NHL lockout has chilling effect on business

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — Most everywhere Lou Billittier turns these days, the Buffalo restaurateur is reminded of the NHL  lockout, and its impact on his blue-collar, sports-mad town where Dominik Hasek became a star and the French Connection is still revered.

Billittier misses the familiar faces of Sabres players having their traditional game-day lunch at his restaurant, Chef's. He recalled a recent conversation he had with his seafood supplier, who's struggling because he also provides salmon and chicken wings to the Sabres arena, the First Niagara Center.

And then there are the arena's idled, part-time employees who stop in looking for work. With his own business down 15 percent, Billittier can only turn them away because he's concerned whether there's enough work for his staff.

"It's amazing the trickle-down effect," Billittier said, standing in his lobby, not far from Chef's "The French Connection" room, honoring the famed former Sabres line of Gilbert Perreault, Rene Robert and Rick Martin. "It bothers me, not only because we're down, but it affects everything. Our community out-reach, we can't donate to the people we normally donate to. It's brutal."

From south Florida to Vancouver, Montreal to Anaheim, a wide array of businesses located in the NHL's 30 markets have taken a significant hit because of the lockout, which is now in its fourth month and has wiped away 625 games. On Thursday, the league canceled all games through Jan. 14.

Joe Kasel, owner of the Eagle Street Grille in St. Paul, Minn., last month wrote a letter expressing his concerns to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.

"I had to look 32 of 48 employees in the eyes and inform them that I no longer can afford to keep them on staff," Kasel wrote. "The impact on our lives is immeasurable. One city's devastation may not seem like a powerful incentive to end the lockout; but I know this is happening in other cities around the nation."

Chris Ray, manager of the Brewhouse Downtown in Nashville, said his establishment is losing an estimated $5,000 for every canceled Predators' home game. That's already a $90,000 hit, given 18 Predators' home games have been wiped out.

It's no different at Wayne Gretzky's sports bar in Toronto, where much of the Great One's memorabilia is on display.

"Yes, it's been very slow," said a bartender, who wouldn't give her name. "I'm scared about January."

The Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto is feeling the pinch. Hall of Fame spokeswoman Kelly Masse said they've made "adjustments" to staff because gate and retail revenues are down significantly.

And so's Hockeytown, aka, Detroit.

The downtown three-level Hockeytown Cafe, operated by Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch, was nearly empty on Monday.

"If there's not a show at the Fox, this is what it's like in here," bartender Molly Brown said, referring to the Fox Theatre next door. "We haven't fired anyone, but everyone has had their days and hours cut because the Red Wings aren't playing. We're all suffering."

The effect goes beyond bars, restaurants and tourism.

In Chicago, Gunzo's Hockey Headquarters, a four-store chain that sells hockey equipment and jerseys, is losing business.

"It's been a huge impact. Huge, huge, huge. People don't see the games and it's out of sight, out of mind," owner Keith Jackson said. "It's kind of a double-whammy for us. We're losing out on equipment sales and we're losing out on the jerseys and licensed apparel sales."

With the Christmas shopping season nearly over, Jackson worries those are sales he'll never get back even if the NHL resumes playing soon. Mid-January will be a critical time, since Bettman has said the league doesn't want to play a season shorter than 48 games per team.

With an entire season wiped out in 2004-05, outsiders are wondering whether the two sides — rich owners and well-paid players — are indifferent to the effects their labor disputes create.

"People are disgusted," said Tom Woolsey, owner of Andrews On the Corner in Detroit. He estimates his business is down 75 percent on nights the Red Wings are playing.

"It's incomprehensible to me that after four or five prosperous years in the NHL, that they can't figure out how to split $3.2 billion (in revenue)," Woolsey said.

It's mind-boggling to John Heidinger, chairman of the Service Employees International Local 200 in Buffalo, who represents about 225 ushers at First Niagara Center.

"When you're making 12 bucks an hour working at an arena, and these guys are haggling over hundreds of millions of dollars, I think for a lot of people it's a hard reality to understand," Heidinger said. "It really frustrates you."

Sabres president Ted Black can understand the frustration.

