Let’s
be honest for a second: I used to hate hockey. Seriously, like, absolutely despise it. I’d actually told my
friends that day I did a hockey column was the day I’d do 100 pushups with a
midget on my back. If I ever made
an ESPN 30 for 30 entitled True Life: These Sports Suck Dick
(a Spike Lee joint) the list
from really bad to unwatchable would go:
5.
Lumberjacking
4.
Bass Fishing
3.
Bowling
2.
Hockey
1.
NASCAR
I didn’t hate the game itself
because I never really watched it; I just hated how much time it took up in
SportsCenter. At least ESPN
respected the fact that lumberjacking, fishing, bowling, and (most of the time)
NASCAR were incapable of producing highlights, and thus, should not be talked
about ever, but hockey was a different story. I would turn on ESPN when I got home from practice or an SAT
class, anxious to see highlights from the Knicks game that I missed, and on the
side bar there was nothing but “Bruins vs. Flyers,” “Penguins vs. Rangers,”
“Latest on Sidney Crosby’s Inflamed Vagina,” with Knicks highlights nowhere to
be seen.
I thought when Matthew Barnaby got
fired after almost beating his wife and getting a DUI, ESPN would drop their
little “hockey project.” However,
this somehow made things even worse.
The hockey highlights kept coming, and Barry Melrose realized, “Hey, now that Barnaby is gone I’ve got this
whole hockey highlight job to myself!
Why don’t I wear uglier suits, double the hair gel, and act
uncomfortably creepy towards all of the female SC Top 10 Highlights interns? What is ESPN gonna do, eh? I’m the
only option they’ve got!”
 |
| #staycreepin |
Hockey just started to get bigger
and bigger until finally… BOOM.
Playoff hockey. Now that
the Rangers are finally relevant again, the New York’s attitude towards the sport
has changed accordingly and the spotlight has shifted. I couldn’t even go to my friends’
houses without them popping in NHL 12 or showing of their new Boyle
jersey.
Finally, I caved. My dad had been a Rangers fan all his
life, and, as if by the work of the hockey gods (to whom I was atheist towards
until recently), I found a signed Brian Leetch stick while looking for a
sweatshirt in my closet… how it got there, I’ll never know. Anyway, all of these Rangers omens (and
the fact that the Islanders* weren’t good enough to make the playoffs) prompted
me to become a Ranger fan.
**Sidenote: One of the worst sports team names ever; up there
with the UC-Santa Cruz Banana Slugs, the Webster University Gorlocks, and the
Butte Pirates… It’s a high school team… You just can’t make this shit up.**
I watched Game 3 of the Rangers’
Round One series against the Senators with a semi-open mind, like you’re
listening to a story that your unfunny friend is telling you. He starts off “Dude, the fuuuuniest
thing just happened to me…” so you hope that it’s good because you don’t want
to get bored, but at the same time it’s your unfunny friend… how funny could it
actually be? Well in this case “the fuuuuuuniest
thing” that just happened to your unfunny friend turns out to be the funniest
thing you’ve heard since Ethan Albright’s letter to John Madden.
This was my beginning of my love
affair with hockey. I started watching the Rangers game during the first period and couldn’t turn it off until I had finished three
repeats of the postgame show. It
was just sooo entertaining. I couldn’t relax at all. Even the commercials were
stressful. The fast pace, the
shots, the fights, the power plays, the losing track of where the puck is, the
elation after a Ranger goal… it was insane!!!! The tension was the same as
being on a very slow ascent to the top of a super tall roller coaster and every
goal was like going down the coaster.
If your team scores it’s the greatest ride of your life, but if the
other team scores it’s like you threw up on the way down just as the snap Coaster
Cam took your picture.
Looking back, I don’t know how I
could ever have hated hockey as much as I did. I mean, it has the tactical
importance of soccer, but instead of lightweight runners on a field, it’s
freakishly big/athletic football players on ice. Oh and did I mention that fighting is technically “legal” and
doesn’t result in suspensions? To
top it all off, most of the postgame interviews with players sound like Soviet
KGB interrogations.
Reporter: “So, Alex, how do you feel about tonight’s win?”
Ovechkin: “Tonight’s victory was very pleasing to me and my
team. I am look forward to next
game, as well as future goal of championship. Now come Olaf, we have much Uranium to find. Transmission terminated.”
I can’t believe how long I’ve been
missing this… Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a
midget to find.
Shoutout
to Chizzy Bang for the tix to watch the Devils lose, B-Rod Skeeter, and
Heiny Lund
#DJLR
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