And, after all, why should they love us? We show up anyway. We swallow the insults and turn the other cheek — or allow them to flip us over and do it again, as it were. We fill the seats, buy the jerseys and the shylock-priced beer and bad food, stand in long lines to take a leak, listen to the deafeningly bad music blaring from a thousand speakers, and never offer a meaningful protest when ticket prices are raised, as they are every season.

We’re fans. That’s what we do.

You know and I know we could bring the NHL to its knees… but we won’t, and they know it. The lies and the unrequited love are the insults we’re willing to bear in order to love the game, or just to love going to the game for the fun of it. If that’s what you value, you’ll watch (go). If it isn’t, you won’t. It’s that simple. Either way, you’ll never be respected in the morning. Even if every fan on the planet stayed home they still wouldn’t respect us, or love us. They’d just lie to us some more. And if that didn’t work, they’d fold up the tents, take the pile of money we already gave them and move along.

So, Stu, I’m not here to convince you one way or the other, it’s merely how I see it and have always seen it. I won’t attend any games this season, and probably never again, but I’ll watch because for me it’s always been about the game. And, I’ll watch because I know it doesn’t matter. Perhaps I’ll even watch from a stool in one of the establishments along 5th Ave., just outside the Con. I’ll wear the colors and I’ll cheer a win and Monday morning quarterback a loss. I love hockey and I refuse to let the poseurs, prima donnas and bad actors who run it take that away from me. Hockey is all over TV these days. I don’t ever have to spend another nickel inside the Con. They obviously don’t care if I attend the game or not. Why should I?