Saturday, January 01, 2011

Outdoor Hockey Not Same As Pond Hockey

I am watching the outdoor hockey game which is supposed to evoke those "pond" hockey games of yore. Except, this is NOT pond hockey! It may be outdoors, and cold, but that's about the best of it.

I do remember back when I was six and living with my grandparents in Baltimore, we had a pond out back. Back then, I wore skates that were made for children with double blades that were doubled = four blades. Yeah, my first ice skating took place on a piece of frozen ice in my back yard. How about that, eh? (pass me the donuts, then the beer).

2 comments:

Bob said...

The annual outdoor game is more popular than the playoffs. Which stands to reason, since the playoffs are the hockey season & don't end until the 4th of July. It is kind of neat to see the huge crowd & hear it roaring like at a football game.

Carrie said...

Hockey arenas only seat somewhere between 18,000 and maybe 21,000, while outdoor football arenas seat around 70,000 and baseball fields can seat as many as 60,000. It is good to see that a football arena can be sold out in a sense for a hockey game. But all the hoopla that precedes the game is bs to me. They constantly show the players as youngsters playing pond hockey and then try to equate a state of the art arena, but just outside, as the same experience that these players are looking for. Reminds me of the movie Mystery Alaska, when the NHL accepts the challenge of the locals to play on pond ice, and then when the NFL comes in, they attempt to transform the pond ice into what is professional ice field. Pond hockey is not the same thing as playing hockey in an outdoor arena on professional ice. So unless they plan to use a frozen over Central Park, I beg to differ with the comparison.