Thoughts on Hockey

Tonight, as I watch the Bruins/Jets game on my large LED TV and the Devils/Ducks game on my outdated laptop, I wonder what I did with myself two years ago when I didn’t know anymore about hockey then that it involved a black puck on cold ice. I figure if anyone is still following this blog, they probably don’t want to read about my reflection on hockey, but nothing has been posted on this blog in quite a while, so I guess beggars can’t be choosers at this point.

Before hockey, my sports world consisted of baseball with a side of football. Discussions were about steroids and century old rivalries. An injury was milked by the prima-donnas and kept them on the bench for at least two or three games. There was usually about 15 minutes of excitement during a game that would last 3 to 4 hours. Sure they were sports, but compared to hockey, they were the lazy man’s game. Maybe that’s why both are considered the red-blooded American sport…

Hockey is something fierce. Most of the time there are blood and guts left on the ice. An injury is a torn ACL that needs surgery to be repaired, not a bruise or even a broken bone. Hockey gives you everything a sport promises and leaves nothing out. I love the sound of a puck pinging off the net, that’s something you don’t get from a dropped pass or a foul ball. You can hear the game happen every second, the slice of a blade racing across ice, a stick slapping the puck through the rink, bodies crashing into each other like steam engines. It almost makes me want to compose an orchestral piece so the sport can really be recognized as an art.

I also love how there is no place for politics in hockey. Most recently, the ridiculousness of the media hounding Tim Thomas for facebook comments and an absence at the White House has been shut down by players and fans alike. There is no room for the personal life on the ice, they don’t use excuses. While it’s quite rough, it’s still a gentleman’s game. The players put themselves and their hockey skills out on the ice, nothing else. You can’t get called off sides on an audible, because hockey players use their actions to prove their glory, not their voice.

While I definitely don’t know as much about the games as some of the boys that contribute to this blog, I like to believe that I know enough. I might not understand the rules or know the regulations, but I’ve grown to respect the sport of it all, the talent and the toughness of the players. Two years ago if you asked me about a hockey player, I probably would have assumed they were all toothless Canadians that were probably poorly educated just because they probably started skipping school at the age of 4 to play hockey and if any of them went to school, they probably got slammed against the boards so often that what brains they had were knocked out. But now I watch the games, I check the stats, and I read the articles. While it gets much less attention than it deserves, hockey is by far the best sport in America, and as the playoffs inch closer and closer, I know it is only going to get better.