I’ve been a hockey fan for almost 28 years. My emotional connection to hockey began in 1983 when Steve Penny out-of-no-where stoned the big bad bruins, and then lead Montreal to two straight victories over the New York Islanders in Long Island. 

When my family moved to Athens Greece, I still followed the Habs religiously. And to be clear, this meant driving to a kiosk that happened to have an overpriced copy of the international herald tribune so I could get 2 lines in an article saying what happened in a game. 

Returning to the US in 1992, thanks to things like Gopher it became possible to read the AP articles about hockey games. I remember waking up at 7am, and running to the CS department to check out the gopher scores. We didn’t have broadband or wireless in our dorms.

In 1998 the internet finally let me listen to games, again. And my love affair was rekindled.

Except that was the dead-puck era. And watching hockey was painful. 

In 2008, my wife took me to a game for my birthday. And ever since, I’ve been hooked to watching the game live. Growing up in Montreal, you couldn’t get season tickets, so I never imagined I would have season tickets to a REAL hockey team. That was like the coolest thing ever.

And now I have a son who CAN ACTUALLY UNDERSTAND THE GAME, and I was looking forward to taking him to the NHL, and the NHL has decided they can’t figure out how to split billions. So instead, he’s watching baseball. Hell, I was about to spend 1000$ (the balance of  the first quarter of the season) to go watch a baseball game, A BASEBALL GAME! My sone is going to turn into a baseball fan. A BASEBALL FAN!

The players have a right to strike, and the owners have a right to make money, but HOCKEY isn’t just a sport, it’s part of the fabric of our communities. There are friends who I meet on a regular basis at the rink, that I no longer meet.

And God Forbid the owners and the players consider the damage they are doing to their communities. 

In this era of profit maximization at all costs, I spit on the NHL players union, and I spit on the owners, you screwed over my winter. And you don’t care. 

So I’m going on strike. Oh I’ll watch your games, and I’ll buy your tickets but as for hockey related income, I am not buying a single piece of NHL merchandise (or whatever you’re calling hockey-related-income) for at least one year after the end of the strike 

Damn you for ruining the my winter. Damn you.