Here's another reason hockey is my favorite thing.
See also: Our British Texan Falls in Love With the Stars
Hockey has some real pantomime villains. Soccer, sure, there were some bad guys. Luis Suarez, for instance, is very keen on biting people, as you do. He was also suspended for being a racist. Joey Barton tends to spend more time suspended than he does on the field, for a series of petulant misdemeanors. Hockey, however, has the best bad guys of all.
None of these people are more dislikable than Corey Perry of the Anaheim Ducks. Not only is Corey Perry, points-wise, one of the best players in hockey, he is also a gigantic turd in human form, a mistake of a human being who has been allowed to don a helmet, a person with absolutely no redeeming features whatsoever.
You see? I'm really worked up. At worst, with Suarez, I thought he was an idiot. Definitely an idiot I could beat in a fight, if he didn't sneakily bite me and then run away. I'm not convinced I could beat Corey Perry in a fight, because he plays hockey and is therefore constructed entirely from iron, much like a sturdy bridge if I really hated that bridge.
See also: This Week In Star's Hockey: Introducing Godzilla
My hockey "awakening," if you'll excuse such a glib phrase, was definitely during the playoff series last season. This is when I was first introduced to Corey Perry. Corey Perry, while undoubtedly not bad at hockey, brings the morals of soccer to the game, and there is no place for a whinging, crying soccer player in hockey. Corey Perry will pretend he is hurt. Corey Perry will hit your players in the nuts with his stick while people aren't looking. Corey Perry will fall to the ice, weeping, should anything bad ever happen to him.
If Luis Suarez played hockey, the other team would take great delight in repeatedly punching him in those sticking-out teeth that provide such a good target. As a perfect example, this is how we deal with Corey Perry.
That's right. We make him land on his face in front of a large crowd of people, then we skate nonchalantly away as if we hadn't just made a person land on his head on solid ice. That is how hockey deals with people. In soccer, they'd just complain to the ref. Not here. This is the justice of the streets. If the streets were covered in ice.
This is such an insanely satisfying aspect of hockey. Brutal justice is dealt out to the bad guys. Sometimes, as in the case of the playoffs, the bad guys win. That's the case everywhere in life. However, in very few areas of life did the bad guys win via having the crap kicked out of them for hours on end.
This week in Stars hockey: There was a torrential amount of bullshit. Corey Perry was in town. We don't want to talk about it.
