HOCKEY IS HAVING A FUN MOMENT — AND IT’S ABOUT DAMNED TIME

Unshackled by skill, speed and an offensive explosion not seen since the 1990s, the NHL is delivering an entertaining Stanley Cup Final, a much-needed renaissance for a league stuck in slush

     I would love to love hockey. It has been my operative refrain about a sport that exhilarates and crackles — albeit, inside the arena — like no other. Those entitled interlopers who text and read phones courtside at the NBA Finals? The bored souls who yawn, talk and order more food during the 46 1/2 minutes between meaningful events at a baseball game?

     They would watch a hockey game, from first puck drop to final horn. And I am thrilled to report, thanks to an NHL commissioner who finally grasps why goal-scoring and a furious pace excites humans, that the disconnect between being in the building and watching at home has been bridged.

     The Stanley Cup Final, too often the domain of the 1-0 lead and the dull art of protecting it, has entered the 21st century. Any laggard who showed up late for Game 1 missed two early goals by the fittingly named Colorado Avalanche, who nearly caused a landslide in their rocking rink. “We want the Cup!” the fans chanted all night, referring to a chalice that hasn’t been theirs since 2001. The onslaught eventually was countered by the Tampa Bay Lightning, hockey royalty, eyeing the first three-peat by a major North American sports franchise since the Kobe-Shaq Lakers of the early 2000s. The game frantically spilled into overtime, natch, but unlike past Cup affairs that could remain tied for hours, this one ended just 1:23 into the extra period.

     And the result, with Colorado’s Andre Burakovsky beating the usually impenetrable Andrei Vasilevskiy, was treated with proper coverage by ABC/ESPN, which has helped Gary Bettman’s league find its dormant mojo in the first season of a breakthrough media deal. Suddenly, hockey seems less a niche sport and more like something Major League Baseball and even the NBA, which has its dragging moments, might want to emulate.

     “I was kind of nervous and had trouble sleeping last night,” Burakovsky said. “I woke up at 6 in the morning and couldn’t wait for the game. I know what is at stake.”

     We feel his anxiety.

     “The right team won,” Lightning coach Jon Cooper conceded. “I don’t think by a country mile we gave them our best game. To beat a team like that, we need to have better in us.”

     We feel his pain.

     We can’t wait for Game 2. When was the last time the sports universe felt so giddy about hockey?

     As for Bettman, has he ever seemed more at ease? His league, crushed by the pandemic, has bounced back to generate record revenues of more than $5.2 billion this season. Funny how commissioners spring into action when struck by the desperation of red-ink debts. By no coincidence, the on-ice product never has been more fun and, at times, breathtaking. Skill, speed and individual panache finally have overtaken traditional defensive slogs, which minimized showmen via clutch-and-grab tugging or, worse, injured them with roughhouse tactics. Now, headlong rushes toward the net aren’t greeted by an opponent’s elbows or takedowns. Defensemen are more inclined to let the playmakers make plays, and whether it’s a subtle directive from on high or just an outgrowth of the sport’s talent explosion, the NHL and its new TV partners (ESPN and Turner) are benefitting from the highest postseason goals-per-game average — 6.42 — in 30 years.

     “I think it's correlated to increased interest in the game," Bettman said. “Everything we do is only important to the extent that the game is healthy on the ice. And the game is healthy on the ice. Our competitive balance is unmatched by any of the other major leagues, and it gives us incredible races in the regular season, and it gives us playoffs as unpredictable as anything you can say. … We anticipate revenues continuing to grow at a healthy rate. Things are very strong and very solid.”

     For once, his words shouldn’t be dismissed as commish-speak. Bettman took office in 1993, a transplant from the NBA. It took a while, much too long, but he has adopted the crowd-pleasing blueprint of his former boss, the late David Stern. To further enable a global sensation known as Michael Jordan, Stern changed defensive rules and banned hand-checking. The goonish physicality of the Bad Boys Pistons promptly and thankfully faded to black, allowing basketball’s beauty and joy to shine through. Is there much difference between an Avalanche outbreak and a point explosion from Steph Curry and the Warriors? The NFL was smart enough in recent years to provide safety and creative leverage for quarterbacks.

     The idea: Sell the game, make it compelling and stimulating.

     The NHL has cracked the code.

     It helps to have a historic storyline. The concept of winning three consecutive championships has become a pipedream in sports, too often thwarted by injuries, star defections, and fatigue/pressure. But here are the Lightning, defying a salary cap designed for parity, positioned to complete the first Cup three-peat since the New York Islanders won four straight in the early 1980s. It last happened in the NFL in the ‘60s — cue to the tape of Vince Lombardi pacing the Green Bay sidelines — and probably won’t happen again thanks to free agency and injuries. Baseball hasn’t had a three-peater since the 2000 Yankees. So all sports fans can relate to the Lightning and captain Steven Stamkos, who are trying to pull off what Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers and Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins could not.

     “When you’re growing up in Canada, you always dream about having your name on the Stanley Cup,” Cooper said. “And to get there the first time, it was a dream come true. To get there a second time the next year was like a dream, like there’s no way we’re going back. And to go a third time is unthinkable. To watch (his players’) growth, watch the pain … I’m utterly impressed by what they do to win a hockey game. Nobody would fault them for saying, ‘Hey, we won one or two.’ But to come back and go for a third? I'm damn impressed.”

     As long as he’s referencing Canada, here’s why Americans should take pride in the Lightning and Avalanche. This will be the 30th straight year that a U.S-based franchise wins the Cup. We’ve hijacked Canada’s national pastime. Do they simply care too much up there? Do media and fans put too much pressure on the orga-NI-zations and players by micro-analyzing them?

     It kills our neighbors to see championship celebrations in markets that can’t freeze ice, such as Tampa, which hasn’t dealt with a temperature under 32 degrees Fahrenheit since Jan. 21, 2018 and has withstood only three such days since 2010. Credit the Lightning general manager, a native Canadian named Julian BriseBois, for creative maneuvering under a salary cap that stalled dynasties in Pittsburgh and Chicago. The team is loaded with stars, from Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov to Victor Hedman and Vasilevskiy, but like Tom Brady last winter in the football stadium across town, the Lightning apparently have met their match in the Avalanche.

     “Colorado? Probably the best team in the league,” Stamkos said.

     Which qualifies the Stanley Cup Final as the most power-packed title matchup in sports over the last year. Now, if Bettman can totally rid the game of thugs such as Evander Kane, hockey is ready to have its moment and make it last. The NHL even has sent a message to Bad Vlad Putin, in case he wants to take credit for Russian players who win a championship.

     “We made both clubs aware already with respect to this summer, the Cup is not going to Russia or Belarus," deputy commissioner Bill Daly said. “We may owe a Cup trip in the future, just like we did with the pandemic. But it's not happening this summer.”

     Damn. Who knew hockey ever would get everything right?

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     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.