In a normal year, we'd be nearly four full weeks into the 2020–21 NHL season. But it's not a normal year, obviously. It's been a downright stressful, anxious, and terrible year, and week, especially. Even the sports that are on are being weird and making me feel bad. Baseball ruined everything with the Justin Turner thing. The NFL is the NFL, equal parts bumbling and evil with their COVID actions and inaction. Only sickos follow college football. The election is next week and we may all die. I wish for lots of things, but among the things I wish is that I could be doing a nice, normal hockey post.
Think of it! In another universe, I could be writing a nice little hockey blog that no one but you reads. Maybe it's a cool Alexis Lafrenière highlight. Maybe a feisty Vegas-Vancouver Wednesday night showdown. Maybe it's 7,000 words on the Winnipeg Jets and their march toward glory. It almost doesn't matter what it's about; I'd write it and you'd read it, maybe even saying "Neat" out loud and to no one, and then we'd each go about our days.
Believe me, I tried to do one anyway! I don't need game action to be thinking about hockey. I thought about writing something on the AHL announcing Feb. 5 as its start date for next season, and trying to read the tea leaves to divine what that means for when the NHL might get going. But I couldn't figure out what it means, if anything, and I realized I'm not yet desperate enough to care about the AHL.
I thought about writing something on the Dallas Stars' new day-glo green third jersey, maybe having a laugh or two about how it allegedly represents the team's "roots" and pays homage to the "iconic Dallas skyline." But my heart wasn't in it, so I knew, deep down, yours wouldn't be either.
I thought about writing something on this truly inscrutable tweet and graph, apparently having to do with 2019 Detroit draft pick Moritz Seider, cruelly dropped into our work chat by Red Wings sicko Lauren Theisen. To taunt me or to drive me to madness, I know not. But it gave me a small stroke, so I didn't blog it.
No, none of those would work. America needs a hockey blog, damn it, something wholesome we can all click to enjoy, or to scroll past, whichever we see fit—it's a free country, or it was. But the country has failed us, and we have failed it, and there are no hockey blogs worth reading. Definitely not this one. All is cold, and dark, and for the moment, feels lost.
So lean into the mid-autumn nihilism by watching the president accidentally but accurately describe what happens before the start of a Rangers-Leafs game:
This is now a hockey blog.
