Twenty years on HFBoards

[Calderon]

A quality post right there, @Hockey Outsider, from a quality poster! I've not gotten "deep" in the history boards such as participating in the all time lists but I enjoy we have them. I've learn a lot on the past greats. I share your opinion of not thinking the NHL or the sport really needs to grow from what it is. The Big Phil controversy intrigues me, I've seen the moniker many times over the years but have no idea what happened. (Edit: Found the whole debacle and skimmed through, it was a wild ride )

I think it's been 20 years on HFB for me, too, as I lurked a while unregistered, probably recapturing my interest in the league during the lockout if not the season before, reading about the next great superstar who eventually got drafted by the Penguins and the subsequent rivalry (Crosby and Ovi) that electrified the sport for years to come. I don't post that frequently and I'll admit myself that I don't compensate it with quality. It is what it is.

Every once in a while you see a surge of new blood on the history forum and even though you tend to roll your eyes a bit on the naive seeming comparisons that've been done to death (Gretzky vs. Bossy as goal scorers etc.) I was pleasently surprised the enthusiasm wasn't just coldly nipped in the bud last time.

Here's to the next twenty years, may we still be here then to acknowledge it.

 

[Salsa Shark]

The MS Paint team logo thread from 12-15 years back is another all-timer.

 

[TheGreenTBer]

Here's an archive I was able to find recently:

Caption/Photoshop this photo - HFBoards

. Caption/Photoshop this photo The Lounge

web.archive.org

if you ever find the bert2nazzy Christina Woloski thread you will be my new hero.

 

[Golden_Jet]

You haven't heard about the additional benefits after twenty years. They really add up.

Awesome, I should start seeing the benefits anytime.

 

[Slats432]

24 years and counting. January of 2001, looking for information on 2001 draft. Once a HFBer, always a HFBer.

 

[Michael Farkas]

There's a lot of people that post here and that's what makes it a discussion forum...and I know that everyone is special, but you're one of the elites that really make it tangibly better, H.O.

Glad you stayed with it all this time.

 

[alko]

Me self celebrated 20th anniversary few months ago. I also was for a short time one from the writers about Slovak prospects. And they paid me for that!!!

 

[Kyle McMahon]

There's no other message board out there that I've ever come across that matches the quality and depth that HF HOH can boast. Anchor tenants like @Hockey Outsider made this place what it is. I'm grateful for all the knowledge I gained from many posters here over the 19 years I've been a member. My interest in the NHL is basically zero by now (if McDavid hadn't landed on my hometown team I doubt I'd watch a single game all year at this point), but it's still great to check on this specific forum regularly. Even reading through old threads from more than a decade ago is a fine way to kill an hour or two. Kudos to everyone who still posts regularly, I look forward to enjoying your content for many more years!

 

[x Tame Impala]

AFAIK there's no better sport's discussion board anywhere online. Which cements the fact that hockey really is the coolest of the 4 sports.

I've been here since 2012. This forum used to be a lot funnier, I have to say, but other than that it's still an amazing place. I can talk about videogames, movies, hockey, politics...kidding, and even other sports here.

The recent layout issues aside, I love the format of discussion here so much. I'm very grateful this forum exists

 

[Johnny Engine]

There's no other message board out there that I've ever come across that matches the quality and depth that HF HOH can boast. Anchor tenants like @Hockey Outsider made this place what it is. I'm grateful for all the knowledge I gained from many posters here over the 19 years I've been a member.

I'm glad to hear someone say that, because I've noticed a few threads where some posters have been responding to (real or perceived) misinformation by trashing the quality of the information here, and I'd hate to see what we have here go unappreciated.

What this place is, it's not the Stanley Finals, it's the London Marathon. Grandmothers on a weight loss journey can show up and compete with Eliud Kipchoge, and you'll see everything from tests in the limit of human ability, to people forgetting to drink water and having to go lie down halfway through, to a guy dressed as Spiderman.

Here it's the same. You can come ask if Gretzky or OV is better, you can forget to drink water and spend a full work day yelling about Pierre Turgeon, or you can do what @Hockey Outsider does and really break the tape in many ways. It's a cool place. (And now I have second verse of "All Star" stuck in my head.)

