So, about that hockey, eh?

Sunday was a big day for me.

Not big in the “my girlfriend is pregnant” way, or big in an “I just got the job promotion of a lifetime” way.
   

Big in the “Oh my God, I just watched an entire game of hockey” way.
   

That’s right. After years of swearing off the sport, I buckled down and watched an entire hour of the Gold Medal game between America and Canada.
   

I tend to think that I know quite a bit about sports. I can name more golfers than rappers. I know the starting rosters to nearly every Major League Baseball team by heart. I have an unhealthy obsession with Mel Kiper’s Big Draft Board.
   

But for the absolute life of me, I don’t understand a thing about hockey. More over, I don’t understand how hockey fans can see the puck for extended periods of time.
   

I’ve also never understood why hockey allows fighting when the rest of the sporting world acts as if it’s on par with genocide.
   

LeGarrette Blount throws a punch at a guy who deserves every ounce of the punch and he gets suspended indefinitely. John Lackey throws at a Red Sox player and it’s an automatic ejection. But hockey players are not only allowed to fight, they’re commended for it. It’s legitimately the main draw for a load of casual fans.
   

I’m not going to get into the morality of fighting or how it sets a bad example or any of that stuff that ESPN pretends to care about. I just don’t get the double standard that allows fighting to be so readily accepted in hockey while in other sports it’s the most despicable, heinous crime you can commit (next to cheating on your wife with a dozen Vegas call girls).
   

For the most part, the commentators were speaking Latin to me during the game. Icing, hooking, the saucer pass, boarding – I didn’t understand a single hockey term they used, but I didn’t really care.

All I was interested in was seeing the good ol’ U. S. of A. repay Canada for burning down the White House in 1814.

I preemptively planned this column out as one giant tribute to America for beating Canada at the one thing it’s good at. As we all know, Canada must have known my plans ahead of time, and Sidney Crosby put the final nail in the coffin of the U.S. Olympic hockey team.
   

But at the end of the day; sure, we lost a gold medal game.

Sure, we lost on the biggest stage of them all. But I watched hockey and I enjoyed it. And that’s all that matters.

Can’t wait to watch the next game in four years.