I hope this is less offensive than the ridiculous New York Rangers "guide" to women watching hockey.

• All guides to watching hockey are incredibly condescending, except this one.
• Regression is like gravity or thermodynamics, it does not exist.
• Counting things is inherently evil.
• A 20 year-old left-winger who scored at a 36 goal and 71 point rate is a second-line bust. Giving $98 million to a 27 year-old left-winger who scored at a 31 goal and 69 point rate is brilliant.
• NHL hockey causes the local economy to grow at an infinite rate. Conversely, the lockout meant the economies of NHL cities experienced the worst economic downturn in human history.
• Concussions are best treated with homeopathy and rebalancing of the player’s humors.
• You contend by losing intentionally. Then BAM! Stanley Cup.
• Character and dressing-room culture are more important than ability, performance, and driving play.

Exhibit A:

Chris Chelios, Claude Lemieux, Guy Carbonneau, Patrick Roy, Mike Ribeiro, Mikhail Grabovski, Guillaume Latendresse, Saku Koivu, Sergei Kostitsyn, Mike Cammalleri, Andrei Kostitsyn

vs.

Denis Savard, Jim Montgomery, Jocelyn Thibault, Andrei Kovalenko, Martin Rucinsky, Janne Niinimaa, Greg Pateryn, Benoit Pouilot, Rene Bourque, Patrick Holland, miscellaneous Magic Beans

• Teams score a lot of goals while fights are going on which explains why they are a key to winning.
• Eastern European players who keep to themselves and don’t speak much with the media are enigmatic and won’t care come playoff time.
• Any player with a sense of personality and exuberance is selfish and doesn't play the game the right way.
• All hockey players are boring.
• A coach whose most notable achievements is putting his team down 2-men because of a bench minor and wearing an awful mustard-coloured suit can make charity-working #1 defensemen better people.
• Goals and points are the only way to measure a defenseman’s contribution to his team.
• This guide would have been tolerable had it been a slideshow with pictures.