NHL commissioner Gary Bettman (in the foreground) with his second-in-command, Bill Daly, earlier this month during a break in collective bargaining talks in Toronto. Photograph by: Chris Young , THE CANADIAN PRESS

VANCOUVER — Not to be a contrarian here, but all the gnashing of teeth over the National Hockey League’s reported intention to cancel the Bridgestone Winter Classic later this week is completely misplaced.

If the league does it, it won’t be despite the fact that it was Toronto versus Detroit, two storied franchises, a first inclusion of a Canadian team, in all ways a potential bonanza.

It will be precisely because Gary Bettman and his soulless owners — and their crisis management team and the lockout specialists at the law firm of Proskauer Rose and whoever else is advising the NHL on acceptable risks — have concluded that in those two hockey markets, the game is bulletproof, backlash-proof.

Torontonians return to the ticket windows like trained pigs every year, no matter how terrible the Maple Leafs are, how much they charge for a seat and a beer and a hotdog, how many generations go by without any real sense of something good in the offing.

Detroit is Hockeytown, USA. The Red Wings, at the opposite end of the performance scale from the sorry Leafs, consistently reward their intensely loyal fan base with excellent ownership, management, players and prospects.

Whenever hockey comes back, no matter how shabbily the two sides in this labour war treat them, whatever the fallout might be in lesser markets, Bettman and his henchmen know that Detroit and Toronto will never punish them for their sins. And the casual fan will forget it was supposed to be on, anyway.

Sure, the league will lose the record ticket and merchandise revenue the game at massive Michigan Stadium would have generated, but compared to the cost of wiping out the entire pre-New Year’s schedule, it’s a drop in the bucket.

Indeed, if the Winter Classic is cancelled — and whatever might be announced this week doesn’t make it so, because there is a certain air of scripted-ness to this whole dog-and-pony show that defies accepting at face value anything either side may say — you can be sure the NHL will simply re-schedule for a year hence. Big House, here we come again. No hard feelings, eh? No harm done.

Only I’m not sure the league has done its calculations correctly, on that last bit.

Because if cancelling the Winter Classic — one of the brilliant strokes to emerge from the last lockout, when the league knew it had to come back better, more appealing and with more fresh new ideas than at any time in its history — doesn’t cause harm, and plenty of it, then shame on all of us.

Shame on the media, for chasing the non-negotiating committees around the continent, or lining up like groupies at the players’ shinny games to beg for a quote, reinforcing the notion that we are hopelessly lost without them. Shame on the fans for railing at the players and owners, swearing they will never, ever, ever come back this time — and then coming back, anyway. You know you will.