Well, the "original six" lasted a long time. I believe the baby boom generation has perpetuated the memory of this era. It was truly the golden age of hockey to many of us. Almost all the players were Canadian and Canadians who were kids in the 50's and early 60's followed it devoutly. We knew all the players and what lines they played on. To us hockey lost something with expansion. It became more remote, less familiar.
Thats my take & I was there.
Yes, very much so. It truly was a "Golden Era" for the game & despite all thats followed, Expansion, the Summit Series & Canada Cups, the WHA, all of the incredible hockey & the players that followed I feel sorry for the generations who followed who werent around to have lived it, experienced it & seen it with their own eyes. With expansion and the WHA, big money & corporate interests ate away, hijacked what had been an untouched and very much uncluttered & pristine game, the players enjoying in most cases lengthy careers & each with unique sets of skills and styles of play individually & collectively.
They were all recognizable by their styles, by their numbers alone, no helmets, no masks (and when masks did arrive - unique). The ice, the boards, the buildings... entirely bereft of in your face wall to wall corporate I.D. and each building in the league rather than cookie cutter, entirely unique, wonderful. The game took center stage. The only logo's that you saw were those of the Bruins, the Habs, the Red Wings, the Rangers, the Leafs & the Blackhawks. You didnt need a program. You knew who #9 was with Montreal, Boston, Toronto, Detroit & Chicago. You knew who #7 was with Detroit, who #14 was with New York or Toronto and so on & so forth right on down the line. You didnt even have to look at their number (much less identify them with a name on their jersey) to know who had just done what or who was screaming down the Left Wing. You had personality, color....
The kind of color that watching it all unfold in Black & White as we did on television until the mid-60's that was rather than an impediment an advantage as like radio or reading a book it left something to the imagination, to the individual to create in their minds eye. That less can be more. Technology was then rudimentary, before cable, before fiber optics, long before the explosion of a 500 channel universe, long before cell phones, home computers & the internet which back then wouldve seemed unimaginable. People actually communicated with one another face-face. The only people who carried pagers were like Cops, Air Traffic Controllers and for emergencies only whereas today, most people check their smartphones before theyve had a shower, a cup of coffee, even thought about the day, constantly going off, consumed & ruled by a virtual reality.
You go to any NHL rink today, probably more than half in attendance are texting, surfing, taking selfies or whatever to share virtually on-line. What was initially introduced an enhancement to our lives, computers, the internet & smartphones, tablets etc taking them over, corporately controlled, sharp programmers keying in on your usage, algorithims & programs created to flood your device with advertising & messaging which like todays NHL you cant escape. All homogenized. Most of the players "look the same". Teams play not to win, they play not to lose or go for the Loser Point in OT. Lifespan of the average NHL'r pitiful in comparison to what it once was and why is that with all of the advancements in nutrition, training & medical care?.... So yes. For those of us here who were lucky enough to be born when we were and who lived through the Golden Era of the Game, through all of the social up-heavels since that have wrought such massive changes on how we even interact with one another, that simpler time (and one equally full of problems, far from perfect) was of a higher quality and experience from a fans or spectators perspective; while from an amateur through Junior or Pro career far more permissive of innovation & artistry, of freedom. Not everywhere of course. But through ones formative years playing hockey given all the rope in the World. First & foremost, there to be having fun. And thats been lost along the way, that & much much more.
