Hockey

[Tumppi 0]

Damn them Swedes! (You are going off-topic...) 55 secs left and they made the 1-1 goal against Finland.

Well Finland will win the WC so it doesn't matter. ;-)

[Kashunowaka 300]

Damn them Swedes!  (You are going off-topic...) 55 secs left and they made the 1-1 goal against Finland.

Well Finland will win the WC so it doesn't matter.  :-)

Who cares about ice hockey, now that Henke is back? ;-)

[Yubiquitoyama 4]

Damn them Swedes!

Edited April 30, 2004 by Yubiquitoyama

[Naifuzan 1]

Who cares about ice hockey, now that Henke is back?

He is? (You are going off-topic...)

EDIT: Never mind.. I saw the other thread about that now ;-)

Edited April 30, 2004 by Naifuzan

[aderechelsea 125]

Damn them Swedes! :-) 55 secs left and they made the 1-1 goal against Finland.

Well Finland will win the WC so it doesn't matter. :-)

the equaliser was fine by me since i made a bet on the match to end tied...... (You are going off-topic...)

Now i can go out and buy me a couple of drinks...... ;-)

[Kaikitsune Makoto 209]

Swedes have a tendency to do this against Finland and against the rest of hockey-kind too maybe. Swedes are also good for casserole in Christmas time. Do you have swede casserole in Sweden?

Nylander's skill in disguising and changing the direction of his fast turns has always been superb and still is. Very neat little fakes and twitches. Nice detail! Like Asanowaka's tachi-ai; you know he is going to go somewhere but you don't know to which side.

[Takanobaka 0]

Um, go Lightning!

US team tends to be fairly pathetic, partly because they don't even put the best players on the team, partly because most of the best guys in the NHL are from Canada or elsewhere (Sweden, Czech, Russia, etc etc)...

[Jesinofuji 11]

Yeah, lets talk about hockey. Lets talk about the Red Wings. Whose the strngest team, whose going to win the cup this year.

[Mark Buckton 1]

Yeah, lets talk about hockey. Lets talk about the Red Wings. Whose the strngest team, whose going to win the cup this year.

Raised in England, spent periods in Oz, Turkey, around Europe, Scandinavia, Baltic States. Good few years in Nippon too.

What's hockey? :-P B-) :-D

:-)

Does it involve a mawashi?

Is that the one where girls whack away at your shins. St Trinians - what?

[Jesinofuji 11]

Sumo = 2 men running into eachother at 25 kph.

Hockey = 2 men with sticks skating into eachother at 55 kph.

[Zentoryu 154]

Yeah, lets talk about hockey. Lets talk about the Red Wings. Whose the strngest team, whose going to win the cup this year.

Normally I'd say Detroit. But, while they clearly have the talent, they've often looked old and slow this year. At times they've even looked uninspired. Not a healthy combination for a team trying to win a championship.

[Jesinofuji 11]

They should use the old team for another couple years, especially if Hasek can play next year, old or not, they are unbeatable with a healthy Hasek. But pretty soon, they are going to have to start over and build a new team from the ground up.

[Mark Buckton 1]

Hockey = 2 men with sticks skating into eachother at 55 kph.

Padded up to high heaven, helmets, tooth protectors and of course big thick gloves.

That's similar to the reason I prefer rugger over American football. (Although some are starting to wear shoulder pads now :-D !)

[Jesinofuji 11]

Find me a pro hockey player who still has all his teeth.

[Misisko 0]

Slovakia - USA 3-3 :-O

Slovakia - Finland 5-2 (Punk rocker...)

Slovakia - Russia 2-0 (Neener, neener...)

GO SLOVAKIA GO (Sign of approval)

[Jesinofuji 11]

Hockey = 2 men with sticks skating into eachother at 55 kph.

Padded up to high heaven, helmets, tooth protectors and of course big thick gloves.

That's similar to the reason I prefer rugger over American football. (Although some are starting to wear shoulder pads now (Neener, neener...) !)

