|I've more or less implicitly supported Sidney Crosby, so I just want to point out|
that this picture screams to have a giant penis photoshopped into his hand
My students were born in 2001 and 2002. This means these kids weren't born yet, and if they were born, they were barely aware of the world when we absolutely destroyed Patrick Roy in Game 7. They never saw the Statue of Liberty debacle . They don't know to fear Mike Vernon and Darren McCarty. The Detroit-Avalanche rivalry is a fabled story told to them by their elders while burning incense.
It isn't just Avalanche fans that are going to suffer from this kind of issue. Thinking back over my years as a Red Wings, it occurred to me that there's a lot of big NHL moments that my students will have no personal knowledge or connection to. Let's take a look at some of what they missed, and what these damned kids these days are into.
- They missed out "Leaving the team that drafted me and I've brought greatness to" press conferences of yesteryear, and instead are more familiar with the LeBron James "Let me take up the one hour that might been used to discuss hockey to make the entire city of Cleveland unanimously hate me" ESPN special
- When I wanted to see a hockey player say something vile and disgusting, they actually had to talk to the press. Nowadays, you just have to follow Tyler Seguin on Twitter.
- While there's a great debate about retiring Sergei Fedorov's number among us older fans, it's unanimously against among younger fans because they only know him as "They guy who is trying to steal Pavel Datsyuk"
- Thanks to the younger generations of fans, Patrick Roy will finally shed his reputation as the great, but batshit crazy, megalomaniac goaltender for the Colorado Avalanche and be able to cultivate his brand new persona as the great, but batshit crazy, megalomaniac coach for the Colorado Avalanche.
- Because they've not been hockey fans for very long, they're less likely to remember what hockey was like before the isosceles trapezoid was introduced behind the net. This means that they'll have no idea why the isosceles trapezoid was introduced. So that's something they have in common with the rest of us.
- They don't know what a two line pass is. But that's okay, because the refs don't know what off-sides is.
- They were only about 3 years old at the time, so they only know the Steve Moore incident as, "The day Daddy screamed a lot and kicked a hole in the wall."
- When people complained about Russians in my day, it was because they suffered at the hands of another perfectly executed play by the Russian 5. Now it's because Alexander Ovechkin didn't score 23 goals in 6 games.
And finally, now I understand the looks of derision and the claims that "You've never seen what real hockey is like!" when I tell older hockey fans that I am too young to have seen Gordie Howe play.
When did I get old?