Nintendo Lockout Ice Hockey will make your inner child weep over NHL (VIDEO)

As the NHL lockout continues to spread like a corrosive fungus across hockey fandom, puckheads are constantly looking for ways to soothe their hockey souls. Perhaps you've cracked open some old NHL DVDs to remember a time when the League actually, you know, played hockey. Perhaps you've sought refuge in the warm blanket of old school hockey video games.

Alas, not even that latter bastion is safe any longer. Behold NES Lockout Ice Hockey, the (rather hilarious but nonetheless disturbing) perversion of an old school gaming classic:

Created by Andrew M., it's a sim that perfectly captures the current labor dispute between players (wearing the color of money) and owners (here represented by Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day, apparently).

Well, almost perfectly: At no point did the two sides engage in a classic Ice Hockey fight in which the loser goes to the penalty box; and, honestly, if we're looking to make a political statement about player avarice, how can you not set the character mode to "fat"?

(And is it too much to ask for a Soda Popinski cameo as the KHL?)

These, of course, are quibbles about an otherwise brilliant spoof. We look forward to seeing the same meme applied to "Blades of Steal, er, Steel" — if only to see how one performs a lockout penalty shot. Firing bags of HRR perhaps?