 

[Nerowoy nora tolad]

A quality post right there, @Hockey Outsider, from a quality poster! I've not gotten "deep" in the history boards such as participating in the all time lists but I enjoy we have them. I've learn a lot on the past greats. I share your opinion of not thinking the NHL or the sport really needs to grow from what it is. The Big Phil controversy intrigues me, I've seen the moniker many times over the years but have no idea what happened. (Edit: Found the whole debacle and skimmed through, it was a wild ride )

I think it's been 20 years on HFB for me, too, as I lurked a while unregistered, probably recapturing my interest in the league during the lockout if not the season before, reading about the next great superstar who eventually got drafted by the Penguins and the subsequent rivalry (Crosby and Ovi) that electrified the sport for years to come. I don't post that frequently and I'll admit myself that I don't compensate it with quality. It is what it is.

Every once in a while you see a surge of new blood on the history forum and even though you tend to roll your eyes a bit on the naive seeming comparisons that've been done to death (Gretzky vs. Bossy as goal scorers etc.) I was pleasently surprised the enthusiasm wasn't just coldly nipped in the bud last time.

Here's to the next twenty years, may we still be here then to acknowledge it.

What exactly happened to Big Phil? I genuinely have no idea what happened to him.

 

[Jumptheshark]

Killer post by @Hockey Outsider !

I know basically nothing about the history of this forum. How long has it even been around? I think I've been on here for about 10.5 years now... (My first post was from Frankfurt, Germany, oddly...)

I was kind of pissed then, too. I was still in my 20s then, and I found the state of the game had become almost unwatchable. And I felt the same about c. 2010 to 2017, but at least it wasn't the "size fetish" / "jumbo goalie equipment" era anymore...

Agree 100%. If any one aspect of the current NHL irriitates me (that is, besides the recent gambling ads) it's the utterly asinine points system for ranking teams. It's idiotic.

Agree 100%. I cringe inside everytime a fan or media pundit or player says the phrase, "grow the game". WTF? When I was a kid, nobody gave a flying you-know-what about growing the game. Nor should they. The game needs to be played, not grown. I wish the NHL was smaller.

Yeah, and I do find some regular posters on here are TOO obsessed with using stats. Like, I like stats, I'm a stats guy. Probably everybody on this forum is. But as you get older you realize the limitations of stats. Like, young fans are going to entrench themselves in stats to argue that Mark Messier wasn't as valuable to his team as Gretzky in 1990 or Lemieux in 1992 or whatever. But if you lived through the era you know why.

Yeah, the post Lock-Out era has definitely been better than 1997-98 to 2003-04 (whose historical existence I prefer to forget). That being said, I personally found the combination of low-scoring games and novelty shoot-outs and whatnot around 2011 to 2017 to be almost as bad. But the game is in great shape now... except for over-expansion and the asinine point system.

It's pretty good. (Once in a while a nut gets loose and causes havok, but the mods are pretty good at dealing with such stuff.) The one thing on this forum that kind of surprises me still is how obsessed fans are with comparing individual players. So, like, if you start a thread talking about team comparison, it dies after about 4 posts. But if you start any player comparison thread, it goes on for 45 pages and causes emotional distress to numerous people.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy player comparison discussion (mostly of players of the same era) to an extent, but I'm always taken aback at how vehemently people argue for their own guy.

Sounds good! I've always considered you one of the best posters on here -- maybe the best poster.

When I lived in Florida I used to drink with one the brothers who started this board
Orisa

 

[Jumptheshark]

24 years and counting. January of 2001, looking for information on 2001 draft. Once a HFBer, always a HFBer.

Do you miss the weekly outages the board had before 2002 ? The slightest rumour would kill the site for extended amount of time

 

[Slats432]

Do you miss the weekly outages the board had before 2002 ? The slightest rumour would kill the site for extended amount of time

Haha, deadline was a nightmare.

 

[weaponomega]

Does anyone remember the Dustin Rose thread?