The strike did it for us, too. When I was 7, my grandfather came to live with us and he and I would watch HNIC every Saturday night. I had to go to bed after the first period, but it was our time. Philip and I were doing the same thing until the strike. We both lost interest and never came back to it.

I'm with you on everything bu other sports. We don't really bother with any of them. Other than the odd All Blacks match. :-)

Being a Leafs fan isn't for everyone. It's a huge amount of work.

I only watched a bit of a bit of it, but didn't care at all. NHL lost me a long time ago.

The Bill Clement/Brett Hull panel on NBC is brutal and when they added Don Cherry the other night it was excruciating.

I actually like the mega-bucks aspect of the English Premier League and think that North American hockey could do with an injection of Russian petro-rubles. Take the top 20 NHL clubs, merge the rest with an AHL group for a 2nd tier and have a few other tiers, have promotion and relegation between them. The southern US dynasties will continue and, like you said, no one will care.

They should have just renamed the league at one point in its expansionist past; the NHL of old died somewhere along the line, possibly around the time my parents quietly through out my boxes of hockey cards from the attic. Not sure when that was, but it happened (they still won't cop to it).

Too bad you missed it. There was some very good hockey this season and from the games that I saw the incidence of fighting was down. It was fascinating to see Cherry interviewed by Brett Hull on an American network (NBC, ABC???). Very pro fighting. And I think that is where the problem lies for us north of the border. Our evolution of the game includes an increasingly harder line on fighting as well as clutch and grab tactics whereas the yanks, with their eye on making the NHL the next UFC, want more brawling and less respect overall.

It's too bad really that control over the game has been devolved to the point where the viscera of the sport have been rearranged to follow short to medium term income projections from newbie American team owners.

Hopefully one can place stock in "this too shall pass".

I cane from a huge hockey family.. My dad coached a number of guys that made it to the NHL. My grandfather was a Canadians fan and my dad a leaf's.. I went to all the games on saturday mornings that he coached but only for the food and to goof around inthe arena at 6am.. Never played, watched a bit in the 90s but truly never got into it.. Same goes for Baseball, basketball..

I only really watch football (UK) and Football (US) and with the addition of a satellite dish to my life in 1999, I no longer have to gripe about hockey taking over the broadcasting time of other shows.. well except for Doctor Who which thanks to the mindless PDs at CBC is a year behind schedule here in Canada..hooray for illegal downloading of TV shows..

Is Hockey over for sure now? Will the endless requests for me to joing hockey related facebook groups finally end? hoo bloody ray.

The Winnipeg Jets! The Quebec Nordiques! The Hartford Whalers! The Minnesota North Stars! Deep six all the teams south of Pittsburg, DC, St Louis and Colorado. And move Columbus to Cleveland and rename them something manly.
Don't forget the Dallas team that won the cup the minute they left Minnesota (roughly). And the stinking Bruins traded Joe Thornton to a stinking California team and I am supposed to smile and pony up fifty plus bucks a Ticket????????????????????????????????????????
I am feeling a little better now.

Ugh, I had forgotten about Dallas. Thanks, Gary. Regular, annual snowfall should be a pre-requisite for a hockey franchise. It's a winter sport and if a city doesn't have actual winter, then they can't possibly appreciate it. Yes, that means Vancouver should lose their team. Move them to Winterpeg.

Ladies and Gentlemen, your Typical Maple Leafs Fan!

<i>I have no interest in watching idiots fight and explaining it to my kids. </i>

Do you feel nervous about having to explain to your kids when a pitcher throws a ball 95 mph at the batters head? Seems infinitely more dangerous to me than than the typical NHL fisticuffs.

Because no gentleman would question parenting decisions, I know you are joking. It is not, of course, the danger of the violence but the stupidity and incidental acceptance.

Columbus has a hockey team?

I know, CM, the 'Blue Jackets'. Shudder.

Hey, Vancouver has snow...almost every year on the city, every year on the mountains - where it so obviously belongs.

I watched three periods of Vancouver and the Ducks...It doesn't snow in Anaheim nor is there any there there.