At the time I’m writing this, the current NHL season is about halfway done. To say that it has been entertaining would be underselling just how crazy everything has been. Not only has the league taken a gradual step into proper relevancy through their TV deals with ESPN and TNT, there has also been a massive increase in both the hatred between teams and the parity in the standings, which is what I want to focus on today. I’ve watched hockey for over a decade now, and I can’t recall seeing a regular season that has been so vigorously contested as this one has been. This is great for the sport and a sign of good things to come across other sports as well, and I’ll explain why.

When I was growing up, it was not only expected, but basically guaranteed that the Chicago Blackhawks were going to be either in the finals or in the conference finals. They were the best team in the league from 2010 until around 2016, and during that run, they won 3 Stanley Cups, a President’s Trophy (award given to the best regular season team), and a whole lot of games in general. With their formidable trio of Kane, Toews and Keith, as well as fantastic coaching by now-disgraced coach Joel Quenneville, they were one of the model franchises of not only the NHL, but sports in general. That of course changed after the Kyle Beach scandal a couple seasons ago, but that’s a story for another time.

You see, the thing with teams like the Blackhawks is that while their runs are impressive and their success is good for business, the truth is that opposing fans can get really tired of seeing the same teams in the finals over and over again. This can lead to disinterest or outright apathy, and it can be damaging to these carefully cultivated brands. Speaking from personal experience, seeing the Warriors and Cavaliers in the NBA Finals for 4 years in a row killed my interest in basketball, and it has never fully recovered. I think part of that may have been due to the amount of interest I had in the NBA vs. my interest in the NHL, but I know for a fact that seeing the same thing over and over again really wasn’t my cup of tea. I’ll admit I wasn’t a massive fan of seeing the Blackhawks win as much as they did or the Lightning nearly three-peat earlier this decade, but I tolerated both of those cases due to hockey being my favorite sport and those runs being admittedly really entertaining. If it were up to me however, I would have had it differently.

Meanwhile in the present day, this season has been sort of an answered prayer. While my teams have been kinda all over the place with regards to their play and their places in the standings, I have been loving how topsy-turvy everything has been as a whole. Teams that were expected to be mediocre or downright bad like Vancouver and Philadelphia are inexplicably near or right at the top of the standings, with Vancouver easily being the most surprising after their recent history of dysfunctional and downright comedic misfortune. In the meantime, teams with heavy expectations like Carolina and my hometown Edmonton Oilers have been fantastic at best and downright terrible at their worst. Both of those teams got off to really rough starts, and while they have since recovered for the most part, it goes to show just how unpredictable this season has been.

Now, why am I so happy about this? I think it’s pretty obvious: there are no clear favorites this time around. There is an equal playing field, and there are so many possibilities for what could happen. It makes for a more entertaining, as well as more interesting, product. However, while I feel that the NHL has the best parity of the 4 major leagues, the NFL and MLB deserve some credit for their increase of parity as well. Even the NBA, as there has been a fresh new champion almost every year since the Cavs/Warriors days. This is a good thing, as it keeps fans interested and is also a sign that the days of one singular team running the entire league might finally be ending. These leagues are at their best when nearly every team has a shot at winning the big games, despite what some may say.

My main hope is that this NHL season continues to be as interesting and as tightly contested as it has been thus far, and that it continues into the playoffs. To end off, I made a post during the last offseason predicting who I thought would be the next 5 Stanley Cup winners and who would fall just short, and my prediction of Dallas beating Carolina in this year’s finals is already looking highly questionable at best. While I’m keeping my predictions for the next 4 years, I’ll say now that my prediction for this year has changed. I’ll talk more about that when I make my next hockey post, which will probably be right as the playoffs are starting later in the year.

Until then, here’s to a great season of hockey so far.