As I have mentioned before, I'm not a sports fan. But during the winter olympics I watched a bunch of hockey games and I have to say that I was enjoying myself. So I've decided to give watching NHL hockey a try. Why not right? I mean, it's a fast-paced game with some amazing feats of athleticism and the occasional fight. As it turns out I have Versus and NESN on my cable system so I can watch hockey games during the season. Nice. A couple nights ago I switched over to the channel to watch the game that was on (a real yawner unfortunately between the Dallas Stars and the Washington Capitals) and it became clear very early on that I have no idea what's going on. It just looked like organized chaos and dudes crashing into each other.
The next night I watched part of the game between the Flyers and ... I forget who the other team was. Ok, clearly I have not been hooked yet but I'm working on it. This game was a lot more interesting though and I was fortunate in that during the 2nd period The Wiff came home and sat down to watch with me. I say I was fortunate because The Wiff actually used to play hockey and likes to ice skate (whereas the last time I tried to skate I stepped out on the ice and fell immediately backwards, slamming my head on the ice hard enough to see stars. I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in the stands staring at my shoes and trying not to throw up). She's more of a man than I am basically. I proceeded to ask her question after question regarding the plays. "What's 'icing' mean?" "Why can't that guy come over that line thing?" "What does it mean when the ref guy holds his arms out like that?" Et Cetera. By using the pause and rewind feature on our DVR thing she was able to show me some of what the hell all that skating around and hitting each other was all about (or "aboot" Hey-OHHH, Canada! In your face!). By the way, how the hell did we ever watch TV before the invention of Tivo and the DVR? I get annoyed at my car radio now because I can't just rewind it when I've missed the traffic update for the third time.
The Wiff's hockey knowledge has waned over the years (probably been replaced by knitting and crafty-craft-craft-craft stuff) and there were gaps in her teachings. It was obvious that I'm going to have to look elsewhere if I am to completely man-up and become a hockey fan. Last night I went out with some peeps from work and I mentioned my new sports initiative. One of them mentioned that I should wait until the playoffs to start watching as the games are more exciting. That may be true but I'd like to at least have watched a few regular season games so that I might understand some of what the hell those guys on my TV are trying to do. I'll do an update on this in a few months to see if in fact I have bailed or if I'm on my way to becoming a true hockey guy. I'm just not going to try to skate anytime soon.
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