I have this new interest in Hockey and I think it has increased my nerd factor by 10. It all started this past winter when Ems invited me to see an Indiana Ice game at the State Fairgrounds. As soon as it started I was mesmerized. The players zoomed around the rink at supersonic speeds and there was always something fascinating to look at. It was extremely helpful that I had a sport savant sitting next to me ( Z ) explaining the rules and why the players were doing things. I was hooked.
Fast-forward to the winter Olympics. Did you know that Ice Hockey is one of the sports. I didn’t until this year. I watched the games on MSNBC and I began to appreciate the strategies and aggressiveness of the sport. All of a sudden I found myself looking at the TV guide to see when the USA team was playing and before I knew it I was watching every leg of the competition. I quickly realized that live sports are far superior to DVR’ed sports. Who wants to find out the winner before they are done watching the game.
As I was watching I would get all excited while I was rooting for team USA to win. I yelled at the TV as they scored great goals and I booed when a player from an opposing team gave USA players unnecessary hits into the boards. I was quite disappointed when USA was matched against Canada in the final Olympic game and lost. They had my hopes up after a spectacular last minute goal that tied the game, but alas Canada took the gold in overtime.
After the Olympics concluded I knew I needed to learn more about the NHL. I tried to find a hockey for dummies website but the best I found was an entry on Wikipedia. I was doomed to look at ESPN and be perpetually confused.
I felt the desire to watch more games on the TV but that also proved to be a bit difficult. I discovered that most NHL games are telecast on a little know network called Versus. Seriously, I didn’t know that this channel existed until two months ago. Strangely there is an existing NHL channel but they didn’t get the contract to show the games. WTC (see The Big Bang Theory to understand this reference)! That makes NO sense to me. After some searching I found out the NBC shows games occasionally on the weekends. Sometimes! Boo...there were no semifinal games on this past weekend. Then you are at the mercy of the network. You don’t get to choose what team to watch. So that left me blocking out my Sunday afternoons to watch whatever team was thrown in my face.
I began to realize that I needed to be more emotionally invested in this sport. I needed a favorite team to root for. But, how was I to decide upon a favorite team? Proximity? A great player? A friends favorite team? How do you choose such a thing? I asked a few sports loving friends how they chose their favorite team and most of their responses involved loving their favorite team since childhood. Coincidentally they appeared to be a team located near where they grew up. Hmmmm….did this mean I needed to be a Blackhawk fan. I didn’t feel any special affinity toward the Blackhawks or any of their players. I am not sure yet. One of my ideas was to see who won the Stanley Cup and become their fan next year. I don’t think that this plan is without merit.
Readers of My Dinosaur Life, how did you decide upon your favorite sports team?
Three months into this new interest I find myself checking espn.com every day. I want to see who is still in the conference semifinals. Who is going to win the Eastern and the Western conference championships and finally who will be the winner of the coveted Stanley Cup? Seriously, ESPN is now one of my most commonly visited websites. I even downloaded an NHL app for my phone last week just in case I had a hockey emergency.
I like to talk to people about things I am interested in. You know…it is VERY difficult to find someone who has the tiniest bit interested in the NHL or Hockey. It is like the dead sport. I have tried to talk to a variety of boys at work and I was hard pressed to find someone who was interested. I finally found one who used to be interested but he has let that interest go in favor or more popular sports (baseball….boring).
FYI....when I begin a conversations by telling you how the Blackhawks are doing in the playoffs please be a bit indulgent with me as I already know you probably don’t care but I have decided to tell you anyway.
PS...the Blackhawks have made it to the conference finals.
3 comments:
The team that I followed when I got into football was because of a really good player that I had heard about. The more I learned about him, the more I liked him AND the sport, so I followed his team.
Of course, he turned out to be a total douchebag, but fortunately, I still love football. So now, living in Indianapolis, I must be a Colts fan.
NCAA basketball - duh - you root for your alma mater. :-)
In general, I'm drawn to the "lovable losers" team. So if I did watch baseball (shudder) then I would probably be a Cubs fan. I have friends who are also Cubs fans, so it would be easy to discuss.
For hockey? I have family in San Jose, so....Sharks it is! Or would be. You know....if I ever watched hockey. (But I also really really like Toronto's uniforms...so maybe Toronto.)
I think that's one of the fun things about getting into a new sport. Picking who to follow. It doesn't really matter WHY you choose to follow a particular team - you'll get emotionally invested eventually and it won't matter why you started.
no you are not a nerd. Growin up with my dad playing hockey every weekend in Iowa and even playing senoir hockey in Ohio taught me it is an exciting game. However, I am not sure how much fun it is to watch. Maybe you should see if there is a local team and try playing yourself? I know your mind is racing now? could be your new goal? You know I tutor for a family from sweden and they all play hockey. The dad is on the florida team here The panthers. You are right, it is a dying sport in most areas but if you go to Minnesota, canada or the northern states it is big. My college boyfriend played hockey is whole life.
i do have to say, i would of never guessed you to be a hockey fan. but with you, one never knows what you will be up to?
AL
Yeah, you could probably pull up a map of the US with winter temperatures displayed on it, and find the band right around freezing (the shade of blue passing through northern Indiana). You pretty much aren't going to find much about hockey any farther south than that, and even the southern half of that light blue range isn't that big into the sport at the NHL level. (When I first moved to Bloomington in 1975, they didn't even show the standings in the paper on a regular basis.)
Of course there are teams below that line that have a reasonable following, and there are probably a lot of people in the pink and red areas who are hockey fans, but it's not like, say, Minnesota or Michigan or Massachusetts. (Canada is a level beyond.)
Like I've said, I think you should feel free to pick any team you like for whatever reason you like ... just make sure that you have a reasonable way to follow that team. Don't go spending the money for the NHL Center Ice package (if you can even get it) with the excuse that otherwise you can't watch the Hawks or whoever.
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