from Bruce Arthur of the Toronto Star,

In 2002, the NHL stopped collecting real-time stats, or at least telling the players what they were. Hits, takeaways, giveaways, blocked shots, even ice time: they disappeared from the record. The players, it seemed, had been using them in arbitration hearings, and the league didn’t like it. The union went to arbitration in 2003, and won.

“The award was silent as to how the league was going to provide us with all the statistics,” said Ian Pulver, a current agent and then an NHLPA lawyer. “And so lo and behold, for the longest time we were getting hard copies from the teams.”

Yep, the stats arrived in boxes. The union had to hire people to input the data into computers. It was a simpler, more contentious time.

Just 12 years later people say Corsi is dead, and it must be so. Fenwick, too, Corsi’s slightly lesser known half-brother. Those terms have been the wellspring of a wealth of loud and pointless fights in the hockey community, and you can call those fights what you want: the wars of the poses, the boxscore rebellion, the bore war. If Corsi and Fenwick are no more, the wars must be over.

This is all half-true, though your exact percentage may vary.

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