Thursday, February 02, 2006




Hockey for dummies

Anyone else bored of the Super Bowl hype? If only one of the players had some sort of connection to the host city of Detroit.

Oh.

Let's find something else to satisfy the sports jones.

How does the National Lacrosse League sound? And should you be thinking that this must be a new thing, check out the logo on the top-right corner of the homepage - this season is its 20th.

All the trappings of a big-time professional sports league are there: big trades (I guess it's big), licensed merchandise, even fantasy leagues.

I caught a few minutes of a last place battle between the Edmonton Rush and the Toronto Rock - the commentary could become quite disorienting when you thought you were watching a grudge match between a right-wing radio host and a superstar professional wrestler. The arena where the game took place seemed to be pretty full. There were a lot of fans wearing that licensed merchandise.

There were two things that I found much too distracting. Both teams sported the dreaded singular team name; in fact over half of the league's 11 teams feature such awkard names (along with the Rush and the Rock we have the Sting, Mammoth, Swarm, Stealth, and to a lesser extent the Lumberjax - yes, with an x).

But the death knell for the NLL has to be its relative similarity to the NHL. Perhaps I need a better idea of the rules and strategy, but to me - a big NHL fan - I found the action to be like hockey for those with special needs. The shorts make the whole thing seem very cheap. One look at the ogreish goalies and you'll wonder why we ever thought goalie equipment in the NHL got too big.

Now imagine it all for the countless people who find nothing entertaining about hockey.

But look out! It looks like professional lacrosse is all the rage (can't believe that's not a team name yet). The NLL has some competition in the form of Major League Lacrosse (singular name count 4 out of 10 - Pride, Barrage, Machine, Riptide), established in 2001. The NLL features both Canadian and US teams - the MLL is pure red white and blue (Rochester and Philadelphia have the pleasure of being two lacross team cities).

Maybe one of these leagues needs Jerry Porter to perk things up.

Maybe I'll just wait for March Madness.


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Posted by Joel at 2/02/2006 10:37:00 PM