Hockey Requires Skill; ESPN Says So

An article by Kevin Weisel    5 Comments

There is a stereotype of hockey that it is simply a brute, toothless, and physical game. Hockey is often caricatured in movies and television shows, etcetera, but the reality is that hockey is a finesse game. It is a game that requires some of the most skill and talent to play than almost any other sport. Why? ESPN says so, that’s why (watch Sidney Crosby showcase some accuracy).

Crosby fending off the opposition

ESPN.com has a segment called “Page 2″ that contains a plethora of entertaining, opinionated articles from several different contributors. One of these articles dealt with which sport demanded the most skill. They had an “Ultimate Degree of Difficulty Grid” that was concocted by a panel of experts, which included a “group made up of sports scientists from the United States Olympic Committee, of academicians who study the science of muscles and movement, of a star two-sport athlete, and of journalists who spend their professional lives watching athletes succeed and fail”.

Their conclusion: Boxing is #1. And guess what. Hockey is #2.

How they came to this conclusion was more than just opinions. As the article states,

“We identified 10 categories, or skills, that go into athleticism, and then asked our eight panelists to assign a number from 1 to 10 to the demands each sport makes of each of those 10 skills. By totalling and averaging their responses, we arrived at a degree-of-difficulty number for each sport on a 1 to 100 scale. That number places the difficulty of performing each sport in context with the other sports we rated.”

-ESPN.com Page 2

Hockey is a skill sport and I would love nothing more than anyone who dislikes hockey (whether out of ignorance or substantial reasons) to give it another shot. Go to a game, preferably an NHL game. Up close and in person I cannot imagine anyone not enjoying themselves. If that is not an option–at least in the near future–then invest in an HDTV (c’mon, who doesn’t have one!?) and watch the game the way it is meant to be seen. The object in play in hockey is a puck. This is a 1 inch thick, 3 inches wide slab of vulcanized rubber, weighing in at approximately 6 ounces. Hockey probably has the hardest object to follow on a television screen in all major sports, and this has been cited as a top criticism for those who dislike the sport. If you do not know where the puck is, or it’s difficult to follow the flow of play, you get confused, discouraged, and ultimately, disinterested. Unfortunately this sometimes turns into dislike, all because you just didn’t know what was going on. And that is a shame.

With the advent of the HDTV it has made it possible for hockey novices to see the puck with ease, and the wide screen has allowed for more viewable ice, which facilitates following the play. If the last time you tried to watch a hockey game was on ESPN for instance (which would have been before the NHL lockout of 2004-2005), then it is possible you might have watched the game on a standard definition television (Now, in 2010, almost 2/3 of Americans own HDTVs).

Do yourself a favor and give hockey another chance. The NHL is in High Definition on Versus, Fox Sports, the NHL Network, and if you are a cool person, NHL Center Ice, which includes every single NHL game, where, at least with Comcast, there are two HD channels allocated for games. You might realize you have been missing out on an amazing and exciting sport.

Graceful skating, nifty stick-handling, blistering shots with pinpoint accuracy, in your face physicality, and emotion draped all over the place, all in crystal clear high definition! Worst case scenario: you might get a glimpse of a sexy ice girl!

Icegirl for the Chicago Blackhawks