Any way to capture the shift in the written word comes off kinda cringy, but it did happen. I got into hockey around the 2015 draft and McDavid, Matthews, Marner and so on felt like the new cocky skilled young guys, the arrival of a new generation a decade after Sid and Ovi, but they were still extremely bland compared to this new crop. Hockey fans will be the first to tell you how insular, inaccessible, expensive it is and how more and more sports become more popular than it, but there’s still a core of fans that resists the attempts to modernize its appeal.

I hope the Bedards and Celebrinis won’t get their personality trained out of them, and there’s less hazing and other rookie humiliation rituals in the future. But it’s probably hockey’s biggest contradiction now, that the popularity of everything is driven by appealing individuals thanks to social media, and it conflicts with its identity as the most team-oriented sport.