I grew up watching hockey when there were 6 teams. There was some incidental violence from team “enforcers”, but speed, nimbleness, coordinated offenses and defenses and grit (from mostly Canadians) was what made it interesting.
As a Blackhawk fan, Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita were icons of the game.
I also started in the six team, old [Madison Square @ 8th Ave] Garden era. My father started taking me in the early-mid 50s when I was about eight years old. By the time I was in eighth grade I was also taking the train in from LI together with friends. When I went off to college 150 miles away my father started getting season tickets pretty much to lure me back to NYC, and it worked. That's when I started to go to 30+ games a year, pretty regularly driving myself or taking a bus down and back all in the same evening. I'm sure I saw Mikita and Hull in person dozens of times.
Besides the fighting I eventually realized that I was watching other people work and I cared more about the outcome of the games than the players did, which was stupid. I still think it's a great game, but only once the teams reach the Stanley Cup semis.
ML/NJ