It was just one of those weekends. You know the kind that if you could relive one weekend over and over again for the rest of your life it’d be right there next to the Memorial Day weekend of your junior year of high school. What a phenomenal feeling I had, driving with the top down to and from the beach with a crew of the best friends in the history of Boston.

Rook’s trying to find a good country song on the radio while keeping his eyes on the road. Ben’s still thinking about his bed and Dayna’s hair is dancing in her face while she sings every word to every song that comes on the radio. I’m quietly observing the scenery, smelling sweet summer and trying to figure out why I want to take my shirt off, stand up and scream “COLLEGE!” so badly.

Now I’m normally a pretty sentimental guy anyway, but there was something extra on Saturday morning on Route 128, an extra scoop of sugar in my large regular from Dunks perhaps. Then I turn to Ben and proclaim with confidence, “The Flyers are gonna win the Stanley Cup.”

That’s when it hits me.

I’m feeling that extra bit of joy because the NHL is back.

Once again … bone crushing checks, sick dekes and one-timers are back.

Now I know the cynics are going to say the damage to hockey has already been done and the NHL has turned off their fans for good. However, I must disagree.

All it took was the NHL draft lottery to make me forgive the league for robbing me of an entire winter’s worth of the best highlights sports has to offer. And no, college hockey didn’t come close to doing it for me — not even Hockey East play. There simply is no equal to NHL hockey and people our age have no idea what’s about to take place.

If you’re a fan of hockey you will come back to the Garden this year when the Bruins begin playing on Oct. 5. If you’re not a hockey fan, you will be, I promise. You see, although most current Northeastern students lived for a good chunk of the ’80s, we were only little tykes and therefore missed one of the most exciting decades in sports history.

We missed Wayne “The Great One” Gretzky at his all-time best, when he was scoring 92 goals in one season and leading the small-market Edmonton Oilers to four Stanley Cup titles. We missed seeing him shatter records with virtual ease and turn stick handling into an art.

However, now we have a chance to witness something extremely similar, if not better.

I know that sounds crazy, but if you haven’t heard of him yet, remember this name: Sidney Crosby. Cleverly nicknamed, “The Next One.” I have only seen a few highlights, but I can tell you this: He will save hockey.

The few things I witnessed on tape are inhuman. The numbers he put up in juniors the past two years — unheard of. The 17-year-old Crosby led the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League (QMJHL) in scoring with 66 goals and 102 assists in 62 games played this year.

Allow me to do the math.

He scored 1.07 goals per game and a total of 2.7 points per game, leading the Rimouski Oceanic to the Memorial Cup title and was named Canadian Hockey League MVP for the second straight year. In his one season of junior hockey, Gretzky averaged 2.8 points per game in the Ontario Hockey Association in 1977-78 — good enough for Rookie of the Year honors.

Crosby, playing in his second season in the QMJHL, racked up some impressive hardware this season. Crosby won the Michel Briere Trophy as League MVP, the Telus Offensive Player of the Year award, the Jean Beliveau Trophy as the league’s leading scorer, the Michail Boss Trophy as the top pro prospect, and the Paul Dumont Trophy as the personality of the year.

Despite all the accolades, Crosby has flown surprisingly under the American radar, well at least the general public’s radar. The sponsors have already inked “The Next One” to multimillion dollar deals and once Crosby is selected No. 1 overall in this Saturday’s NHL entry draft by the Pittsburgh Penguins, his face and name will be all over America.

Reebok, preparing for a huge hockey campaign, inked the phenom to a five-year, $2.5 million deal in March. Crosby also signed a three-year pact with Gatorade, rumored to be the richest deal a hockey player has ever signed with a sports drink company. All that for a kid who hasn’t played a shift in the NHL.

The Lebron James of hockey isn’t the only thing that’s going to save the NHL however. With the official ratification of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement by both the NHL owners and the NHL Players Association come a few radical rule changes that will speed up the game and allow for more scoring.

Here’s a look at a few of the changes:

* The addition of four-feet in the offensive zones.

Obviously this will provide more space for skill players to maneuver and greatly aid teams on the power-play.

* Goal lines two-feet closer to the end boards.

Along with making the space smaller behind the net, goalies will be restricted to a trapezoid-shaped area behind the net. These restrictions will limit the goalie’s ability to play the puck, encouraging more offensive possessions for the opposing team.

* The center red line will not be considered in regards to the two-line pass.

This is my personal favorite rule change. By allowing players to pass the puck from their own zone to a streaking teammate charging to the opposing blue-line, the number of breakaways will increase, creating more excitement and more quality scoring chances.

* No more ties.

One of the dumbest things the old NHL did was allow teams that went a full five-minute overtime period without scoring to each receive a point and finish with a tie. Wow. I guess the suits in charge of the NHL never played “Blades of Steel” on NES, because it took them this long to institute a shutout at the end of the first overtime period.

Those are just a few of the major rule changes but they alone should make the game more exciting and marketable.

The NHL still has a good amount of ass-kissing to do before all the fans will come back, but I’m positive they will return.

Sometimes in life there are the things you should do, the things you shouldn’t do, and then there are the things you do. Although the lockout was horrible for the league, whether it was the “right” thing or not is a moot point. It is what it is and in the long run it’ll all work out.

While I may be anxiously awaiting the start of the NHL season, I think I’ll survive with a few more trips to the beach with my crew, only this time instead of yelling “COLLEGE!,” I’ll yell “LETS GO FLYERS!”

— Max Lederman can be reached at sports@nu-news.com.