Ray Kowalczyk called me at 6:14 this morning to confirm we are, in fact, watching the hockey tonight. I told him I had already moved the recliner two inches closer to the television and put a beer in the freezer at a deliberate angle. Ray said good. Ray said his wife is going to a Pilates thing. Ray said this is the first February in a decade he has not actively resented.
The Olympic men’s hockey medal round opens tonight in Milan. Four nations left, NHL guys on every bench, real ice, real sticks, ninety feet of nothing between a defenseman and a man trying to take his teeth. I have spent four years writing columns about pop stars eating pretzels during third-and-goal. Tonight I get to write about a sport.
I will say this once and never again: I am happy. I am going to enjoy something. Do not get used to it. Denise has already warned me that if I start grinning at the television she is going to take a picture and send it to our daughter, who does not believe such a photograph exists.
Now. The hockey itself I will not complain about. The hockey is the hockey. Men in skates moving very fast at each other for the right to wear a piece of metal around their necks on an airplane home. This is the correct amount of ceremony for an athletic contest. You play, somebody wins, somebody gets the metal, everybody flies coach.
What I will complain about — and Ray and I worked through the full list on the phone — is everything happening AROUND the hockey. The graphic that follows the puck like the puck owes it money. The in-arena DJ playing a song built entirely from air-horn noises during a face-off. The between-period segment where a former player explains analytics using a touchscreen the size of a garage door. Pete Corrigan, who refereed high school hockey in the Mohawk Valley for thirty-one years, called the touchscreen