I'm really excited for the NHL. It's just time, after so much negativity for so long, for optimism. It's almost as if a brick home has been destroyed and been rebuilt with superior bricks.

I'm really excited for the NHL that they found a partner to lock arms with. It didn't seem as if the NHL and ESPN could find the same page. At OLN, the NHL is a big fish in a small pond. At ESPN, it was a little fish in a big pond.

The game is exponentially more exciting. When I think of the entertainment value of the sport in the five years leading up to the lockout and compare it to the product today, it's almost unfathomable to me the progress we've made in injecting entertainment back onto the ice.

That gives us a leg up because fans will know when to find us.

Now the players have a vested interest in growing the sport because their salaries are tied to revenue, so everyone is pulling the same rope. It was almost as if we had to hit rock bottom until we started building back up. I firmly believe we would not have all the positive things we have if we did not go through a year without the sport. So to me, if that was the price tag that we had to pay, it was absolutely worth it.

What happened was, the style created the disappearance of stars. Like when the meteor hit and the dinosaurs died. There were no star players. Maybe there were stars, but they just weren't afforded the opportunity to put up star-like numbers and to be visible. Most games looked the same, most players looked the same.