A Special Breed

One of the hardest things to do is to convince somebody to like something that they have already determined is not for them. People may give something initial consideration, but once they aren't blown away by their first impression, it becomes exponentially more difficult to convince them to give it another fair shake. It happens in all facets of life, be it in the case of a bad start to a job interview or a bad pick-up line at a bar or even when trying to share your interest with someone for a particular sport. This coming weekend brings an interesting showcase that the majority of America hasn't been overly impressed with over the countless years of its existence. The National Hockey League brings its most talented players to Ottawa for the NHL All-Star Weekend, but it will draw only minimal attention relative to the exhibitions that Major League Baseball, The National Basketball Association, or the National Football League put forth to celebrate the best and brightest of their respective sports.

Hockey has always been the step-child to the other major sports, but it is certainly not due to the sport's lack of excitement, the skill level of its participants, or the sheer uniqueness of its battlefield. People will say that that baseball is America's past-time. Football fans will say that their medium is America's game. And then there are soccer fans that will insist that soccer players are the best athletes in the world. But there is something special about hockey and the fearlessness that its cast of characters exhibit on a daily basis. As the sport that doesn't get the majority of the headlines, most of its players have a unique, unspoken bond as they have become ambassadors for a game that they've grown up living and breathing, but they've also never experienced the national reverence or fandom that comes with being part of the “Big 3” professional sports.

This weekend offers the opportunity to see a group of die-hard, fearless, massively skilled participants demonstrate, as one unit, what they can do. First will be the Skills Competition where you'll see how fast they can skate, how hard they can shoot, and how pinpoint accurate they can be. Think of it as the equivalent of how far they can hit a homerun, how accurate they can pass a football, and how quickly they can make three-pointers, but all rolled into one. This event, followed by the newly designed All-Star game that now features the Captains from each team picking their teams through a Fantasy Football-esque draft, comes on the heels of the 5^th Annual NHL Winter Classic. The Classic, an event that showcases two historic rivals playing head-to-head in

an outdoor arena or stadium just after New Year's, has now been paired with an in-depth, four-week documentary looking inside the world of the NHL. And what that HBO documentary has shown the world is that hockey players are a certain, special breed of being. It could be the 17 stitches a player can take in the middle of a game and not miss a shift. Or it could be the absolute sacrifice of one's body to block a 100 mile per hour slap shot from an opposing player. Or it could be the absolute excruciating punishment a player subjects themselves to as their bodies are crackled into the boards over and over again with the full force of the oncoming player. The natural comparison would be to the professional football player that lines up play after play with the goal of smashing through the opposition to either violently bring down the ball handler or to avoid getting throttled to the ground as the ball handler. Sure, it takes talent to hit a baseball rifled at 100 mph or to heave a football 60 yards to wide receiver cutting across the open field, so compare that to placing a slapshot just inside the area where the crossbar meets the post. Then throw in the fact that you can't even compare those apples to apples until you spend years learning how to walk...err...skate. Imagine not being able to put yourself in a position to work on the skill set that you hope will make you a star, until you learn how to walk, all over again.

There is a special connection amongst hockey players as they grew up spending the ugliest hours of the day trudging to and from rinks because that was the only ice time they can get. Add to that the thousands of dollars spent on the endless amounts of equipment or skating lessons. Each player has his own connection or dedication to the sport, and it is certainly a little different than most people's connection to the baseball diamond, the football field, or the basketball court. But the one thing most of the players that will skate in Ottawa this weekend will still tell you, is that it starts when you're young and never dissipates.