What’s happening to your game?
What’s happening to your game?
You watched night in and night out this playoff season as big, physical players competed in a sport that so recently resembled rugby more than hockey but is now the beautiful blend of finesse and physicality you always knew it could be. You watched with unabashed joy as shooters found space among the six large torsos, 12 long legs and a larger-than-life goalie standing in front of the net. The sight of it had you reveling and then remembering it was just a few seasons ago that any NHL shooter who could actually find space on the ice would also find someone holding him or his stick, or otherwise smothering his talents. You began hoping this truly is again becoming your father’s game. You remember, the one with Bossy and Lafleur bursting down the wing and scoring on the fly.
If you needed more proof, you just turned on a sports highlight show any time during the playoff season and saw NHL games featured prominently, with players’ names actually pronounced correctly. The product, it dawned on you, was becoming too compelling to be ignored, or worse, mocked by the mainstream sports media in the U.S.
You watched, and you were certainly not in the minority. For a change the ratings numbers for the NHL playoffs were relentlessly positive, culminating in those chart busting figures for viewership of Game Seven’s classic for the ages. When you watched, what you saw was unadulterated artistry and skill and drama, series after series. And if you were fortunate enough to watch in the clarity of HD, that only meant the excellence of the product was enhanced and so, too, the experience for all viewers, ardent or casual.
You watched and you remembered it was just a few years ago – at the very time NHL hockey was in need of a major transfusion of brilliant, thoughtful dialogue on ways to improve the game and make inroads on the sporting landscape of the United States – that those in power on both sides were instead making threats. Where you needed creativity and statesmanship, you were getting smugness and scowls. Where you needed people whose sole agenda was to present the sport in a way that all of its magnificent potential could be realized, you were getting egos and arrogance. They want to shut the sport down, you remember asking? Now? Who will notice? And who will be there when their personal epiphanies win out over their egos and they decide it’s time to play again?
What’s happening to your game? Armageddon came. The sport did shut down; to you and many other fans who love hockey, it felt like the final implosion. But out of those ashes came the brilliant, thoughtful dialogue hockey fans yearned for, spearheaded by Brendan Shanahan.
Gradually, a game that was choking itself, with paramedics at rinkside, but none able to cure what ailed, came off life support. This game – your game – that had become a clutch, grab, whack, hack, and sack hodgepodge of its predecessor was starting to open up again. Skill players were allowed to showcase their world-class talent. Mobility and speed were again considered necessary assets. And the 2009 playoff season proved beyond a doubt that for this game to matter and to grow, skill must be allowed to thrive.
What’s happening to your game? Some very good things. The stars are aligning, and they are bright, shining stars, young and able to showcase hockey in all its splendor, replete with end-to-end flow, offensive artistry, booming open-ice hits, and one acrobatic save after the other. This style of game is gradually becoming the norm, not the aberration, as this playoff season attested. That defense-first, squash the skill guy, collapse to the front of the net, show no respect for your opponent hybrid that lived for so many years pre-lockout is dead. Praise the puck gods. Long live the two-on-one.
Yes this was a special playoff season. The league presented an on-ice product so compelling, so breathtaking, so edge-of-your-seat that it deserved to be called NHL hockey. It deserved to be watched; it deserved widespread media coverage, and it deserved to be savored.
That’s what’s happening to your game.
