By AILEEN BURKE
Executive Editor
Fall is the most beautiful time of year for professional sports aficionados: the end of baseball, the start of American football, and the start of ice hockey. The National Hockey League, or NHL, is finally emerging from its all-too-long hibernation. It truly is the most wonderful time of the year.
There are few sounds like the slashing of ice and the whirring of the Zamboni between periods. Preseason hockey is nowhere near as revered as football, but it absolutely should be. New competitive picks from the most recent draft show their skills from the get go, and it usually is a great indication of how the rest of the season will go for an NHL team. Unlike the NFL, there isn’t much drama between these players off the ice; they’ll save it for on. The sport has its own unique energy that makes it unlike any of the other professional leagues.
Home schedules have been released for this upcoming season, and every division will present their own interesting challenges. The most competitive division within the NHL is the championship-producing Central division. Teams from Central keep going really far into the playoffs, and these are the teams that are going on to win the Stanley Cup.
Although they don’t hail from the Central division, the Tampa Bay Lightning are also more so specifically stacked; they received a lot of players and picks from the New York Rangers over the past few seasons. Most of the former Rangers the Lightning has came from their back-to-back Stanley Cup teams. Although those both resulted in losses for the Broadway Blueshirts, the team was tight. Their youthful promise now radiates in the Sunshine state. Here’s looking at you, Kevin Shattenkir.
Off of the ice, one of the biggest changes to the season is the quiet removal of Pierre McGuire from the major Wednesday night rivalry team on NBC. He has been seen as a somewhat controversial color commentator, historically for no reason other than he rubs some individuals the wrong way, but after an exchange of some pointed and confusing remarks between McGuire and a fellow NBC broadcaster: Kendall Coyne Schofield, he was forced by his company into lesser coverage opportunities. His odd behavior and icky-feeling on-screen persona finally manifested in a change of assignment; there is nothing released from NBC indicating that the change of position is the result of any other charges. The loss of McGuire’s presence between the benches will be noticeable for long-time followers of the NHL, and it will be fascinating to see if his replacement, Brian Boucher, can stack up against him in his own brand new fashion.
Although a lot of the old NHL guard that college students grew up watching has retired or are planning to, true hockey fans will be eagerly anticipating the return of their favorite sport. The 83 game season goes by in a flash, playoffs for the Stanley Cup are as competitive as ever, and summer is just long enough to rebuild a hockey fan’s appetite in time for the next season to start. Celly starts now.
