How excellently renovated? During the NHL All-Star weekend, one visiting NCAA executive told Zimmerman: “I’ve been coming to this building for 20 years, and I really didn’t know where I was. I didn’t recognize it.”

It’s still hard to believe St. Louis didn’t get the 2018 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships (Buffalo won the bid). Within the next year, St. Louis will make a pitch for the 2025 return of the event to the states. Do you know how big this would be — not just the event, but for the city? One could argue it’s the Olympics for hockey players ages 20 and under. It’s a tournament that lasts longer than a week. It would be, as Zimmerman pointed out, the biggest international sporting event in St. Louis since 1904.

As for the recent run of hockey fun, it began with the Winter Classic, which also introduced us to the phrase “Heartland of Hockey.” Since then, two things have happened simultaneously. Parallel, really.

One is a string of marquee moments: Winter Classic to the upgrade of Enterprise Center to the Stanley Cup Final to the All-Star Game (and the Fan Fair and fanfare that went with it). But there also has been the growth of the game in the “Heartland.”