Kings Rule (?)

The LA Kings played their first home match in a year at the Staples Center against the Phoenix Coyotes, and I was there. Oh yes, this was my first experience of an all-American sporting event (even though most ice hockey players are really Canadian; well, they're *North* American too). And what an experience it was!

I'm no stranger to passionate support of a team, be it football, rugby or cricket. But never have I sat in a stadium in utter silence after a goal scored by the away side. If there were any expatriate Phoenix fans in the Staples Center tonight, they sure kept themselves quiet... It was a partisan crowd without equal; little different to your regular fitba fans, who challenge the referee's every decision against the home side and keep mum when their team gets away with a gawd-awful foul. It didn't help that I was sat with the craziest fans (one of whom bought the tickets for us), starting the chants, and generally swearing loudly at all the players throughout the game. Again, perfectly normal behaviour, for nutjobs...

There's something about ice hockey that seems to draw the males with the most testosterone. There were a fair few fights on the ice, and it's a good thing the crowd was 99.99% Kings fans, or there may have been fights on the steep terraces.

Ice hockey is a strange sport. It's not all that easy to skate or control a puck on ice, yet players are allowed to bump into each other, obstruct their opponents, slam their opponents into the plexiglass walls, and generally act like hyperactive boys in a playground. And if you start a fight, you're told off, made to go sit down for a bit, but be back on the ice by the time the next period has started... That's not exactly going to teach the player a lesson. If anything, his teammates have to work harder while he has a wee breather on the bench...

It's also weird how many substitutions there are in a game. It's like a constant flow of traffic here and there. Hope someone keeps track of the number of players on the ice at any one time... Speaking of which, a wee storm in a teacup resulted today when the Coyotes posted the name of an injured guy on their match list, but brought in a different player, who was then ruled as ineligible to play... A controversy enough, but I heard on the radio on the way back that the Kings staff knew about the initial mistake when the player list was submitted, but kept mum about it. Somehow, I'm no longer surprised by behaviour like that. Sportsmanship now has a completely different meaning...

And a one hour game is no longer that either... As I understand it, ice hockey is split into three 20 minute periods, which gives the players a little time to recover from whatever brutal push or whack they received during play. But it's not only two 15 minute intermissions per game. Oh no... There are wee breaks for TV commercials. J'y crois pas! Play stops DURING the 20 minute period for TV scheduling/advertising purposes! So what should have been a 60 minute game plus 30 minutes of intermission took 3 hours to complete... It pissed me off no end when BBC lost TMS, and Channel 4 started to show short ads between overs; or when BBC (again) lost F1, and ITV showed ads during the race. But at least with those, play/action didn't stop... I don't like this. What if they introduce this in football, given Sky's dominance over the Premiership? Speaking of Sky, I've now seen Rupert Murdoch's Fox Sports Channel presenters in the flesh; they broadcast out of a booth at the Staples Center.

And speaking of TV, just like I've seen on TV during the Lakers games in the early 90s, the roving TV camera picks up people waving their flags/towels/t-shirt manically. And the cameraman had a good eye for spotting the lookers in the crowd. There were lingering shots on celavatories like some guy from SugarRay (was told his name, which I promptyly forgot), the gardener from Desperate Housewives, and Cindy Crawford with two pretty wee girls (at least I recognised her straight away). There may have been more, but stick a famous face under a baseball cap and I'd fail to recognise them. Then again, stick a famous face right in front of me and I'd still fail to recognise it.

While I'll probably never be a die-hard Kings fan, the experience was fun enough to make me wanna go again. But give me a few weeks to recover from the earache of piercing whistles and shouting men...

And I almost forgot to mention that I had my first all-American hotdog, with mechanically-processed-meat-sausage-inna-stodgy-bun, relish, ketchup and mustard. And a my first pretzel in America (having had German pretzels before). No beer at the game though. My wallet rebelled at the thought of losing $8 for less than a pint of very crap draught beer.

Technorati tags: ice hockey, la kings.