In high school, I decided to take a creative writing class, and I found myself face to face with possibly the most interesting writing assignment of my academic career.
We were told to write a few hundred words describing our very own existential hell. Meaning this: What would compose the most tormenting experience possible for your eternity of damnation?
Whereas I probably thought myself witty back then by describing an afterlife that had me surrounded with high school characters who annoyed me to no end, teachers who were the most obnoxious and so on, I realize now I got it all wrong.
It is safe to say, without a hint of falsity, that I am living that hell right now.
You do not realize how much you miss something until it's gone, that's for sure, and such a loss can leave you in a never-ending pit of despair. Nothing has made me realize how much I miss it than the lack of an NHL season this year.
That's right, the absence of the Coolest Game on Earth has turned up the heat of what can only be described as an athletic void that occurs between March Madness and the beginning of football season.
Usually there's this thing called the Stanley Cup Playoffs to get me through the spring, and I do mean all of it -the playoffs last more than a month. Sadly, my Devil-esque figure of my personal hell, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, has decided to take this athletic spectacle away from all hockey fans.
I will stop my angry rant about Bettman here, though I will encourage you to visit http://www.garybettmansucks.com for further information and merchandise.
What truly flips me off my figurative rocker are ideas that the NHL Player's Association and league officials are milling around during hockey's absence. These are not minor changes, these are huge honking changes that will affect hockey in way that can only be compared to sacrilege -if hockey's a religion to you.
To those not in the know, here is what the NHL is thinking about changing in what seems to be a final effort to make any and all fans turn away from the game forever.
Paint the ice blue: Hold on. Because people already can not see a BLACK puck on a WHITE surface, hockey officials now want to make the ice powder blue. I think somewhere, Canadians are rolling over in their graves.
To make matters worse, BLUE lines would now have to be ORANGE. Orange lines? Think of the hockey terminology, if not the children.
Change the shape of the nets: First off, they want to make the nets bigger. Find me a goalie who will agree to that and I will buy you a delicious Taco Bell dinner uptown. Even offensive players, the scorers who would benefit the most from the change, consider this a last resort. I whole-heartedly agree.
New goalie rules: They want goalie pads smaller, after they were restricted just years ago. They want goalies to be unable to play the puck outside the crease, arguably one of the most interesting new abilities in the NHL now that goalies can quarterback power plays and, heck, even score goals because their puck control is that good.
I have decided to stop here, because before I finish this sentence, hits will count on the scoreboard at the rate hockey higher-ups are thinking.
So welcome to my existential hell, no hockey -specifically no playoffs -and the wrong people are in charge of changing the face of the game...for-ev-er.
Heaven help us hockey fans.
-Mark Shugar is a sophomore journalism major and sports editor for The Post. Send him an e-mail at ms314803@ohio.edu.
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Mark Shugar
