5: The amount of skill
I like to imagine the thought process of making hockey went a little like this:
Inventor 1: Well, let’s knock around a ball for a bit.
Inventor 2: NO! That’s too easy! Let’s put in a target to get the ball into.
Inventor 1: Ok, we’ll kick a ball into a target–
Inventor 2: Still too easy! Let’s make the ball smaller and flat on two sides AND… you can only navigate it with sticks that have a curve on the end.
Inventor 1: Fair enough, so we’ll knock balls into a box. Sounds like a jolly good time.
Inventor 2: Still too easy. What if we put a guy with a bunch of padding in front of the box to make it harder to get the ball in?
Inventor 1: That could be done, I suppose. It sounds fit for a fine summer’s day.
Inventor 2: NO! It’s still not awesome enough. What if we did it in winter, when it’s 40 below zero and the wind’s blowing?
Inventor 1: That sounds…doable. So the players would run around in the snow?
Inventor 2: NO! Running on the ground is still is too weak! We should do it on ice!
Inventor 1: Running on ice? That sounds rather dangerous, old chum.
Inventor 2: Who said anything about running? Running on ice still isn’t hard enough to do! I propose we tie knives to the soles of our shoes and use the contraptions to glide around the ice.
Inventor 1: Wait just one minute: you are proposing that we play a sport where grown men tie knives to their feet and glide around ice, brandishing sticks while chasing after a small, flattened ball?
Inventor 2: And then we can put some sort of boarding around the edge of the playing area, into which one could smash one’s opponent in pursuit of said ball.
Inventor 1: You must be stark raving mad! Such a game is so…violent! Pugnacious! Belligerent!
Inventor 2: Truculent… (tents fingers in “excellent” pose)
Inventor 2 was Brian Burke’s great-great-great-great-great grandfather (may not be true). But when you think about it, hockey really is tough to play. It’s tough to maintain—you have to have a playing surface, specialized footwear, all sorts of gear, and so on. You aren’t just moving a ball round, but you have to do something that most humans don’t practice every day. How often do you skate versus walk or run? It’s like doing two sports at once.
While on the ice, a player has to make plays in his/her head while maintaining skating while looking out for an attacking player while avoiding injury. It’s a lot to think about at once, and certainly not something I can do any day I want. Besides, there’s also the whole “brandishing a large stick with razor sharp blades on your feet.”
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