So…. Euro 2012 is underway in Poland. Ireland are out. Beaten by Croatia and then by Spain. We will likely be beaten by Italy tomorrow night, just as a final kick us in the balls when we’re already on our knees, sealing our place as one of the most embarrassing countries to be from in Europe. Cheers for that one. The Irish fans and their vocal support long past the final whistle at the Spain match are having their praises sung by all and sundy, except for Roy Keane, who said something about coming along for a sing-song not being enough. Personally, I could give a shit about any of it.
Here’s what I know about football:
I tried to be into football for a while when I was younger. My brother and cousin were all about it, so I joined ’em, deciding my favourite team was Manchester United and my favourite player was Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. My cousin and I, creatively, called him “Curly Boy” because of his curly, black hair, and, man, we thought we were THE SHIT for coming up with such a hilarious and original nickname. So… that’s embarrassing for me. Anyways my affair with the beautiful game was short lived owing to the fact that I found it boring as hell and didn’t understand any of the rules. Any of ’em. None. Except that a red card meant “get off, you naughty little scamp!”
That was it. In the years since my foray into soccer fandom, I’ve dallied with other sports. I played handball for a while in National School (I even made in on to the BOYS doubles team! WHAT! WHAT!). But handball, as it turns out, is a pathetic sport and nobody plays it. Then I was an avid horse-rider for years. The highlight of my year used to be going to the Dublin Horse Show every August. And I’d always buy a pile of junk that I didn’t need; grooming brushes, pony treats, coloured whips, helmet covers, books, you name it! Alas, you don’t see much of equestrian competitions on the big screens down the local. Then I fell in with motorsport for a good while. There was a good two years where I repeatedly found myself awake at some ridiculous hour of a Sunday morning so I could watch the live coverage of whatever Formula 1 race was on (I was a Raikkonen fan.) Nothing stuck. Rugby? Too violent. Golf? Too boring. Cricket? Too British. GAA? Too familiar.
I gave up. I quit like a great big quitter. I informed the tomboy lurking inside me that she was bound to stay where she was, to be freed only by occasional splurges on Military Channel documentaries and Man Vs Wild. I dedicated my life to celebrity gossip instead. I was in an Irish Bar in Newcastle with some family last April, when our home province team, Ulster, beat Edinburgh to make it through to the 2012 Heineken Cup Final. The place was jammed with excited, chanting, raucous men, my own relations included. The buzz was electric. I couldn’t tell you what the score was. I could, however tell you that that was the day after Barack Obama made fun of Kim Kardashian at the White House Correspondents dinner. Or that Beyonce called her fake pregnancy rumours “crazy” that day. Or that LeAnn Rimes and Eddie Cibrian had just renewed their wedding vows. That’s what I can tell ya.
So, it was somewhat a bolt from the blue when, in June of last year, I discovered….. HOCKEY!!!
I was a latecomer to the 2011 NHL race for the Stanley Cup, not witnessing anything before the opening game of the finals. I was introduced to the game by my best-friend and serial cohort, who happens to be Vancouver born. The season culminated in June for a series of seven playoff games between the Boston Bruins and the Vancouver Canucks. So my best friend is a ‘Couv native. But then, I have an uncle who’s lived in Boston for the past twenty-odd years. Who was I gonna root for? I ultimately went with the Canucks after coming to the realisation that they were ruthlessly vicious, hard-as-nails and hell bent on fighting for that cup. The Canucks fought dirty throughout the playoffs and we fucking loved it. We downloaded every game the night after it had aired (because where were we gonna watch it live?) and we sat, enthralled, involved and committed.
It came down to the wire. When game seven rolled around on June 15, the Canucks had three wins and the Bruins had three wins. Game seven was the decider. And the Bruins destroyed the Canucks 4-0 at Rogers Arena, taking the Stanley Cup back home to Massachusetts and out of the reach of the devastated Canucks. Ryan Kesler bawled his wee eyes out right there on the ice. The people of Vancouver responded decidedly badly to the loss. Suffice to say, they went fucking apeshit and rioted the shit out of the city!
Canucks fan in Vancouver in the aftermath of the 2011 Stanley Cup Riot
I didn’t mind all that much. I was happy enough. Because I’d discovered a sport I could get down with. I faacking laaaaved hockey!!!
Agus is anseo an fath…
The Insanse “WHERETHEFUCKISTHEPUCK?!” Speed
Hockey moves fast. The players skim across the ice at lightening speed and send the puck even faster. The average speed of a player is around 25mph. The average speed of the puck is around 97mph. Pretty nifty. Games are three periods, each twenty minutes in duration, and there’s zero let up. I mostly learned to forget trying to keep and eye on the puck and just watch the players. Go where they go. All the glory of goals, as far as I’m concerned, has to be absorbed in the replay, seeing as I’m never actually paying close enough attention to see it do down in the first place.
Here’s Canuck centre, Ryan Kesler, goin’ hella fast at the 2011 NHL Skills Competition:
The Violence
Listen okay, I know I said that I can’t watch rugby because it’s too violent, BUUUUT, for absolutely no justifiable reason whatsoever, the violence in hockey is kind of what makes it for me. So we know these guys move fast. But they also go hard.
There’s a tactic used in play called “checking”. Without going into an condescending and unnecessary explanation, checking, or more specifically, body-checking, involves slamming oneself into an opponent, usually the dude with the puck, and forcing him into the ringside boards. It’s fucking brutal lads.