"We are disappointed the NHL and NHLPA have not been able to negotiate a new collective bargaining agreement," Black said. "Our fans are extremely disappointed, and we know the lack of NHL hockey is having a negative impact on many local businesses. At the same time, we want to play hockey under the right circumstances that the NHL will negotiate on our behalf. ... The league has our full confidence."

The impact of another lost season would be high.

In Buffalo alone, the city's tourism bureau, Visit Buffalo Niagara, estimates local hotels that host visiting NHL teams will lose between $850,000 and $1 million if there's no season.

City transit is affected. Douglas Hartmayer, spokesman for the Niagara Frontier Transportations Authority, says up to 1,700 riders use Metro Rail to attend each Sabres home game.

There's even a psychological cost, especially in a place like Buffalo, where the winters are already long, and the Sabres provide an entertaining outlet, particularly when the Buffalo Bills are struggling, as they are once again are this year.

"Especially with Pegula, you had some hope," said Joe Allman, bartender at the Swannie House, referring to Sabres owner Terry Pegula, who's raised expectations since purchasing the team two years ago. "They probably are our best chance to win."

With no hockey, and the Bills out of playoff contention for a 13th straight season, there's little for Buffalonians to fall back on.

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Barring setback, Redskins' RG3 looks good to go

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      Kirk Cousins will start in place of Griffin wgho is sitting out with a sprained knee. (AP Photo/Rick Osentoski)  less

ASHBURN, Va. (AP) — Robert Griffin III looks good to go.

The Washington Redskins rookie had a full practice Thursday for the second straight day as the team prepares for this week's game against the Philadelphia Eagles.

"I like what I see," coach Mike Shanahan said. "If there is no setback, he should be ready to go."

Griffin missed Sunday's win over the Cleveland Browns with a sprained right knee. On Wednesday, he had his first full practice since the injury, and coaches and doctors were eager to see how the knee would respond.

"There wasn't a setback today, so that's a good sign," Shanahan said.

Also Thursday, right tackle Tyler Polumbus remained unable to practice as he recovers from a concussion. Linebacker London Fletcher (sprained left ankle), linebacker Lorenzo Alexander (right shoulder) and defensive end Stephen Bowen (torn biceps) were limited, and linebacker Rob Jackson returned to practice after the birth of his baby girl.

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AP IMPACT: Steroids loom in major-college football

WASHINGTON (AP) — With steroids easy to buy, testing weak and punishments inconsistent, college football  players are packing on significant weight — 30 pounds or more in a single year, sometimes — without drawing much attention from their schools or the NCAA in a sport that earns tens of billions of dollars for teams.

Rules vary so widely that, on any given game day, a team with a strict no-steroid policy can face a team whose players have repeatedly tested positive.

An investigation by The Associated Press — based on interviews with players, testers, dealers and experts and an analysis of weight records for more than 61,000 players — revealed that while those running the multibillion-dollar sport say they believe the problem is under control, that control is hardly evident.

The sport's near-zero rate of positive steroids tests isn't an accurate gauge among college athletes. Random tests provide weak deterrence and, by design, fail to catch every player using steroids. Colleges also are reluctant to spend money on expensive steroid testing when cheaper ones for drugs like marijuana allow them to say they're doing everything they can to keep drugs out of football.

"It's nothing like what's going on in reality," said Don Catlin, an anti-doping pioneer who spent years conducting the NCAA's laboratory tests at UCLA. He became so frustrated with the college system that it was part of the reason he left the testing industry to focus on anti-doping research.

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EDITOR'S NOTE — Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the first of a two-part series.

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While other major sports have been beset by revelations of steroid use, college football has operated with barely a whiff of scandal. Between 1996 and 2010 — the era of Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Marion Jones and Lance Armstrong — the failure rate for NCAA steroid tests fell even closer to zero from an already low rate of less than 1 percent.

The AP's investigation, drawing upon more than a decade of official rosters from all 120 Football Bowl Subdivision teams, found thousands of players quickly putting on significant weight, even more than their fellow players. The information compiled by the AP included players who appeared for multiple years on the same teams.

