Ice Ice Baby

As part of our government-sactioned hockey education programme, we first rented Slap Shot, and then watched a Vancouver Canucks hockey game live on pay-per-view. The Canucks were playing the Washington Capitals, and after an initial period of parity, blew them off the ice, winning 6-1. There were no actual punchups, which was a bit of a letdown, but there was a bit of facial blood-letting, and one guy even folded his knee underneath him and had to be carried off. In the end, our lust for mayhem was well-satisfied.

After reflecting on the experience, I've decided ice hockey is a pretty cool sport. It has a good mixture of speed, stamina and skill, with the required streak of ragged violence the modern viewing audience demands. After all, it's hard to take a sport seriously unless people are getting badly hurt. I do feel a bit detached watching the top guys play though, as their skills are fairly unearthly. They can flick the puck behind their backs into the upper corner of the net while going backwards on one skate, as they're being slammed from the side by one guy the size of a bus, and while another guy is jamming a hockey stick into their eyes. It's not something I could ever do, even if I went off to a mountain monastery to learn from a magical order of French-Canadian ice hockey monks. I'm about as good at the game as Happy Gilmore, minus his shot, which means I basically can't do anything at all. This pretty much throws cold water on any hockey fantasies I might ever have, unless I hurl reality completely out the window.