There's Something About Hockey

[Forkboy]

Presented good naturedly... :)

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While it is true that no professional sport is as ill-suited for television as ice hockey — even in HD the puck can be difficult to follow, the speed and flow of line changes and late-rushing attackers are impossible to track, and the great, sweeping canvas of the ice must be rudely squeezed into a frame far too small to hold it — it is also true that no professional sport is better suited to live viewing.

Baseball spreads half its players across a pasture, hides the rest in dugouts, and then, proudly aware that it is the only sport without a time clock, proceeds apace as though its fans do not have one either. Football, played on one hundred twenty yards of distant field in increasingly canyon-esque stadia, packs twelve minutes of balletic violence into sixty minutes of game time and two hundred minutes of real time. Basketball provides near constant action and often intimate attention, but when scoring occurs every twenty seconds, only the last hundred or so seem to matter, and they often unfold over such an excruciation of stops and starts and fouls and timeouts and team meetings that even the most dramatic finishes unfold like athletic arrhythmia. Soccer drops one lost ball amidst twenty joggers, offers almost as many riots in the stands as goals on the field, and is beloved only by a loose affiliation of drunkards, Europhiles, and overprogrammed eight-year-olds who have yet to convince me I’m missing anything of interest.

But there’s something about hockey.
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The ice becomes the background, the playground, the blank canvas on which a dozen artists take their shifts and make their marks and paint their works of flowing, darting, crashing beauty. They skate with equal parts power and poetry, propelling themselves up the ice and back down again, starting and stopping and flashing, gliding and cutting and flowing, reaching speeds of twenty-five miles an hour suspended on just a few millimeters of metal. Imagine strikers, linebackers, catchers, and point guards all doing what they do; now imagine them doing it on ice skates, with bullseyes on their backs, in pursuit of a ball the size of your fist, as it hurtles toward and away from them and back at them again, at almost one hundred miles an hour.

http://community.post-gazette.com/blogs/radicalmiddle/archive/2009/10/01/there-s-something-about-hockey.aspx

[JonLP24]

1. Would love to see a Hockey game live

Do you remember that All-Star game about 10 years or so ago that had a blue streak that followed the puck when it moved fast such as shots? I don't know if it was popular or not but no TV broadcast that I've seen has that streak.

I think he is somewhat accurate about most sports. I love basketball but I can see why some people think the only last 5 minutes or so are important. But I love the drama of the game, I like to see a team get hot and then go on a cold streak. Love to see 20-point comebacks. The fouling at the end bothers me only when a team is down by more than 2 baskets because in those cases, the odds are very low with the losing team pulling it out.

But I gotta say he is way off base about soccer and it isn't even my favorite sport. I've watched quite a few games and never seen a riot break out. I've heard it happen but I'm sure it is rare as tens of thousands of professional matches are being played all over the world. I'm not a drunkard, Europhilla, or a overprogrammed 8-year-old(Or at least I hope not). It is kinda funny, in the 6th paragraph, some of the things he says about hockey, you could say about soccer.

That said, would love to see a Hockey game live.

Edit-Oops, forgot to ask. What do you think of bringing a blue streak or something like that to televised broadcasts for hockey games so it is easier to follow the puck?

[KamaAina]

2. The dreaded blue streak was Fox's attempt to "Fox up" hockey

:puke:

Mercifully, it ended shortly thereafter, along with Fox's involvement with the sport.

I remember how hilarious we confirmed puckheads up in Stratford, Conn. though that was.

[flvegan]

3. I have seats for tomorrow's Lightning game.

I'll raise a beer to you while I heckle the penalty box.

[Forkboy]

6. I was among the ones who hated the blue streak.

I found it more distracting than helpful. I can see why it would help some people follow the puck, but hockey is kind of anti-flash, and it just didn't fit the hockey culture to me, but I'm kind of a purist on this matter. :)

I think he was having some fun picking on the other sports. The basketball one sums up my feelings for it pretty closely though. The college game is better than the pros to me, but they both suffer from the same slowdown just when it gets really exciting. Timeouts, fouls, more timeouts. It ruins the pace for me.

