Most exciting decade of hockey in the past 40 years?

[Islay1989]

80's AINEC

In 1992, the "Instigator Rule" was introduced and in a few short years, it absolutely ruined hockey.

Anyone that cheap shot Gretzky would get their face caved in by Dave Semenko and Marty McSorley. You could slash his hands, but you sure as hell would pay the price in the infirmary

Believe it or not, this kept the play "honest" and the stars were allowed to free-wheel. After 1992, it became open-season on the stars.

Skill-less players could now clutch and grab with impunity. Teams devoid of skill could now win cups because stars were now treated like garbage. This crap goes on today.

Ironically, the team that benefited the most from this were the Stars with Hatcher, Matvichuck and the gang exploited clutch and grab like no others.

As for the OP, 90s without a question for me.

 

[BenchBrawl]

86-96

There were more great players in their prime than at any time since. Gretzky, Lemieux, Messier, Roy, Bourque and many more.

However it doesn't beat the Original Six era especially from the mid-1950s to 1967, which IMO was the golden age of hockey. The signature era.

 

[wetcoast]

I'll take the 90s. Granted the last couple seasons were tight defensively, but 1990-97 was a great mix of free wheeling offense, physicality, intensity, along with a few great defensive teams like NJ and the best era for goaltenders ever. It feels like that era had everything. I take it over the 80s because it was more well rounded with defense and goaltending also on display. Not to mention Europeans were a huge part of the league in the 90s and basically non existent in the 80s.

After that I'd say it was 2005-12 or so. Since then it feels like the intensity has been sapped out of the game. I like that offense is coming back, but the physicality and hatred is long gone.

Good points but for me its the 80s with 2 of the big 4 making their mark on the NHL and the latter part of the 90s just really sucked from a fans point of view.

 

[valet]

2000s imo. rule changes post lockout made the game super fun to watch and we still had dumbo enforcers running around knocking people's heads off. now it's just kids playing fortnite getting cool haircuts and scoring lots of goals. fun to watch but not as good as that plus fights nearly every night