“Seinfeld” is one of the greatest television sitcoms of all time. My favorite episode might be “The Face Painter”, but then again I’m biased as a New Jersey Devils fan. My team doesn’t get a lot of national media recognition so it’s nice to see us represented, even if it’s covered in body paint. “Gotta support the team”, are we right?
One of the series most memorable is when the gang celebrates Festivus. Festivus, for our uncultured readers who might not know, is the Costanza family’s fake (but it’s real to us) holiday on December 23rd. It includes decorating a pole and performing feats of strength.
Another Festivus tradition is the airing of the grievances when you sit at the table and tell everyone how they’ve disappointed you the past year. We love the NHL but there’s some things that have upset us, “grievances” if you will. So let’s have our own little PuckProse Festivus airing of the hockey grievances from the past year.
Italian Hockey Rink Builders
We’re thrilled NHL players are finally going back to the Olympics after over a decade. We’re not thrilled with the drama that has surrounded building the rink for the Milan Cortino games. Construction delays meant the rink might just be ready in time, without the chance to have a test run of hosting another event. Then we heard the ice might be a few feet short? Doesn’t “regulation” mean anything to the workers in Milan? They probably just looked at each other and said “mi sembra buono”, which is Italian for “looks good to me” and called it a day.
Freak Injuries
First Aleksander Barkov gets a freak knee injury on the first day of training camp that requires surgery and is, more or less, season ending. Then perpetually injured Devils superstar Jack Hughes suffers a “freak hand accident” at a Chicago steakhouse during a team dinner that requires surgery and sidelined him 18 games. Fellow Panther Eetu Luostarinen was out week to week in November with what coach Paul Maurice described as a “barbecue injury” (which is what I call it when I pull a muscle playing corn hole after too many hot dogs and hamburgers). Lacking details was also when the St. Louis Blues lost Alexey Toropchenko to burns from a “home related incident”.
Hockey’s is a tough sport and it’s hard to avoid injury playing it. You have to imagine its easier avoiding injuries like these. Some of them sound straight up Looney Tunes like in nature. For those suffering kitchen related injuries, maybe leave the cooking to the professionals and make dinner reservations.
Decentralized Drafts
When the NHL announced last year’s draft would be “decentralized” (in person attendance not needed by every team) it didn’t seem like a big deal. The league had done similar things for the 2020 and 2021 draft. From a fan’s perspective, unless your city was hosting the draft or if your team was picking first overall, would you really be upset about not being there in person?
Instead what we got was a rather odd assortment of tech delays and weird glitches from Los Angeles's Peacock Theater. After being drafted players were taken into a room, called the “NHL Draft House” to videoconference with giant screens of people from their drafted team. It was very “meeting the Wizard of Oz”-esque and sometimes didn’t go as planned.
Let’s sum it up with this question: did the decentralized draft work better than the previous way of doing things? Not really, except maybe teams were happy they were able to avoid the logistics of traveling. The league is reported to make several changes to the 2026 draft although no host city has been announced yet as of our Festivus writing.