On NHL Opening Night, Let’s Remember Why We Love Hockey

A reminder that sometimes the best way to reconnect with the game is to stop overthinking it and embrace the joy that made us fall in love with hockey in the first place.

This isn’t going to be the typical NHL opening-night column, but it’s the one that I think I need to write.

This site, admittedly, has been a bit hollow lately. Part of that has been some personal struggles I’ve had the past few months. There’s been some grief, which I’ve written about here, and some other extenuating circumstances that I’ll keep to myself for now.

But for whatever reason, I’ve been in a bit of a funk creatively. I’ve struggled to deliver on some ideas that I’ve thought would be pretty good in the offseason, and I’ve struggled with some other things when it’s come to the nature of this site. There’s been indecisiveness that's been crippling at times, and I think the lack of stories/posts here is a pretty good reflection of that.

It’s been one of those things that, unfortunately, I’ve told myself over and over would get better tomorrow, and it unfortunately hasn’t, mainly because I’ve refused to do some of the work internally on myself.

Now, this isn’t meant to be a mopey thing — although it is reading like that — but rather a positive, change-inducing piece. One that, I need to write get out of the rut, to remind myself how much fun this is supposed to be.

While I take this website seriously, this at its core is supposed to be fun. It’s a site about hockey, and occasionally other things, where I get to be myself, share a bit with the world, and talk about a sport I’ve loved since I started playing street hockey in elementary school.

I think there have been times recently I’ve forgotten about that, gotten too worried about finding the perfect angle, getting too caught up in finding something “unique” and letting the imposter syndrome take over, which I think everyone in this business deals with at some point.

Not to get too sappy, but my 8-year-old, whether she knows this or not, recently realized I was getting too far away from the point of it all recently. While I was thinking and overthinking here, letting it become crippling to the lack of production, I’ve been watching her own hockey fandom create itself right in front of me.

She’s not really a team-sports kid, so playing ice hockey wasn’t her thing, she’s a pretty good figure skater, but each day she skateboards to school and typically three or four days a week she’s wearing a hockey jersey. She wore a Kelowna Rockets jersey yesterday, and I can only imagine that’s the first time a WHL jersey has been worn inside her school by anyone.

She also will grab a stick from the garage and play street hockey with her brother and the neighbor who lives behind us. She’s never cared about how or why anyone defines how she enjoys the sports, she’s only cared about finding the fun and finding her own definition of passion for it.

So, on NHL opening night, I’m taking the moment to remind myself why and how I got into this. To be more like my 8-year-old, to embrace the fun and ridiculous ways you can love this sport, no matter which way, and to not be afraid to write about it like I have before.

Thanks for reading, and let’s have some fun this season.