Things to ponder from the past week
OK, so it’s still the middle of October. Lord Stanley isn’t even going to be in the house for another seven months or so. In the meantime, we get blessed with lots of scintillating Atlanta-Philadelphia matchups, games that make even devoted hockey nuts like myself want to roll over and hit the snooze button. Opening Day in the NHL is not the tradition-laden event that it is in Major League Baseball. Mostly, it just signals the start of a very long slog…as if we’re supposed to care about those nail-biting cliffhangers between the likes of Columbus and Nashville. Yawn….
One of the disturbing things about living on the West Coast is that the only “free” NHL outlet, Versus, shows games on Mondays and Tuesdays…and then only games on the East Coast, where a 7pm start means a 4pm puck drop here. Even if I skip going to the gym, I’m still not going to get home from work until about the middle of the second period.
And then the National Hockey League wonders why it’s still considered a “regional” sport….
Sure, I could call Comcast and order the NHL Center Ice package for $169…which I still may do, but I find it difficult to get too terribly excited about games between Columbus and Nashville in October and November. Too may teams in too many places that really should have NHL teams to begin with. Combine that will an overly long season, and all you really have is way too much of a good thing…so much so, that anyone before January or February is really rendered meaningless. I mean, is there anything more thoroughly meaningless than an early season NHL game in Atlanta? Or Miami? Or Nashville? Or Columbus? Give me a break….
Don’t get me wrong; I love the game of hockey. What I cannot stand is what Gary Bettman and his band of evil trolls have done to the game I love. After the travesty of losing the entire 2004 season, even I have trouble getting excited about hockey. That should tell you just how badly the best, most exciting spectator sport in the world is being thoroughly mismanaged. Game on, eh?
Game on, eh? Who cares?
