NHL Hockey Is Back, And Why It Rules

Mandatory Credit: Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports

It’s that time of year. The leaves are turning and the temps are dipping. As such the pucks are dropping. It’s that time of year. The NHL is back; hockey at its highest level has returned. And hockey rules.

Many of us are multi-sport fans. We also watch our football, baseball, basketball and soccer. And each comes with its own set of thrills, chills, upsets and Moments. But the one thing they just can’t deliver, and what they all have in common, is that they’re not hockey.

There’s just something about it.

Hockey incorporates the best from all sports and then adds to them a uniqueness all its own. (Okay, technically, “a uniqueness all its own” is kind of a redundancy. But hey, it sounds cool.) Hockey trims the fat and it cannot be matched by any other athletic endeavor.

In hockey there are no nightly, mind-numbing parades to free throw lines nor endless time-outs. No numerous pitching changes, pitching conferences or infinite displays of unsuccessful pick-off attempts. No boring-as-heck extra point-commercial-kickoff-commercial set ups. 48 minutes of every hour are not spent standing around or in huddles while the game clock runs down. There are no insomnia-busting 90 minute 0-0 ties.

With hockey, in-between whistles there is always action.

One thing many of hockey’s detractors seem to have in common is that they’ve never played and, as such, never took the time to get to know the game. Instead they chose, and still choose, to believe the tired stereotypes of toothless goons who drop the gloves every third shift to perform involuntary facial reconstruction surgery on adversaries with the business end of their battered, taped-up Sher-Woods.

If this describes you sir or ma’am, please note that Slapshot was 37 years ago. The John Scotts of the league are now very few and far between. Give the game another chance.

Hockey fans, however, know better. They get that most people can’t even skate, period, and so they understand just what a variety of talent and athleticism it takes to play this game.  They comprehend what it takes to combine world-class ice skating and stick-handling while avoiding opponents who can legally hit players as hard as they want while they’re gliding along the ice at 25 miles per hour.

They know the effort it takes to make hard passes, soft passes, saucer passes, blind passes and needle-threaders. They know that players must constantly hit and absorb hits. That forwards must stand in front of goaltenders while bigger men roughly and rudely try to dislodge them from the crease. And that, when they do win those battles, their prize is hoping a rock-hard piece of pre-frozen, vulcanized rubber fired at them by a teammate at upwards of 100 miles per hour strikes them somewhere so that it’ll change direction slightly.

They’re aware that even if players succeed in carrying a puck through an entire team, they still have to defeat a large, armor-clad man possessing the agility of a circus acrobat who is paid millions just to stop them.

On the ice, players cannot take a second off. Coaches cannot hide aging, portly designated hitters on an NHL bench, or long-snappers, or any of the one-trick pony positions which other sports’ rosters include. Every man must play hard in all facets of the sport to earn his payday. (Okay, sure. Maybe not Ville Leino. What can I tell you, though? There are exceptions to every rule.)

Even in the most lackadaisically-played of mid-season contests, hockey is still an ascetically beautiful thing to watch. A 2-1 game can overflow with multiple outstanding offensive chances while, conversely, a 9-8 contest might contain spectacular saves and instances of great defense.

Compared to ice hockey, basketball is less exciting than competitive, non-contact knitting would be.

Baseball is a placeholder between hockey seasons and football, while great to watch when stuff is happening, provides about a dozen minutes of action in a typical three-hour broadcast. By comparison, I doubt I’d enjoy watching 24 as much as I do if each episode contained 6 minutes of storyline and 54 minutes of commercials.

For the NHL hockey fan, few things in sports can compare to the first rounds of face-offs that count. They are the signal that the flag has been  dropped and another nine-month battle for the world’s most coveted trophy has begun. Again.

And in October there’s still a chance that their team, yes theirs, has a chance to outlast numerous squads scattered throughout the entirety of North America and finally, proudly, skate around with it next summer.

And you can tell it’s coming because the leaves are turning and the temps are dipping.

It’s that time of year.