Back in October, my colleague Derek Moore wrote a front-page article headlined, “Snoopy never saw hockey like this” about how Novato-based 2K Sports was using Snoopy’s Home Ice in Santa Rosa for motion-capture sessions for its upcoming “NHL 2K11” video game. Now, it’s looking like the game may never see release.

In its quarterly financial report, released on Dec. 17, parent company 2K Games listed all of the titles it was planning to release next year, and “NHL 2K11” was conspicuously absent. Other 2K Sports titles, such as “NBA 2K11” and “Major League Baseball 2K10” are on the list, however. When contacted for comment by The Sporting News’ Chris Littmann, a 2K Sports rep offered these reassuring words:

“We are currently in the process of evaluating our sports portfolio and have not announced any new NHL titles at this time.”

I’ll follow up here once 2K comes out with something a bit more definitive, but things don’t look good. While 2K’s recent hockey games have been decent, they’ve been largely eclipsed by what EA Sports has done with “NHL 09” and “NHL 10” the past two seasons. EA hasn’t bothered to release its standout game on the Wii, however, so if 2K’s hockey franchise does go belly-up, hockey-loving owners of Nintendo’s console will have to learn to cherish their back catalog.

Kudos to blogger Bryan Wiedey, aka pastapadre, for noticing “NHL 2K11’s” omission on 2K’s financial report.