Prompt 2

Hockey is kind of a strange sport, when it comes to so called ‘trick plays’. As a Brit, my initial sporting introduction was soccer (football here, but don’t want to confuse anyone). As a sport, the players deemed the ‘best’, certainly in my lifetime, have usually been the flashier, more skilful players. Your Messi’s, Ronaldinho’s, etc. Hell, even shinty, which is a sort-of aggressive field hockey type sport we play in the north of Scotland, has a respect for players finding new, inventive ways to score. And shinty is as old school a sport as you could find, in almost every other way.
Hockey, on the other hand, looks down on showmanship, flashy goals, new ideas. As a Flyers fan, the immense frustration when someone like Ristolainen is signed, because he’s a big guy and can hit people, because ‘that’s how a Philadelphia team should play’ shows the kind of outdated thinking in the NHL. It was brought home by the Beagle/Zegras/Terry incident a few nights ago, where Zegras tried something ‘fancy’, got a cross-check from Beagle for it, who then proceeded to batter Zegras’ teammate who stood up for him. The commentary team explained it away as, if you’re going to show off and make someone look stupid, expect a punch in the mouth. The league have played down to this level as well, by putting no further sanctions on Beagle. It’s a problem from the top down and I have no idea how it is ever going to be changed.