The best game you can name.

To mark the end of the NHL lockout and the belated start of the professional hockey season in North America, here is a classic of musical Canadiana from Stompin' Tom Connors. Much as many baseball fans declared themselves to be thoroughly disgusted and disillusioned following the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike, one can now hear many hockey fans expressing bitter dislike of the NHL, the NHL Players' Association, and the business and commercial aspects of professional hockey in general. Perhaps I lack the sort of high-minded scruple that can lead to such bitterness, but I'm simply glad that the lockout is over and that I can now look forward to future broadcasts of Hockey Night in Canada and - assuming that I can act quickly enough to get one of the few remaining affordable tickets - a Leafs home game at the Air Canada Centre.

As French Canadian writer Roch Carrier reminds us in a bit of prose reproduced on the back of the Canadian five-dollar bill, winter can be a long, long season. Whatever we might think of costly disputes between franchise owners and professional athletes, let us be thankful that we have diversions like ice hockey to help us get through months of cold and darkness on the way to spring and summer. AMDG.