It’s probably the natural grind of a hockey season, and life, that’s made me feel tired of everything. In the line of business that I’ve been in for the last six, seven years, it’s easy to get cynical. The hype around the games, the stars, the general managers, is draining, and in the end, disappointing, because it seems to me that it creates a world that overpromises and underdelivers.

And that’s where cynicism breeds.

I can’t remember the last time I smiled while watching hockey.

Maybe the pro sports world is a cynical place because we travel back and forth between childhood dreams and adulthood realities every day, and no game can live up to the expectations a nine-year-old’s mind can create, regardless of the body that the mind happens to be in at that moment.

But cynicism is dangerous because it eats you up inside, poisons your mind so that when you’re stewing in your own misery, the only thing you see are the broken promises.

I’ve been disappointed with HBO’s reality special on the NHL. I probably didn’t want to see the reality of the NHL, especially since it seems to be a little too close to Slap Shot for my taste. Not that it felt very real, anyway.

I can’t find the energy to get excited about the annual “returns to the roots of hockey”, the outdoor games played at big stadiums everywhere.

I can’t get pumped about the choreographed goal celebrations.

Everything feels manufactured, artificial, and fake.

The coaches and players never smile. Or maybe they do joke and smile, but I don’t remember it. Everything seems so serious. Everybody’s so serious. Everything’s a battle, every game a war.

Fortunately, there are moments that give me hope. Like Stefan Liv skating to Jacob Markström in a Swedish Elitserien game to see if he was feeling OK, after he was hit in the throat by a puck. And the Women’s under-18 World Championship in Stockholm I’ll be covering this week.

Their highs are high, their valleys deep. They do their best, they give their all, and they play for each other. In one game two Finns collided in the offensive zone, leaving one of them on the ice injured. She had to leave the game but the team lost two players, because the other girl felt so bad about the incident that she couldn’t play, either.

The other night, I stood in the cafeteria, waiting for the second period to begin in a Finland – Germany game, when I glanced at the Finland bench.

I saw Finland’s number 2 sit on the bench, waiting for the puck to drop as well, but she was dangling her legs, left, right, left, right, left, right. Johanna Koivisto, 16, was sitting on the bench, but her 154 centimeters weren’t enough to reach the floor with her skates.

I smiled.

Maybe there’s hope for me, after all.