A hockey hostage gets sucked into playoffs

Benched by two-blanket chills, I hunker down and make these observations

I don’t want to do it, but I’m powerless to resist.

The start of the NHL playoff coincides with me getting a bad cold. I can’t speak without coughing. My lungs feel like they are being probed by red hot crochet hooks. I have the two-blanket chills. They’re twice as bad as the one-blanket chills. (No one has been known to survive the three-blanket chills). I won’t describe the runny nose other than to say that if I’d purchased Kleenex stock beforehand, I would have been charged with insider trading.

There is nothing to do for four days besides sit on the couch and pray for either death or hockey. Hockey answers my call first.

In my delirium, I forget that I don’t care much for hockey. Never

really got into it. Never played it as a kid. But I need hockey now like Jack Dawson needed woollen long johns in the movie Titanic. And so I watch. And learn the following 20 things.

1. Clear plastic foot guards. One player had a loose one but they wouldn’t let him take it back to the bench. He had to hand it to the ref. I’m not sure if every player wears them, but they look like a great idea. I Google them. The Shotblocker XT Pro starts at $199.99 which is twice what my last pair of skates cost.

2. It’s the end of a long shift but they can’t get the puck out of their own end. They’re being pummelled by shots. The harder they try, the more tired they get. You can see them wear down, like their batteries are dying, like their legs are going to explode. It’s like watching someone being tortured. You’d feel worse for them, but at least they don’t have a cold.

3. Somebody needs to invent a hockey stick that doesn’t break when you look at it.

4. The two guys waiting for the other two guys taking a faceoff ? Why don’t you get it over with and just strangle each other to death?

5. In a “chippy” game where there’s “no love lost” and there’s a “scrum” after every whistle, the announcer will choose the term “pushing and shoving” 110 per cent of the time.

6. Defying the odds, an announcer eschews “pushing and shoving” and says “bump and grind.” He needs to check his burlesque dictionary.

7. That Getzlaf guy is freaking good.

8. When it’s really, really important that an overmatched team doesn’t take a stupid highsticking penalty, some idiot on the overmatched team will take a stupid high-sticking penalty. They’re like dogs walking past food they’re not supposed to have. They’re like, “I better not ...” GULP.

9. Unlike football, there are very few needless and boring breaks for coaches to challenge plays. Refreshing.

10. Hitting; avoiding getting hit; shooting; blocking shots; pushing and shoving after the whistle: They do all that on skates. It’s crazy. I skated three times last winter. My legs felt like lead. My ankles hurt. My arches hated me. And that was doing lazy laps for 20 minutes. What they’re doing isn’t technically possible, yet they do it night after night.

11. Hockey players are famously tough, yet they wear stockings. Balanced life.

12. Shattenkirk is a cool name. 13. When players get close to the glass on a scrum, fans on the other side feel compelled to stand up and bang on the glass. They’re like bad kids at the zoo. Annoying.

14. On TV, you never get to see the Zamboni between periods. Obsessive compulsives everywhere love seeing the skilled, meticulous driving that turns cloudy ice shiny and new. Might be better than Don Cherry, even. 15. Some jerseys have laces at the collar, but they’re rarely tied and appear to have no purpose.

16. Little is expected of the fourth line. Yet much is required. This sounds like a fortune cookie. 17. Hockey is the only sport where bleeding factors into the length of a penalty.

18. Joe Thornton’s beard. Speechless.

19. One team enters through the mouth of a shark. I forget which one.

20. No Danny Gallivan? No Dick Irvin? Where have I been?