[rlmorel]

I began watching hockey in 1975 when I moved up here to New England, and got hooked. I began to play goal in men’s leagues when I got out of the Navy and played for 15 years...

I was really into it, all my buddies were. The Adams Division rivalries, Montreal, Quebec, etc just made it a blast.

Then the game began to change with the trap, the restructuring of the divisions and such, and by the late nineties, I simply could not watch it anymore. They took all the intensity and fun out of it for me. Here is what the game seemed like to me in the nineties:

Faceoff.
Puck in the corner. Grapple. Grasp. Struggle. Muck. Clutch. Grab. Whistle.

Faceoff.
Icing. Whistle.

Faceoff.
Puck out of play. Whistle.

Faceoff.
Skate through the neutral zone. Offside. Whistle.

Faceoff.
Shot. Goalie ties up puck. Whistle.

REPEAT.

The game became so mind numbingly boring I couldn’t bear to watch it.

I have only watched infrequent games this decade, but when I began watching the Montreal-Boston series, I was amazed at how different the game was. So much faster, no whistles.

But when I saw Thomas lay the lumber on that guy, I could see the heart of the game still existed...:)

I would still rather watch a physical game rather than a finesse game. But that is me. Some people like it the other way around.

[Betis70]

Since the lockout, it is much more fun to watch again, but this year and last are standouts in the playoffs. There have been some very intense, free-flowing hockey (still with physical play) without all the clutch and grab stuff.

Ah the old Adams Division. That was fun stuff, even if my boyhood team (The Whalers) was the perennial bottom feeders.

[Alberta's Child]

Then the game began to change with the trap, the restructuring of the divisions and such, and by the late nineties, I simply could not watch it anymore. They took all the intensity and fun out of it for me. Here is what the game seemed like to me in the nineties:

I think you overlooked a number of things about hockey in the 1990s. For one thing, the "trap" didn't just appear out of nowhere in the 1990s. In fact, the Montreal Canadiens had adopted and perfected it more than 25 years earlier (which explains why the Devils became the standard-bearer for the neutral-zone trap in the 1990s, with Montreal Hall of Famers Jacques Lemaire and Larry Robinson serving as the core of their coaching staff).

Montreal was a dominant offensive team when they played the trap, and the Devils were a very underrated offensive team as well (just look at their offensive numbers in those five or six years between 1994 and 2003 when they were legitimate Stanley Cup contenders).

What really brought about the decline of hockey in the 1990s was expansion in that era. There simply wasn't enough talent to fill the rosters of all those teams, so the NHL ended up with so many players who should have been third-line and fourth-line forwards and #5/#6 defensemen creeping up on rosters and being forced to play key roles on many teams. That's not going to change unless the NHL starts cultivating a heck of a lot more talent, or until the NHL seriously considers contracting to a 20-team or 24-team league.