Jun 11, 2016 5 min read

Hockey season could end tonight.

It should have ended a long time ago, and I’m not talking about the Penguins not eliminating the San Jose Sharks Thursday night. I’m talking about it being June 12 and the NHL championsip hasn’t been decided.

If the NHL season ends tonight, or with a Game 7 Wednesday night, you won’t have to wait long for more hockey. In three months it will be time for the World Cup of Hockey.

That’s right. Eight countries in Toronto beginning Sept. 17.

And hockey fans everywhere will be watching, though it will be the beginning of the football season and Major League Baseball will be in the stretch drive.

And the NHL should use the interest generated by the World Cup as a reason to wise up and start their season in September instead of October.

The World Cup games will be real all-star games made up of teams that are actually interested in winning and playing the same game they’ll play when the NHL season starts in October.

It and the Olympics basketball and hockey tournaments are the only real professional all-star games.

Early regular-season games aren’t the same as international all-star games but fans around the world will show they’re capable of enjoying hockey before October.

Lots of people in Western Pennsylvania and Northern California are enjoying hockey in mid-June, but how much attention would you be paying to Game 6 if the Penguins weren’t playing?

The NHL season could start in September and have someone skating around with the Stanley Cup in late April or early May. The best and most important games could be played when lots of people in the northeast where, you know, they play hockey and know what ice looks like when it’s not in a glass, are still housebound.

Football is still played mostly on weekends and Monday nights. Why would Penguins fans have a problem with going to or watching a regular-season game on a Wednesday night in September?

Lots of them will be watching Sidney Crosby playing against Evgeni Malkin this September.

• If the Penguins win the Stanley Cup, will Mike Sullivan have done the greatest single-season coaching job in Pittsburgh history? Dan Bylsma took a team that was struggling to the Stanley Cup but it was a team that had been to the Final the year before.

Chuck Noll did what might have been the best coaching job in the history of North American sports when he took the Steelers from being the worst sports franchise in North American history and turned it into the best NFL team of all time, but that was done over 10 years.

Johnny Majors took over a Pitt football program that might have been the worst in the country and went to a bowl game his first year and won a mythical national championship five years later. That might have been the most miraculous long-term turnaround in Pittsburgh sports history – right up there with what Noll did, except that Noll won four championships.

The turnaround under Sullivan was astounding. Not only were the Penguins struggling to stay in playoff contention, they were unwatchable. So, if Pittsburgh wins the Cup, I’d have to say Sullivan did the best one-year coaching job in Pittsburgh history.

• The Pirates are having problems with their pitching. They bring up Jamison Taillon from Class AAA, where he was a man among boys. He has a pretty good start and they send him back.

Why?

• Seeing a Game 7 in Pittsburgh Wednesday night wouldn’t be shocking, but the Penguins are much more likely to play as well in Game 6 as they did in Game 5 than Sharks goalie Martin Jones is, and Jones is the No. 1 reason there is a Game 6.

• I’ll take following or covering a team in the Stanley Cup Final over following or covering a team in the Super Bowl any time. Instead of two weeks of sound bites since the Penguins made it to the championship, we’ve had five games, each one having as much action and excitement as any Super Bowl, and there’s at least one more to go.

• In 2010, Jonathan Toews of the Chicago Blackhawks won the Conn Smythe Trophy as the most valuable player in the playoffs. In his last nine games he had one goal, which included no goals and three assists in the Stanley Cup Final.

• When the Penguins’ season started, David Perron, Sergei Plotnikov, Bobby Farnham and Daniel Sprong were wingers. I knew getting rid of Plotnikov was going to haunt them.

• One-game playoffs are exciting but it’s pretty ridiculous to think that everything the Pirates do in their next 100 games will determine whether they get in one.

• The Penguins-Sharks TV ratings in the Pittsburgh market are five times higher than the Sharks in the San Jose market. Overall, the national TV ratings stink. The NHL apparently plans to fix that by putting another team in the desert.

Las Vegas, here we come. Hockey in the summer. Hockey in the desert. Dumb.

John Steigerwald writes a Sunday column for the Observer-Reporter.