Sports Are Everything: How hockey vs. nature shows the way

Lots of people say that sports get too much attention. But to me, they’re the only things that have consistently made sense — and they’ve mirrored a lot of events and philosophies in my life. This feature comes from years of writings, discussions and plain old sitting around and thinking about what sports means to me. In this edition, I write about what can be learned from hockey vs. nature.

 

First, a hearty hello to all my non-U.S.A. readers out there (hopefully, you’re back from your first visit). So far, my blog has been read in nine other countries, which I think is awesome for something that’s only existed for a couple of days. Nice balance, too — Canada, Europe, South America and Oceania are represented. My goal is to have all the continents in there, fully realizing that Antarctica is going to be a challenge.

And the mention of Antarctica naturally leads me to hockey.

Lately, I’ve become more of a hockey fan, which doesn’t make sense on the surface. About 1 ½ years ago, my wife, I and our cats made the terrifying but ultimately rewarding move from the Upper Midwest, our home for more than 40 years apiece, to Southeast Georgia. Many things are hot in this area — barbecue, beaches, temperatures — but hockey doesn’t seem to be one of them. Georgia is, after all, a state saw two National Hockey League franchises move to Canada for better times.

I’ve always liked hockey. I enjoyed covering it as a sportswriter, and I would tune in the Minnesota North Stars games once in a while. Problem was, the NHL rarely was on TV or the radio in my area of the world, so keeping up with a team was hard in the pre-Internet days. Also, hockey wasn’t a sport at my high school. All that made hockey’s presence in my life inconsistent, to put it mildly.

But despite environment and access working against me, I’m now in love with hockey. I think about trips to cities I’d like to see hockey games in, I take in podcasts/radio shows about it and I study which teams have good minor-league systems. Yeah, I’m all in.

That’s because a few months ago, I started seeing hockey in a different light. I see it as the ultimate, if momentary, conquering of nature by humankind. 

I’m a little fuzzy about the origin of ice hockey, but I like to think of it as starting when somewhere, sometime, someone with a textbook case of cabin fever during a bad winter, said, “You know what? I’m going out there on the ice and doing something.” That person, or people, didn’t let horrifying temperatures cold enough to freeze bodies of water stop them. On the contrary, they turned it into a challenge and made do with what they were given, no matter how bleak and cumbersome it was (I hate winter weather, if you can’t tell).

Even if it’s more anecdotal than real, I love that sense of adapting and overcoming. That’s something I’ve learned to do while living in a new area of the country – new people, new weather, new smells, new ways of doing things. It’s something I’ve had to do every day here, but where before I hated challenges — like moving cross-country — I now seek them out to what I can take on next.

Maybe I’m adapting my own imagination to fit a feeling here. All I know is hockey in enriching my life. Now, if I can just figure out who the Nashville Predators are taking in the draft …

Did you like this? Think I'm full of crap? Let me know on Twitter. Thanks.