I know this is a little (Punk rocker...) but when talking about pads in football and hockey, lets keep in mind that there is a big difference between taking a hit from a guy whose right in front of you who you see coming and can brace yourself for, and a hit unexpectedly when you're totally off-guard with your eyes on the ball. In football, since the ball is often being thrown forward, a reciever has to take his eyes away from where he's going and look behind him to catch the ball, this leaves him in a very vulnerable position cause the hit can come from any direction, and even more than one direction at once. Injuries are very very common in football dispite the heavy padding and helmets they wear. So the pads are very necessary IMO.

In hockey, I don't think the players wear enough pads (ecept the goalie). Not only do they have to worry about hits at very high speeds from all directions, they also have to be concerned with errantly (or not) high sticks, flying pucks, and opponents' fists.

[Zentoryu 154]

And they have to worry about idiots like Alexander Perezhogin. Check this out:

(From AP)

HAMILTON, Ontario - The AHL suspended Hamilton Bulldogs forward Alexander Perezhogin indefinitely, pending a league review, following his stick-swinging attack to the head of Cleveland Barons defenseman Garrett Stafford.

Edited May 2, 2004 by Zentoryu

[Takanobaka 0]

Hockey = 2 men with sticks skating into eachother at 55 kph.

Padded up to high heaven, helmets, tooth protectors and of course big thick gloves.

That's similar to the reason I prefer rugger over American football. (Although some are starting to wear shoulder pads now (Punk rocker...) !)

Don't forget, that American football players didn't start wearing pads until the 1910's and hockey players didn't start wearing pads until the 40's (and goalies didn't even start wearing masks until the 50's!, and position players didn't start wearing helmets until very recently), and the only reason that these developments started was because people kept dying on the field/ice. In the pre-pads era of American Football, there were well over 100 casualties a year, and the numbers for hockey weren't too far off either. All of these guys still take their fair share of pain (it's not like Barry Bonds wearing armor over his batting forearm so it doesn't hurt if he gets hit by a pitch), it essentially just prevents people from dying or becoming quadrapalegic, the latter which still happens with an all-too-alarming regularity...

BTW, I can't remember, but what was the name of the first goalie who started to wear a mask? I still remember the picture towards the end of his career...he would draw stitchmarks on his mask everytime a puck hit him in the face, and by the time he retired, the whole thing was half-black...

Edit: BTW, that Bertuzzi hiot was absolutely vicious as well...probably not the worst I've ever seen, but checked him from the back of the head and then rammed it into the ice, snapping the guy's neck. It was a real punk thing to do...

Edited May 2, 2004 by Takanobaka

[Mark Buckton 1]

Jesi-san,

good comments on the pads and follow you totally. Another angle could however, be this: players realised the protection the introduction of pads offered and perhaps increased their levels of physical violence accordingly. Very old videos may not have been so violent - I honestly do not know.

Possibly, better refs, stronger rules on fighting and striking from behind, with the stick etc could be a way to reduce all problems like those listed above. (Said without an in-depth knowledge of the present rules though) Make it more 'gentlemanly' for want of a better term.

[Sasanishiki 57]

Try watching Australian Rules football. No padding, running the entire game, shepherding allowed similar to ice hockey (no boards to slam into though). Some of the hist and tackles are pretty good, and often this happens to someone who is jumping to catch the ball.

[Hashira 0]

BTW, I can't remember, but what was the name of the first goalie who started to wear a mask? I still remember the picture towards the end of his career...he would draw stitchmarks on his mask everytime a puck hit him in the face, and by the time he retired, the whole thing was half-black...

Jacques Plante. i dont remember exactly the story. but i believe he broke his nose during a game, and thenrefused to go back in without a mask. im not sure if it was his nose or something more serious, but it was something like that. everyone mocked him at first for being a wimp, but then realized its easier to stop pucks when youre not worried about having ur face smashed.

[Takanobaka 0]

Jesi-san,

good comments on the pads and follow you totally. Another angle could however, be this: players realised the protection the introduction of pads offered and perhaps increased their levels of physical violence accordingly. Very old videos may not have been so violent - I honestly do not know.

Possibly, better refs, stronger rules on fighting and striking from behind, with the stick etc could be a way to reduce all problems like those listed above. (Said without an in-depth knowledge of the present rules though) Make it more 'gentlemanly' for want of a better term.

