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2012–13 NHL season

sports season

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ171706 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 2012–13 NHL season was the 96th season of operation (95th season of play) of the National Hockey League (NHL). The regular season began on January 19, 2013, and ended on April 28, 2013, with the playoffs to follow until June. The Chicago Blackhawks defeated the Boston Bruins in six games to win the Stanley Cup.

The season start was delayed from its original October 11, 2012, date due to a lockout imposed by the NHL franchise owners after the expiration of the league's collective bargaining agreement (CBA). After a new labour agreement was reached between the owners and the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA), training camps opened on January 13, 2013, and a 48-game season (reduced from 82 games) started on January 19. Similar to the 1994–95 season, the shortened regular season was limited to intra-conference competition.

League business

Entry draft

The 2012 NHL entry draft was held on June 22–23, 2012, at the Consol Energy Center in Pittsburgh. Nail Yakupov was selected first overall by the Edmonton Oilers.

Lockout

On September 13, 2012, all 29 league ownership groups (with the Phoenix Coyotes collectively owned by the NHL) authorized commissioner Gary Bettman to lock out the National Hockey League Players' Association (NHLPA) upon the expiration of the NHL collective bargaining agreement (CBA) on September 15. The action marked the fifth labour dispute in twenty years for the league, following a 1992 strike, lockouts in 1994–95 and 2004–05, as well as a referees lockout in 1993; this is more than any of the other major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada during this period.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “2012–13 NHL season” is sports season. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through season and sports, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2012, 2013, 1994, 1992—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, season and sports is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “sports season” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q171706. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2012, 2013, 1994 and 1992.

Critical limits

The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow 2012–13 NHL season primary sources, 2012–13 NHL season archive and season research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “2012–13 NHL season” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.