This is Hockey

On Saturdays, I’m aiming for a bit of a change of pace. Something not writing/art related, something that I’m interested in, something that I feel like I might be able to explain.

So today, this is hockey:

Hockey is basically this: two nets on either end of an ice surface that is 200 feet long and 85 feet wide. A guy in a ridiculously large amount of padding in front of each net. 10 guys in less padding (though still a lot), five on each team, who attempt to put a little, round, black, rubber disc, three inches in diameter, into each others’ net. (Hence the padding on the guy standing in front. He’s called a goalie, just like in soccer.) All of this while balancing on skates.

It is beautiful. Seriously. It is an incredibly fast game with tons of momentum and plenty of momentum shifts. It’s intricate — there are set plays that make the best diagrammed football play look like chump change. There’s improvisation in spades, thanks to the difficult nature of controlling a piece of hard rubber on a sheet of ice. There are times when, thanks to the bounce of the puck, two forwards (the term used for players who typically play on the offense side of the puck) get alone with the other team’s goalie. The goalie sometimes wins, even.

People are drawn to hockey for many different reasons — some like the fighting, some like the checking, some like the atmosphere. As for me, I like the speed and grace that a good game of hockey brings to the fore. There’s nothing quite like watching Sidney Crosby or Mario Lemieux confuse defencemen, sneak by them with the puck, deke the goalie out of his shorts, and put the puck soundly in the back of the net. When you see that siren light up at the end of a seemingly impossible play… there’s just nothing quite like it.

This is hockey.