For decades, scientific studies have shown that anabolic steroid use leads to an increase in body weight. Weight gain alone doesn't prove steroid use, but very rapid weight gain is one factor that would be deemed suspicious, said Kathy Turpin, senior director of sport drug testing for the National Center for Drug Free Sport, which conducts tests for the NCAA and more than 300 schools.

Yet the NCAA has never studied weight gain or considered it in regard to its steroid testing policies, said Mary Wilfert, the NCAA's associate director of health and safety.

The NCAA attributes the decline in positive tests to its year-round drug testing program, combined with anti-drug education and testing conducted by schools.

The AP's analysis found that, regardless of school, conference and won-loss record, many players gained weight at exceptional rates compared with their fellow athletes and while accounting for their heights.

Adding more than 20 or 25 pounds of lean muscle in a year is nearly impossible through diet and exercise alone, said Dan Benardot, director of the Laboratory for Elite Athlete Performance at Georgia State University.

In nearly all the rarest cases of weight gain in the AP study, players were offensive or defensive linemen, hulking giants who tower above 6-foot-3 and weigh 300 pounds or more. Four of those players interviewed by the AP said that they never used steroids and gained weight through dramatic increases in eating, up to six meals a day. Two said they were aware of other players using steroids.

"I ate 5-6 times a day," said Clint Oldenburg, who played for Colorado State starting in 2002 and for five years in the NFL. Oldenburg's weight increased over four years from 212 to 290.

Oldenburg told the AP he was surprised at the scope of steroid use in college football, even in Colorado State's locker room. "There were a lot of guys even on my team that were using." He declined to identify any of them.

The AP found more than 4,700 players — or about 7 percent of all players — who gained more than 20 pounds overall in a single year. It was common for the athletes to gain 10, 15 and up to 20 pounds in their first year under a rigorous regimen of weightlifting and diet. Others gained 25, 35 and 40 pounds in a season. In roughly 100 cases, players packed on as much 80 pounds in a single year.

In at least 11 instances, players that AP identified as packing on significant weight in college went on to fail NFL drug tests. But pro football's confidentiality rules make it impossible to know for certain which drugs were used and how many others failed tests that never became public.

Even though testers consider rapid weight gain suspicious, in practice it doesn't result in testing. Ben Lamaak, who arrived at Iowa State in 2006, said he weighed 225 pounds in high school. He graduated as a 320-pound offensive lineman and said he did it all naturally.

"I was just a young kid at that time, and I was still growing into my body," he said. "It really wasn't that hard for me to gain the weight. I love to eat."

In addition to random drug testing, Iowa State is one of many schools that have "reasonable suspicion" testing. That means players can be tested when their behavior or physical symptoms suggest drug use. Despite gaining 81 pounds in a year, Lamaak said he was never singled out for testing.

The associate athletics director for athletic training at Iowa State, Mark Coberley, said coaches and trainers use body composition, strength data and other factors to spot suspected cheaters. Lamaak, he said, was not suspicious because he gained a lot of "non-lean" weight.

But looking solely at the most significant weight gainers also ignores players like Bryan Maneafaiga.

In the summer of 2004, Bryan Maneafaiga was an undersized 180-pound running back trying to make the University of Hawaii football team. Twice — once in pre-season and once in the fall — he failed school drug tests, showing up positive for marijuana use but not steroids.

He'd started injecting stanozolol, a steroid, in the summer to help bulk up to a roster weight of 200 pounds. Once on the team, he'd occasionally inject the milky liquid into his buttocks the day before games.

"Food and good training will only get you so far," he told the AP recently.

Maneafaiga's former coach, June Jones, said it was news to him that one of his players had used steroids. Jones, who now coaches at Southern Methodist University, believes the NCAA does a good job rooting out steroid use.

On paper, college football has a strong drug policy. The NCAA conducts random, unannounced drug testing and the penalties for failure are severe. Players lose an entire year of eligibility after a first positive test. A second offense means permanent ineligibility for sports.

In practice, though, the NCAA's roughly 11,000 annual tests amount to a fraction of all athletes in Division I and II schools. Exactly how many tests are conducted each year on football players is unclear because the NCAA hasn't published its data for two years. And when it did, it periodically changed the formats, making it impossible to compare one year of football to the next.

