One would be hard pressed to find a person in the United States that says hockey is their favorite sport. As a matter of fact, hockey probably resides on the totem somewhere in the neighborhood of the WNBA. Hockey isn’t nearly as popular as Golf and Tennis, especially women’s Tennis, so it obviously doesn’t come close to challenging American Sports’ Big Three of professional Football, Baseball, and Basketball.
Why is that though? Why is hockey so far outside the scope of the American Sports radar? It doesn’t make sense because hockey, the NHL, has many elements that should catapult it to a higher level of popularity. Hockey has more flashes of excitement than baseball. It has just as much physicality as football. It is often more violent than your average pay per view boxing event. And, it can be said that hockey has the most graceful, elegant, and best athletes.
Okay, if you’re finished laughing, and yelling, “Athletes? What about the NBA?”, then think about this. How easy is it to ice skate? Not only that, try ice skating at a running pace – with 10 lbs of pads on! Or, try it with a stick in your hand, keeping up with a puck, and keeping away from defenders who can legally and quite physically impede your progress. How’s that for athletic coordination?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not easy dribbling a basketball while running, and it’s definitely not easy flying through the air and staying focused with people swinging their arms towards your head. But, if you’ve ever been on some ice skates you know that ice skating and chewing gum at the same time can even be a challenge.
I often marvel at those graceful NHL athletes every night when watching hockey highlights. They spin. They skate backwards. They change directions at full speed. It is purely a thing of beauty. Well, not purely, because there is an element of the beast in hockey.
The physicality and toughness exhibited in hockey is not even second to football. If you don’t think hockey is just as physical and tough as football then ask why it is that everybody in the NFL has their god given teeth, and everybody in the NHL has man-made teeth. And the bone jarring hits that they take in hockey? What about a hard rubber rock flying towards you at over 100mph?
That’s enough to test your mettle and get your heart racing. That’s more excitement than you get watching baseball. I doubt that you could watch a hockey game and go 3 minutes just seeing crotch grabbing and spitting. But that happens all the time in baseball.
I just don’t understand how the American public has not become enraptured with hockey. Could it be that the hockey season is too long? They start in October and end in, what, May or June? The only ice most of us want to see in May and June is in a pina colada.
Maybe the NHL’s lack of popularity can be attributed to the fact that its season runs parallel with the NBA season, begins during the apex of the MLB season and in the middle of the NFL season. That doesn’t help.
Maybe since the NHL went away for a full season absence has made the heart grow fonder. But then again, it may have been out of sight, and even further out of mind.
4 replies on “Why Isn’t Hockey More Popular?”
I totally agree with you on the subject.Completely Agree. Nice topic, good article.
No Clue It was a good article so i voted for it, but hockey still sucks. It’s unexplainable why it does, but it just does. But we’ll see, maybe the new rule changes will make it more exciting.
Hockey isn’t more popular because people can’t understand it as easily as other sports. What’s easier, watching 10 second spurts of action in the NFL or watching 5-10 minute stretches without a stoppage in the NHL? I’ve accepted this, and really don’t care if hockey becomes mainstream or not. Hopefully we just don’t get any more terrible rule changes.
Your first sentence is retarded. My eyes could not physically roll back into my head far enough to express my disgust upon reading it.
The article is also pretty full of small grammatical errors, but I guess grammar doesn’t matter in writing.
not a single person? I think you’d find a good number of people in the US who would say hockey is their favorite sport. Granted, most of them are in Maine, Mass, Rhode Island, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Wisconsin, etc. But they are there. Not as many as would list the NFL or MLB. But hockey has a lot of die-hards. For whatever reason, they don’t get casual fan interest like the other sports do.