Is hockey worth it?

Yesterday, NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman unveiled the league’s plan to return

to play in an expanded playoff format signed off on by the league owners and the

NHLPA. While this might seem like something we all want, and maybe “need” in some strange

sense of the word, I felt compelled to step out of my self-imposed exile from hockey blogging

(and I’m not sure this post won’t reemphasize that I should return to my Fortress of Solitude) to

say this: it’s just not worth it.

I don’t know how else to put this, how to describe the massive self-inflicted wound our country

has experienced, because the idea of 100,000 people dead in such a short period of time is quite

literally incomprehensible to me. I’m…