Today, in the interests of expanding my mind and learning about “sports”, I decided to study ice hockey via the medium of the new ice-hockey documentary Heated Rivalry (Sky Atlantic). It’s tempting to write “ice hockey” off as just “Canadian snow hurling”, but there’s far more to it than that, as I’ve learned from the first three episodes.
So let me tell you about how ice hockey works. To start with, two teams of sturdy gentlemen dressed in baggy clothes and helmets, and wielding curved wooden sticks, face each other across an expanse of ice.
Then each team casts smouldering, longing looks at one another.
Delivering a convincing smouldering look is, it seems, one of the key skills in ice hockey. (I jot this down.) Everyone cheers.
There are two types of person in ice hockey.
There’s the devil-may-care Russian type of hockey player, who smokes cigarettes and has a troublesome family back in Russia.
And then there’s the uptight Canadian sort of hockey player, who cares about brand deals and strives to please his ambitious mo
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