Saturday, November 6, 2010

Five for Fighting....er... Make that Six


I went to a hockey game last week. Sharks-Ducks. Great rivalry. The Shark Tank in San Jose. Full raucous house.  Home team won.

During the course of the game, there were six separate fights. Six. I've seen a lot of NHL hockey first hand, taking in three to five games a year. But there've been some years I didn't see six fights all season. And I've never been at a game before with 6 fights. Soi this was special.  Six fights, 12 combatants. And after each bout, each guy took their respective five minute time-out in the penalty box.

Five for fighting.

Three words that bring a smile to the face of any old-school hockey fan. Yet recent years have brought a concerted effort to reign in fighting; at least curb some of the more gratuitous NHL violence. While this has somewhat watered down the product, to the sports’ detriment, it’s also put the kibosh on any sort of 'Broad Street Bullies' resurrection. That part’s okay. Nobody wants to return to those days. Goonery and thuggery for the sake of goonery and thuggery, is lame.

Even so, the softening of the game hasn't prevented it from receiving more than its fair share of criticism, mostly from those who've never actually seen a hockey game. Passionate fans know the type; generally condescending, they see hockey as a rouge niche sport embraced mainly by beer-swilling and unsophisticated ruffians, eh?  Hockey?! Nobody cares about hockey! Hahaha! 

Hey, them's fightin' words!

Though I grew up in California, after discovering hockey while channel surfing one Sunday afternoon when I was 13, I was hooked. And I played it, too, both on wheels and blades. So if feel like dropping the gloves with some blowhard mocking my game, someone who wouldn't know a Zamboni from a Zeppelin, I’ll gladly take the penalty. Just show me to the box.

Five for fighting.

Though these know-it–all-know-nothings look down on and cry foul over hockey's inherent true north hardscrabble violence, every weekend they're whooping it up and fixated on the brutish bores busting heads on NCAA and National Football League gridirons. Equally annoying is the politically-correct melon-head who questions if even badminton might need to be gentrified. Oh, that poor birdie.

Puh-leeze.

But it's kind of a time waster trying to convince these Neanderthals that hockey isn't what they think, so I don't even try anymore. It's like trying to explain Jello to a caveman. He sees it and it looks good. But any attempt to pick it up and eat it ends with the treat slipping through his hairy oversized fingers and onto the ground. Where he laps it up like the rest of the unwashed masses, who turn up their nose at the best team sport in North America. Whatever.  I’ll take five for fighting over fist and ten any day of the week, and twice on Sunday. Go 49’ers! Nah; just go.

So, last Saturday, as the Sharks Douglas Murray squared off with Anaheim's Aaron Voros in the evening's final scrap, my heart was joyous. Not just because two guys were throwing hands, but because not one of the 17,562 in attendance at HP Pavilion was passively sitting on their hands in disapproval. They get it. It's just part of the game. And they were diggin' it.

At last, I was among friends.

 

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