Hockey is the Best Sport EVER!

Mike has joined Toastmasters, a group which helps its members build their public speaking skills by holding meetings where you give speeches. A few months back, he wrote a speech about why hockey is better than all other sports combined. Seeing as the Bruins have just tied up the Stanley Cup Finals, it seemed a fitting tribute to post his speech here:

Hockey Is Better Than Soccer, Basketball, and Football Combined – and I Can Prove It!

by Michael Trahan

Hockey is better than soccer, basketball, and football combined. This is an irrefutable fact and I can prove it! That’s not to say that the other 3 sports aren’t any good; it’s just that they pale in comparison to hockey.

To put this in context, let me start with the story of how I came to love hockey. Growing up I really enjoyed floor hockey in gym class. Once in-line skates became popular I started playing roller hockey after school with my friends. And then, when I was a freshman in high school a friend of mine brought me to see a Bruins-Whalers game in Hartford. Seeing that game in person, I realized just how awesome hockey is. Seeing the speed of the game, the bone-crushing hits, and the awesome goals in person had me hooked by the end of the first shift.

So now let’s get back to explaining why hockey is better than soccer, basketball, and football. Each of these three sports has good points, but hockey combines the best parts of each in a way that makes it better than the three sports combined.

Let’s first look at soccer. The best part of soccer is the suspense. Soccer is a low-scoring game that you have to watch from start to finish to make sure you don’t miss anything. Hockey is very much the same as soccer in this way. Hockey games are usually low scoring and if you turn your back for 5 seconds you could miss the deciding play of the whole game. Where soccer goes wrong is that the field is so large, the games are so long, and the substitution rules mean that the players don’t have the energy to go full speed for the entire 90 minute game. Unfortunately, that means that at times a soccer game really seems to crawl along at snail’s pace and can at times be boring.

Next, let’s look at basketball. The best part of basketball is the fast break. The point of the fast break is to go as fast as you can to try and catch the defense out of position. In hockey, every play is a fast break. Players crisscross their way up and down the ice using crisp precise passing to try and get a scoring chance. The difference being, that in basketball, teams usually score on the fast break. In fact, in basketball scoring is so frequent that the important plays are not really when you score but when you prevent the other team from scoring. Because of this you could easily skip the first 40 minutes of a basketball game and still catch all of the exciting plays.

And then there is football. The best part of football is the physical play. Watching the defense crush the other team’s quarterback has to be why instant replay was invented. Much the same way, watching Milan Lucic line up someone from the Canadians in the corner and crush them into the boards and skate away with the puck as the other player melts into a puddle on the ice is something that I could watch over and over again. The difference between these two is that after every 5 or 10 second play in football the teams get 40 seconds to figure out what to do next. Unfortunately, those 40 seconds of strategizing take away from the excitement of the last play.

Finally, there are other distinguishing characteristics. Both basketball and football have an inordinate number of timeouts that can drag the last 2 minutes of the game out to closer to a half hour. While this adds to the suspense of the end of the game, it also kills the flow of the game. On top of that, substitutions are made exclusively during the multitude of stoppages in play. Hockey, on the other hand, is designed to maintain the flow of the game. Each team gets one time out – one - that they rarely use and on the fly substitutions are a critical part of the game that are designed into the flow of the game. Add to this the fact that the game is played on ice and that the players carry sticks that the TSA would be unwilling to allow you to carry onto your next flight and you have a recipe for success.

I don’t think I need to say anything more. Hockey is clearly better than soccer, basketball, and football. Hockey is better because it combines the best parts of these 3 sports: the suspense of soccer, the fast break speed of basketball, and the physical play of football, in a way that engages and excites the crowd. As soon as I started watching hockey it was clear to me why hockey is so awesome. Hopefully you now understand too but if you don’t, I suggest you go to a game.

Go B's!

Love, The Trahans