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Jan 25, 2013 4 min read

You can only shake your head.

You know the friend; the one who is just hopelessly and frustratingly head over heels for someone who just doesn’t treat them right. You try to talk some sense into them, but they won’t hear it. So you just shake your head every time your pal gets drug through the mud because their other half just doesn’t respect them enough to treat them right.

“You just don’t understand,” you’re told.

Or alternatively, “You just don’t see them how they really are.”

And so, much to your chagrin, your friend goes eagerly rushing back after a trite apology each and every time they get their heart broken.

And you’re left with nothing but an unspoken “Told you so” and a shake of the head.

You’d think, after it kept happening despite the promises that this time it would be different, that they would wise up — that they would realize that the person they were so committed to just doesn’t feel the same way in return.

This friend is destined to be hurt again — you know that — but you can’t talk them out of their infatuation.

It’s just that despite everything you try, I just won’t listen to reason. Try as you might to convince me I should, I refuse to give up on the NHL.

Sure, the league that I love just spent 112 days on a stupid lockout — denying me both the old tradition of fall nights sipping a beer while watching Crosby’s backhand and the relatively new New Year’s tradition of watching the Winter Classic while scarfing down pork and sauerkraut leftovers.

Sure, this is the second time in five years that the NHL has done this to me. Sure, I should have known better after the first time that a few superficial apologies — painting “Thank you, Fans” on the ice, for example — wouldn’t make things right.

But I don’t care. I just couldn’t look at that skating penguin logo and stay mad. I mean, look at that face!

So I came crawling back in 2008. I was snookered, I see that now.

And then, after losing the entire season in 2008 — the only professional North American sport to pull off that inauspicious feat — they did it to us again this fall.

I tried to ignore the NHL during this fall’s lockout. But, yet, I was still weak. Every time there was reported optimism that the lockout might be ending I came flying back like the dumped lover who leaps for the phone thinking their significant other is finally calling to take them back.

And so it was on Jan. 6, when early morning news of the lockout’s end caused me to pull my Marc-Andre Fleury jersey out of the dark corner of the closet where it had been stashed for these long months.

There was no deliberation as to whether the NHL deserved to be loved again. There was no debate as to whether or not this would just happen all over again in a few years. Nope; there was just a joy at finally (finally!) having hockey to watch again.

And I guess that’s what the NHL was banking on. Like millions of hockey fans around the country, I will come back, dutifully, to the league that demonstratively does not give two craps about the fans. (The Canadians were always a shoo-in to come back. I mean, for Pete’s sake, the Canucks have a picture of kids playing hockey on their $5 bill.)

I know there will be grumbling. I know there will be shaking of heads that hockey fans are willing to give their time, attention and dollars to a league that, if recent history is any indication, is going to mistreat them.

But you know what, I don’t care.

Because after far too many months of waiting, it’s time for hockey nights in Pittsburgh.

If you’d like to know how his fantasy hockey team is shaping up, Brandon Szuminsky can be reached at bszuminsky@heraldstandard.com.