Even when players are tested by the NCAA, experts like Catlin say it's easy enough to anticipate the test and develop a doping routine that results in a clean test by the time it occurs. NCAA rules say players can be notified up to two days in advance of a test, which Catlin says is plenty of time to beat a test if players have designed the right doping regimen. By comparison, Olympic athletes are given no notice.

Most schools that use Drug Free Sport do not test for anabolic steroids, Turpin said. Some are worried about the cost. Others don't think they have a problem. And others believe that since the NCAA tests for steroids their money is best spent testing for street drugs, she said.

Doping is a bigger deal at some schools than others.

At Notre Dame and Alabama, the teams that will soon compete for the national championship, players don't automatically miss games for testing positive for steroids. At Alabama, coaches have wide discretion. Notre Dame's student-athlete handbook says a player who fails a test can return to the field once the steroids are out of his system.

The University of North Carolina kicks players off the team after a single positive test for steroids. Auburn's student-athlete handbook calls for a half-season suspension for any athlete caught using performance-enhancing drugs.

At UCLA, home of the laboratory that for years set the standard for cutting-edge steroid testing, athletes can fail three drug tests before being suspended. At Bowling Green, testing is voluntary.

At the University of Maryland, students must get counseling after testing positive, but school officials are prohibited from disciplining first-time steroid users.

Only about half the student athletes in a 2009 NCAA survey said they believed school testing deterred drug use. As an association of colleges and universities, the NCAA could not unilaterally force schools to institute uniform testing policies and sanctions, Wilfert said.

"We can't tell them what to do, but if went through a membership process where they determined that this is what should be done, then it could happen," she said.

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Associated Press writers Ryan Foley in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; David Brandt in Jackson, Miss.; David Skretta in Lawrence, Kan.; Don Thompson in Sacramento, Calif., and Alexa Olesen in Shanghai, China, and researchers Susan James in New York and Monika Mathur in Washington contributed to this report.

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Contact the Washington investigative team at DCinvestigations (at) ap.org.

Whether for athletics or age, Americans from teenagers to baby boomers are trying to get an edge by illegally using anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, despite well-documented risks. This is the first of a two-part series.

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It's official, Andersen is new Wisconsin coach

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Several schools tried to lure Gary Andersen away from Utah State.

Wisconsin finally got him.

Andersen was officially hired as the Badgers' new coach Thursday, and will be formally introduced at a news conference Friday morning. He replaces Bret Bielema, who left the Badgers for Arkansas this month.

"I don't know if I can really have a word for how excited I am to be at Wisconsin and have this opportunity," Andersen said in a video on Wisconsin's website. "I know I'm humbled, I know I'm blessed."

The 48-year-old Andersen just completed his fourth and best season at Utah State. The 18th-ranked Aggies finished 11-2 with a bowl victory against Toledo and won the Western Athletic Conference. One of those losses was at Wisconsin, where the Aggies missed a 37-yard field goal in the final seconds to allow the Badgers to escape with a 16-14 win.

It's been a remarkable rise for a program that had been near the bottom of major college football for years, and stuck in distant third in its own state behind BYU and Utah. The Aggies won nine games in the previous four seasons before Andersen took over. The last football coach to finish his tenure in Logan, Utah, with a winning record was Phil Krueger who went 21-12 from 1973-75.

Andersen drew interest from California, Colorado and Kentucky last month, but decided to pass on those opportunities and received a contract extension from Utah State.

When Wisconsin called, however, Andersen couldn't resist.

"It all came together," he said in a video on Wisconsin's website. "By no means was I sitting out there going, 'I've got to have a job, I've got to have a job.' But as soon as this one popped open, to me, this was a special, special place."

Before Andersen left Logan, Utah, however, he called his players — all 107 of them — so they would hear the news that he was leaving from him and not on TV or Twitter.

"I couldn't tell them yet that I had taken the job," Andersen told UWBadgers.com. "But I told them if I was offered the job I was going to take the job. There were a bunch of tears and hard conversations."

