Hockey one, hockey two

Ice hockey never seems to have really caught on as a spectator sport. Fans tell me that you need to be at the game for it to be any fun. I know I have a helluva time trying to follow the puck on television. It really needs to be about five times larger and fluorescent orange to make it visible. I spend most of the time trying to figure out which speeding skater might have that little black dot at the end of his stick. Ow! Not those two. They have each other at the end of their sticks. Now they will have to have a time-out. They raised their sticks above their shoulders in a foul that is called, of all things, high-sticking. Then there is icing the puck. This happens a lot, but I guess you are supposed to be enough of a fan to know what that means. I do not. Play stops and a referee picks up the puck (he is allowed to) and then drops it between two enemy players who whack away at it until the puck goes speeding off to who knows where, certainly not me.In street hockey you chant, “Hockey one, hockey two, hockey three,” dropping the puck between opponents on three. In my youth I played a bit of street hockey, also known as roller hockey. I did not have skates, but that was OK because you could still play goalie since a goalkeeper only moves a couple of feet either way.There are a couple of problems with this. First, people come skating right at you and try to drill the puck, a rubber furniture coaster in our games as we did not have much of an equipment budget, past you. Often you manage to block it, which is a good thing, but painful. Sometimes they wait until the last minute to shoot and the sting of the puck is immediately followed by the whack of the stick and a full-on collision. Did I mention that we did not have much in the way of equipment? By some miracle I never lost my teeth.I had a friend from Canada years ago who used to play goalie on an amateur team. In Canada, hockey players are much admired and tend to get the girls ... except the goalie. See, for many years he has had to wear a full face mask, a la “Friday the 13th.” Nobody knows what he looks like, nor do the babes believe him when he protests that he is that masked man on the ice.Another thing, it is cold at the ice rink. I think I would prefer something a bit warmer now that I am older. How about jai alai? Okaaaay, now who’s got the ball?Bill Abrams resides in Pine Plains, sans puck, sans hockey sticks.