Two years ago I managed to bag some cheap flight tickets from Mexico City to Montreal and decided to spend a week in the city, with a trip down to Niagara Falls. Something I have always loved about the US and Canada is the TV, the wall to wall news, the millions of sports channels, I usually switch on as soon as I get into the hotel room. When I arrived to the hotel this is exactly what I did, and on the first TV channel I turned on to I see Pietro Triassi Montreal Canadiens reporter, giving it both barrels as he presented the upcoming NHL game. He sold it in such a way that I was hooked, and I decided that I would open the mini bar and see what ice hockey was all about, I absolutely loved it.
Breaks
One of my biggest issues around US and Canadian sports is that they just stop and start all of the time and I honesty just lose focus whenever I am watching them. In the case of ice hockey however I really don’t find this and whilst there are stops and starts, it isn’t all of the time and it is to a much more manageable level.
Aggression
Everyone talks about American Football as being pretty brutal and whilst I do not doubt for a second that some of those hits are painful, they are once every now and again. In ice hockey however, my goodness they are absolutely savage with their hits and the fact that they are being so physical whilst they are on ice skates is even more impressive.
Speed
The speed of the game is what really grabbed my attention and because of the proximity between the two goals, it means that there defense turns to attack in a heartbeat. There is no boredom when you watch these matches, there are no moments when the teams are able to run down the clock or anything like that, because you have 10 guys playing on this tiny little rink, and they know that a goal could come along at any time.
Winners
From the little experience which I have of watching these games I have to say that it seems that anyone can win n just about any night and that is of course something which adds a great deal of excitement to proceedings. The last thing you want from a sport is to see the same team winning week in and week out, and that is why I really love to see what happens in ice hockey, because it can really go either way.
Volume
And finally it is the volume of the games which I find absolutely incredible, they play sometimes 3 times per week. Now for the players I imagine that this pretty tiring but for us fans it is absolutely brilliant.
This is by far and away my new favorite sport.
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