I feel like hockey culture is way too keen on defining "passion" as "wants to cripple people for playing a game against you". People tend to forget that a lot of the big heated rivalries of days past got as heated as they did because of guys running around making plays that served no purpose but to try to ruin someone's life. We get on our high horse when something like the Bertuzzi incident happens and preach how it doesn't belong in hockey, but we disgusting acts as long as they don't end in anyone being too hurt to ever play again. If Moore hadn't suffered such severe brain damage people would be complaining about how "kids these days" are too soft for thinking there was anything wrong with what happened that night.
Excellent points. I personally miss a bit of the so-called "hate", but I do not miss the thuggery, the staged fights, or the endless (and pointless) scrums after whistles and goals-scored that slowed down the game.
Part of the issue is just that people display passion differently. I highly doubt that players don't care about the game anymore.
Right, but the difference is that 30 or 70 years ago, players cared about their own team first, and nowadays players care about themselves/their careers first. The players now know (and are paid in accordance) that they themselves are the most valuable currency their franchise has, that the NHLPA is more powerful than their team's owner/GM, and that risking life and limb to "send a message" is not (in career terms) worth the blowback and penalties it will engender.
Guys care as much as always, and it's not as if there aren't still plenty of extra curricular activities going on after whistles or big hits or whatnot.
I disagree there (not sayin' it's a bad thing). There is WAY less scrumming, jockeying, fighting after whistles and goals now than when I was a kid.
You've always had some players who were there because it was their job, some who were obsessed to the point of needless violence, and the majority who love the game but aren't about to kill a guy over it. Nowadays though with players having a lot more contact with each other away from the ice and the effects of head injuries being much more well known, it's a lot harder for anyone to want to play the traditional big mean guy role. To be a Scott Stevens or Mark Messier type today requires that you look at someone like Marc Savard and the months of hell he suffered and make a conscious choice that you want to do that to people. Not a lot of people have it in them to do that, and that's a good thing.
Sure, agreed. Except I don't think players like Stevens and Messier were typical of the "traditional big mean guy role". Guys like them were all-stars, universally respected, and were not considered 'dirty' by the standards of the time (well, Messier was borderline at times). For the most part, they played within the rules, though Messier's elbows sometimes got out of control and Steven's late-career hit on Kariya was late and overly savage. You'd be better to point to good-skill players like Gary Suter and Matt Cooke as examples, or to the enforcers of course, like Stu Grimson or Tim Hunter, who would never make an NHL line-up today.
I can imagine someone's grandfather during the Depression being deeply offended that a black man was allowed to drink from the same water fountain as him, or being scandalized by the slightest hint that gay people exist. People say this a lot, but it doesn't add up. It's only in the relatively recent past that it's stopped being perfectly acceptable to be so offended by the existence of demographics you aren't a part of that you will get laws passed against them being seen in public and assault or kill them if you do see them. We've moved on to scrutinizing everything so closely for offensive material in large part because the society of decades past was so relentlessly hostile to everyone that offended its tender sensibilities.
Yes, which is a very good thing in society (in my opinion). But the drama on a hockey rink isn't life, it's an entertainment-business with a tradition that depends on fans' interest levels to maintain its existence. If the entertainment level dips too much, the NHL will suffer and fans will drift away.
As Phil mentioned earlier, I think there's an ideal balance to be sought in hockey. I certainly wouldn't want to go back to scrums and gooning and head-shots (does anyone?). And once players learned their actual worth and that the NHLPA was bigger than their teams... well, once that genie was out of the bottle, it can never go back in. We can't plan to make players dumb and uninformed again. So, what can be done to get more intense hockey and passion between clubs?
I think the only thing the NHL can realistically do is to schedule teams to play rivals more often -- and go back to the 80s/early-90s playoff structure of intra-divisional rounds one and two always. I swear, as an Oilers' fan I often can't remember the last time Edmonton and Calgary played each other, and when they do there's not much hatred or passion. That's ridiculous, and the NHL is to blame for those natural rivalries turning into "just-another-day-at-the-office" games because the teams don't play one another enough.
The NHL is too big now, so I'd like to see it change into two "Leagues" (like MLBA) that have strictly intra-league play -- like, 16 teams in each League. Local/division rivals will play one another about 8 or 10 times per year, and are guaranteed to meet in the playoffs if they both make it in.
I think that is the best that can be done.
