Trend I like: All original six teams seems to be decent as of late.
Not sure if that qualifies, but I'm also glad the statistics of hockey are evolving.
Trends I dislike: Parity of teams and parity at the top of the scoring race for players.I dislike the decline of fighting, and also the lack of respect players have for each other.
I think the game is too fast now, making it too dangerous.Speed isn't really what I'm looking for, I like the "slowing down" the game kind of neat plays, with hockey IQ playing the prominent role in domination , not athletic abilities.Oh well, the only solution I see for that is cutting down the bench for all teams, forcing every player to be a bit more tired and not giving their absolute 100% at every second of every single shift, giving room for more slow action and intelligence.Won't happen.
Basically I'm not a really happy fan nowadays, and I'm slowly losing interest in hockey though the interest was so strong to begin with that I doubt I'll ever completely lose interest in this great sport.But more and more my love for professional hockey is based on nostalgia.
I grew up in the Lemieux, then Jagr era, and started to see a decline in quality of the sport after 1996 when Lemieux and Jagr finished with 161 and 149 pts respectively.The game has never been the same ever since.We had the Jagr domination which was nice, but that's about it.Now it's even more ****ed as no player is able to consistantly beat the pack.