Celebrate, hockey fans! NHL action returns tonight and the 2015-16 season is finally here. The long summer days discussing off-ice issues (there were far too many) and potential line combinations are over and real, meaningful games have arrived.
Too often it’s easy for hockey fans to overlook what makes the NHL and the game of hockey so great in favor of focusing on the league’s many blunders and areas for improvement. Today, as hockey returns, let’s all rally around what we all love.
What We’ve Missed and Love About Hockey:
– Awesome goalie masks and pads. What other sport allows one position to completely customize the look of their equipment? Goalie masks are incredible and allow a goalie to show off their personality, from Duck Hunt to Casey Jones. Hockey fans analyze – and over analyze – goalie pads/masks and that’s something unique to hockey.
– Goal horns. Sweet, sweet goal horns. Not much more needs to be said here.
– Jaromir Jagr. Let’s all be thankful he’s still playing and pay tribute to that amazing mullet.
– Crunching checks which rattle the boards. To elaborate, we love clean hits which shake the glass and send the drinks inexperienced fans placed on the dasher flying. If you’ve ever sat near the boards, you’ll know what a unique, incredibly satisfying sound the boards/glass make on a big hit.
– The constant debates over Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby and countless other stars. All these big name players are great in their own right, but that won’t prevent us from debating them until our fingers hurt from typing.
– Don Cherry rants. OK, no one really missed those, but they sure are ripe for ridicule.
– ESPN’s stellar coverage. Seriously. It’s always comical.
– Hockey Fights of the Week. Fighting might be down in the NHL, but we’ll still recap the five best fights each week for your enjoyment.
– The surprise performers. Every year, players and teams come out of the blue and take the league by storm. Young stars rise to the surface and it’s never tiring. Changing of the guard is happening for numerous teams in 2015-16 and it’s exciting.
– The new 3-on-3 OT format. Sure, we haven’t missed it because we’ve never seen the NHL use it in a meaningful game, but we’ll celebrate any change which reduces the emphasis on the shootout.
– Fantasy hockey. Sure, the focus is purely on the daily fantasy games now, but there’s still something fun about the ability to draft a team full of players you’d normally ignore.
– Hockey Twitter. The hockey community on Twitter, for the most part, is an amazing group of people. If you’re on Twitter, you’ve likely joined in on the fun such as the NHL Podium saga.
This list could keep going and going, but we’ll wrap it up with one last thought. Hockey is back and it’s awesome.