The soccer one is just silly, but a funny line anyways. :evilgrin:

Seeing games live it great, and highly recommended. It's very different in person than on tv.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

12. If you can get to a couple games

live, then it will be easier to watch on TV. Depending on where you live, you could watch youth hockey and still get a feel for how to find the puck.
Another thing I like about hockey; no one 'walks' the puck up ice.............. :bounce:

[Jack Rabbit]

4. And where else can you see Big Time Wrestling on ice?

[Forkboy]

7. Wrestling is fake.

;)

[Bluzmann57]

9. Rasslin is fake

Wrestling is real. Ask Dan Gable.

[Forkboy]

21. You are, of course, correct.

I should have clarified. :)

[underpants]

11. Team putting

on ice

Wow you can sell that?

I have a co-worker who is a diehard Red Wings fan. Everything I have read about that organization is nothing but good. I respect the loyalty of the fans but frankly I don't get it. Sorry the water didn't freeze where I grew up - we played football and basketball.

[devilgrrl]

5. Yes there is something about hockey...

it's awesome and I love it!

:-)

[Forkboy]

8. My father took me to a New England Whalers WHL game when I was 4 and I was hooked.

Intense to watch, even more so to play. :)

[LisaM]

10. Oh, I love it

It makes other games seem slow. I also like that for the most part, it's the fans and the game. The fans are right next to the action. You don't have a bunch of hangers on like you do at basketball and football games - the team sits by itself, right next to the spectators.

I think that's part of the attraction - there's not a bunch of clutter between us and the game. Sometimes there are so many people on the sidelines at a football game it's just a circus. And the tv cameras go looking for them rather than showing the game - how many times have you tried to watch a football game, and they're interviewing some stupid celebrity on the sidelines?

[Iggo]

13. It really does feel as if the fans and the players are in it together.

Gah!

Only 3 home games left!

[joeybee12]

14. Now that Notre Dame is in the Frozen Four, I might start watching this new sport...

It's only be around for a couple years, right?

[Forkboy]

16. LOL

Well, we'll have hockey next year. Doubt we can the same for football. :)

[PRETZEL]

15. Not the same game as it was when I was a kid,

but it is still the best sport to watch, especially live.

Even if you have to see a minor league game, do it. You never realize just how fast it is until you see it in person.

[Forkboy]

17. I think it's the closet to the style of the late 70's and early 80's that it can get.

We won't be seeing bench clearing brawls anymore and stuff like that (in the 70's the movie Slapshot wasn't that far from the truth), but the hitting is still there, the speed is still there, and the players are arguably as good as ever. I was really unhappy with the game in the late 90's and into this decade, but the rule tweaks during the lockout really helped the game, imo.

And you are so right about the speed of the game. TV just doesn't do the sport justice. I'm so lucky where I live here in Mass. We have 4 AHL teams, a pro team, and about a 12 college teams all within an a 90 minute ride. I can't afford to see the pro game anymore, but an AHL or college can squeeze into my budget. :)

[PRETZEL]

18. A good bench clearing never hurt anyone,

there more entertaining than dangerous.

I've been a Pens fan literally since they entered the league. The one thing that I don't really care for is that the rules have changed too much in favor of the offense. Players don't have to work as hard to get open or draw a penalty.

[Forkboy]

19. As an ex-goalie I do agree about the offense being favored.

I personally have no trouble with a 2-1 game, but the league wanted more goals, and they got it.

I notice this year that they've been a lot more forgiving on interference calls than the previous couple of years, but some of the hooking calls are laughable.

[PRETZEL]

20. A good 2-1 game is way more exciting

than a 6-5 game where each team scores 3 power play goals.

[bluedigger]

22. I can go along with this.

Basketball - just watch the last two minutes. If the game was already decided before that, it sucked.

But back to hockey - there is nothing better (spectator-wise) than live hockey! If you dislike the fighting, I recommend college hockey, as the NCAA doesn't permit it (much;)).