HOCKEY PLAYERS ARE A SPECIAL BREED

If you’ve read my blogs, you know that I’m an ardent ice hockey fan. The NHL teams are now engaged in the Stanley Cup playoffs and I will be watching the games on TV every day from now until the final game sometime in June.

Hockey players are a special breed for any number of reasons. Two of them are (1) their toughness and (2) the maturity in their goal scoring celebrations.

HOCKEY PLAYERS ARE TRULY TOUGH

You’ve got to be really tough when you get checked hard into the unforgiving boards time after time in every game. And you’ve got to be extra tough to block a hockey puck shot with your body, as players are expected to do.

Ice hockey pucks are made of hard vulcanized rubber and weigh between 5.5 and 6 ounces When a puck is hit with a slap shot it travels at well over 90 mph. Hockey players will use their bodies to block those shots. To show how tough the players are, here is just one example:

Last November, Ian LaPerierre of the Philadelphia Flyers went down to block a shot in the first period of a game. He got hit in the face with the puck and got helped off the ice with blood pouring from his face. He ended up with more than 100 stitches, 6 broken teeth, and a broken jaw. Was that it for the night? Nope, he came back out to play his shifts in the third period.

On Thursday, ‘Lappy’ took another puck to the face while blocking a slap shot in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup quarterfinals between the Flyers and the New Jersey Devils. The puck slammed into his forehead at top speed, opening his face to the point where a trail of blood followed him as he skated blindly on the ice before getting medical attention. "When I grabbed (athletic trainer) Jimmy (McCrossin), I asked him if my eye was still there," LaPerierre told reporters after getting about 70 stitches along his right eyebrow.

The Flyers won the game 3-0, thereby eliminating the favored Devils from the playoffs. LaPerierre will be ready and eager to play in the Flyer’s next Stanley Cup playoff game. And you can bet he will not hesitate to keep on blocking those shots.

Every year there are any number of players who get hit by pucks, taken to the dressing rooms to be stitched up, and then return to finish out the game. You cannot get any tougher than that.

WHEN SCORING A GOAL, HOCKEY PLAYERS DO NOT CELEBRAT WITH A DISPLAY OF IMMATURE SHOWBOATING

Most times when a professional football player catches a pass for a touchdown, he’ll celebrate with a rooster-like strut through or out of the end zone. His celebratory showboating is contrived rather than spontaneous. And he often displays additional immature ways of showing off. No such juvenile displays by hockey players.

Sure, hockey players will celebrate whenever they score a goal. But their momentary celebrations are not contrived. They are spontaneous and mature. There is no juvenile showboating. You’ve got to respect them for that.