Lethal! En, forcers! Player one! *bang*

[prog]

Today's Wikipedia featured article is about fighting in hockey and I read the whole thing. I found it fascinating because I grew up in a hockey-loving house (by virtue of my brother Peter being in it) and watched and enjoyed countless Bruins games on television, and then went on to a hockey college and couldn't help but follow all our boys' (and, separately but lesserly, ladies') exploits there, and still I had no concept at all until now of NHL teams having unofficial "enforcer" players who protect the smaller players, punish perceived transgressions, and generally only fight with other enforcers. This is apparently a tradition far older than I.

I haven't followed or even thought much about hockey in years, and now it all seems rather bizarre for the reason the article states, that there's no other professional team sport in the western world that tolerates and even encourages on-field pugilistics like North American hockey. When I was a kid it seemed as natural as anything but now it strikes me as the output of unregulated testosterone poisoning, and simply distasteful. The purposeful and oddly abstract tackles and collisions in American football is just as physical but a hundred times more nuanced. (As is the checking and such in hockey, sure.)

(Subject line is what the arcade machine "Lethal Enforcers" would say when you put a quarter in and then started a one-player game, and otherwise has nothing to do with anything.)

Comments

[dictator555.livejournal.com]

As you know, my knowledge of sports is highly limited on account of them being pretty boring to me. However, I did go to a Bruins game with Nate and found it to be the most interesting sports event I've ever been to. (And I've been to Red Sox, Celtics, etc games. Boring!) But the fighting was kind of cool and interesting and no one really got hurt. I dunno. Seems like there are worse things.

[prog.livejournal.com]

Yes, hockey is definitely the funnest mainstream sport to watch, at a wholly objective level (otherwise I think I like watching baseball a little more, for its mystique). It has the continuous action of soccer, except it has the novelty of being on ice, and all performed in a more compact space that means more scoring and more physical play in between the scoring. And yeah, fightin'.