Hockey Un-American!

It’s un-American I tell you! They have gone and messed with hockey. Uhh…John, Hockey is Canadian. I thought we bought Canada? Wasn’t that what NAFTA was about? No...NAFTA allowed the Japanese to build their cars in Mexico but say they were made in America. That’s crazy talk I tell ya! Next thing you’ll tell me Bacon isn’t American either! Well…there is Canadian Bacon, but never mind! Just get back to hockey.

Okay, so the people in charge of hockey decided that the reason people didn’t go watch it last year wasn’t because of the strike, but because there wasn’t enough scoring. But what do those Canadians do? They go and turn hockey into Ice prancing with sticks. There is no more clutching, no more grabbing, and no more checking. And that’s nothing compared to what they did on the ice. Badum dum! What kind of sport is that? Actually John, Ice Dancing is a sport. It is? How do you keep score? Well, a panel of judges makes an arbitrary decision and assigns points. Based on these points a winner is determined. That’s not a sport! Yes it is. It’s in the Olympics. Well so is gymnastics but that’s not a sport either. Can we please get back to hockey?

Okay, so the first big decision was to decrease the size of the goalies pads by 11%. Wow, where did they remove all of that material from. Let’s see, the made the blocker pad 1” smaller. 1”! That is like the tip of your finger. Then they took ¾” off the catching glove, and said the kick pads could not extend past the pant leg and had to conform to the contour of the leg. What is this, the fashion channel? That’s what I said, “What is this, the fashion channel?” 1” here, ¾” there that’s nothing, why don’t they make the goalies play without all that equipment

Now here is where my head really started to spin. They moved the goals 2’ back and the blue line several feet further out. They reduced the neutral zone, and there is a magic trapezoid behind the goal which the goalie can’t play the puck beyond. All of these complicated geometrical equations are designed to increase the amount of scoring. They did this because they think the public goes to a hockey game to see scoring. Not because they go to see fighting, gouging, and guys crashing into the boards at 70 miles an hour. Now you are going to have a bunch of guys with names you can’t pronounce skating circles around the slow moving, hard hitting Americans.

See if hockey were an American sport we would be able to fix this without changing all the rules. We would just do like we did with football or basketball and make a goal worth more. Let say we make a goal worth 5 points, now your typical hockey game would have a final score of 15 to 10. Doesn’t that sound better than 3 to 2? No math, no foreign guys, and plenty of hitting. So what are you going to do about it? Well I am going to do what any red blooded American would do. I’ll get in my Honda, drive to the Taco bell and watch my un-American hockey on the big screen.