The moment that nearly destroyed your hockey interest

[jiggs 10]

I loved the video clip they showed when Stevens got inducted into the HOF. It showed 4 or 5 illegal hits to the head! I counted 4 elbows, and one outright punch to the head! Yeah, what a GREAT hitter!

Not saying he didn't play alright at times, because he did. But once in a while he would just skate around like a lunatic and look for a head to crush. If the NHL had any cojones, they would have suspended him numerous times for these illegal shots to the head.

Don't listen to the goon fans of 2007. They have their Devils' glasses on, and can't see the forest for the trees when it comes to Stevens.

 

[Kitsune]

For the NHL, Expansion,the watering down of talent and just plain getting old. Since the 30th team entered the league, my interest has gone way down from when I was younger (I'm 22 now). Its to the point where I only watch maybe a couple of games a year and the finals now. I really dont see anything that will get me back into loving the NHL. The OHL has held my interest a lot more then the NHL, but even then, its maybe nothing more then a few games a year.

 

[Morris Wanchuk]

I will never stop watching the NHL

But I have not been happy with the blatant way they are legislating fighting out of the game. It is something that gets the fans on their feet and does serve a purpose. I'm tired of this inferiority complex the NHL has, always tinkering and changing.

They should market the game as it is. This is hockey, if you don't like than don't watch. Hockey IMO was in at its top in the late 80s. The lockout brought back the scoring and rightly so. People ***** about the new NHL but hooking/holding is not hockey and its good to see it gone.

Now the NHL needs to wake up and think maybe fighting isnt such a bad thing. They need to get rid of all things instigator, especially that garbage rule of the last five minutes.

Hockey needs its good and bad guys, the wars that used to go on down on the ice. How there was always a buzz when Nilan was coming to boston because you knew something was going to happen and there were going to be some fights going on. I loves those days and I think for the NHL to be good again they need to come back.

Fights create a Buzz and with that Buzz more tickets are sold and more people watch the game. The NHL needs to stop issuing warnings every time something happens and let the players play like they used to. Before the NHL was run by lawyers.

I complain but I still love the NHL, I think its the best league around. But there are some things that irk me a little.

 

[nckd]

Great post. How come it's only in the last few years that all these people have started crying about hits that have been legal for a century? The rock-hard shoulder pads that have become standard need to go (I can't for the life of me understand why the NHLPA hasn't outlawed them), but basically players just aren't keeping their heads up enough, and the rules shouldn't be changed to accomodate them.

Oh, I don't know... maybe advancements in the medical understanding of brain injuries? Or that it's become increasingly unacceptable to send punch-drunk players back into the game regardless of the sport?

You're right about the shoulder pads. Given how much time and money the NHL spent on designing new jerseys, they could have spent at least a little bit on investigating players' equipment. I still say, though, that you can do all the legalistic dancing around the definition of "clean hit" you want, if a severe and potentially lasting injury is a regular outcome, the definition of "clean" needs to change. As exciting as big collisions between 220lb men might be, the actual point of bodychecking is to move the man off the puck.

 

[Hank Chinaski]

I loved the video clip they showed when Stevens got inducted into the HOF. It showed 4 or 5 illegal hits to the head! I counted 4 elbows, and one outright punch to the head! Yeah, what a GREAT hitter!

Not saying he didn't play alright at times, because he did. But once in a while he would just skate around like a lunatic and look for a head to crush. If the NHL had any cojones, they would have suspended him numerous times for these illegal shots to the head.

Don't listen to the goon fans of 2007. They have their Devils' glasses on, and can't see the forest for the trees when it comes to Stevens.

Yeah, with those four elbowing minors his entire career, I guess all NHL refs had their Devils' glasses on as well.

 

[Wetcoaster]

Harold Ballard becoming the sole owner of the Leafs.

 

[Nalyd Psycho]

Great post. How come it's only in the last few years that all these people have started crying about hits that have been legal for a century? The rock-hard shoulder pads that have become standard need to go (I can't for the life of me understand why the NHLPA hasn't outlawed them), but basically players just aren't keeping their heads up enough, and the rules shouldn't be changed to accomodate them.