I has become somewhat more vicious because of the development of pads (in both football and hockey), but a bigger part of it is probably the development of weight training. No need to go in to this in detail, as it;s fairly self-explanatory, but that did (for hockey at least) help lead to the place of the enforcer, an unofficial position/goon that most NHL teams have whose sole job is to beat the crap out of people who try cheap shots on the more skilled players. Due to a rule enforcement a few years ago (the rule had been on the books but was never enforced until Mario Lemieux started whining about it....can't remember specifically which penalty though), their prominence have decreased, and I'd say that hockey is actually substantially less violent than it was a few years ago.

In football as well, some rule changes back in the 60's and 70's made the need for so many pads a little less necessary (outlawing clothesline tackles and chop blocks, primarily) but it's better safe than sorry and guys who take a lot of hits at their positions (running backs) have short enough careers as is to make them wear fewer pads than they do.

AFL is pretty nuts, as is Rugby, but the type of violence you see in American football (where a vicious hit may be beneficial due to the time space between downs) would probably be counterproductive in those sports since that type of hit would put the defender out of position when they need to switch to offense. As for ice hockey, remember that ice is much harder than grass, that there are blades on both the sticks and the skates (several people a year usually end up with huge gashes due to blades, and I imagine that number would be substantially higher if the only part of the body not protected by some form of pad wasn't the face), pucks are much harder and go much faster than a ball (and not just the goalies get hit by solid rubber pucks flying at 150 kph), and that grooves develop in the ice over the course of a period that do leave a person substantially more vulnerable (although the flying catch analogy does work here).

Either way, even with the pads, the injury rate for football and hockey are still higher than most non-pad sports (actually is the highest for basketball, of all things, but pads wouldn't help prevent the types of injuries they most frequently suffer), so I think it's defensible that those sports wear pads and that rugby and AFL don't.

As an aside, AFL is just plain cool because of the refs in those white suits and hats B-)

[Zentoryu 154]

The NHL is probably the biggest professional sport in the world that doesn't enforce it's own rules!

Every other major sport, at least in North America, has umpires or referees that call penalties when they occur. Every year the NHL promises they're going to crack down on interference fouls (one of the biggest problems in the game right now). Every year they don't, and if they do it only lasts for about a month.

Every year they say they're going to call penalties in every period of the game. Every year the referees disappear during the 3rd periods of close games, when nothing short of an on-ice mugging gets called.

The refs say they don't want to be responsible for deciding a close game. I say Bull- (Censored) . In basketball they call fouls all the way into the closing seconds. Everything the refs see, good or bad, they CALL.

In the NFL, penalties are called by the referees and Umpires when the see them, no matter the score, no matter how it effects the outcome of the game!

Why not in the NHL?

The lack of rules enforcement is so ridiculous that the NHL had to call a meeting of all its referees prior to the start of this year's playoffs and tell them to start calling penalties as described in the rulebook! This is no joke, they actually had to have a meeting where they had to tell their own darn referees this. How stupid is that?

The NHL has been wondering why it's TV ratings have been droping and droping, wondering why the sports popularity has been steadily decreasing.

This may not be their primary problem, but it is a major one. They need to take a long hard look at the officiating, or lack thereof, and fix it. Once and for all, not the usual "oh we'll talk about it and do nothing in the long run except hope the problem goes away by itself," attitude they always seem to have.

Edited May 3, 2004 by Zentoryu

[Takanobaka 0]

That might help, but I think the main reason that ratings keep dropping is because hockey is the one sport where the teams in the biggest markets generally suck, despite heavy spending. Other than Detroit (where ratings would probably stay high even if the team wasn't any good), people in markets like New York, LA, and Chicago just aren't that interested because their teams have been perennial losers since the mid-90's...

[Jesinofuji 11]

I was horrified when Yzerman took that puck to the face destroying his eye socket two days ago. Hockey really is too dangerous a sport, and the NHL should look into this and do something to protect the players. I don't think pads make a sport any less enjoyable. I do think players getting severly injured does. :'-(