Recently, WhatCulture stated they had a goal to increase their international sporting audience. I suggested that the easiest way to bring Canada back into the Commonwealth (of reading articles that spell colour and honour correctly) is to write about ice hockey. Pretty much any type of hockey will do it, just as long as you put the words 'hockey' or 'NHL' in the title and Canadians will link to it faster than an English granny to a picture of Kate Middleton's ultrasound. First let's set the record straight again; this will be the last time I refer to this sport as 'ice hockey'. To use the term ice hockey is like calling it foot-soccer. Now what better way to promote hockey to a wider audience than to compare it to the 2nd most popular game on the planet after '
baiting Americans about gun control'. Hockey in a sentence is this; foot-soccer on meth, all centered around making things go faster. The pitch is shrunk down from roughly 360 x 230 feet grass playing field to a shoe box like 200 x 85 feet gladiator's den covered in ice called a 'rink' from which there is no escape barring a small door to your team's bench where another player is automatically supposed to take your place. To compensate for the smaller playing area the amount of players are cut down to six players per team, with four officials of varying abilities and responsibilities watching for penalties, offsides and the occasional stick to the balls. The primary goal of hockey is speed, which is accomplished by wearing blades of steel on the soles of kevlar-leather boots to increase overall sliding velocity along the ice. The secondary goal of hockey is goals which are much like foot-soccer. Players use objects called 'hockey sticks' to move an object 'the puck' towards the opponent's goal, which is much faster than kicking it. When they score into the net, there is much rejoicing on one side and much blaming of the referees on the other. They have 60 minutes to do this as much as possible before the game ends. Due to the need to repair the ice, games are broken up into three 'periods' of twenty minutes each. If after 60 minutes, the game is tied, there is a brief 5 minute overtime and then a shootout which goes on indefinitely or until one goalie gets bored and stops trying so he can go home, taking his equipment with him. Due to the limited amount of space and insane amounts of speed, players can change direction by hitting into each other to stop and start over in another direction (if they are North American players) or turn away from each other and avoid all physical contact (European players). Because of this running into each other, some players get upset about it. In one of the greatest selling points to the game, players can decide to fight someone,
or in some cases the other team, and be given only a 5 minute timeout by the referee. Sometimes these spontaneous fights can be quite
fun and chaotic (if you are Canadian), other times just a
little bit silly (if you are European). After their 5 minutes of quiet time are up, the players are usually allowed back on the ice to either continue to fight or stare menacingly at each other from their respective benches. Hockey is probably the biggest thing that Canadians care about as they have precious little else to be proud of; they still talk of Vimy Ridge as their crowning military glory and their most beloved/hated hockey celebrity has
the fashion sense of a handicapped Austin Powers with the gruff demeanour of your mean old uncle Sal at a family wedding. The largest hockey league in the world is called the National Hockey League, (NHL) where wealthy, predominantly American businessmen buy franchises and then poach the world's best players. Much like English football, there are a lot of teams in various leagues of decreasing talent, but only six that really matter. The points system is a convoluted mess that has been arranged so that nearly everyone finishes at .500 and allows for 1/2 the league to qualify for the playoffs. Often the team that finishes in third place in a conference has fewer points than the team that finishes in fourth place. It's best not to think of this too hard but it happens. They battle for the Stanley Cup, a 100 year old trophy that is so unique there are three of them; one that is presented to the Captain of the winning team who is congratulated by a chorus of boos by the losing team's home crowd, another that is on permanent display in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, Canada and a third that is the official replica that goes around and does all the public appearances at fund-raisers, shopping malls and cancer wards. But now, to the history of the game so you can impress those Canadian tourists at the pub.