I like it when people like what I like

Man, am I ever looking forward to hockey tonight! This week in the life of an NHL fan has been incredible. More than half the entire league are either Free Agents or Restricted Free Agents. You’ve got teams that before the current collective bargaining agreement were always buying up all the good players now selling or passing up on them. And teams that would normally not be able to sign the big names signing them! The league is going to be so different next year and I feel like I have no one to share in the excitement with. My Dad and brother-in-law, Eric are out of town. Tim’s gone camping. And the majority of the people in my day-to-day life don’t really now about or care what’s going on right now in the NHL.

Me: “The Oilers got Chris Pronger!”
Idiot who doesn’t like hockey: “Okay.”
Me: “He’s, like, one of the best players in the NHL. He was the MVP in 2000.”
Idiot who doesn’t like hockey: “Oh.”
Me: “They never would have been able to sign him before, but thanks to…”

[Stops for a second to consider whether he should say: “CBA” or “Collective Bargaining Agreement”]

“…the new deal, small market teams like Edmonton and Calgary can sign or re-sign the top player in the league.”

Idiot who doesn’t like hockey: “Oh. Okay.”

[Ponders how to make this the least bit interesting for the other person]

Me: “He’s from Dryden, you know?”

And so it goes. I’m absolutely starved to share some excitement about all this to someone besides the geeks at the Hockey’s Future Boards.

Fortunately, tonight is hockey and at hockey there will be people who (hopefully) share my enthusiasm.

And to make sure I that I go way to far to the right on the geek-nerd continuum, here’s my top 5 most intriguing moves this off season so far:

1. Scott Niedermayer to the Anaheim Ducks-Being that my favourite player is Sergei Fedorov and hence I am a Ducks fan, of course this would be #1 on my list. Also, Scott gets to play with his brother, Rob.

2. Chris Pronger to the Edmonton Oilers-Edmonton can finally buy stars instead of making them and then selling them to the Rangers.

3. Peter Forsberg to the Philadelphia Flyers-The Philly fans I’ve talked to seem to think of themselves as already a cup favourite. But really I feel like they’ve only gotten marginally better and have an injury prone star while most of the rest of the league is getting better.

4. Alexei Kovalev to the Montreal Canadiens-Actually this is a re-signing but I never thought he’d go back to Montreal. Kovalev really tore it up with the Habs in the playoffs last season.

5. Tony Amonte to the Calgary Flames-In last season’s playoffs, the Flames made it to the Cup finals with really only one, maybe two stars on the team. Now Amonte will be there to help out Jarome Iginla.