How Could I Just Kill a Buzz, NHL style

Tough Monday morning? It could be worse: your name could be Gary Bettman and you could have seen a team from Alberta (Canada) eliminate a team from Texas (USA) last night. Despite a total of just 10 shots on goal…

Bettman had just seen the big New York market eclipsed a few hours earlier…

What’s more, neither of the two conference final series needed an ultimate Game 7 to determine a winner. As we all know, it’s the #7 games that attract the best ratings in the hockey world.

On top of all that, the final series doesn’t start until next Saturday night in Florida. So we’ll be five nights without hockey… just as the weather is starting to warm up outside and people’s minds are increasingly focused on something other than ice hockey.

I want to believe that the final series between the Oilers and the Panthers will be the one with the greatest distance between the two cities in NHL history (in the Stanley Cup Finals)…

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Puck Empire (@puckempire)

Still, the schedule for this series between the Oilers and Panthers is a buzz killer. A big buzz killer!

In 2024, there may be a little voice in Gary Bettman’s head humming How Could I Just Kill a Buzz?

Los Angeles – Montreal… Vancouver – Boston… It’s not the first time players have had to fly a few hours to get to a Cup Final game! But then again…

If we’re going to have a little milk run, we might as well complete it properly this morning. This will be the fifth consecutive Stanley Cup Final appearance for a Florida team. Three times the Lightning, twice the Panthers…

This year, it’ll be against one of Canada’s lowest-tax cities!

Hasn’t the time come to review the way the salary cap is applied to NHL teams? Shouldn’t we be using players’ net salaries, not their gross salaries? Guys like Steven Stamkos accepted a million or two less (per year) to stay in Florida a few years ago. And he’s likely to do the same again this summer…

Taxes, weather, language, politics, media, sun… Florida has a lot of things Quebec doesn’t have. And never will!

For a league that constantly boasts about the parity that exists between its teams, unlike other North American professional circuits, the NHL still has a long way to go before it is truly parity. And in the meantime, it’s teams like the Canadiens who are paying the price…

Go Oilers Go… even if there are more Quebecers in Florida than in Alberta, and even if Pierre St-Paul-Plamondon will tell you that English Canada is bad, you know?

In bursts

– Canada rallies behind the Oilers.

– Renaud dropped it on this one.

Never trust what’s “almost assured” pic.twitter.com/dzbFAyrWuz

– Maxime Truman (@MaximeTruman) June 3, 2024

– Phillyfans…