The Long Loneliness of the NHL Offseason

Wading through the emptiness of an NHL offseason can be a lonely task. Hockey isn't football; talking heads named Skip and Jaws aren't yelling at each other about players being elite even when there won't be games on for months. ESPN barely seems to care about the sport when it's the middle of the season, and after the Stanley Cup Finals hockey ceases to exist as far as the media is concerned.

This can make hockey fans a little testy, like we're the little brother who's left at home all summer while our older brother and his friends ride bikes through the mud, burn bugs with magnifying glasses, and find old Playboys in the woods. Your life goes on, nothing that bad is happening to you, but you wish more people would pay attention. Like I said: It gets lonely.

The ebbs and flows of an 82-game NHL season are like those of any other sport. You have a long season with some highs and lows, and at the end, after the Moët's been popped and a group of bearded men dig their blades into the ice and parade around a trophy the size of spaniel, there's no immediate hangover.

It's like that night out when you drink shot after shot of whatever gets slammed down on the beer-stained bar and afterward, with the light burning in through your window, you feel surprisingly good. Everything is going to be all right. You think maybe that Gatorade on the way saved you from spending the day walking the 15 feet between the bed and the bathroom. You've finally figured out how to drink heavily and not suffer the consequences. You cracked the code.

It usually goes downhill from that first waking moment.

The problem is there's no pacing in an NHL offseason. Football fans get to go from the Super Bowl to the draft to the trades and contracts and rumors that everyone covers so breathlessly, then it's time for training camp and the season is here again.

For hockey fans, the offseason is a miserable, interminable time, during which there's nothing to do but obsess over the arbitration (or non-arbitration in almost every single case) of a player they've never seen live. You can gather over a case of cheap beer to commiserate over the lack of team news, but that conversation can only go so far. The hangover is in full effect—it's one of those terrible ones that hits you in the afternoon with an overwhelming heaviness and nausea that leaves you crouched in the work bathroom until it's time to go home.

The offseason is like a dark expanse flowing over the earth, slowly covering more and more terrain until everything is black. The light breaks through only when training camps open, which means you start to get news about players getting injured or holding out.

As the days get dark and the mercury drops, NHL fans gradually rediscover their lives. That overpriced jersey of a player traded two seasons ago finds its way out the closet—and lasts a whole month before your significant other hides it under the bed because you won't stop wearing it—and you look through your channel guide to find NBC Sports again.

There's a lovely honeymoon period before the first frost hits the ground and hockey officially starts up again. That's the moment to remember that the offseason wasn't so bad. You got to drink beers with your friends, watch some fireworks, and eat grilled meat. Your favorite sport was nowhere to be found on television, not even on the networks devoted to sports, but you'd rather not pay attention to those hot take merchants all the time anyway. So what if your not an obsessive fan 365 days out of the year? That just means you've got a more balanced life than those football obsessives who are addicted to hearing the same debates over the same few players over and over again.

So yes, it may feel lonely, but remember, it'll probably be snowy and terrible where you live in just a couple months, so enjoy the lack of hockey and go outside. In just a few short months, your team will be losing again.

Follow Patrick Kearns on Twitter.