Game starts in confusion, opening once, and never finishing (7)

'game' is the definition.
Both the definition and answer are singular nouns.
Perhaps there's a link between them I don't understand?

'starts in confusion opening once and never finishing' is the wordplay.
'starts in' indicates taking the first letters.
'and' becomes 'n' (common abbreviation for 'and').
'never' becomes 'can' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'finishing' means one lot of letters go next to another.
The first letters of 'confusion opening once' is 'coo'.
'coo'+'n'+'can'='COONCAN'

Can you help me to learn more?