"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
What if they called off the hockey season and nobody cared? That's about to happen. And it's a shame.
Boston is a hockey town after it's a baseball town. The only thing close to the mania that has gripped the region for the Red Sox was the fervor for the Bruins during the Bobby Orr days, when the B's owned the town.
The picture at Old Time Hockey could have been taken in any neighborhood in Greater Boston in the winter during the early '70s. (See the kid on the right? I had pants very much like those.)
It wasn't so long ago that people around here were crazy about pro hockey. But the reaction to no NHL this season has been the sound of crickets chirping. No one misses it. Imagine the reaction if they canceled the baseball season.
The NHL has made itself irrelevant. Talk about destroying your own brand.
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A book by hockey writers Karl-Eric Reif and Jeff Z. Klein, The Death of Hockey, describes "how a bunch of guys with too much money and too little sense are killing the greatest game on earth."