There's nothing new about it

I have an irrational hate-on for the term "new NHL". Ever since the lock-out ended, everyone and their uncle has been referring to the NHL as the "new NHL".

It is not new.

Just because every member of the hockey media is 40+ and associates the name Crosby first with Still & Nash and then with Sydney doesn't mean the game became "new" for the 05/06 season. It's a salary cap people. Believe it or not, hockey was not the first sport to come up with this astounding idea nor will it be the last. There is nothing "new" about setting a limit on what teams can spend on players. It's not like they decided to put eleven guys on per side, switch the game to a field, have them run instead of skate, then have them use their feet to kick a ball and call the game the most common-sense name they could think of (soccer, of course).

It's still hockey. Okay, maybe finally making Bryan McCabe irrelevant is deserving of new, but really now. What else changed since the lock-out? There are still plenty of big contracts (see Ovechkin, Alex; Lecavalier, Vincent; DiPietro, Rick), Martin Brodeur is still stopping not only the puck but the little flecks of ice that also fly up with the puck, Gary Bettman is still a moron and the Leafs still suck.

So enough with this "new NHL" nonsense. The only thing that would make it new would be to get rid of all the tired old hockey media and replace them with me.