Does hockey bring you joy, or is it becoming a drag

[crdr]

I will always love hockey through thick and thin. There are pros and cons to every era. I will die a superfan. Thanks for bringing this up though.
I think the game today is much more skilled than before. The players are 1000X better. Kane would destroy Gretzky in his prime today as in.
We take Wayne Gretzky in his prime as an 18 year old in the 80s and pit him against Patrick Kane as in 18 year old. Kane would wipe the floor with him.
But that's the beauty of the game. Evolutions.

Gretzky is the Greatest don't get me wrong. But man did most of those NHLers who weren't Superstars suck back in the day.

[Benched]

Great topic.

I too find my interest waning. Might be age/priorities, who knows. A couple pts though.

1) Salary Cap (as you mentioned) - I find myself caring a lot more how a player performs vs. their contract/expectations because a 6mill dollar player not playing at expected level is hurting the team more than before. Suddenly I care about contracts, pts/$, etc. It's a business and that does take some fun out. I believe this echo's OP statements

2) Reviews. Maybe it's just me but I don't even celebrate goals anymore. I'm waiting for the challenge, the 'was a skate over the line on the entry 30s ago?' or 'did rippling the goalies jersey on the fly by count as interference?'. The nitty gritty break down and stops has lost the thrill of a goal. Until the next whistle and puck drop it's debatable if a goal is a goal - what seems like almost all the time. One of the best parts of the game is having it's life sucked out of it.



Definitely doesn't feel the same or as gripping. But again, could just be me moving onto other things at this stage of the game.

[bubbsy]

It's interesting that folks have listed the salaries/cap as an issue.

personally, i think it adds a ton of intrigue to the NHL fan, as you are adding another crucial dimension to the standard performance metric, when building out an NHL roster.

For folks considering that as a negative, would it be intriguing if player salaries were actually hidden from us? All we fans would know is the cap, and the players signed and their term, but the $ figure being hidden?

[Northendzone]

I find I am too busy keeping my collection of imported and rare sports car polished and keeping my wife (and a few of her select friends) satiated and satisfied to have any free time to watch pro sports of any kind

[flamesfever]

I try to keep hockey as a very minor part of my overall passions in life. I found that if I get too emotionally involved, my overall mood ebbs and flows with the wins and losses. I believe studies have shown that our body chemistry actually changes with the success or failure of the team we are most passionate about.

I think just loving the game for what it is, and avoiding getting too high with wins or too low with losses, has helped me avoid burnout.

[crdr]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

I find I am too busy keeping my collection of imported and rare sports car polished and keeping my wife (and a few of her select friends) satiated and satisfied to have any free time to watch pro sports of any kind

Just an innocent question... Why are you on a sporting forum then?

[bubbsy]

Originally Posted by Northendzone

I find I am too busy keeping my collection of imported and rare sports car polished and keeping my wife (and a few of her select friends) satiated and satisfied to have any free time to watch pro sports of any kind

need a hand with any of them friends

[VANFLAMESFAN]

I still watch every game live or PVR it while avoiding the score. If I'm out while a game is on, I'm never focused on what I'm doing the way i should be.

Do I get joy out of watching the Flames? Only when they win.

Do I find the games entertaining? Only when they win.

I know to a neutral, a lot of the Flames games are very boring, but as a fan of the team who is invested in every shift, I'm still into the games.

An 82 game season is filled with highs and lows and I never get too high or too low(at least I try), I do my best to "enjoy" the ride.

[mrdonkey]

I guess unlike some of the folks here it doesn't have anything to do with getting older and priorities changing etc. I'm in my early 30s and I don't have a wife or kids to take care of, though I imagine if I did that would definitely affect my point of view. Essentially I've just moved on to hobbies I can take a bit more agency in. Learning new languages, playing music, volunteering, working out, coaching, etc. It helps that these things actually help develop real-world skills, through which I feel like I'm growing and improving as a human being. But most importantly I don't like going to bed upset over something I have no control over. It's no longer a positive part of my life. It doesn't help that the Flames have been mediocre to godawful for as long as I've been able to form memories, so that definitely plays into my frustration as well.

