Hockey pucks and dog turds

I have recently been wondering something.

Who is the girl in the 'free-college-info' ads that are all over Yahoo!? Just kidding. That's not what I was wondering. Why would I care about that, anyway?

I have pondered the great enigma of how it is that a guy like me could not be in to hockey. I have been known after all (when I still had cable), to watch almost anything remotely relating to sports. And I will watch games again, you know, re-broadcasts that I have already seen. I will watch teams I hate (New York Yankees, Notre Dame football, Duke basketball, you get the picture) just in case I might be able to see them lose (hopefully in a big way). If they were to broadcast a loogie-spitting contest on ESPN9, I might call around to a few friends to ask if I could come over.

And with all that, I don't watch, or really even follow, the NHL. The Stanley Cup, crushing checks, guys who don't shave for two months. Means nothing to me. Maybe I don't know what I'm missing. Is it blissful ignorance?

You know, like the kind I enjoyed as a kid. My family moved in to a house when I was very little, and the house came with a dog (who ever heard of that?). The perfect dog, as it turns out. We never fed her, she only pooped in the neighbor's yard, and one day when she got old she simply left and never came back.

In case you missed it, yes, she had been trained (how else can you explain the habit?) not to defecate on our premises.

As a child, the significance of this was lost on me until I went to a friend's house one day. His mom came in to the room where we were playing and said, "Darryl, you need to go do your chores." And one of his chores was picking up dog crap in the back yard. I watched him with great curiosity (but no pity) as he scoured the place, using his little spade to collect the offensive brown lumps into a five-gallon bucket. I don't know what he did with it after that. All I knew was I was happy not to have to do that at my house.

Now I have a dog of my own, and I have picked up the dukes she drops. And I appreciate my childhood dog even more, now.

But I don't appreciate the NHL--still. Obviously I was exaggerating before; I have seen my share of hockey games. And after watching the last two games (in their entirety, mind you) of the NHL playoffs this week, I am still 'not on board' (to steal a phrase from an eccentric local blogger I know).

Don't get me wrong, there are things I like about hockey. If you look at the box score, everyone player suited up (with the exception of the backup goalie) gets significant playing time; it is truly a team sport. Not like basketball where the last few guys on the bench (even in the NBA) are scrubs. And the swift, yet many times very physical nature of the game is fun to watch, at times.

But I have two major problems with hockey: First, many times the correct play, you know, the right thing to do, is to send the puck in to the zone by the back boards, without having a teammate there to receive it. It turns in to a race to see who gets it first, and the defense wins most times, or the play stalls as several players slash at their feet to get it out from underneath themselves. So the correct play ends most times in what I consider a turnover. Sorry, I just don't like that idea.

Next, when you watch a game, either on TV or in person, you lose sight of the puck at all times whenever it is being played up the near boards. You see players skating after it and swinging at it, but the wall blocks your view. I don't usually have a problem following the puck around, even after shots and ricochets, but I can't see through a wall.

Believe me, I have tried to see through a wall, and failed. I also tried to watch Tay Zonday's "Chocolate Rain" all the way through. Couldn't do that, either.