When did I stop giving any credibility to this joke of a league? Probably sometime between about 3 lockouts ago, and when I was old enough to know better.
Between the likely fixed 'lotteries' which don't show the balls dropping, the biased zebras who dont HAVE any balls, and the discrepancies between the haves and have nots that has not been fixed adequately by the salary cap/floor, not to mention any of a number of other things we could legitimately gripe about, this league is an absolute joke. About the only thing the NHL has over the other major pro sports in North America is that it is not filled with criminals (the Matt Cookes of the world aside), but it ends there. And until the NHL addresses these issues, they will continue to be a joke, and continue to far lag behind MLB, the NBA, and the NFL, certainly in the U.S.