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| Nathan Horton scores for the Bruins against Chicago earlier this season |
Tomorrow the NHL Finals gets underway between the Chicago
Blackhawks and my Boston Bruins. Many of you are probably already bored just
reading that first sentence because you have no interest or knowledge about ice
hockey, but hopefully I can convince you to give it a go.
Ice hockey is a sport Australians simply don’t get because
it’s not a sport we grew up with as we don’t have the climate for it. Only in
recent times have we started to develop athletes who can compete at an elite
level in winter sports and even that is typically only in two or three events.
But as the sports addict that I am, I took an interest into
learning about ice hockey as a kid, mostly through the EA Sports NHL series of
video games and then after attending a game in person several years ago my
passion for the game only increased.
The first thing you need to know about hockey is that it is
the best sport to see in person in the world. That may sound like a very big
statement, but ask any of your friends who have been to a game and very few
will disagree. Now I will qualify my statement by saying that you do need to
have decent seats, close enough to the ice, because the puck is small and can
be hard to see from a distance. For the same reason, hockey was a terrible
sport to watch on TV for a long time, until screen got bigger and TVs got to HD
and just general higher quality.
But because of the speed and exciting nature of play, hockey
is incredible in person. If you ever
travel to the US and want to catch a sporting event, I strongly recommend
getting to a hockey game.
Now, none of that actually explains the game itself so I
should probably teach you a bit about the game.
Hockey has a lot of similarities to basketball and soccer in
the way you score and move the puck or ball. The aim is of course to score a
goal and you have five outfield players and one goalie. Much like basketball
and soccer you pass the puck around, try to create angles or take the puck past
an opponent to then take a shot. The score lines are typically comparable to
soccer but on average a little bit higher.
Hockey also invented the idea of the sin bin, or as it is
known in hockey the penalty box. Any foul committed results in that player
being sent to the box for two minutes, or for some more serious fouls 5
minutes. However, if the team with the extra player scores in that time, the
penalised player gets to come back out on the ice. It’s a system I have
advocated for to be used in the NRL for years.
Whilst controlling the pick and passing is difficult enough
whilst ice skating, the game is also very tough. Guys get smashed onto the ice
and into the boards/glass on the edge of the ice. A good legal hit in ice
hockey is a thing of beauty. However there are rules for how and when you can
smash a bloke and if you do a hit that is considered dirty, your reputation
takes a nosedive and you often will face retribution.
Whilst fighting is considered common in hockey and it would
be hypocritical of me to praise it after I wrote about Paul Gallen in State of
Origin, all fighters are immediately sent to the penalty box for a 5 minute
major penalty and depending on the cause of the fight can also be suspended
afterwards. Hockey fights are a lot better policed than you might imagine. Then
again hockey players are known as the nicest, most down to Earth professional
athletes around.
When I was in Boston and was staying in a hotel where
visiting NBA and NHL teams stay, I got to experience the difference between NBA
players and NHL players firsthand. You truly wouldn’t know that hockey players
were famous, because they sure as hell don’t show it externally, nor do they
want that lifestyle. Any player who seems to embrace that lifestyle is actually
laughed at. NBA players on the other hand… well that’s a different story.
But what makes hockey so interesting an exciting?
Well the game is played at such a frenetic pace and the
action is constant. As soon as a team takes a shot, they either get the puck
again for another one or the other team is off to the races to get one of their
own. The pace is so tiring that attacking players typically only play for about
a minute at a time before subbing out. You see in hockey, you don’t just make
substitutions at breaks but on the fly mid game. A team will dump the puck at
the other end and several of their players will race to get back onto the
bench, whilst their teammates jump over the railing and take their place.
On the ice at a time a team has a goalie, two defensemen,
two wingers and a centre. The wingers and centre are considered the forwards or
attacking players, but defensemen nowadays have to be proficient attackers too,
especially with the always entertaining slap shots from distance. Overall a
team during a game has three ‘lines’ of defensemen and four ‘lines’ of
forwards. So the forwards sub between the four lines regularly and the defensemen
sub between the three lines a little less. Of course they have more backups
beyond that in case of injury, but they tend to play 19 players a game or 20 if
they decide they need to switch to their backup goalie.
One downside to hockey is that every time their CBA is up
for negotiation between the players and the league, they seem to end up having
a lockout and either missing an entire season or at least having a shortened
season like the one we are coming to the end of right now. The biggest reason
for this is that the league is run by a man named Gary Bettman, who may be the
most incompetent man in the history of humanity. But that is a story for
another article one day.
Another awesome thing about hockey is the Stanley Cup
itself. Without question it is the best trophy in sports, it is over 120 years
old, although the current version is just short of 60. Unlike other sports,
they don’t make a new version each year for teams to keep, they simply give
each winning team the actual cup for one year and each player gets to take it
home and do all sorts of crazy shenanigans with it. Then they give it back,
with a whole bunch of new stories. If only the cup could talk. Just look at this beautiful thing.
Obviously I haven’t gone into the nitty gritty details of
the rules or the strategy, although I’m always happy to talk hockey if you
contact me. I hope this gives you a taste of an amazing sport that is about to
have its 7 game Finals series get underway between two of the ‘Original 6’
franchises of the NHL. It is going to be an amazing series and I implore you to
try to watch.
Finally, my friend Sarah demanded I include this wonderful ‘Together We Can’ video
that came out during the recent lockout. It’s goose bumps stuff.
Go Bruins.