Andersen replaces Bielema, who left Wisconsin on Dec. 4, three days after the Badgers routed Nebraska to win the Big Ten title and a school-record third straight trip to the Rose Bowl. Athletic director Barry Alvarez has agreed to coach Wisconsin in the bowl at the request of the players.

Though the Badgers' 8-5 record going into the Rose Bowl is their worst since 2008, Andersen is inheriting a team loaded with talent through Wisconsin will lose Montee Ball, who set the major college record for career touchdowns this year and tied the single-season mark last year, along with linebacker Mike Taylor and standout defensive backs Marcus Cromartie and Devin Smith.

The Badgers still have James White or Melvin Gordon, who rushed for a total of almost 1,400 yards and 15 touchdowns. Jared Abbrederis has led the Badgers in receiving each of the last two seasons, and Joel Stave showed promise before the freshman broke his collarbone. Disruptive linebacker Chris Borland, who is second with 4 1/2 sacks and 95 tackles despite missing two games, also is expected back.

And while this will be Andersen's first job in the Midwest, one Big Ten opponent has no doubt he can succeed. When Alvarez was considering Andersen, he called Ohio State coach Urban Meyer, who had Andersen on his staff at Utah in 2004, when the Utes went 12-0 and won the Fiesta Bowl.

"(Meyer has) had some very good assistants," Alvarez said on UWBadgers.com. "Urban told me that Gary is in the top five of all of them; he's the real deal. I said, 'Would he fit here? Would he fit in the Big Ten?' He said, 'Absolutely.'"

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Barea, Wolves snap Thunder's 12-game streak

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — J.J. Barea ended Oklahoma City's 12-game winning streak almost all by himself.

Playing with the tenacity that made him so important to the Mavericks' run to the title two years ago, Barea scored 14 of his 18 points in the fourth quarter to lift the Minnesota Timberwolves to a 99-93 victory over the Thunder on Thursday night.

Kevin Love had 28 points, 11 rebounds and seven assists and Nikola Pekovic had 24 points and 10 rebounds for Minnesota. But it was Barea who was the key, scoring 12 straight at one point for the Wolves to hold off the team with the best record in the league.

Kevin Durant had 33 points, seven rebounds and six assists and Russell Westbrook had 30 points, 11 rebounds and nine assists for the Thunder, who had not lost a game since Nov. 23 at Boston.

That it was Barea, and not the Olympian Love or the sensation Ricky Rubio who was chiefly responsible was the biggest surprise of all.

Barea didn't join the Timberwolves until training camp had already started last season, then languished through the first injury plagued year of his career. Finally healthy, he's getting back to the super pest that helped the Dallas Mavericks to the title two years ago.

With the Thunder charging early in the fourth quarter, the smallest guy on the court played the biggest.

After Durant's two free throws cut Minnesota's lead to 80-77, Barea hit two 3s and scored on a putback under the rim amid the tall trees, an 8-0 run by himself that gave the Wolves a little breathing room. His long 3 with 5:26 to play made it 92-81, and the Wolves held on.

Barea was also a nuisance on defense, drawing an offensive foul on Durant with 2:24 to play. The normally super-cool Durant uncharacteristically lost his composure, picking up a technical foul for arguing the call as well.

Serge Ibaka had 14 points and nine rebounds.

Alexey Shved had 12 points, 12 assists and seven rebounds for the Wolves, who are trying to claw their way back to respectability after years at the bottom of the Western Conference.

With a nucleus of Love, Rubio and Pekovic, there is optimism here for the first time in a long time.

The Thunder stormed into Target Center riding the longest winning streak since the team moved to Oklahoma City, bullying opponents by an average of 14.2 points per game as they warm up for a run at a second straight finals appearance.

Rubio was playing his third game since being activated from a torn ACL in his left knee that had kept him out since March 9. He had a scintillating debut last Saturday, throwing no-look passes between his legs and looking as if he'd never left. But it's been slower going in the ensuing two games. He was a non-factor in a loss in Orlando on Monday and had trouble getting going again against the Thunder.

His handle wasn't nearly as sticky as usual and he was thwarted every time he tried to penetrate, then could be seen wincing in pain after an awkward landing on a shot in the second quarter. Coach Rick Adelman immediately pulled him, but Rubio was able to return in the second half.

