Tom Clements
Registered User
- Mar 25, 2013
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Well, our gifted fourth liner Anthony Peluso is still absent since sustaining a broken bone in his right hand after it landed squarely on Aaron Volpatti's head on March 2nd. We should specify that the incident occurred as he and Volpatti were involved in an on-ice fistfight, which basically consists of two guys on skates, flailing their arms randomly through the air, trying to connect with something vaguely resembling flesh. Of course, seeing as the two fighters are also attempting to pull their opponent's jersey over their head, and given that, as previously mentioned, they are both on skates, the odds of landing a punch on anything resembling flesh are somewhat slim. The odds of striking something hard and unforgiving, however, are significantly higher. A few of these objects come to mind easily - the boards, the ice, a helmet, bone... and I'm sure there are many more of them out there if were to put our collective heads together and think about it a bit more...
The game of hockey consists mostly of the act of using your hands to guide a stick, which in turn ushers a small rubber disc into tiny openings leading into a net. If other sports are games of inches, hockey is a game of millimetres. The dexterity which is necessary to score a goal is impressive, sometimes astonishing. One would think that hockey players value, above anything else... their fingers! And yet, guys like Peluso flail their arms randomly through the air on a daily basis, attempting to strike that elusive flesh, and jeopardizing the very things that makes them good at this game: their hands. The Jets captain also fought this month, as did other goal scorers in the Jets line up - fighting, you see, is not an exclusive domain of the dumb brutes on the ice, but "part of the game", as we are often reminded.
This of course leads to many questions, but I won't bore you with all of them. Could someone just simply explain to me who is more clueless: the hockey player who willingly smashes the one thing that makes him good at his craft squarely into inanimate objects that are built with the exact goal of being as unyielding as possible, or the scores of fans in the stands cheering for this spectacle?
I won't compare apples to oranges other than to ask another very simple question: why do you think NFL receivers do not randomly and willingly crush their hands into the helmets of defensive backs when they get a little irate? Could it be that these gifted athletes from across the border know something that boys growing up in the Canadian Prairies do not??
I just wish that proponents of the sanctity of Canada's favourite sport also understood the idiocy behind some of its most sacrosanct traditions.
The game of hockey consists mostly of the act of using your hands to guide a stick, which in turn ushers a small rubber disc into tiny openings leading into a net. If other sports are games of inches, hockey is a game of millimetres. The dexterity which is necessary to score a goal is impressive, sometimes astonishing. One would think that hockey players value, above anything else... their fingers! And yet, guys like Peluso flail their arms randomly through the air on a daily basis, attempting to strike that elusive flesh, and jeopardizing the very things that makes them good at this game: their hands. The Jets captain also fought this month, as did other goal scorers in the Jets line up - fighting, you see, is not an exclusive domain of the dumb brutes on the ice, but "part of the game", as we are often reminded.
This of course leads to many questions, but I won't bore you with all of them. Could someone just simply explain to me who is more clueless: the hockey player who willingly smashes the one thing that makes him good at his craft squarely into inanimate objects that are built with the exact goal of being as unyielding as possible, or the scores of fans in the stands cheering for this spectacle?
I won't compare apples to oranges other than to ask another very simple question: why do you think NFL receivers do not randomly and willingly crush their hands into the helmets of defensive backs when they get a little irate? Could it be that these gifted athletes from across the border know something that boys growing up in the Canadian Prairies do not??
I just wish that proponents of the sanctity of Canada's favourite sport also understood the idiocy behind some of its most sacrosanct traditions.