Why Hockey is the Greatest Sport in the World

Growing up I was a baseball fan. It was by far my favorite sport. I played it, I watched it, I lived it. As I grew older, I fell in love with NFL football as well. Football is an exciting sport with hard hitting, speed, and talent. Now, while I still love baseball, and football is still awesome, a new sport has taken the #1 spot in my heart. Ice Hockey.

Ice hockey is a sport that combines the finesse and ahnd eye coordination of baseball, the physicality of football, the speed of basketball, and the tenacity of boxing...all while on ice skates. Of all the major sports, I'd have to rank hockey as the hardest sport to play. I mean, you have to be good with your stick on the puck, you have to be fast, you have to be able to take a hit...all the while, you have to be able to ice skate forwards and backwards, side to side, stop on a dime and change directions. Its insanity. Hockey is a wonderfully difficult sport to play, giving me much respect for those who do make it all the way to the NHL.

Hockey is also one of the most exciting sports around. It is constantly go go go. There is no stop between every offensive attempt. There is no stopping to change players, even. You keep skating, and change on the fly. Scoring can happen any any time. The action goes up and down the ice so quickly, that no team is truly ever out of a game until the end. Scoring chances happen constantly, too. Goalies routinely face 20, 30, even 40 shots in a game. Multiply that by 2, and you're looking at 40-80 scoring chances in a single game. That's 40-80 times in a game when someone can score a goal and change the complexion of a game. The game is always changing, always on the move. That sounds exciting to me.

Take football for instance. They run a play, take a break, run a play, take a break, punt, commercial, run a play, timeout, commercial. Football players do a lot of standing around. There's just far too many breaks in a game. This becomes especially evident when viewing a game in person. There's loads of downtime! Hockey does not have this problem. During a period, there are three total commercial breaks...total. Otherwise, they are skating and shooting and hitting constantly. When a puck is stopped by the goalie, the faceoff happens to start play up again right away. There's no chance to get bored at a hockey game, because it is always moving. It makes for an awesome spectator experience.

They also have the best penalty system of any sport. If you are caught cheating, you have to sit in time out for 2 minutes, and your team gets to play without you. It is a serious thing that can put a team at a huge disadvantage. Power plays and penalty kills are exciting. I think the loudest I've ever heard the crowd at a hockey game was one time when the Sharks were on the penalty kill down two players (they were facing a 5 on 3), and they killed it off. It was so tense in that building, and everytime the puck was cleared, the place went nuts. Tell me any other sport where a penalty is that exciting?

Finally, there's the fighting and physicality. First, football is a physical sport. The only way to stop someone from scoring in football is to physically drag them to the ground. Pretty hardcore. However, hockey is full of hits and checks. A player on the boards with the puck needs to be strong enough to get run into at full speed by two guys, not get knocked over, and still hold onto the puck. These hits happen 30-40 times a game...with a good 5-10 of them being considered "big hits"! Football is lucky to have one or two "big hits" in a game. Also, if someone takes a cheapshot at one of your players, you can fight them! And its allowed! The refs will stand around, and the two players will wail away on one another until one of three things happens: someone gets injured, someone gets knocked to the ice, or both players get tired and stop throwing punches. Then the players take a 5 minute timeout in the penalty box to cool off, and then they can come back out and play again! Tell me any other sport where you are allowed to stand up for teammates like that?

With its combination of speed, finese, and power, not to mention the fact they are doing this on ice; as well as hockey's fast pace of the game and consistant scoring opportunities, make hockey, hands down, the best sport in the world.