Random Post - The Greatest Game in the World

Now is a great time to be a hockey fan. The regular season for the National Hockey League (NHL) is just about to finish and all teams are gearing up for the playoffs---or at least the teams that actually made it to the playoffs. With only two more games left to play, and a few playoff spots yet to be claimed, the games are becoming more competitive and more intense. That added intensity makes watching the games even more exciting. And the best thing is that the LA Kings made it to the playoffs this year. Last year they missed it by just a few points, and for a while it looked like they were going to end up doing the same thing this season as well, but luckily they came through at the end. I adopted the Kings as my team when I first moved to LA, and there are currently two Swedes on the team, so it has been fun to follow them these past two years.

Hockey is a weird activity if you think about it. It is basically a group of grown men skating up and down a rink, slapping around a piece of rubber with wooden sticks and tackling each other. Thinking about that kind of cracks me up, but nonetheless, I love watching it. Another thing that makes hockey unusual is the fact that it is probably the only sport where fighting is part of the game, and where the referees will stop the game just so that two guys can fight it out on the ice. I can't think of any other sport that does that.

I'll finish off by quickly summing up my own hockey career. One day when I was maybe eight years old, I decided that I wanted to start playing hockey. I convinced my parents that it was a great idea and they consequently threw down a tonne of money on all the gear that I needed. What's interesting about hockey is that before you can even start playing hockey, you first need to learn how to skate. It's not like soccer---you don't have to learn how to run before you can start playing soccer---you already know how run. So, what happened to me was that after only two or three practices, I got so mad that I couldn't skate as well as the other guys on the team (who had already played for years) that I gave up and quit hockey all together. You can imagine how happy my parents were about that.

Comments

  1. Matthew KwongApril 7, 2018 at 5:58 PM

    This was an interesting read. Now that you point out the skills you need to play hockey, I couldn't imagine the difficulty of playing this sport: skating on ice, slapping the hockey puck, and fighting each other all at the same time. It seems absurd but fun.

    ReplyDelete
  2. JacquesWRIT340April 8, 2018 at 7:56 PM

    I liked your post Niko! I am not into hockey at all, but I want to change this and start understanding this nice sport. Honestly, I love the fact that they can fight during the game

    ReplyDelete
  3. sbsimon13April 8, 2018 at 11:12 PM

    Hockey has never been my favorite sport, but I have always respected hockey players and think that people underestimate how difficult it really is. They are great athletes who leave it all on the ice. This year's playoffs should be interesting!

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