With October right around the corner, the MLB regular season will finally be wrapping up, the NFL will be in full swing and the college football season will begin conference play.

But the most exciting thing in sports won’t be the baseball playoffs, and certainly won’t be just another weekend of football games.

The NHL is back.

Don’t get me wrong, I love football, baseball and basketball; I played all three in high school and have never played an organized game of hockey in my life.  But when it comes to watching a game, nothing can come close to hockey.  The speed and energy on the ice cannot be matched from start to finish by any other sport.

A recent Wall Street Journal study found that the average NFL game takes over three hours, but has only 11 minutes of game play.  The rest of the time is taken up by huddles, replays, commercials, timeouts and all that other jazz.  Hockey is all action, all the time.  In this game, 60 minutes on the clock means 60 minutes of action.  There is no downtime or standing around talking about the next play.

Everything happens on the fly in hockey, and the excitement never stops for the full 60 minutes.  Basketball is the only other sport that can make the same claim… but the NBA has become synonymous with boring since defense left the league.

In the game of Lord Stanley, you get the best of both worlds.  You get the physicality and agility of football, as well as the endurance and constant action of basketball.  It’s got football’s bone-crushing hits and basketball’s breathtaking breakaways.

And, oh, yeah: It’s on ice.

So as baseball season winds down and football season drags on, America’s most exciting sport is right around the corner.  And, hey, maybe sports fans in this town might actually have something to cheer for.