Hockey

Hawwwkeeyyy. That's how it's said if you have ever played it. Aside from a few pond hockey opportunities as a 5-year old child, I know next to nothing about hockey. So when I signed on to the Union vs Clarkson hockey match for Time Warner, I was less than thrilled. I couldn't check off any of the Sports Viewing Trifecta, or the three requirements for enjoyment of sports watching: I had never played the sport, I barely understood its rules, and I certainly didn't give a rat's buttock who won the game. Hockey is as familiar to me as Elle magazine.

Let's focus on the game itself. 5 vs 5, with 1 goalie apiece. Fine, that's like soccer, I can live with that. But substitutions? It doesn't seem to matter where the puck is for a substitution to take place. In, out, in, out, ROTATE! Each hockey substitution reminds me of a relay race in which one team consistently cheats by beginning to run before his teammate touches his hand. The official rule is that a player can enter the game if whom he is substituting for is within 5 feet of the bench (according to proicehockey.about.com). What referee can measure 5 feet in the blink of an eye? I propose changing that rule to require a good ol' fist bump (sometimes referred to as a "dap" or "knucks") prior to a new player skating onto the ice. This rule change would make it easy to determine who can legally substitute and who cannot. Who's with me?

It's unlikely that I will ever understand what constitutes a penalty in hockey. There is so much grappling, shoving, slamming each other into walls, and lost balance that penalties appear totally arbitrary to the layman (me). Occasionally I will even see on TV two grown dudes with fists bared, encircling each other on skates. Then they fight. If that's not a penalty, I don't think I'll ever understand what is (I think it actually is a penalty, but it's a penalty for both sides... So what's the difference?) Is calling someone on the other team a "poof" a penalty? How about ramming your skate into their upper thigh? What about intentionally passing gas as they skate behind you? That call would sound something like this: "*TWEEEET* 2 minute penalty on #42 for Aggressive Farting." The point is that I don't know what hockey penalties are. All I know is that there is a box of shame that players must go to where fans can jeer at them and call them names from the safety of their seats. Similar to medieval stocks, but without tomato throwing.

The game, to me, is confusing, with arbitrary whistles and massive amounts of testosterone (which isn't that weird, but hockey is especially aggressive.) So what about strategy? If I were coaching, my strategy would be this: Stick 4 of the 5 field players in front of the goal, and play 1 versus 5 on the rest of the ice. Could anyone POSSIBLY score with 4 defensemen lying down on top of each other in front of the goal? Plus a goalie to act as he normally does? I think not. In all likelihood, there is a rule preventing this, but until someone proves that to me, I'm sticking with my guns.

So now what about the fans? Do they understand all of the game's intricacies that I am missing? Well, according to what I witnessed at the Union-Clarkson game, the answer is a nice, resounding "No". When I attend a game I love, like soccer or basketball, I think of the strategy my team could employ to win, and yell out some helpful advice to my team, such as "Watch out for the other guy!" (My advice is rarely heeded.) I don't just yell generic crap like "Be aggressive" or "You suck ref!", but even that I can understand. Hockey fans are a different breed. They yell "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH", and I'm pretty sure it's because nobody knows what to say (although it may have just be that drunken college kids don't feel like thinking too much about their cheers. My sample size is small.) What should they yell? "Skate faster!"? That's the worst cheer ever. Hockey fans love the fast-paced action and the slamming bodies, but, from what I've witnessed, understand the game only a teensy-weensy bit better than me, and are too inarticulate or drunk to express their knowledge.

Somehow hockey gets grouped into the "Big 4" of American sports (with basketball, football, and, ugh, baseball), but I'm not sure it belongs there. Couldn't we just give it to Canada specifically? So instead of being a "Big 4" sport, it could be one of Canada's "Big 2" sports (the other? Curling, of course.) Unless there is a serious, nationalistic passion for the sport, like in Canada, it just doesn't feel fair to designate hockey as a "Big" anything. Can a sport be considered "Big" if only a small fraction of it's population play's it due to it's high costs of padding, skates and sticks, rink use, and doctor's visits? (If you argue that football is the same way, I will retort that you don't need an ice rink to play football, and then sulk a little bit at the validity of your argument.)

You know how it's difficult to focus on a person talking about something you just don't give a crap about? That's what watching hockey felt like to me. What my forced attendance of Union-Clarkson hockey really made me consider was how most people feel when intentionally attending an event that they will not enjoy for somebody else's sake. It's the strongest show of support when somebody puts themselves through misery for another's sake. Like girlfriend's watching a television game because they know their boyfriend enjoys it. Or mother's going to their son's sporting events. Or husband's enduring a chick flick with their wives. They fake interest just for you. That means something, and became all too apparent as I sat through 2.5 hours of hockey.