Didn't you answer your own question? It was never an issue until the new shoulder pads came in. If people aren't getting hurt, no big deal, when the hit is expected to produce a concussion, it is an incredibly serious deal.

 

[cupcrazyman]

nothing has destroyed my hockey interest,even knowing that the leafs ownership has no interest in icing a winning team.

i watch other nhl teams,ohl, chl ,ncaa ,wjc, Ladies etc,etc.

i'm a big enough fan of hockey to ignore the leafs short comings & just watch hockey for the enjoyment of it.

 

[Inkling]

My interest in the NHL is often tested yearly in the playoffs due to poor scheduling. There's often a huge gap between series and in May and June when the weather is nice I've often found other things to do by the time the next series has started. Other sports seem to do a better job of flowing quickly from one series to the next to keep interest up.

The new schedule and lack of inter-conference games also tests my interest. I'm sick of seeing the same teams over and over again, and not seeing the Western conference teams coming to town. Even good rivalries like Ottawa-Toronto can get boring when it seems like they're playing every week.

No one event, even the lockout, has killed my interest in the league overall.

 

[Big Phil]

I loved the video clip they showed when Stevens got inducted into the HOF. It showed 4 or 5 illegal hits to the head! I counted 4 elbows, and one outright punch to the head! Yeah, what a GREAT hitter!

Not saying he didn't play alright at times, because he did. But once in a while he would just skate around like a lunatic and look for a head to crush. If the NHL had any cojones, they would have suspended him numerous times for these illegal shots to the head.

Don't listen to the goon fans of 2007. They have their Devils' glasses on, and can't see the forest for the trees when it comes to Stevens.

He played alright at times? Many people consider him to be the best defenseman to never win a Norris. Other than Park IMO I think he is. Plus his hits were clean. They were thunderous and people got hurt but they were clean. Intimidation is a part of hockey and no one did that better than him. Remember the story about how players would intentionally cross the other side of the blueline just to avoid him? Yeah, tell me that wont throw off your game plan. Stevens deserved every inch of his Hall of Fame induction. He's on a short list all time of players that have Captained 3 Cup winners, look it up

 

[RobertKron]

I still don't get this argument. For obvious reasons, but it doesn't matter what I'm going to say, it will be disputed any way.

The hell with it:
- talk to you provider
- you can always go with a satellite provider instead of cable. Sort of easy to figure out you don't have dish.

If the second bullet isn't an option, go with the first. If the first bullet isn't an option (because your cable provider is a tool) go with the second bullet. I just magically solved all your problems if you follow through on either one of those, but if your cable provider is a tool and the residents in the area you live in are tools then you will never get option 1 to work.

I don't know how things work down in the US, but up in Canada, that **** costs money.

 

[RobertKron]

I have thought of the one thing that nearly destroyed my interest in hockey and not just the NHL, and that was my first introduction to minor hockey politics at age 13/14, when the best coach I've ever had, a volunteer who had no children in the organization, was "fired" right before the start of the season because he didn't pick a kid for his team, and the mother had connections in the organization.

The new coach who came in was a friend of the mother (and actually, a few years later I saw a bit on the news about how he was wanted for some sort of sexual offenses. Good choice or replacement!) and was told that there were a few of us who really liked our old coach, and were really upset about the whole thing, and even though we never said a single word about it, he treated us like garbage. At the time, myself and my defense partner were pretty much undisputedly the #2 and #1 defensemen, respectively, on the team, and he would bench us for extended periods, passed us both over for captaincy, even though we were the leaders on the team (and the kid to whom he did give the C refused to take it until we convinced him that he should), and would tear into us in front of the team for things that weren't our fault at all. I remember at one point I was blamed for the goalie letting in a shot from outside the blueline when I wasn't even on the ice.

