I guess I qualify as a young old fart!
I am 46 and missed the 1942-67, 6-team NHL. My old man always told me about the fierce rivalries and competition and how everybody played each other 14 times with many jobs being up for grabs and the checking was tight.
I began watching and learning in the 1969/70 season and have seen how expansion has ruined the product and coaches who coach not to lose instead of coach to win and that has ruined creativity and skills.
It's so ironic but I picked up my latest THN today and there is an article about how the Gretzky deal to LA may have hurt hockey 20 years ago and how massive expansion to the sun belt to go to new markets diluted the game and talent pool and brought on holding and boring non-creative hockey! I have been writing this for 4 years here and saw it in this week's THN.
Guess what, 30 teams and 700 jobs has ruined the NHL pure and simple! When I saw Neil Smith draft a Manny Malholtra 10 years ago as the number 7 pick if I remember right, I knew how low the talent pool had fallen! Malholtra is one of these modern athletes who is big, strong, in great shape, can skate like the wind, but he is clueless with the puck and has no hockey sense as an offensive player! He is the epitome of most of today's players!
About 5 years before Smith drafted Niclas Sundstrom at around the same position as Malholtra and he was another guy who could skate but had no hands and offensive creativity. I have written here about 25 times how I watched poor Gretzky in 1997 in his first year in NY score 97 points with 72 assists but he should of had 140 points easily with 115 assists.
Sundstrom was one of Gretzky's linemates and he ruined more great passes being clueless around the net and not having a clue how to finish a play. Sundstrom had his "big" year with Gretzky scoring 24 goals and 52 points and the bastid should of scored 44 goals and 92 points with little effort!
It was just brutal to watch how Gretzky would make a great pass and some as*hole would ruin the play and either not score, not receive the pass cleanly, or miss the goddamn net! This sh*t goes on all the time today with no hands or skills hockey players making believe they are NHL players!
Have you seen some of these powerplays today and the defenseman who are the "quarterbacks" of the powerplay! Utterly clueless and lacking in skills and they always write about the great coaching today and I almost never see guys in front of the net and point men just putting shots on goal. No instead they pass it around the perimiter for 4 hours and never get a shot on goal or blast it 300 MPH and miss the net and it goes around the boards and out!
For 15 years, I'd watch a
Denis Potvin use a wristshot from the point on a powerplay and never miss the net and yet today the wristshot is a thing of the past as is the backhand! Phil Esposito always said it isn't the speed of the shot that beats goals but how quickly it's released and how accurate the shot is!
Lastly I have railed on guys like: Kovalev and Nedved in NY as more of these so called great modern athletes who are morons when it comes to hockey sense. Kovalev is a 65 point scorer and should be a 100 point score with his skill set but is an idiot. The object of the game is to score, not be fancy and look pretty and then miss the goddamn net and not score. Guys like Kovalev are like this or a Nedved who they said had a powerful shot but half the time he missed the goddamn net so what good was it!
I'd watch a Mike Bossy on the Island and the guy was so smart and skilled and knew how to finish and had all the shots and then I'd watch a Kovalev at the Garden and he'd ruin more plays with stupidity and selfishness and not having a clue and just shake my head and want to vomit!
Where are the fundamentals today and hockey sense? The great players like a Crosby or Ovechkin have it but alot don't and then half the players have no business being in the NHL. All they do is skate like hell and check!
Boring!