Upon hearing that the Quad-Cities will return to its hockey roots next season with a franchise in the International Hockey League, one fan we know shook his head and said, "It's going to be bad hockey."

Perhaps. But it also might be fun hockey.

The bad hockey we used to have wasn't so bad. It was a lot of fun. And it drew better crowds than the good hockey we've had the past two years.

While it was nice to watch bona fide prospects and NHL veterans skate around the i wireless Center with the Quad-City Flames the past two years, it was impossible to forget just how wildly popular so-called bad hockey once was here.

The Colonial Hockey League, which became the United Hockey League, which has since morphed into the International Hockey League, was a good fit.

The players often were slower, sometimes older and usually more combative, but it was entertaining.

And now we're going back there. Bad is good.

Remember some of those great old rivalries the Quad-City Mallards gave us for a decade or so? Remember how much you hated Jim Duhart and Robin Bouchard? Remember how much you loved Kerry Toporowski and Hugo Proulx? Remember the verbal jabs that were hurled between Howard Cornfield and Robbie Nichols? Remember how your feelings about Kevin Kerr flipped on a dime when he stopped playing for Flint and became part of the Mallards' "evil empire"?

Remember how much fun it was to sit among 8,000, 9,000, sometimes even 10,000 people for games tinged with tension and energy?

Remember Game 7 of the 1998 Colonial Cup finals against Flint? The game was held on the same night that the much-awaited final episode of Seinfeld aired on TV. It attracted a crowd of 10,145, with 430 people wedging into an adjoining conference room to watch the game on big screens.

The TV show about nothing couldn't match a game that really meant something to local fans.

Bad hockey was good enough then. It would be nice to see it become that important here again.

Although league officials say the quality of play in the IHL is much better than in the UHL that the Mallards left after the 2007 season, it's fairly obvious it's the same old league that once captivated our fancy.

The much-despised Bouchard still is playing for Muskegon. He scored 42 goals in 46 games last season at the age of 35. His old, familiar linemate, Todd Robinson, led the league in scoring. Fort Wayne, which outdraws every other team in the league by a wide margin, still has Colin Chaulk and Guy Dupuis, who at 39 was named the league's best defenseman last season.

A handful of ex-Mallards still prosper in the league, too.

The name has changed, but it's the same old league.

But that's good.

League chairman Michael Francke, who also is the head of the Fort Wayne franchise, said Tuesday that "We are all about physicality in hockey." The IHL even has tinkered with the rules to accommodate that.

"We're not talking about goonery," Francke insisted. "We're talking about good, solid hits and an occasional tussle between two willing combatants."

Sure. And teams are allowed to dress more players for games to account for all the game misconducts.

All of that seemed to be music to the ears of many of the fans on hand at Tuesday's announcement.

"It's time to get back to ice hockey instead of nice hockey," Jeffrey Wiatt of Rock Island said.

In this league, there might be times when you'll be transported to the 1970s film Slapshot. You might see players who are vaguely reminiscent of Reg Dunbar or Ogie Oglethorpe or Andre "Poodle" Lussier.

You might hear someone grumble that it's "bad hockey" and that the whole thing is "a damn disgrace."

But it will be our damn disgrace. And it might just be pretty good entertainment.