The Bullshitter’s Guide to the NHL

The NHL regular season has finally arrived, and you know what that means: Everywhere you go, all anyone wants to talk about hockey! (If you're in Canada, "everyone" is everyone. If you're in the United States, "everyone" is that one really polite guy at work who talks kind of slow and might secretly be Canadian.)

But what if you're not a hockey fan? You could become one, but that sounds like work. No, what you want is to be able to plausibly fake it. So today, I'm going to walk you through the five key skills you'll need to pretend to be a hockey fan even though you're not.

Bettman has been NHL commissioner since 1993, and everything bad that has ever happened is his fault. I don't mean everything bad in the NHL since 1993—literally everything bad is a direct result of Bettman's existence. The 2004 lockout that wiped out an entire season? Bettman. The loser point? Bettman. That time in 1988 when two guys in raincoats ended up officiating a playoff game? Bettman. The routing of the French nobles at the Battle of Courtrai? Partly the marshy terrain and strategic positional advantage of the Flemish forces, but mostly Bettman.

I really can't stress this point enough: If you're going to fake your way through hockey fandom, complaining about Gary Bettman is the single most important skill you can learn. Get really good at it, and you might even get a job in the hockey media.

If you're ever involved in a conversation about hockey that you're not really following and it suddenly gets quiet and everyone looks at you like it's your turn to speak, just shake your head grimly and mutter "fucking Bettman." Then get ready for a round of high-fives.

On any given day during the regular season, some NHL player somewhere will do something stupid and end up facing a suspension. Hockey fans love it when this happens, because it gives them a chance to argue about how many games he should get.

Well, "argue" is probably the wrong word. No hockey fan actually engages in an argument over suspension length. What we do it is wait for the Department of Player Safety to deliver a ruling, and then act outraged about it.

Roughly 95 percent of DOPS decisions are far too lenient, because a weak-kneed league would rather let offenders off with a slap on the wrist than send a message with a big suspension. The other five percent are the league cruelly picking on a guy who was just finishing his check and isn't that sort of player. In a weird coincidence, those five percent of cases are always the one involving your favorite team.

Now pay attention to this part, because it's crucial: Never give an opinion on a suspension before the DOPS has had a chance to rule. That's a rookie mistake. Do that, and you risk landing on the same number that they do, at which point you'd be stuck agreeing with them. Instead, hem and haw and run out the clock until they announce their decision. Then get angry.

Pop quiz: Do you know who's to blame for all these terrible suspension decisions? That's right, Gary Bettman.

This is kind of a weird one, but it's important. Today's NHL features a ton of superstar players in their prime, from Sidney Crosby to Alexander Ovechkin to P.K. Subban to Connor McDavid. And you hate them all.

Crosby is a whiner. Ovechkin is a showoff. Subban smiled that one time. We haven't figured out why we hate McDavid yet because he actually seems like a nice kid and we all feel kind of bad about how he has to live in Edmonton, but give us a few weeks and we'll come up with something.

The only players that hockey fans are allowed to like are gritty veterans, the kind who play six minutes a night on the fourth line and are missing a lot of teeth. Do you ever see those guys making a big deal out of scoring a goal? No, because they're never on the ice when it happens, but if they were they'd probably be super-cool about it.

But everyone else is terrible.

Today's NHL is fine. We watch it. It's there. But it's nowhere near as good as it was back in the day, where "the day" is whenever you were a small child.

Back in the day, players had respect for each other. The followed a code. Love of the sport meant more than a big paycheck. Games were exciting and high-scoring, and we had true dynasties instead of all this watered-down parity.

As a fake fan, your job is to constantly be looking back fondly at the game's glory days. Feel free to practice by spending a few hours watching old YouTube clips, then posting "This is when they played REAL hockey" in the comments section of each one. You won't be alone.

By the way, all of this may cause some slight cognitive dissonance if you're old enough to remember that back in the day, the same teams won every year, goalies could barely stand up, players would crack each other's skulls with their sticks, the owners stole all the money, and everyone would occasionally pile into the stands to randomly attack the fans. Ignore this feeling. It is Gary Bettman's fault.

Screw this league. Screw the watered-down product, and the boring games, and the dull players, and the terrible referees. Screw the lockouts and the nonstop merchandising and the outdoor games and the constant cash grabs. Screw the violence and/or lack of violence. Screw Gary Bettman and everyone who looks like him. You're done. You're out.

Note: You will never keep this promise.

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