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Like so many goldfish crackers, the sports world has long gone swimmingly along in one direction, while the NHL hummed along the other way, marketing itself as a major sport while marching to its own drumbeat.
That's part of what made the game so interesting.
Eventually, that had to change. The NHL had to grow up, and it did, becoming more mainstream and surfing the many-millions of incoming and outgoing revenue streams and operating costs.
Every now and then, however, the NHL finds ways to show how it's a little bit different.
The most recent example of that is the schedule, which actually shows an increase in travel for the teams, as opposed to the last couple of seasons.
Personally, I'm all for it ... if for any other reason than it means less long car commutes to lovely Nassau County, Long Island.
But it does makes you wonder if the NHL realizes that jet fuel costs for its league teams totals something akin to the national budget of a Third World country, or California (same thing).
Apparently, some teams do realize it.
"Since 2006, fuel costs have doubled on our charter jets," Comcast-Spectacor chief operating officer Peter Luukko said Wednesday, referring to the price of carrying the Flyers from Florida to Vancouver and all points in between.
""That's a big jump in costs. That has a big effect on the budget, and this year we had to increase our scouting budget 25 percent. That's directly attributable to fuel costs, because our scouts fly and drive all over the world."
In the old days, the only reason the world intruded on the politics of the world's best hockey league was because the Soviet Union kept holding its superstar players hostage and only released them to play here for a sizeable ransom.
Now that was unique.
Of course, the NHL used to have a lot of quirks that made it stand out from the other major sports leagues.
Putting franchises in small towns? Check.
No national TV contract? Check.
Rules that consistently didn't make sense? Check.
A league of owners in cahoots with the head of the players union? Check on that, too.
Given time during the 1990s, the league became much more buttoned down. NHL Players Association chief Alan Eagleson was tossed in jail and Villanova resident Gil Stein, would go down as the league's last NHL "president" after being booted for fixing his election to the Hockey Hall of Fame.
Ah, growing pains.
Then Gary Bettman took over as the first NHL Commissioner, a title much more major-league-sports-like.
A few of his wacky expansion city choices worked for a while ... and then the good people of Nashville decided to stay on nightclub row rather than walk over for a hockey game, and the good people of South Florida stayed on the beach 'til sundown, and the good people of Phoenix decided to stay in their air-conditioned houses, then ESPN dropped the TV contract and Versus came along ...
You know, growing pains.
But in 2008, with Bettman still somehow in charge, hockey remains hockey in Nashville and in college towns in Ohio and North Carolina ... and the saga of the NHL's quirky schedule carries on.
It was changed, and not for any particular reason except that the league was trying to instigate more heat between division rivals folllowing the NHL lockout in 2005.
It resulted in Western Conference teams playing East teams just once a year or not at all, with travel limited to every other year between certain inter-conference teams. So Toronto and Detroit, old-time Original Six rivals and natural logistic enemies, would go a whole year without playing each other.
And West Coast viewers rarely get the chance to see this new kid named Sid in Pittsburgh, or his games on TV --- not that it was anything new for NHL fans.
But it was OK, because the Devils and Rangers could play each other eight times a season. Except that some believe familiarity can breed as much disinterest in the stands as it does contempt on the ice. Lo and behold, a movement culminated late last year in another change.
So we'll have every NHL team playing each other at least once this season. For good measure, a push will be made to expand the schedule from 82 games to 84, so that another change can be made to enable every team to play each other once on the road and once at home.
As it is, division rivals will play each other two fewer times than they have in recent seasons. In the case of the Rangers, like every Atlantic Division opponent, the Flyers play them six times, three home and three away.
Four of those games against the Rangers, by the way, will come in the last four weeks of the season.
But with every smirk and empty shrug of the shoulders by the common American oil baron friendly politician out there, the more everyone is going to realize that the days of $3 a gallon gas - much less anything less than astronomical for jet fuel - are gone.
Travel costs for pro sports teams are soaring, and naturally, those costs are most commonly going to be borne by the $160 jersey-wearing, $75 ticket-buying, $7 beer-swilling consumer.
"When your overhead increases, eventually, it does lead to higher ticket prices," Luukko said. "There's no way it can't."
Such are the times we live in.
