(Ed. Note: Thus ends the broadcast week for Puck Daddy, as we're on the road for the weekend. Feel free to use this comment thread to talk hockey, post headlines or continue debating the contraction of the Southeast Division. Keep an eye on the main NHL page for breaking news. Fun starts again on Monday morning. Thanks again for reading ... even if our agility score on NHL 09 is embarrassing.)

The first rule of being a "true" hockey fan is that you're always under the unspoken assumption that most of the puckheads you meet aren't as die-hard as you are.

Everyone's done this dance: You meet a fellow fan, and you poke and prod their hockey street cred and puck knowledge until you're satisfied you can successfully make a Theo Fleury or Alexandre Daigle reference and still get a laugh. (The comfort level for unleashing a Pelle Lindbergh joke might need to be established over the course of several years. Or beers.)

By that measure, Alan Bass, a senior writer for the Bleacher Report, is evidently a true hockey fan -- because he's rather fond of telling others that they're not. And because he's gotten this close to the Stanley Cup. That too.

His essay "Only A True Hockey Fan..." is a baffling collection of contradictions and generalizations that manages roughly four accurate assessments for whether one is a "true" hockey fan:

Only a true hockey fan will cheer at a beautiful goal scored, even if it is scored against his home team.

Only a true hockey fan will continue to support his team, even in a bad time.

Only a true hockey fan will be a hockey fan forever.  If you one day decide hockey isn't so great, you never were, are, or will be a true hockey.

Only a true hockey fan will love the Stanley Cup, no matter how often is has eluded his team.

There's no disputing these. If you're a Phoenix Coyotes fan that doesn't give it up for the Rick Nash goal or the Alexander Ovechkin goal, then you're not really a hockey fan. And if you don't gaze with slack-jawed awe at the Stanley Cup like it was a mystical artifact in an Indiana Jones flick, then perhaps it's time to join the exciting world of indoor lacrosse fandom.

Alas, the rest of Bass's list is a tad flawed. In fact, it reads like a parody of what a "true" hockey fan really is.

Only a true hockey fan will sit down after a loss, and not make excuses, such as "the refs threw that game", or, "Crosby was diving", etc.

Wow, is that way, way, way off. One of the hallmarks of being a "true" hockey fan is that the other team is always cheating and the refs are always in the bag for them. "C'mon ref!" and "Are you kidding me?" are as commonplace for hockey fans as screaming "Shoot!" on the power-play. (Not a preferred practice, but still something a "true" hockey fan can't help but bellow.)

Maybe during the summer, you realize the better team won. Sitting down after a loss, it's Excuse City.

Only a true hockey fan realizes that any hockey game is worth watching, whether NHL, International, Junior, Minor league, or bantam.

This is something a baseball fan would say; the type who drags his wife to a Single A game in bumfrack Iowa because he thinks Kevin Costner might show up.

Not all hockey is that watchable. If it were, then they'd send out the Mites on Ice during both intermissions instead of just the first.

Only a true hockey fan realizes that the Stanley Cup winner is truly the best team; the Super Bowl champion can get lucky for three games.  The Stanley Cup champion can not get lucky for 16 games.  To win four playoff series, you have to be good.

This is a generalization. If the Edmonton Oilers had won the Stanley Cup in 2006, would they have been the best team in hockey, or just in the postseason? As a New Jersey Devils fan, I'll honestly say that they were the best playoff team in 1995, but were certainly not the best team in hockey. They got lucky, they got hot, and they met a better hockey team in the Detroit Red Wings that just couldn't figure out the trap.

That's just how it happens sometimes, which makes the Stanley Cup playoffs the gold-standard for professional sports.

Only a true hockey fan wakes up every morning thinking about hockey, and goes to sleep every night dreaming about it.

I'm sorry, but if going to sleep thinking about Scarlett Johansson making me a deep-dish pizza while twirling on a stripper pole makes me a golf fan, so be it.

Only a true hockey fan will continue to support the league in a bad time, such as a lockout.

Finally, there's this one, which is both insane and insulting.

When we conceived of the "5 Ways I'd Change" summer project, we were careful not to make it about "hockey" but rather about the NHL. Hockey is flawless; the NHL is preposterously flawed. If you're a hockey fan that believes the current incarnation of the League deserves your unwavering support during a work-stoppage, chances are you're in Gary Bettman's gene pool.

Dissent is honorable; in fact, a "true" hockey fan is one that proudly wears his or her scars from various arguments about fighting or salaries or contraction. I haven't met one NHL fan who isn't bitter about something the League's done to muck things up. It's just who we are.

Read Bass's list, if only to gain one man's rather warped perception of what a "true" hockey fan is. But maybe I'm the dillweed here. After all, Bass writes: "Only a true hockey fan will accept the opinion of every other hockey fan, as long as that opinion is intelligent, and realistic."

Hey, I accepted four of his opinions. It's a start.

So, fellow puckheads, I ask you to complete the following in ways that it was not completed in Mr. Bass's essay:

"Only a true hockey fan ..."

Related: Hockey Fans