NHL season cancelled

I wanted to write about this yesterday, but I worked through lunch and almost did again today.

The NHL season was officially cancelled, to no one's surprise. I almost don't miss it, and that is a very bad thing for the NHL, because I own and often wear a replica Nicklas Lidstrom jersey and my dad and I once stalked Steve Yzerman in a Detroit-area shopping mall for a good fifteen minutes. (The Wings had just lost to the Avs in the playoffs, so we figured he didn't want to actually be bothered by autograph seekers, so we just trailed him excitedly for a short time.)

I say, who cares if the NHL isn't popular in some places? Retrench, regroup, build up your base again where ice actually forms occasionally on non-refrigerated bodies of water. Let fans in Nashville and Atlanta go back to watching people drive around a race track - It's not like the NHL relies on the paltry TV money it ekes out these days. And right now, the Stanley Cup belongs to a city that has an average of one day of freezing temperatures a year. (Yes - I have been to the Ice Palace in St. Pete Florida. Yes - There are some snow birds down there who are rabid fans, including my very own parents. But I also had to sit behind some nutcase whose entire hockey experience consisted of yelling "shoot the puck" at his team every time they had possession, including, hilariously, when they were behind their own net. I kid you not. I ended up secretly rooting for the visiting Boston Bruins purely out of spite.) And some of these team names, Thrashers? Predators? Mighty Ducks?

In the Bush era, America is learning how to be a second-class country in a lot of areas. We may have to accept that fact in the hockey world too, at least temporarily, if we're going to save any North American hockey with any tradition at all. Otherwise, we'll have turned professional hockey into Major Indoor Lacrosse. Tradition is one of the few things the NHL has going for it these days.