Hockey season is under way, and I wanted to get a few words down on what is quickly becoming my second-favorite sport.

As many of you know, the NHL hit rock bottom in what was supposed to be the season of 04-05 when the owners and the players union failed to come to terms on a CBA and the season was ultimately canceled. However, sometimes you need to hit rock bottom before you can begin the slow crawl back up, and I think that that is exactly what we saw here in this instance. The NHL needed a salary cap, the owners knew it, and they would not start play again without one. The players resisted, but in fact the outcome will prove to benefit all in the end. If you look at what the cap has done for the NFL, it is clear to any thinking person (read: anybody except apparently David Stern, Bud Selig, and the swarms of sports columnists who are constantly sucking up to big market teams and going on about how sports leagues "need" franchises in New York, Boston, LA, etc., to be successful), that the correct way to run a league, if you want to capture a nationwide audience, is to create an environment where any team can win. People will go and see a winner; that is why baseball is so popular in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Houston, St. Louis, Chicago, and virtually nowhere else. Those are the markets where the teams are capable, playing under the current economic format, to compete. In the same vein, the NHL was hugely popular in Detroit, where the team won a regular basis, and pretty much no where else. That WILL change with the salary cap. The Red Wings will retain their huge fan base, just as the Cowboys, Redskins, and other huge market, historically successful NFL franchises retained their fanbases in the cap-era, while the other teams will become popular because the fans will know that their team is either a contender right away, or is in the process of becoming one. Will the NHL ever be as popular as the NFL? Certainly not in our lifetime, but the NHL could reestablish itself as the 4th major sport and might even pass basketball (which is a horrible sport to watch). Add in the rule changes, which make the game more exciting and better to watch, and the advent of HDTV, which does more for watching hockey than any other sport, and the future of the NHL looks bright.

Anyway, as for this season, my main concern, being a Capitals fan, is the continued development of Alexander Ovechkin, who is already one of the League's elite players, and the slow development of a set of complimentary pieces around him. League-wide, I understand that the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim are chief among the Cup favorites this season, although that means almost nothing in the NHL.

Anyway, that's what I got this morning. Tomorrow I'll have the new NFL power rankings.