Quote:
Originally Posted by rousseau
I've tried to watch hockey a couple of times over the years, and I can never take more than a few minutes. It just looks like a bunch of guys whizzing around, haphazardly hacking away at a little black thing you can't see half the time.
The percentage of time that things are in control, that you get a sense of technical and/or artistic mastery, is so little compared to other sports. This is what I think makes it unsatisfying if you haven't grown up with it, and why hockey is never going to make any inroads outside of the traditional hockey-playing regions.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Acajack
I think that's a bit unfair. When you count the balance that's required for something as unnatural as being on skate blades on ice, plus stick handling, all of it in a very confined space, it's as skillful as any sport.
I'd say that any sport is vulnerable to being called boring and even stupid. Especially by people who want to bring it down, or didn't grow up with it. Or both.
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Heh heh, I wondered if I'd get any push back on that. I didn't mean to disparage the skill required in hockey, and of course personal taste in sports is subjective. But I did choose my words carefully.
What I meant is that an appreciation of the skill involved in a sport like basketball is a lot more accessible to the uninitiated than it is for hockey. There's something universal and intuitive about tossing a ball into a ring, but whizzing around on blades on ice and hacking away at a little black thing that you hardly ever see really isn't. Hockey is chaotic and fast-paced like a game of pinball. Like air hockey, actually. You don't get much fluidity of motion, or slow build-up, in plays that come to some sort of fruition, whether that be scoring a basket, making a good run or scoring a goal after multiple passes in football/soccer, etc.
To someone unfamiliar with the sport it just looks like a whole lot of hacking away with sticks. There's a very good reason that Michael Jordan is (still) a global god but nobody outside of Canada and a few other countries knows who Wayne Gretzky is.
None of this matters if you love the game, of course. My own position on things is a bit complicated. I love basketball, and I'm excited about Toronto taking its place as a second-tier North American basketball hotbed what with all the Toronto guys playing in the NBA and with even more to come, but I don't wish to see hockey's place in Canadian hearts and minds diminished at all, even if I personally would rather have a kidney removed than be forced to watch it.
Actually, I feel the same way about the CFL, too. Canadian/American football has got to be one of the most boring, tedious sports in the world, but the CFL is ours, and it would be a shame to see it falter.