If you haven't seen an NHL game this season, you've missed the most dramatic improvement since Zambonis replaced shovels.   If this doesn't draw more TV fans than Texas Hold 'em poker -- well, people just don't like skillful hockey.   This new version of NHL hockey is lightning on ice.

The NHL dug up the rule book under a quarter century of dust, and decided the offense deserves an equal opportunity to compete.  Eliminating the offside pass rule at the red line was a good step; moving the goal line toward the end board and the blue line toward the neutral zone certainly helps the power play; and confining the goalkeeper to a trapezoid area is window dressing -- but eliminating sticks from the repertoire of defensive players will have earth-shattering consequences on the game.

Like it or not, you can't cheat any more on defense.   You can't hook, hold, slash, trip, interfere, or cross-check.   To stop an offensive player, you have to skate.   Wow, that's novel -- you actually have to skate as well on defense as offense.

If the NHL continues to call the game as they have in the exhibition season -- and history tells us they might bow to the complaints of losing coaches and frustrated defensemen -- the future looks bleak for those D who can't skate, handle the puck, and play by the rules.

The game has suddenly and dramatically changed.   Defensive players who cheat are no longer aided and abetted by referees.  There are still plenty of heavy hits -- and just as many fights -- but they've resurrected those forgotten rules about using your stick illegally to play defense.

Dust off the ol' Larry Robinson pokecheck, folks.  Youth coaches better figure out how to teach defense without cheating, because the game will change at every level as soon as we want it to.  Plan some skating drills in which the defenseman mirrors the forward, because the D who can't do this have no future in hockey.

Alexander Ovechkin might have had a less spectacular introduction to the NHL if he'd come of age a couple years earlier.   But he is going to be one of the most exciting players in NHL history -- not in three years.   Right now in his rookie season.   He races through the neutral zone with the puck -- stick and feet moving 100 miles an hour -- and approaches the blue line with the belief that all defensemen are stationary cones trying things only a naïve kid would consider.

The other night he beat a defenseman with moves we haven't seen for thirty years.   Alex faked inside, slid the puck between the twisted legs of the D, danced toward the net, faked a shot, and stuffed the puck in the top shelf.   Just inside the blue line, the opposing defenseman tried to prevent the inevitable in the old fashion manner.   After being totally faked out, he struggled to regain his balance and swung his stick at the legs of his tormentor.

This was a big-time two-hander that might have broken the legs of a mortal, but Ovechkin has legs like tree trunks, and the slash was probably not even felt.   However, it didn't go un-noticed as it would have two years ago.  The referee assessed a double minor, so the goon had to sit in the box after being humiliated for a goal.

This is the game of the future, folks.   Get involved.   Write the league and tell them you like to see skills returning to the NHL.   More importantly, make sure it moves in this direction at younger levels, and officials are empowered to defend the skills.

It took us three decades to ruin a good game with the thought that illegal stick-work was just "good defense."   It's taken the NHL only a month to make a clear statement that defenders will have to skate in order to stop the attack.   Now, anyone who loves skillful, fast hockey must become defenders of our game, just as the referees have.