The way hockey should be

There was a good number of goals in all the games last night, but the Washington at Edmonton contest was a hugely entertaining game with a 7-4 final. Anyone who says a 2-1 game is more exciting than that is crazy. If people like close, low scoring games, then soccer is  for them. The only real theory I have is that old people remember the smaller 12 or 6 team league when players were closer in skill, or young people only know the NHL from the 1995-2005 ‘Dead Puck Era’ when the coaching and goaltending came to the fore initially and then the overall better trained athletes on D matriculated up the ranks. 

I cut my hockey watching teeth on the action filled 1980’s with goals and fights in abundance. The other night on the Sabres broadcast Brad May recalled the 1992-93 season when there were 14 fifty goal scorers and more than twenty 100 point men. I went to many Sabres games that season, including sitting in the front row of the Lower Golds for the New Years Eve match versus the New York Rangers – an 11-6 Sabres victory with 2 hat tricks and some great fights. 

In the 20 years since I can’t figure out why the NHL is not focused on getting back to that level of entertainment.