We love lists here on Puck Daddy, and John Grigg of The Hockey News has a pot-stirrer today called "Top 10: Things that changed the game"; published in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of Jacques Plante becoming the first goaltender to wear a mask.

(The goalie mask anniversary is Sunday. We plan on celebrating by watching a "Friday The 13th" marathon and eating overcooked hamburgers until our teeth break.)

The game-changing list, via The Hockey News Web site:

10. The elimination of the rover and the introduction of forward pass
9. The Summit Series
8. The Miracle on Ice
7. The World Hockey Association
6. Wayne Gretzky
5. The 2004-05 Lockout
4. The NHLPA
3. Expansion
2. Europeans
1. The Entry Draft

Obviously, head over and read the justification for each entry, because Grigg has some solid arguments for each one. It's an odd collection at first glance, because the focus should be on "10 things that changed the game" but some of them are clearly more influenced by "things that changed the NHL," like the WHA. The top three would be solid in any order; the NHLPA's probably a little high, but that might be a generational gripe.

The 2004-05 Lockout at No. 5? Huh. The Miracle on Ice at No. 8? Double-huh.

There's no question the lockout ushered in an "NHL 2.0" of new economics and new rules. (Grigg doesn't even mention the shootout, which remains a fundamental and reprehensible change.) Here's Grigg:

The lockout single-handedly altered the face of the NHL. The economics of the game were drastically altered, in both the way franchises worked together and how they worked with the players; the salary cap was instituted; the on-ice game was changed with the elimination of the red line and a new standard for enforcing rules; and the NHLPA is still reeling from the effects of the power vacuum created by the ouster of former executive director Bob Goodenow.

The problem is that we're less than a decade removed from it, and we have another CBA negotiation on the horizon. Verdict: Too soon.

Blasphemous as it may seem, the Miracle on Ice at No. 8 is about right.

Grigg is right that it "awoke a nation to the game," but what did it change fundamentally? Gretzky had more to do with U.S. expansion, which in turn "awoke" more hockey markets than 1980 did. Plus, we have professional players in the Olympics 30 years after the amateurs stunned the Soviets.

It's one of the greatest hockey moments of all-time; perhaps the greatest. But did the Miracle on Ice change the game like goalie mask, the forward pass and the entry draft did?