Hockey is a sport that I have never given much credit to.  Whenever I watch the highlights on TV it takes up about a minute of my time, I see a fight, see a goal or a crazy save and then that’s it…SportsCenter moves on to baseball or golf or Scrabble – all of which are seemingly more exciting than hockey.  Friends and hockey enthusiasts have told me that to truly appreciate the sport, you need to attend the game.  This is only partially true. 

First and foremost, in order to truly appreciate the sport, you have to actually understand what the hell is going on.  There are rules that I didn’t know existed, there are lines that I had no idea what they were for and the puck seemed to fly out of play every 10 minutes or so.  The teams are doing line changes seemingly every 30 seconds.  In fact, we timed a player to see how long he spent on the ice and his shifts were an average of about 23 seconds.  People are coming, going skating and passing, it is all very confusing…and cold.

No Really, Its Actually Pretty Easy to Understand

 

If you remember back to last week, I wrote a post about why I hate sports movies.  I would like to add another example to that list.  I watched 60 minutes of hockey (That’s 20:00 a period) and did not see a single “Flying V.”

The game wasn’t all bad though, despite my hometown Coyotes losing 5-1(I guess that’s who I was rooting for).  For one, I was impressed with the atmosphere in the arena.  From what little I understood about hockey, apparently both teams playing, the St. Louis Blues and the Phoenix Coyotes were about as far out of the playoff hunt as possible with just 2 games left.  Despite this fact, both teams seemed to be playing hard and the fans were pretty into it.  I was obviously looking to see a fight or at least catch a puck but neither of that happened.  There was almost a fight, but the guy who started it took such a cheap shot, that the other guy couldn’t get back up to even fight him…disappointing.

Some other highlights included scantily clad women scraping the ice about every 10 minutes as well as another shocking revelation…Hockey teams have cheerleaders? I almost saw the cameraman who was filming the national anthem singer fall down.  There was a giant remote controlled Chalupa blimp hovering around in between periods.  

I also got to see some meatheads race each other on the ice to be the first to “Recycle everything in their pile.”  On a side note, a fun fact I learned at the game…recycling one aluminum can saves enough energy to power your TV for 3 hours.  Who would have thought? 

 

Now I’m not going to rush out and start buying season tickets, hockey jerseys, or even one of those sweet old school goalie masks, but I will say this; despite my best efforts to be pessimistic, I truly, honestly enjoyed myself at the game.  What fascinated me the most was watching athletes do things that I would never be able to do.  They really skate ridiculously fast and handle the puck with relative ease.  The goalies are freaking agile and pretty much fearless.  I was very impressed overall.  If you want to leave any comments about hockey, my first experience with the game, or anything that might help me to be a better fan in the future, go for it.

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