This one time, in 1996, Detroit Red Wings player, Kris Draper, was checked from behind by Colorado Avalanche player, Claude Lemieux. He hit the boards face first. Broke his jaw, his nose and his cheekbone. Draper’s teammate, Darren McCarty was behind the board and later said he “could hear his face crack”. Noice. McCarty would later go on to launch an EPIC retaliation attack on Lemieux the following year when the Red Wings faced the Avalanches again.
A Subheading For Violence… THE FIGHTING!
Oh man, the fighting. You know, I’ve long held the opinion that soccer players are nothing but over-paid, over-pampered, helpless little paaaaansies. This I maintain. You know that guy, Didier Drogba? Plays for Chelsea. Isn’t he notorious for faking injuries? I think I read that… Anyways, you don’t get that shit in hockey. These guys are HARD. AS. NAILS.
Fighting, in the NHL, is not only legal, it is openly encouraged and viewed as tradition. Heck, it is tradition. Fights are usually the role of the enforcers. It’s their job to aggravate the fuck out of the other guys. Some fights are premeditated by the players, some erupt suddenly out of nowhere, some involve two guys, some involve two teams, some are professional, some are personal. But all are ferocious. Sticks are thrown down, gloves are usually discarded and players descend into a melee of fists and fury on the ice, watched by the refs, who decide when enough is enough.
This is a good ‘un:
Hockey teams are close knit and more often than not, players are not afraid to jump into a fight on behalf of a teammate slighted. Blood is shed and the crowds go clayne ballistic for it! Decent fighters are valued by their team and revered by fans.
Hell, the Canucks won me over last year because of their infamous bad behaviour on the ice. I loved it.
The Fans
Michael Buble, of Vancouver, British Columbia, is so dedicated to hockey that he requests a local team hockey puck in his dressing room everywhere he performs. Michael Buble (who’s marriage won’t last, by the way), is so devoted to hockey that he bought part of the Vancouver Giants team.
Hockey fans are loyal and committed. And they’re involved. Part of the beauty of a hockey game is that the fans are separated from the game by just a glass board, which the players are slammed up against continually throughout a game. There seems to be a certain level of intimacy at a hockey game. Thousands of people, supporting their side and going pure wild at the very inclination that a fight might go down.
I digress again to the Vancouver riots. The second time Canucks fans had a less than docile response to a Stanley Cup loss. Yes it was a pretty substantial overreaction. Things got a bit cray, people got hurt, it wasn’t cool. But if anything marked the kinship that the fans feel for their teams, that was it. Vancouver was a city devastated. They had come so close. And they reacted, in true Canuck style; ridiculously violently.
Skill
So you want to be a hockey player? Okay, well first you’re gonna have to learn to skate. Then you’re gonna have to learn to skate backwards. Then fast. You’re gonna have to be able to stop suddenly or you’ll get busted into the boards. Now you’ve gotta learn how to use a stick, how to hold it, how to maneuver the puck. Then learn all the various types of shots; slapshot, wristshot, snapshot, backhand slapshot, sheesh. Okay, then learn how to “deke”, or trick your opponent with decoy moves. Evasive skating. Toughen up for some checking. Lose some teeth, perhaps. Learning to fight wouldn’t be the worse decision.
I just… Like, it’s definitely more than I know I’d be able to handle! Yeah, yeah, footballers are skilled too. Aye, but they’re also great big paaaansies, remember!
Shootouts
In 2005, the NHL made a controversial decision; to make tied games obsolete. The shootout was born.
It’s pretty straight-forward, if the game runs it’s time and the scores are tied, then it goes to shootouts. Each team has three players take a shot. The best of three wins the game. But what if both teams score 2 out of 3? Then it’s shootouts until one team scores and the other misses. Simples.
It means every game ends with a clear winner. It means that tensions run high and games often come right down to it!
The Stanley Cup Itself
First of all, all the players on a Stanley Cup winning team get their names engraved on the cup. So that’s awesome.
Second of all, every player on the winning team gets a day with the cup, and he can do whatever the heck he likes with it. In 1996, Sylvain Lefebvre , of the Colorado Avalanches, used the cup as a baptismal font for his daughter. Creeeeepy. Okay. In 1994, New York Rangers forward, Ed Olczyk, took the cup to the stable of Kentucky Derby winner, Go For Gin, where the horse ate out it. The horse… Ate… Out of the Stanley Cup. Patrick Kane of the Chicago Blackhawks took the cup to Niagara Falls in 2010. Mark Messier, Edmonton Oilers, took it to a strip club. It’s even been to Kandahar, Afghanistan. I mean, you know?! That’s aces!
Los Angeles Kings captain, Dustin Brown, with The Stanley Cup. June 2012.
Celebrities
I had to get it in there! As I said Mickey Buble is a massive hockey fan. Corey Monteith, of Glee fame, has been spotted at several Canucks games. Vince Vaughn is a huge Chicago Blackhawks fan. Snoop Dogg supports the Anaheim Ducks. Carrie Underwood is married to Mike Fisher of the Nashville Predators. Mike Myers, Justin Bieber and Drake are all Toronto Maple Leaf fans. Trey Parker (South Park) is a Colorado Avalanches supporter. Kevin Smith, of Mallrats, Clerks, Jay and Silent Bob, fame, supports the New Jersey Devils. Kid Rock, Detroit Red Wings. All the names, yo. All the names.
I could go on but I feel I’ve started rambling so I’mma go ahead and curtail myself ‘fore I go cross-eyed. You get the gist of what I’m sayin’ though, right? That hockey is gosh-darned awesome and I wish it was more available to us Paddys. Sure we love a bit of violence, no?
Look, Kanye West knows…
sureitsallabitofcraic 
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