My first Hockey Game
I don’t care about hockey at all. I actually don’t care for most sports. Even Football and Rugby back home. Never much cared for it.
But I do remember this whole city exploding in a riot over hockey a couple years back. Now, you have to remember that these are Canadians, which are a even nicer, friendlier people than the English. And yet, something about hockey got them up in arms.
What is it about this sport?
Vancouver Canucks Game
Legalized Assault and Battery?
We and a few friends all went and saw the Vancouver Canucks and the Los Angeles Kingships. Now, I didn’t even know Los Angeles could have a hockey team. Isn’t it a tropical desert or something down there? I remember reading that it hadn’t snowed in thirty odd years down there. Amazing, this is.
Anyway, going in with no knowledge of hockey, these are my observations:
- These people go fast. Really fast.
- There’s A LOT of rules that stop play. Can’t do a hand pass? puck touched with high stick? Are these really reasons to stop a game?
- If you want to beat people up, but don’t want to be arrested, become a hockey player. Seriously. I think I understand why hockey fans riot.
I can’t believe they still allow assault and battery in a hockey game in this day and age. And the crowd? Oh my god, the crowd started to terrify me as a fight broke out on the ice. Women were shouting for blood.
Were we in Roman times? Are they going to put some Tigers out there in skates?
If you combine a passion of fans and the brutality of this kind of fighting, I can totally see how riots would happen. I know that they only seem to happen in Canadian cities, but that’s probably because they only have the one sport to identify with. If you’re in Boston, or New York, your hockey team is only 1/4 of your sporting life. With Canadians, I can tell, it’s everything to them!
I can’t believe they allow them to bare-knuckle brawl out there. It’s…illegal everywhere except on a hard, slippery surface. Maybe because I’m English I just don’t get it. I don’t know. But man, oh man, that is some serious culture shock!
