Hockey's Back! Oh Baby!

bubble hockey,
originally uploaded by
richard winchell

Hockey is the greatest sport ever. It has the hand-eye coordination of baseball, the rock'em sock'em action of football, the fancy passing of basketball, the international flavor of soccer, and of course the pomp and majesty of figure skating! It's all of that rolled up into one big ball of excitement, plus it's fast.

That's right, hockey is a twenty-first-century sport. It's figure skaters on meth or tweakers on skates, you decide. This past year hockey fans have had to endure the deep depression of a season with no hockey. I was in Montreal during the lockout of '95 that cut the season in half and let me tell you the French Canadians were about to start burning cars in the streets. While it is true that they'll do that for just about anything, that's beside the point, hockey was missed!

I'm a huge hockey fan. Most people don't know this but hockey was big in the Bronx, okay it wasn't but it did have a dedicated following, especially after 1980. The whole "miracle on ice" thing happened and everyone was lacing up and smashing each other in the face, it's true that Bronxites will do that anyway but trust me hockey was loved! A live game is a beautiful spectacle to behold; a cavalcade of sights, sounds, and smells; a sensual stream of consciousness involving prodigious amounts of blood, swirling bright colors, gut wrenching screams, profane chanting, and mustard-slathered pork byproducts! Okay, I'm ready...Let's go R_A_N_G_E_R_S!!!