Postman
Registered User
- Feb 27, 2002
- 4,927
- 1
HollyG said:Hockey is more difficult to read and react to than a lot of other sports. How mentally difficult is it to hit a ball? Tackle someone? Not very. Play defense in hockey? Harder.
I'm sorry, but like the Kaiped Krusader said, horrible comparisons and you're showing a little too much bias towards hockey. Hitting a baseball is quite the difficult thing to accomplish. That has more to do with hand-eye coordination and preperation for a pitch. There's nothing in hockey that's even comparable to hitting a baseball. Except maybe batting a puck out of the air. But again, no one's throwing the puck to you at 90 mph with a spin on it to make it curve.
There's incredibly difficult tasks to accomplish in all sports. So I wouldn't go belittling other sports just because you have a love for hockey.
As for the main point, sports usually have more to do with instincts than they do with thinking things out. You rarely have time to think out a play in hockey, and I'd bet its even harder with the fast pace of the NHL. That's a totally different kind of intelligence than book smarts or street smarts. As previously mentioned, you could be a Yale graduate/have a high IQ, but that doesn't always mean you'll exhibit smarts on the ice. You have to have the instincts to react quick to plays. In those situations, you'll have no time to use your high IQ.
So as intelligent as Valabik may be, if he doesn't have the instincts to react, he won't get too far.