>>>PS -- only a few weeks until pitchers and catchers report.
>>
>>I am keeping track. I just wish hockey would change to a sensible season and not run until halfway through baseball season. Or better yet, stop altogether.
>
>Heretic!
>
>Like all sports, hockey is a business. The more games, the more money. And I really do enjoy this team.

Back about a hundred years ago when I was much younger and the NHL was a six team league. What we had was the best 150 hockey players in the entire world scattered over only 6 teams. And they were all hockey players. No hired thugs. If you couldn't play hockey, you didn't play. Now THAT, that was hockey!

After about the 2nd expansion when they got it up to several thousand teams, I started to drift away from it. Then they started hiring non-players to beat up on the real players and I completely lost interest. Then more expansion and I guess there are now teams in places where there aren't even places.

Do you remember when there were actual, for real defensemen (Doug Harvey, Allan Stanley, Dick Duff, J.C. Tremblay to name a few) and scoring 20 goals in a season really meant something?

Maybe if I hadn't grown up through the six team era, I might feel different, but I did. When I try to watch now, I see players being called 'great' who would have had trouble making the farm clubs back then.

And now it runs until around July sometime. It's nuts.