By the age of 18, the average American has witnessed 200,000 acts of violence on television, most of them occurring during Game 1 of an NHL playoff series.

You can be writing every day. When you go on a road trip, the trip itself becomes part of the story.

As life speeds by, nostalgia has a shorter pregnancy. Games still in progress are given the straight-to-sepia status of "Instant Classics" no matter how oxymoronic that phrase appears.

My first interview at SI, I sat in silence next to Guy LaFleur for five minutes on the New York Rangers team bus until he finally broke the ice. Those early interviews, every one of them was like a terrible first date.

Hockey belongs to the Cartoon Network, where a person can be pancaked by an ACME anvil, then expanded - accordion-style - back to full stature, without any lasting side effect.

I can enjoy an Arsenal-Chelsea match without having to worry about getting exclusive quotes afterwards from one of the participants as he makes his way to his Bentley. I was never very good at steaming up to someone and engaging them in conversation like that.

I never learned the secret handshake. That may be one of the reasons I've grown to love English soccer.