It got so bad that I eventually walked off the bench in the tied third period of the semi finals of an out of town tournament, and the coach ended up coming into the room and begging me to stop taking my equipment off. I went back because I didn't want to let the team down, but I told him that if he said a single word to me for the rest of the tournament, I was gone.

This whole thing happened while the Canucks were in a pretty big funk, and I was pretty soured on hockey as a whole by the time the season was over, and had to be convinced that I actually wanted to play the next winter. This is also the reason why I refuse to get involved with any of the inner workings of the organization as a coach now.

 

[Guillemin]

The New NHL (TM)

I hate everything about it, apart from those few things that are similar to old time hockey. No more battles in front of the net, penalities for breathing on your opponent, suspensions for punishing someone in a fight. And a ridiculous devotion to more goalscoring in a pathetic attempt to pull in a fanbase who are never going to be converted.

The Ottawa/Buffalo brawl last year kinda saved it.

 

[Habsfunk]

The Habs of the late-90s definitely caused me to lose interest. They traded away so many good players from Roy to Damphousse, and got nothing back except for a bunch of scrubs. They missed the playoffs three years in a row and were boring to watch. Then came the 2001-02 season. I probably wouldn't have paid much attention if it didn't begin with the news that Koivu had cancer. His comeback and the team rallying to make the playoffs and upset Boston revived my interest and since then I've been more obsessed then ever.

 

[Other Little Mikey]

There have been times I've wished something could diminish my interest in hockey.

Pronger asking for a trade really took my heart out of things for a long while. Probably won't ever be exactly the same, but as an Oilers fan you compare everything to Gretzky, so really ... what're you gonna do? The game goes on.

I think if the Oilers had ended up moving in the 90s though, that would have done it. As much as I am absolutely a hockey fan, I'm an Oilers fan first.

 

[trenton1]

Expansion/realignment-post 1992-93 season. This spelled the beginning of the end of divisional playoffs and true, constant, rivalries.
For this fan, the NHL hockey experience was just right at this time with 24 teams, divisional playoffs, and an exciting mix of traditional North American hockey with all of the World's best players now involved.

Alot has gone wrong since, IMO, but the biggest thing was the end of the divisional playoffs and rivalries.

 

[Slats432]

Stupid people fighting over $2 Billion.

 

[Big McLargehuge]

Penguins almost movine to ___________ (insert city name here) numerous times over the past decade, especially this past season.


Had they moved when I was younger I probably would have found a new team to call my own. The older I get the more attatched to the Penguins I get. With the potential of the Penguins moving out of town and with me moving out of town I had no reason to stay with hockey had the Penguins been uprooted. I just would have focused on "more important things" like my studies...

 

[Lux Aurumque*]

 

[Dark Shadows]

The dark age of hockey was between the years of 1997 and 2004. I posted a long post why.

 

[BringBackTheSkate]

I stopped watching hockey when Trevor Linden was traded from the Vancouver Canucks, it shattered my love for the team until he came back.

 

[Dark Shadows]

http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=444602

 

[mymkovski]

The day Selanne was traded from Winnipeg to Anaheim...

 

[SniperTom]

http://hfboards.com/showthread.php?t=444602

I was going to say this when I saw your link. I actually stoped following the NHL after the 96-97 season and didn´t start again until the comback of Mario 01-02. I still looked at boxscores during this period but I didn´t follow the league with same passion as before or after. The new NHL has been a blessing for me (or a curse if you ask my wife)

 

[Mad Habber]

I survived the Peanut years with the Habs. I honestly remember the Habs parading Houle, Tremblay and Cournoyer in front of the media and me saying out loud "Oh no, not them". Then they made the announcement and the nightmare began. After living through 10 Stanley Cup championship, my mighty Habs were brought down by one ahole hiring his buddy who then hired his buddy who hired his buddies. All total incompetents, from top to bottom, and then refusing to do a rebuild because the market wouldn't allow it.

I lived through that and am still a fan, I can live through pretty much anything. Unless maybe if BG quits, and Boivin says, we were wrong to let go of Houle, so we hired him back with a lifetime contract.