...it hasn't yet gotten absurdly over-commercialized...

As someone who grew up watching hockey, I'm sad to report that it seems to be trending that way.

In the early 2000s, most of the commercial sponsors were limited to ads between periods, at least on Hockey Night in Canada. Those ads were for things like pickup trucks and beer. I do know that American broadcasts would have things like "the KFC power play," which was cringy.

I watched my first games in over a decade during the playoffs last year and was appalled by how betting odds and the associated apps had taken over both the ad space and the analyst desk.

My son will probably start getting into sports in the next few years, and I'm not looking forward to trying to convince him that no, we can't win $10k from FanBet or SportsOdds or GambleKing or whatever.

I never cared for team sports at all. I rather went to concerts and stuff like that. A friend told me that you have to see it live, it's so much better. So he took me to a soccerball match. I thought: this is kind of cool, kinda like a festival, people buy merchandise and scatter around, random way too drunk people, all that jazz. Then the game started nd they introduced the players one by one. The home team, so "our" team was first. The fans yelled their names. Then the other team, Ireland was next. The commentators said their first name and the whole stadium yelled "hurensohn" (son of a bitch). I was like: okay, cringe, but everyone around me padded themselves on the back because how funny it was. It never got better, the game was boring as fuck and the fans were obnoxious as hell, calling every other player gay or a faggot or whatever weirdo thing. I had to separate from the group and just wandered around. I met some irish guys and they were super cool, so i just hung out with them on their side for the rest of the game. It was better, but still boring and a super cringefest.

A few years later i won tickets to the spengler cup, and i didn't want to go at first, because of my soccerball experience, but fuck it, it was free and i could just leave. Despite not really liking or understanding the sport, it was waaaaaay waaaay better. People were nicer, more respectful abd i had an overall good time.

I started to enjoy watching it maybe 5 years ago, and I couldn't agree more. The OP isn't wrong in that it's been hidden, though and that is so frustrating. Thanks to the blackouts, it is really expensive or impossible to watch most NHL games here so I mostly don't, which sucks.

Past, nobody tell him about Utah...

Sharks fan, that's rough. It can get better.

Signed,

-- A Detroit Lions fan of 40 years

That’s what’s up

You need to either go to Canada or a Canadian embassy (hockey rink).

I download torrents of each game.

You don't need to actually see entire games; like football, there's a lot of running back and forth without much of anything going on. Very few points are scored.

The fights and the goals are the only parts of the game you need to see; so just watch the highlights on YouTube; you'll save hours of your time and you won't miss a thing.