Why you should love hockey (even in LA!) – Mac Ribner
Of the four American sports, it seems that hockey has always stuck out like a sore thumb against its more established contemporaries. Beloved by a fragment of the population and utterly ignored by the rest, hockey is the quintessential “sleeper pick” of many sports enthusiasts when asked what leagues they recommend people watch. Take a few minutes to google hockey’s premier events and you’ll see exactly why — not many moments can beat the image of a hulking goalie hoisting the Stanley Cup over his bloodied head as confetti coats the ice.
The average American can probably name a slew of football and basketball stars, along with a smattering of baseball’s all-time greats, but this celebrity-level recognition simply evaporates with regard to hockey. Unless, of course, you grew up in Boston like I did — a place where our most famous sports statue is of Bobby Orr and the name “Tim Thomas” is practically deified.
Suffice to say, I didn’t expect to experience even a fraction of that fervent passion upon my arrival in LA — a city known for sweltering heat waves and picturesque beaches is about the last place I would expect hockey culture to flourish. But in this regard, LA has done what it does best: defy my expectations.
The Los Angeles Kings don’t have the universal appeal that we’ve come to expect from teams like the Dodgers and Lakers. You can’t walk a block in this city without seeing a mural of Kobe Bryant or Fernando Valenzuela — yet you’d be hard-pressed to find any Kings-centric street art around the city. From a cultural perspective it makes sense. LA fans tend to coalesce around venerable individual athletes as opposed to teams as a collective, and hockey teams generally pride themselves on the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. But don’t be fooled: Angelino hockey fanaticism hides in plain sight. All you have to do to experience it is go to a game yourself.
Anyone who’s ever been dissatisfied with LA sports fan enthusiasm will quickly find their concerns quashed at a Kings game. Boisterous fans from all across the city congeal into an uproarious mass, adorning themselves in the most esoteric Kings jersey they can find and waving oversized team flags with reckless abandon.
Those who still believe in the pretense of west coast politeness will have their perception of Angelinos shattered (and perhaps improved!) as the more raucous rooters in the crowd reach into the deepest recesses of the English language to most efficiently insult opposing players. It is an absolute fandom phenomenon, but it goes completely unnoticed by the general public because hockey is niche and the Kings are terrible.
This to me is what makes LA hockey so fascinating — it betrays nearly every stereotype that the city’s sports fans have accrued over the years. Kings fans will happily drive through horrendous traffic for hours only to watch their team get obliterated — and they’ll happily repeat the process the next week. It is a rooting interest that completely transcends the traditional success measure of win-loss records. Kings management has been maligned for years on account of perceived inaction and complacency, but their fans represent the opposite philosophy.
From my perspective Kings fans are champions on account of their commitment to an improbable ideal. Hockey in the middle of a desert was never supposed to work, but the Kings’ devotees made it work. Thankfully, this indomitable spirit also appears to have reached the next generation — there is currently a supercharged interest in LA youth hockey, and its 126% growth rate in recent years is the fastest in the entire country.
My plea to prospective hockey fans is simply this: give it a shot. The only thing stopping you from loving this sport is your own perception of its unimportance. If you’re anything like me, one night amongst Kings fans will be more than sufficient for them to earn your admiration — and hopefully, for the sport of hockey to earn your attention.
Why I’m not sold – Angus Kapstein Parkhill
When people try to sell me on the idea of hockey, they embellish it with the idea of constant action — the sport’s level of difficulty, brutal fistfights, how players shoot the puck really hard and other clichés. Unfortunately, for me, the base concept of the game is just not very interesting. If you’re not someone who wants to turn on the TV and watch two dudes beat each other up, it’s hard to then also get invested in their backgrounds, the team’s performance and whatever else constitutes fandom. Why not watch a boxing match instead?
You could say the same thing about other sports having a high barrier for entry, but at least a baseball, basketball or football game is more of a comprehensive experience. Every action feels like it’s heading in a direction, and there are myriad storylines to follow as scoring climbs and the narratives progress. Hockey mostly just consists of players skating back and forth, and scoring a goal maybe once every 10 minutes.
Similarly, the lack of meaningful time on the ice means only a couple moments per game really matter, as opposed to having the chance to make incremental progress with every opportunity. Also, since the “backups” get most of the playing time in hockey, the star players are barely on the ice, and have the least playing time of any major sport. It’s hard to be a fan of a player if you only catch a few glimpses of them over the course of a game.
It doesn’t help that hockey feels bland if you’re not tapped into the specifics. If you took away the colors and the logos, could you really tell what stadium was which? There are no Fenway Parks and Rose Bowls in the NHL. Even worse, if you take all the uniforms off the players and put them in basic gear, would you even be able to tell who’s who?
I have no issues with Canada, America, Sweden and Russia being the dominant nationalities in hockey, but part of what I love about other sports is their diversity. Players come from countries without snow, and you get to see so many different people represent themselves and their backgrounds proudly. The most I’ve witnessed that happen in hockey is Alex Ovechkin happily embracing Putin.
The insular nature of the sport has also lead to its infamous culture problems. Hockey has never been able to shake its boy’s club reputation. Having a prep school attitude works if you’re at a prep school, but not so much if you’re trying to make DEI advancements or really any sort of progress at all. With hockey’s popularity in New England, and the longstanding establishments they have that encourage and protect bad behavior from hockey players, it feels natural to be on the outside of the sport’s lifestyle if you’re not involved in those scenes. Sexual assault and hazing run rampant, and these issues carry over from their high school petri dishes directly into the professional world.
I know firsthand how important sports can be to people, and I don’t want to insult anyone’s love for hockey. Still, I’ve had countless people try to extoll its virtues and give varying justifications for why it’s so problematic and boring. As someone who’s at least passively interested in most of the major sports, hockey doesn’t live up to the standards of the other major leagues. Maybe if the problematic culture was addressed, it was more diverse, stars played more and the scoring wasn’t so sparse, I could be convinced, but until all those boxes are checked I won’t be sold.
Contact Mac Ribner at ribner@oxy.edu and Angus Kapstein Parkhill at parkhill@oxy.edu