It also ties into my increasing cynicism surrounding mainstream entertainment. I've pretty much stopped watching movies, sports, and TV because the industry has become a complete corporate cash grab. I don't like the feeling of being sold a cheap, think-tanked product engineered to pander to me in order to make as much money as possible. The notion of having some executive's fingers in my wallet so he can buy his son a yacht for his 18th birthday feels icky.

I pretty much just follow the Flames casually now, no longer bother watching the games, and try to stick to the Off Topic forums as there's more for me there now.

[bubbsy]

Originally Posted by VANFLAMESFAN

I still watch every game live or PVR it while avoiding the score. If I'm out while a game is on, I'm never focused on what I'm doing the way i should be.

Do I get joy out of watching the Flames? Only when they win.

Do I find the games entertaining? Only when they win.

I know to a neutral, a lot of the Flames games are very boring, but as a fan of the team who is invested in every shift, I'm still into the games.

An 82 game season is filled with highs and lows and I never get too high or too low(at least I try), I do my best to "enjoy" the ride.

as this ugly fugly year comes to an end, i do need to compliment you, a poster always with the positive outlook, on hanging in there with me and the negative minded folks.

Unfortunately, as much as this team has frustrated me this season, i do concur with the fact that if it's game day, my mind is always, at least partially diverted, on how the team is doing.

[CaptainYooh]

I could never have justified the cost of decent season tickets for the family. But I normally go to 12-15 games during a season and watch pretty much every game on TV. So, yeah, my name is CaptainYooh and I am a Flames addict. When the Flames are losing, I feel crappy all around and my family knows it too well. My wife has been a neutral fan but, lately, she hates seeing me suffer in front of a TV and transfers that hate to the Flames hockey... I often wonder if being a fan of a perennially mediocre team is some form of BDSM, more on an M-side of it... Should I seek professional help?

[Cube Inmate]

No joy.

• Over-saturation with TV, radio, and internet coverage.
• Too much focus on the business side.
• Too difficult to have "hope" when your rosters are nearly frozen for a year at a time due to salary caps, long-term contracts, and signing bonuses.
• It's hard to care about the frivolous when there's so much more to worry about.
• Etc.

[kevman]

Originally Posted by The Cobra

If winning was easy, it wouldn't be that much fun.

See: Vegas.

That franchise is going to be in for a surprise when all they know is winning.

[Parallex]

A little bit of both... we had a new kid recently so time is valuable (and watching the game can't always make the cut) plus seeing the team constantly grabbing defeat from the jaws of victory is demoralizing. And honestly... I find it harder to really get up for the team when I know that the folk who own them are lying to us while trying to extort money from the taxpayers.

I still enjoy watching games and I still want the team to win. Just not as enthusiastically as I once did.

[It's a great day 4 hockey]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

3) Money - The internet was/is great for getting information. But at this point, it just seems like the fan experience has shifted off ice and there's more excitement around things like Cap Management, and player salary levels and points per dollar. We spend out time talking about arena deals and TV deals. Its almost become like a business meeting when people talk about dollars.

I so agree about the money. Until salary disclosure was made public this was never an issue. Unfortunately there is no way that it will ever go back, the backlash from fans who have only known full disclosure wouldn't stand for it. Talking hockey back in the 80's was exactly that and when you talked about a trade the first thing mentioned was not the size of his contract.

[troutman]

Have I watched 10,000 hours of NHL hockey in my life? What else could I have mastered instead?

[DeluxeMoustache]

I think that the gong show that the Flames are is making it hard to be passionate. Hockey in general is fine and I have seen exciting play from teams, including Vegas. On ice product can make a ton of difference.

The Flames on several occasions have had games in a good position and them get away, but not the converse. It is not expected, but also not surprising when they choke.

