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By Eunice Lee and Steve Strunsky/The Star-Ledger

NEWARK — The Edison Ale House near Prudential Arena in Newark gets so packed on New Jersey Devils game nights that patrons wait 25 minutes just to get in the door, says bar manager, Ricky Medina.

"As far as the bar’s concerned, it’s like looking up at a sea of faces," said Medina, 40, of Fort Lee. "They just want that one beer, that craft beer, before they go into the arena and spend that $9 on a Bud Light."

But a lockout by National Hockey League team owners that threatens to delay or disrupt the 2012-13 season could mean empty bar stools at the ale house and at other city establishments. These places rely on hockey fans to help fill their seats and cash registers during the fall, winter and spring.

Medina said the ale house gets 100-125 hockey fans before and after each of the Devils’ 41 home games, warming up beforehand, toasting a Devils victory or drowning their sorrows in defeat. Few, if any, are likely to be there during the lockout.

"It’s definitely going to hurt our business," said Medina, who guessed that a season-long lockout could cost the year-old establishment $70,000.

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"That’s a chunk for being across the arena," Medina said from behind the bar, framed by a Devils banner highlighting the team’s three championships. "We’re hoping we’ll just miss a few preseason games."

The impact of the lockout, now in its third day, is far from certain, with much depending on how long it lasts.

Players and owners have three weeks to settle a dispute over profit-sharing before Oct. 11, when the regular season is scheduled to start. The Devils first home game would be Saturday, Oct. 13, against the Boston Bruins. But no contract talks are scheduled, and owners have demonstrated patience in the past, with a lockout that persisted through the entire 2004-05 season.

"None of us have any idea how long this will go," said Chip Hallock, president and CEO of the Newark Regional Business Partnership.

"I can’t quantify it," Hallock added. "For a hockey game, you’re bringing somewhere between 15,000 and 18,000 people a night, so it’s certainly going to have an impact."

In advance of the NHL playoffs last spring, the Devils projected seven home games would generate $4.1 million in local economic activity, including $1.1 million spent on food and drink outside the arena and excluding ticket sales and parking fees.

But just as playoff action is more intense on the ice than during the regular season, so is the economic activity it generates. Hallock said the Devils’ playoff spending model might not be applicable to an early season lockout.

The Devils declined to comment yesterday.

The hockey lockout coincides with the defection of the Nets from New Jersey to Brooklyn for coming NBA season, meaning Newark could go from having two professional sports franchises to none.

"It is kind of like a double-whammy," said Medina.

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The Fast Park parking lot across Mulberry Street from the arena can fill 185 spaces at $30 per car when the Devils play, said Emmanuel Nantwi, one of six attendants who work on game nights. But fewer games mean less work, Nantwi said.

Those figures mean a full lot could theoretically realize more than $227,000 in revenue from home games.

Not all surrounding businesses are concerned. Scott Kleckner, vice president of operations at Dinosaur-Bar-B-Que on Market Street, said game crowds were an "added bonus" on top of a bustling weekday lunch trade. And unlike the hockey season, he said, business as usual will go on however long the lockout lasts.

"I’d like to cry poor," Kleckner said. "I can’t today."

The impact of lockout was downplayed by Rick Eckstein, a professor of sociology at Villanova University and co-author, with Kevin J. Delaney, of "Public Dollars and Private Stadiums: The Battle over Building Sports Stadiums," a book questioning the economic development value of arenas for areas where they are built.

"The (lockout) won’t have much impact since the games themselves don’t have much impact," Eckstein said in an e-mail.

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