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Longtime hockey fans should be giddy. The NHL endured growing pains that lasted for decades.

Blues fans felt this more than most. Their team experienced multiple ownership changes, with each sale occurring with the franchise in some peril.

Succeeding in the smaller NHL markets is still challenging, but the Blues can benefit from the industry’s steady growth.

The NHL survived the pandemic and continued its upward climb. It struck new U.S. television deals with ESPN/ABC and Turner Sports in 2021 and saw a double-digit ratings boost in the playoffs.

The league set new marks for attendance (22.56 million) and overall revenue ($6.2 billion) last season. That lifted the salary cap to $88 million this season, and early projections suggest the cap could climb to $92.5 million next year.

The sport features more speed and skill than ever before, with the help of rules changes that added more pace. Stretch passes trigger breakaways. Controlled zone exits and zone entries create more opportunities off the rush.

The crackdown on Velcro checking and cheapjack goon tactics has allowed talent to play. Talented skaters like Blues forwards Robert Thomas and Jordan Kyrou can wheel and make plays.

Superstars abound. On this side of the league, Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl, Nathan MacKinnon, Mikko Rantanen, Cale Makar, Kirill Kaprizov and Quinn Hughes are showstoppers. On the other side, Nikita Kucherov, David Pastrnak, Artemi Panarin, Auston Matthews, William Nylander and Jack Hughes will dazzle.

The young stars keep coming: Connor Bedard, Tim Stutzle, Adam Fantilli, Macklin Celebrini, Wyatt Johnston, Leo Carlsson, Will Smith, Quinton Byfield and Logan Cooley.

And destined Hall of Famers are hanging tough. Alex Ovechkin, 39, will try to pass Wayne Gretzky as the NHL’s all-time leading goal scorer while Sid “The Kid� Crosby will keep defying age at 37.

The midseason 4 Nations Face-Off will showcase NHL stars playing for teams representing the U.S., Canada, Sweden and Finland. The league is committed to sending its best players to the 2026 and 2030 Olympics to boost global marketing.

The Blues will experience the NHL’s growth firsthand this week. They began their first road trip in Seattle, where the expansion Kraken have done fantastic business from Day 1.

This three-game journey will end in Las Vegas, where the Golden Knights set the success standard for every expansion team in every sport.

The league collected a $500 million expansion fee from the Golden Knights, then a $650 million fee from the Kraken. With Salt Lake City pushing hard for an expansion team this year, the NHL brokered the purchase of the Arizona Coyotes for $1.2 billion instead.

Franchise valuations are soaring. The Coyotes sale subtracted a terrible owner, Alex Meruelo, and moved the team from a tiny college arena in Tempe, Arizona, to the hungry new market in Utah.

That was still another triumph for Commissioner-for-Life Gary Bettman, who preserved through two decades of turbulence to lead the league to more prosperous times.

The Sun Belt expansion finally took hold. Now Atlanta wants back in, and Houston wants in, too. After the most recent league meetings, Bettman killed the expansion buzz — at least in the near term.

“We feel no compulsion to do it right now,� he told reporters. “We just came off our most successful season in our history, we’ve got collective bargaining to deal with, we’ve got new media arrangements to do in Canada in the next couple of years. If something came in and checked all the boxes, and we felt that it might make sense, we might consider it.�

After 20 years of labor unrest, the owners and the NHL Players Association finally settled into a mutually beneficial partnership. With a salary cap and salary floor as the central feature in the collective bargaining agreement, the NHL has found the right balance.

There is labor peace, so much so that Bettman expects to wrap up bargaining for the next CBA before the next offseason.

“I don’t want to speculate, but if we have it done by my media avail in the Stanley Cup Final, everyone would be very happy,� he said.

Ah, how times changed.

The current system allows top players to use the leverage of free agency to command eight-digit salaries. At the same time, the salary cap keeps the big-market teams from dominating the competition, and the salary floor prevents franchises from running the sort of low payrolls you see in baseball.

The resulting competitive depth is impressive. For instance, the Blues are widely regarded as a playoff long shot this season despite finishing with 92 points last season.

The Athletic crunched the numbers and ranked the Blues 25th. So did EP Rinkside. ESPN picked them to finish seventh in the Central Division, ahead of only the rebuilding Chicago Blackhawks.

It’s not that the Blues are all that bad this season, it’s that the NHL just keeps getting better.