The pains of love for the NHL

By Dan Nied [send email]

We lost a season to greed and stupidity and now the hands have been shaken and the contracts are about to be signed and we, as hockey fans, are just supposed to go back?

Do we forgive and forget? Are we relieved or angry? Does the Stanley Cup have a watermelon-sized dent in it and a few flakes of rust around its rim?

The NHL Lockout lasted 301 days and killed a full season and, for the first time since the NHL was created in 1926, the Stanley Cup was not awarded.

We are supposed to forget that?

Not likely.

But sometimes that can’t be helped.

I want to stay away, but I cannot. In reading about the new collective bargaining agreement, visions of North America’s game dance in my head. The hits, the goals, the rugged grace, all bouncing around my brain.
As hard as I try, as much as I want to curse this whole sport, well I just can’t do it.

Hockey is back and I can’t forgive and I can’t forget. I can only act on emotions which tell me that hockey might be the greatest sport in the world if played the right way.

But the Players Union and the NHL took this away from me for an entire season. During that time, I never missed it one bit. I wasn’t sad when April rolled around and the playoffs would have started. I wasn’t upset that there was no Stanley Cup celebration in North America. It never occurred to me that I was missing out on anything.

But now that a collective bargaining agreement has been reached, I give in. I can’t stay away no matter how much it could hurt the next time. This is a game I grew up with, as have so many other fans. This is a
game that, in some way, is a part of me.

I want to see the last gasps of the Red Wings-Avalanche rivalry, before Steve Yzerman and Joe Sakic are forced into retirement by old age. I want to see players throwing their bodies into each other with
malicious intent. I want to see goals. I want to see fights. I can’t believe its been so long since I checked out the stats of the Nashville Predators.

I don’t know why. At least I tell myself that. But oh, I really do know exactly why. See, I’ve finally realized that the NHL didn’t take away the sport, They just took away the league. Hockey lived on in so many beautiful forms last season. From Denver University’s NCAA title to the Swedish Elite team where so many NHLers played.

Hockey was alive and it will never die. No matter how tiny the television ratings. No matter what contractual force tries to kill it.

Hockey is not the game of millionaire players and billionaire owners. It is my game. It is your game. It is our game. I want it back because it has been a part of me for so long. I want it back because I grew to love it as a boy, and sometimes growing up isn’t much fun.

I want it back, and I will get it back. We will rejoice eventually. We will realize that what drew us to this game wasn’t the contracts or the lack of a salary cap or the brilliance of the players, owners or commissioner. It was because of its swan-like brilliance and bone crunching action. Because beauty and violence coexist so perfectly in its realm. Because it gave us so much before it was taken away.

Hockey is back. And I might cringe, but I believe I can love again.