Stick a fork in it. The NHL just cancelled the season, becoming, as the talking heads have been fond of saying, the first of the four major U.S. sports leagues to cancel an entire season due to labor troubles (that's 'labour' for any Canucks that might read the board.)

I'd argue that hockey has long since been passed by NASCAR, poker, X-treme Sportz,and three-cushion billiards in the hearts and minds of most Americans, though.

I find it stunning to see hockey fights described as gay on a board that worships baseball....a sport whose fights more closely resemble hissy fits among 16 year old kids who are really into musicals.

I think the last time I saw solid contact made during a bench-clearer was Nolan Ryan's geriatric fist crowning Robin Ventura on the skull. That was about 12 years ago.

If you don't like hockey, go see it live. If that doesn't change your mind, so be it. Frankly I can't see how anyone can really dislike the sport, but to each their own.

I love it. Blackhawks season ticket holder, back when they actually played games and stuff. Matt Barnaby is in town. Most decidedly NC.

ginandtacos.com wrote:I find it stunning to see hockey fights described as gay on a board that worships baseball....a sport whose fights more closely resemble hissy fits among 16 year old kids who are really into musicals.

It isn't that fighting is gae, it's that the mechanics of hockey make real fighting almost impossible, so the fights are lame. Knowing this, hockey players are prepared -- encouraged, even -- to "fight," knowing that the chances of really getting hurt are slim. This showbusiness aspect -- this false bravado -- is gaeeeee.

I think the last time I saw solid contact made during a bench-clearer was Nolan Ryan's geriatric fist crowning Robin Ventura on the skull. That was about 12 years ago.

And in hockey, no unprotected player is made to stand still in a box while an expert throws baseballs at him from 60 feet away. The potential for real violent intent is there some 150 times a game, as well as any time a baserunner tries to break-up a double play, or beat a throw home.

It just isn't fake sissy pretend-to-fight fighting, so it doesn't look like fighting.

steve wrote:And in hockey, no unprotected player is made to stand still in a box while an expert throws baseballs at him from 60 feet away. The potential for real violent intent is there some 150 times a game, as well as any time a baserunner tries to break-up a double play, or beat a throw home.

now, now. guys get fucking _clobbered_ playing hockey, on a regular basis. getting clobbered is an integral part of the game.

i think the constant tension you describe in baseball is one of many transcendent things about baseball, and that tension is one of the reasons i have always preferred baseball to football, hockey, rugby, australian rules football, and roller derby. and hockey. but playing hockey is some rough bullshit.

i think hockey is an exciting, manly, brutal yet graceful sport. while i have little time to follow it, i have rather enjoyed watching the playoffs in recent years.

not crap

steve wrote:And in hockey, no unprotected player is made to stand still in a box while an expert throws baseballs at him from 60 feet away. The potential for real violent intent is there some 150 times a game, as well as any time a baserunner tries to break-up a double play, or beat a throw home.

I think the rate at which careers are ended by violent injury in hockey, as compared to baseball, call into question the true potential for danger on a diamond. Even with all the padding, I think a goalie who steps in front of 50 slapshots a game is taking every bit the risk that a batter takes, given the average of just over 1 HBP per major league game.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't about calling baseball players pansies, but the Ray Fosses are few and far between, vastly outnumbered by guys who go on the DL for lacerated fingers and pulled groins.

I think you're vastly overstating the level of homosexuality involved in hockey fights. Yes, there are plenty of hockey fights that resemble two wounded elephants trying to slap one another to death, but you don't have to watch hockey very long before you see one of the Stu Grimsons of the world put someone in the hospital. Call me crass, but I don't think that can be compared to Pedro Martinez girl-slapping Don Zimmer in a sport where guys go on the DL with hangnails.

I love baseball. I just can't really see how the chance of violent injury and death, or the "toughness" of its players (mental or otherwise) compares to the sport of our northern cousins. I'm badly straining my memory to think of one baseball player whose career has been ended by a contact related injury and I can't. Hell, even Terry Steinbach played another 6 years after I sat behind home plate watching him take a Bobby Thigpen fastball off the skull with a thud that was probably audible on the north side.

ginandtacos.com wrote:I think the last time I saw solid contact made during a bench-clearer was Nolan Ryan's geriatric fist crowning Robin Ventura on the skull. That was about 12 years ago.

Yeah...when the weather gets damp, i still feel some sorness in that particular geriatric fist. Ah well, old age.

ginandtacos.com wrote:I think the last time I saw solid contact made during a bench-clearer was Nolan Ryan's geriatric fist crowning Robin Ventura on the skull. That was about 12 years ago.

I would go see a band called Geriatric Fist Crowning.

Wow. What a gross band name. I hope that this post prompts other folks to post additional gross bands names in this "hockey" thread.

Because really. Who cares about the NHL? The NHL doesn't even care about the NHL.

Gross band names it is.

I care about the NHL.

It's a cult sport. Always has been, always will be. Hockey has about 1% of baseball's fan base in any given city, that's why the league fucked itself so badly by pricing its (limited) fan base out of attending the games.

When I make fun of hockey, it's mostly because it's fun to make fun of hockey. I think hockey is actually a cool sport, and played by manly men and canadians, etc. And people who love it do so with a passion reserved for it alone, which I can respect.

This does not change the facts, however. It is basically lacrosse, played on ice skates, by guys wearing bloomers who pretend-fight a lot.

So I get to make fun of it.

I am in a band called The Flemish Cap and we bring some heavy, heavy shit.

We don't have any songs yet, and I haven't gathered up the rest of the players, but it's gonna be great. The Flemish Cap! Psychedelic heavy rock! Hot as shit!

But some of my friends think the name sounds gross. It's not. It's heavy, like the sea.