonEspen encounters some competition in the form of a team of Japanese scientists claiming that the NHL Lockout was close to ending. “The experience in Japan was very difficult,” VonEspen said. “They published stories of massively popular outdoor hockey games being cancelled, clandestine meetings in secret lairs, additional alternate lockouts happening throughout history and an army of giant robots piloted by teenagers. I'm pretty sure they were making these tales up.”
  • BONE SWEET BONE NOVEMBER 7 – Some of VonEspen's previous experience as a paleontologist did come in handy during his foray into the sports world. “We followed hockey leads to a forest in Slovakia known as the 'Valley of Chara' and excavated what could be the largest human bones ever discovered. Whatever creature these bones came from, I wouldn't want to meet it in the flesh. Very scary.”
  • THE GRAND REVEAL TODAY – VonEspen (center) is proud of his revelation and is excited to share it with the rest of the world. “Learning about the lockout has been an eye-opening experience for me personally. Not being a sports fan, I had no idea that a professional league could or would simply stop playing. It has been fascinating.” So, is he a sports fan now? “Oh, god no. Who cares about some silly game? But if I go to a sporting event from now on, I'll be cheering for the owners and hoping to discover another spectacular treasure trove of labor negotiations, posturing and endless conjecture.”

A locked-out National Hockey League was discovered by scientists earlier this month, upending weeks of public assumptions and expectations about professional sports. The revelation - now going public for the first time - could be the sports find of the year.

"You never expect to make a monumental discovery on a Tuesday morning during breakfast," said Dr. Claus VonEspen, who made the initial finding that sparked a revolution. "But that's how it happened. I was wearing my boxers and eating my muesli when my world was sent crashing."

VonEspen, a professor of paleontology at Marshall College in Bedford, Connecticut, has never been much of a sports fan. Which is exactly how he came to his ground-breaking discovery.

"I simply assumed that the National Hockey Association was being played somewhere. You always take things like this for granted. But sometimes the untrained eye sees the clearest," VonEspen said. "When I realized that the Nationalist Hockey Federation may not be playing, I had to catch my breath. I asked myself, 'Is it even possible? Could this be happening and no one had any idea?'

"So I did what they told to do us in paleontology school - I started digging!"

VonEspen's discovery eventually encompassed six countries, an international team of helpers, over 1,000 hours on the internet, and a lost slice of society finally being revealed to the world for the first time.

HOVER OVER THE PICTURES TO READ ABOUT VONESPEN'S BRILLIANT FIND

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