{"id":699,"date":"2007-08-20T17:57:22","date_gmt":"2007-08-20T21:57:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.IreneEng.com\/2007\/08\/20\/the-holy-land-of-ice-hockey\/"},"modified":"2011-10-30T02:34:19","modified_gmt":"2011-10-30T02:34:19","slug":"the-holy-land-of-ice-hockey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/?p=699","title":{"rendered":"The holy land of ice hockey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"hockey_hall_of_fame.jpg\"<\/a>I couldn’t\u00a0grasp the reality that the ice hockey isn’t as popular as say the drug ridden, slow motioned baseball, or half naked basketball in the USA.\u00a0 The ice hockey has grace, finesse, speed, drama, fight, blood, goons and heroes, and is elegant and clean (years ago, a promising rookie caught using drugs: he’s banned for life — kiddo, you’re in the wrong sport, switch to\u00a0baseball, you not only get\u00a02 more chances, also get\u00a0longer shelf life!!)\u00a0 All the ingredients that makes a sport exciting .. .. but unfortunately the\u00a0Yankees just don’t take it the way they take to baseball or basketball, and it certainly dictates the fate of that sport.\u00a0 Ice hockey players seemed never show up on the top ten (best-paid athletes) list.<\/p>\n

It’s summer, and news is all about ice hockey in Toronto. Do the Canadians have other thing on their mind? The Maple Leafs has new home .. .. Anyway, Toronto is the seat of\u00a0hockey, so first thing first.\u00a0 We visited the\u00a0it as soon as we arrived.\u00a0 The building that bears the Hockey Hall of Fame\u00a0on the corner of Front and Yonge Street is very elegant, but the museum is housed in the basement at the adjacent mall.\u00a0 Hockey news dominated their newspapers and airwaves, even in the sweltering summer: Mark Bell has pleaded no contest to felony drunken driving and hit-and-run, will\u00a0face jail time after the season;\u00a0Sam Pollock<\/a> has passed away on 8\/16 .. ..<\/p>\n

The media room in the museum was showing a documentary on Mario Lemieux as we walked by.\u00a0 I always prefer him over the more famous Gretzky, whom I thought on the\u00a0girlie side.\u00a0 Super Mario also battled cancer and came back to play again.\u00a0 The last time I saw him playing was at the MSG Madison Square Garden against the Rangers in May 1993 – I remembered it by heart: pregnant with King in the 8th month.\u00a0 Mario scored 5 goals and the Penguins eventually won 8:1 or something like that.\u00a0 I was wildly happy and cheering for him loudly.\u00a0 That had irritated the Rangers fans that packed the house.\u00a0 Few of them fixed\u00a0me with the\u00a0menace-est looks.\u00a0 I supposed if my belly weren’t visibly enlarged they’d throw me onto the ice in no time.<\/p>\n

I left the meseum early to entertain the kids – they refused to go to the Hall. \u00a0Golfer stayed longer.\u00a0 Our local rings at home are always packed to almost 24\/7: mens league starts at 11pm and boys’ starts at 5 or 5:30am; girlie figure skaters always get up before school.\u00a0 Is the lack of rings or hockey is indeed popular at grass root?\u00a0 Parents would kill for it.\u00a0\u00a0You hear term ‘soccer moms’ when soccer isn’t popular at all.\u00a0 (David Beckham made to the top ten in 2004 as the Mr. No. 8th, beating out\u00a0A-Rod the 9th and\u00a0Kobe Bryant the 10th.)\u00a0 Another myth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I couldn’t\u00a0grasp the reality that the ice hockey isn’t as popular as say the drug ridden, slow motioned baseball, or half naked basketball in the USA.\u00a0 The ice hockey has grace, finesse, speed, drama, fight, blood, goons and heroes, and is elegant and clean (years ago, a promising rookie caught using drugs: he’s banned for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-699","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ice-hockey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=699"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/699\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.ireneeng.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}