Strange Ritual, This Hockey--What’s It Mean?

My friend Tom, a rabid hockey fan, is unhappy.

Now, you’d expect Tom to be very happy because the local hockey team just paid the equivalent of 800 Cadillacs for some guy who is supposed to be the greatest player in history.

But Tom is not happy.

Tom is not happy because of people like me: people who know nothing about hockey but now desperately want to. People who sense, out of a need to be in on whatever is new and different, that hockey is about to become a big deal in Los Angeles.

However, people like me have a problem. We know nothing about this game, and we have to learn before they throw out the first puck in the fall. Now, there you have it. That’s the problem. Do they throw out the first puck, or do they just drop it? Do they begin their season in the fall?

Tom has become rather upset with me in the past week because I have approached him with a number of well-intentioned questions aimed at helping me grasp the essence of hockey, so that I can watch what’s-his-name skate gracefully through the five (it is five, isn’t it?) opposing players and slam the puck into the net at close range. Given, that is, that he does not pull up and slap in a long-distance shot, for which I presume they give extra points.

Tom, who has been known to venture to his local skating rink in the wee hours just to find “ice time,” blew up at me the other night after I walked over to his desk in our office and asked four foundation-building questions:

This blue line I keep hearing about, I said, how thick is it? Is it raised? Does anyone ever trip on it?

The skates these guys wear. Do they lace them up like in the old days, or do they use Velcro?

That red light that flashes after each goal. How soon is it turned off? Does someone else have to score before that happens? Or does a green light go on instead?

This term high-sticking . Does that signify the manner in which the player holds his stick? Or am I misspelling it? Does it refer to a good-natured greeting that opposing players use as they enter the rink, waving their sticks to wish each other good luck?

I’ll tell you, this experience has given me a massive injection of empathy for people who are sports fans but have blind spots. I can imagine what it was like the day back in ’79 that the Lakers signed Magic Johnson and the whole world here exploded and people who might have been, say, big golf fans scratched their heads and said: Hmmmmm. There they stood, aware that they were on the periphery of an awesome event, but embarrassed to admit they did not quite know what to look for.

I’m not embarrassed. I need help, a lot of it, and I bet there are a lot of other people out there just like me, self-styled sports fans who don’t go to hockey games but are suddenly itching to see this guy Gretzky, whose nickname is “Great.”

What do we do?

We form study groups, that’s what we do. We hire consultants. We study videotapes. We ask our friends, like Tom, as many questions as possible.

This will require courage. There will be massive resistance to the nouveaux pucksters among hockey fanatics. Expect this, friends. Expect these people to jealously guard their cult sport. Expect them to resent its “discovery” by the washed-and-permed masses. For years, hockey fans in Los Angeles have been a small, prideful knot of people. Now they face the painful specter of tens of thousands of people vying for the same limited number of Forum tickets, parking places and souvenir programs. It may get ugly. But hockey is about to become hot, and I, for one, am too cool to be left out.

I know what you’re wondering about now. “Bob,” you’re asking, “have you ever been to a hockey game?”

Yes.

By chance, the day that the Forum in Inglewood was dedicated with a Kings game in December, 1967, my brother bought a couple of tickets and invited me along as a birthday present.

I don’t remember what the score was. But I was impressed with the stick-to-itiveness of the fans. As we walked out after the second-half buzzer sounded, marking the end of the game, virtually all of them stayed to pay tribute.

I wanna be like that.