That's a Wee Bit Offsides…
Continuing the theme of a totally irrelevant topic, I’m going to pick up on another topic from the wide, cold world of hockey.
(Aside: did you know that in a large part of the world, if you said “hockey,” you’d have them thinking field hockey? Apparently the more specific term “ice hockey” is appropriate when one is in climates featuring average temperatures of “ridiculously hot” all the way up to “no, seriously, you could die out here just from standing still.” Suffice it to say, I’m talking about the ice version. Beauty, eh?)
I remember the first time I watched a hockey game with someone new to the sport. The referee whistled the puck dead, and I muttered “Offside,” not thinking anything of it.
“Why’d they stop the play there?”
“Oh, he was offside.”
“Well, what does that mean?”
It was then I realized that there was a whole world of hockey mystery waiting to be unfolded for the uninitiated. (I later came to realize the reason for this: most of the unititiated don’t care.)
Adding to the confusion is the popularity of soccer (football to the rest of the world, you know, where smashing into each other in a large suit of pads doesn’t seem like sport). In soccer, the player on offence is offside if he doesn’t keep a defensive player from the opposing team between himself and the net until he takes control of the ball. It gets downright confusing, trying to sort it out.
Hockey’s version is a lot simpler (in my mind, anyway). There’s a blue line that distinguishes each team’s zone. When you are entering the zone on offence, the puck must enter before any member of your team. If it does not, you’re offside.
Why? Well, it keeps you from parking a guy by the opposing team’s goalie, getting the puck and passing it all the way down to him so that he can dump it into the net without any defensive presence (known in street hockey as “cherrypicking.” I was really good at this in my younger years). It makes teams work harder for odd-man rushes (Two on one, three on two, etc.). I guess, in general, it sort of keeps the game a little more balanced.
If they ever remove the rule, I’ll be a lock for a pro spot as a cherrypicker. But, since it seems unlikely, I’ll keep on submitting you, dear reader, to the literary experience of a body check every chance I get.
And I don’t even know what that means.
