The Best Game You Can Name

Originally Posted: 01/12/07

I'm trying to decide what it is I like best about city hockey (that brand of hockey you can only find in the 416 area code, where the ice is perfect and free, the game perpetual and all-embracing, and the rules unwritten but entirely understood). Here's what I've come up with so far:

1) The fact that the corners are more square than round, and that the puck can inadvertently squirt beneath a select few crevices where either the ice has melted to create a hole in the playing surface or the boards don't quite make it all the way down to the ice, and no one has ever once complained about it or used it as an excuse for losing the puck.

2) The fact that people from all walks of life and comprising every conceivable race, religion, and age group show up in their choice of either old school hoser-gear or new school thug-garb, putting all differences aside and for the time becoming brethren in that unequivocally Canadian ritual, for the most part without even realizing it.

3) The democratizing factor of it being against all acceptable city hockey decorum to raise the puck, thereby making the fact that I am essentially incapable of such feats a virtual moot p0int.

4) The knowledge that it is pretty well guaranteed that any guy with a mustache will be giving it the full 110% at all times, no questions asked.

I'm leaning towards #4. More to come on the subject soon.