NHL 2013 Thread

[BMack]

Originally Posted by ToastedFoot

in a day and age where most every Canadian freezes their back yard, skating is as natural to them as running and throwing to us Americans. With the growing popularity of the sport here in the states most northeast states are following suit. But to say its the most difficult sport to master is nonsense. A poll was taken in the late nineties of which was the hardest single feat to master in all professional sports and hands down it was facing a major league pitcher. An orb coming at you one hundred miles an hour and breaking twelve to eighteen inches before it hits the catchers glove, you have exactly .3 seconds to make a decision on attacking. I'm no expert in the field, but I bounced around in the minors for 4 years, hands down the hardest sport to make it professionally is baseball, and that's just because of pure numbers, everyone thinks they can do it but few can excel at it.

A baseball has a lot more surface area than a puck and pucks travel faster, from different angles, at varying distances and hockey players knock the puck down or deflect it on a regular basis. Then you have to deflect a puck that is potentially bouncing (with sticks/skates/legs in the way) into a net, past a goalie... or from a goalie's perspective have to stop a puck that could be coming from 180* and might be deflected at any given time.

...I know the survey, yeah, yeah, "Hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do because if you fail at it 70% of the time, you're a hall of famer" but that's not true. Pitches are hit almost every time a MLB batter swings, whether it be a foul ball or a fair ball, whether it's an out or not. It was amazing last year that Stamkos scored on just under 20% of his shots...because the average goalie saves over .900 of shots faced. So that makes scoring in the NHL a fair amount harder than hitting a baseball.

If you take any random pro hockey player and have him play in a men's league baseball game he will do fine. If you put any random baseball player in a hockey game, almost none of them will be able to stand up and move without falling down, let alone play. You VASTLY over estimate the amount of people that can skate decently enough to play hockey...and like I said, just because someone can skate doesn't mean they can play hockey.

I hope that argument isn't "too spirited" but, I've grown up playing and have coached both sports..hockey is far more complex to teach or play.

Originally Posted by icehog3

I play on 3 men's league teams, one I have been playing for for over 20 years.

Geez, 20 years on one team!? That's awesome!

I played pond hockey growing up. Does that count