As the Feaster/Hartley regime was emphasizing youth, speed and hockey IQ, and rewarding players for their effort, there seemed to be a path forward and a light at the end of the tunnel. They had gotten out of the place where it was a club for veterans to come and wither away in their twilight years (you know, Amonte, Nolan, etc). They even cleaned out a lot of the somewhat serviceable veterans

Now it is just a mess. It is exemplified by the latest episode with Chris Stewart, 6 years removed from a good year, unwanted by his team, and plucked off the scrap heap, who is given on his first shift the opportunity to play on the top line. What kind of message did that send to the team? That the coach is out of ideas and had to try operating based on hope?

The fact that many, many people see fixable problems like the breakouts and the power play, and that the coaches can not figure out how to fix it frustrating. Good power plays move the puck quickly.

The nonsense around the arena, and the politics I think soured a lot of people as well.

I agree as well with the fatigue associated with advanced stats. I like the challenge and the concept of advanced stats. The challenge is to assess individuals and teams based on things that can be measured. Statistical models can be valuable.

Here to me is the problem. Say you have a hypothesis that proportion of shots correlate to possession and likelihood of winning. Maybe on the whole, with enough data, across enough teams, this is generally reasonably statistically significant.

The problem is that when the hypothesis and the statistical model agree, you assume it validates the model.

Then the model is applied to increasingly granular data sets, individual teams, games, players, etc. The model is then used not to support an overall broad hypothesis, but used as a descriptor for what happened, generally devoid of context. More as a diagnostic. Let’s run through all the players and tell you who played well.

I saw the Rangers game. Statistics say that throwing 50 muffins at Lundquist implies the team outplayed the Rangers and should have won. Sure, because a statistically good goalie would generally let in 4 goals. But no. Lundquist was busy but not challenged.

NHL teams have moved past the simple models like Corsi, they are internally using context, what type of shot, how the shot arrived at its location etc. They know that shot location as proxy for danger is not good enough but that is the state of the broader internet discussion.

And the guy(s) on the radio talk show keep trotting this stuff out. It is used not necessarily to reinforce the eye test, but as the basis for telling you why your lousy player is actually good. That is the kind of stuff that makes your eyes roll.

And single game save percentage without discussing the D? Don’t get me started on that

/rant

So long story short, good exciting fast hockey like Vegas is playing, with a team that is hungry, hates to lose, and seem to always have a chance - that, I enjoy.

I enjoy a lot of things the Flames do on the ice, but find the inconsistency and lack of focus to be unnecessary. They try to play a cerebral game but don’t have the high end skill and focus to pull it off.

And all of the analysis that purports to be even keel, neither too high nor low, and ultimately tells us that the flames are playing well enough and are mainly unlucky - well, it is well intentioned, and there is a pragmatic unemotional opposite side that says the statistical analysis is based on a lot of assumptions, definitely not free of major flaws and shortcomings, and the Flames have actually played as lousy on the whole as their record shows.

[Johnny Makarov]

Also the idiotic Calgarynext power point, Ken King still being employed and Bettman meddling in our mayoral election should have soured the crap of any long time fan.

[Vox]

My experience sounds much like Captaincrunch's. In the mid to late 80's I would sit in my car in the parking lot of the U of A residence and listen to Flames games from Calgary on the radio, as I couldn't get reception inside. I watched the cup run back home in Calgary with my buddies, and was a huge fan. Over the years, mostly because of age, and partially because of the team, that has worn off.

I was never a ticket holder when I was younger, but I have been for the last 15 years and will not give up my seats, despite having less interest. I sell off most of the games, but keep enough to take my 5 and 10 year old kids to a couple games a year each. It's the experience with them that I enjoy, and I have the tickets only because of them. If I didn't have the kids, I'd give up the tickets and just watch the odd game on TV. They became fans because of me, they are becoming larger fans, and I'm still a fan because of them. Circle of life.

[rhino]

I enjoy watching hockey.... it’s a sport so unless I play it there is not joy involved. This thread is a drag