Playing the part of Rubio on Thursday night was Shved, the Russian rookie with the flair for the dramatic. After two rough games in a row in Florida, Shved wasn't intimidated by the team with the best record in the league. He calmly glided along the perimeter, surveying the defense and finding teammates with pinpoint passing.

NOTES: Kevin Martin did not play for the Thunder because of a right thigh contusion. ... The Timberwolves waived G/F Josh Howard on Thursday after an MRI revealed a torn ACL in his right knee. ... The Thunder lost for the first time in six tries on the second night of a back to back.

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Laclede to double customers in $1 billion deal with Energy Transfer

(Reuters) - Natural gas distributor Laclede Group Inc  is buying two utilities from Energy Transfer Equity LP  for $1 billion, doubling its customer numbers and boosting its exposure to more stable state-regulated income.

More than 91 percent of Laclede's earnings will come from rate-regulated business after the acquisition of Missouri Gas Energy and New England Gas Co, owned by Energy Transfer's affiliate, Southern Union Co.

About 68 percent of Laclede's operating revenue of $1.12 billion came from its regulated gas distribution business in the year ended September 30.

"With lower ... prices, more and more customers are interested in using natural gas," Chief Executive Suzanne Sitherwood told Reuters. "The other emerging market that is taking place is with natural gas vehicles."

Gas prices have fallen sharply from their peak of more than $13 per million metric British thermal unit (mmBtu) to about $3 now due to vast supplies from shale fields in North America.

This has prompted increased use of gas for heating and power generation. Westport Innovations Inc , General Motors Co , Caterpillar Inc and Ford Motor Co are some of the companies developing technologies to drive the use of the fuel in vehicles.

Laclede too has been working on fueling natural gas vehicles and has received a lot of interest for possible partnerships, Sitherwood said. She did not name the interested parties.

GOOD PRICE FOR ETE

Missouri Gas and New England Gas, which had combined revenue of about $517 million for the year ended September 30, serve more than 500,000 customers in western Missouri and about 50,000 in Massachusetts.

The acquisition, which includes debt of about $20 million, will take Laclede's customer base to 1.2 million, the company said in a statement.

Laclede expects the acquisition to be neutral to its earnings per share in the first full year after close, likely in the third quarter of 2013.

Energy Transfer Partners LP , a unit of Energy Transfer Equity and a party to the deal, said the transaction was part of the company's efforts to divest non-core assets.

The gas utilities passed into Energy Transfer's hands when it bought pipeline operator Southern Union Co last year.

"For the Energy Transfer family, this (deal) compares favorably to our previously modeled $710 million sale estimate," analysts at Robert W. Baird wrote in a note to clients.

St Louis, Missouri-based Laclede said Wells Fargo Bank will provide a $1 billion bridge facility for the purchase.

Laclede shares were down about 2 percent at $39.12 in afternoon trading on Monday on the New York Stock Exchange. Shares of Energy Transfer Equity and Energy Transfer Partners were slightly up.

Wells Fargo Securities LLC advises Laclede, while Credit Suisse Securities LLC is advising Energy Transfer and Southern Union. Moelis & Co gave the fairness opinion to Laclede.

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Zurich puts Sandy storm damage claims at $700 million

ZURICH (Reuters) - Zurich estimates that damage claims relating to tropical storm Sandy, which hit the United States in October, will amount to $700 million in its fourth-quarter earnings.

The Swiss insurer's announcement on Monday also said that it expects $58 million of "reinstatement premiums due on reinsurance covers". The company gave no further explanation. It is due to report quarterly earnings on February 14.

The storm, which killed 132 people in the United States and Canada on October 29, led to power outages, disruptions of public transport and massive damage to infrastructure.

U.S. insurer AIG said it expects post-tax losses of at least $1.3 billion from Superstorm Sandy, while Travelers Companies Inc and Swiss Re estimated their claims burdens at $650 million after tax and $900 million before tax respectively.

Sandy is expected ultimately to be the second-costliest catastrophe in U.S. history, with insured loss estimates as high as $25 billion. The costliest catastrophe was hurricane Katrina in 2005.

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