Baseball is America’s pastime. Football is America’s sport. And hockey… do you even know what hockey is?
Hockey is exciting. Hockey is nerve-wracking. But mostly, in South Florida at least, hockey is unknown.
Like any in other sport, there are die-hard fans and die-hard opponents. I am one ofvthe former.
The beauty of hockey is that you don’t need to know much about it to enjoy it. All you need to know is that the team that gets the puck into the other team’s net the most times in three 20-minute periods wins. There, you can now enjoy a hockey game.
Of course there is more to it than that. There are rules. Really, there are. There’s jargon. And there are rivalries. But you’ll pick up on those as you watch.
There is nothing like watching a live game. Experiencing the crowd’s energy, rooting for your team, seeing a hat trick — it is one of the best experiences.
Hockey players are incredibly talented — even those who don’t play for the New York Rangers. You try ice skating at 30 mph while pushing a tiny puck with a stick and making beautiful and complicated goals like Wayne Gretsky did or Alex Ovechkin does.
Yes, people criticize it for being too violent, but it really isn’t. Players sometimes get into fights when someone from the opposing team hits or insults them or their teammates. Of course, there are times when a player will pick a fight with a strong player from the opposing team to get him benched and give his own team an advantage. But that seldom happens.
The fights are allowed because the National Hockey League thought it would attract new viewers — and it has.
But even though hockey is stereotyped as violent and players are stereotyped as toothless, angry people, the NHL is doing a lot to help the community and break those notions. Teams sell jerseys and paraphernalia to raise funds toward a cure cancer, for example.
So, you see there is more to hockey than fights, ice and toothless men.
The Florida Panthers are playing twice this week. I encourage you to give hockey a chance because it might change the way you think about it.
And to answer the question I asked in the beginning, life-changing — that’s what hockey is.
