It’s almost time for the NHL’s 2023-2024 season to start, and while we won’t be publishing every Saturday on the sport anymore (for awhile, at least), it doesn’t mean we won’t be watching on Tuesday when the puck drops. The NHL is the best North American professional league as we have outlined here before, and we will reiterate those reasons here today: nothing has changed in the last handful of seasons to alter this reality.

Think about it: MLB is a a joke both on cheaters and corruptive greed; the NFL is a joke on cheaters, too, not to mention the big TV markets; and the NBA is the worst when it comes to manipulating the postseason for maximum TV exposure. Now consider the NHL: the last three champs have come from Tampa Bay, Denver, and Las Vegas—those are the 13th, 16th, and 40th television markets in the country, respectively. Diversity!

Last year is a perfect example: the Boston Bruins set records for regular-season success, and they play in a Top 10 TV market. But come playoff times, the Bruins lost in the first round to a team from Miami, the 18th-biggest TV market. That would rarely happen in MLB, the NBA, or the NFL. You didn’t see the undefeated New England Patriots lose to a rando team from a small(er) market. Nope, they lost to the New York Giants.

Just a glance at the CBS Sports website for NHL news and information gets us excited: “Bold Predictions: Bruins Miss Playoffs”—because we all know hockey doesn’t pull shit like baseball, basketball, and football do. Maybe because it’s more Canadian in origins, the NHL has kept its purity and avoided corruption. Heck, if the sport was corrupt, a Canadian team would have won the Cup multiple times in the last 30 seasons.

But no … The Montréal Canadiens were the last Canadian team to win the Stanley Cup, and that took a miracle performance from the team’s goaltender to do so. Since 1993, only 6 teams from north of the border have even made it to the Finals—and none of them have won. In fact, those 4 Cup runners up have lost Game 7s, situations where the league could have totally manipulated the officiating to its liking. Hmmm.

Purity, to the end. Drop that puck now, baby! We will be hitting up the Vegas Golden Knights game on October 27 ourselves, and we can’t wait to tell you all about it …