• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

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.