So, Adam Kubalski is the latest example of why hockey is still a
second-rate sport in most regions of the country. Don’t blame
Kubalski; it isn’t his fault. Nor is it the fault of anyone
involved in the UCLA-USC hockey collision from the Pac-8
Championships on Feb. 10.
That whole mess just reminds us that so many sports fans refuse
to take hockey seriously.
It really doesn’t matter how much athleticism is needed to
make each cut on the ice, gliding through the opposing defense en
route to a breakaway. It doesn’t matter how much hand-eye
coordination is needed for a pass gingerly dropped behind the net,
or the reaction time needed for a one-timer. But it should.
Hockey loyalists have long been trying to sell their sport on
the excitement of the blurring pace and the feverish adrenaline
rush of competing only inches above a frozen floorboard.
So why can’t hockey finally grow out of its image as a
brutish sport that is played by head hunters missing their front
teeth? Why is the controversy surrounding Kubalski and USC
defenseman Matt Lewis probably not at all surprising to anyone? It
is as much institutional as it is just bad luck.
The National Hockey League leadership, starting at the top with
Commisioner Gary Bettman, has never attempted to create a pro
league that restricts violent body checking and promotes swift goal
scoring. Critics have long called for Bettman and his cronies to
change some of the rules so that the game can put the spotlight on
wholesome competition rather than embarrassing bare-knuckle boxing
fights on ice. NHL leadership will never change the lenient penalty
for roughing or fighting (five minutes) because it thinks that is
what the public wants to see. The stoppage of play for blue-line
crossing slows the game so that big, lumbering defensemen have the
advantage rather than nimble forwards. The NHL really thinks that
is what keeps the sport on the television in American sports bars.
But it’s also what keeps hockey out of the households of
worrisome soccer moms.
Genuine interest and perception of sports is a grassroots
project. Major League Baseball couldn’t be anymore disgraced
by the assumed guilt of its superstars for allegations of steroid
use. But baseball is still the cornerstone of every otherwise
boring American childhood because of little league, hot dogs and
the “Two, four, six, eight, who do we appreciate?”
nostalgia. Baseball will survive as long as there are visions of
Walter Matthau as “Morris Buttermaker” drinking beers
and cleaning pools as the coach in “Bad News
Bears.”
Hockey has never been able to cultivate that kind of following
outside of the frozen ponds of Canada and the northern part of
America. In Montreal, hockey fans recall what it was like to glide
around with a stick that is bigger than them, trying to push a
slippery puck into the goal so that Dad can see how good they
really are. Sports is really nothing more than a reference point to
some moment in childhood, when life was as easily understood as a
game.
That’s why any sports fan south of Wisconsin or west of
Minnesota thinks of hockey as a thuggish horseplay with remedial
ice skating. We don’t have the memories that can forgive poor
leadership on the professional level, commercialism, or immature
fighting that distracts from how graceful a hockey player can look
when twirling the puck around the opposition.
E-mail de Jong at adejong@media.ucla.edu if you wonder why
memories of orange slices and Capri Suns don’t translate into
more fanfare for American soccer.