Imagine a country full of people who love reading. It's their #1 pastime and it's just about all they talk about around the dinner table.  Internationally they are known as the people who brought the great art of reading to the world.  Now imagine that they refuse to let anyone in other countries read above a third grade level because "you don't deserve books since you can't read well."  That's the feeling I get from Canadian media.  We don't deserve or appreciate hockey here in the South because we didn't grow up with it.

Well, I did not grow up with hockey.  I grew up in MS and never saw a hockey game until 5 years ago.  I immediately liked it even though I had no idea what was going on.  I didn't see multiple games until this season when I got season tickets with my brother.   The moment I started learning the rules, understanding strategy, learning about positions, different lines having different skills, penalties, and all the other subtleties of the game, I became hooked for life.  It's not that Southerners can't appreciate, support, and even advance the game of hockey.  The problem is that the snobbish attitude put forth by seemingly all of Canadian media holds the game back.  If you truly love the game of hockey, instead of talking down to people and insulting them you should try teaching them why you love the game yourself.  Then they too can learn to love it.  If an illiterate man walked into a school and asked to be taught to read, they wouldn't tell him to get lost.  So try not to bash entire cities and regions for trying to learn to love the game of hockey.

What these burgeoning young hockey fans need is someplace that provides a little Hockey 101.  How about a post every now and then explaining one or two of the finer aspects of the game instead of every article assuming we all know what all those terms mean?  I sure didn't when I first started following hockey.  I had to google just about every other sentence.  But with some Hockey 101 we can turn some of our recently acquired playoff fans into long term regular season fans.