My P2P Sports

Online Hockey Fans Love to Watch The Action on the Ice

With football, baseball and basketball firmly entrenched as the top sports in the United States hockey has at times had to make do with the remaining fans that were left behind. Even though myp2p hockey isn’t typically viewed as an incredibly popular sport in the United States like most other sports it too enjoyed a period of popularity and success that brought it onto the national stage. Hockey reached its pinnacle during the 19080’s and 1990’s thanks in large part to the emergence of Canadian hockey star Wayne Gretzkey, who is easily the best player in the history of the sport and has been credited with giving birth to hockey in the U.S. because many Americans started to watch hockey in order to follow Gretzkey.  Although he was Canadian Gretzkey was incredibly popular with many Americans and it has been said that he was an adoptive American, especially after he joined the New York Rangers I 1996. In many ways, Wayne Gretzkey embodies the many reasons why people love to watch hockey.

Wayne Gretzkey was never a physically imposing figure and at the beginning of his career many people said he was too small or skinny to be successful but what Gretzkey lacked in athleticism he made up for with knowledge of the game. It could be argued that Wayne Gretzkey was the Peyton Manning of football, a guy that uses his intelligence rather than athleticism and skill to dominate opponents. Gretzky’s unlikely success is a primary reason why people love to watch hockey, it is a sport that allows underdogs not only to succeed but to thrive as long as they are committed to the game. There are not many sports where those that lack the athleticism to normally be successful can overcome their lack of natural talent and skill by studying the game. Everyone likes an underdog story, or a David vs. Goliath battle, and hockey allows for that situation to arise unlike any other sport on the planet. Most people that do not watch hockey, or do not follow the sport closely, tend to view it as a sport dominated by massive brutes that are constantly trying to bludgeon one another to death while skating around at full speed but to those that are more than casual fans hockey is much more than that. Hockey is physical, brutish and violent yet at the same time it is a game of finesse and intelligence, a game where strategy and teamwork can often overcome athletic or talent deficiencies. To those that love to watch hockey, the sport has a perfect combination of violence and finesse.

At the same time, for every hockey fan that watches because of skill and intelligence required to play there will likely be a handful of others that will admit to only watching because of the physical nature of the sport. In terms of physicality hockey is rivaled only by the sport of football but even then it should be noted that knock down drag out fights are not a common occurrence in football. In truth, while there are many die hard hockey fans in the North America and around the world the sport would likely not be as popular amongst Americans were it not for its physical nature. Many people that watch hockey do so because they are hoping to see a fight, or at the very least a gruesome hit. In a way hockey is sort of like NASCAR, it has a core of diehard fans that will watch any game at any time and it is bolstered by even more fans that only tune it to see the action. The fact that hockey is so physical in nature is not a mistake by any means. The NHL knows that its existence and continued relevance is dependent on the continued level of violence that people have become accustomed to.

Many of the people that watch hockey are people that may not normally give the sport the time of day but have seen a fight or two featured on one of the sports shows on ESPN. Even though some may not like the level of violence in myp2p hockey it is hard to deny that it pulls in viewers.

While hockey may not be incredibly popular in the United States as a whole it is definitely popular in the northern states where kids can grow up playing the sport. Hockey as a sport tends to be lost on many southerners who only watch hockey for the fights, if they watch at all. The affinity for hockey in the northern states is shared with the Canadians across the border who watch hockey to the same extent that many Americans watch football. The fact that the National Hockey League contains teams from both the United States and Canada is one of the reasons that it is still popular with many Americans. Most American sports leagues are contained primarily within the United States but the NHL has 7 teams stationed in Canada, allowing for plenty of international rivalry and giving fans even more of a reason to watch hockey.

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