Hockey 101: Novice To Fan In One Easy Lesson

Their boyfriends are obsessed with it. Their husbands can’t get enough.

That alone was enough to drive a half-dozen women to spend two hours in a Spokane classroom Tuesday night, listening to nothing but (gulp) … hockey!

The students, joined by their significant others, jotted notes and tossed out questions, hoping to understand the allure of guys slamming other guys into walls and fighting over a small piece of black rubber.

“If you aren’t familiar with the game, it’s a little wacky,” warned their teacher, Don Jamieson.

Call it Hockey 101. Everything you ever wanted to know about the sport but were afraid to ask.

The Spokane Arena is filling with fans eager for the thrills and chills of Canada’s addition to the wide world of athletics.

Jamieson hopes his students join the hard-core fans. As the business manager for the Spokane Chiefs, he geared them up for what promises to be one of the team’s premiere seasons.

Hosts to the championship Memorial Cup, the Chiefs have an automatic bid into major junior hockey’s version of the Stanley Cup playoffs.

“This isn’t coming back to Spokane in our lifetime,” he said of the rotating tournament. “Hockey is great if you know what we’re talking about.”

The learning curve for hockey, Jamieson admitted, is not huge. But for those weekend warriors spraying Chiefs fans with half-full beers during a post-goal jubilation dance, hockey is everything.

And you better know your stuff.

For folks trying to get hip to hockey, but who are still lost in the jargon, Jamieson has one rule: simplicity.

“We hockey people are quite simple,” he said. “We don’t try to fool you with names.”

Take the basic penalties, for example.

High-sticking - hitting a guy above the waist. Tripping - using your stick to help a guy fall flat on his face. Boarding - using excessive force to slam a guy against the wall.

“It’s not too tough,” Jamieson said.

How about those plays?

In a power play, one team has more men on the ice due to a penalty. More guys, more power.

The box formation, used as a defense against power plays, is just that: guys set up on the ice in the shape of a box.

As for the basic rules, Jamieson said, they’re only odd until explained.

For example, players must wear tie-down sweaters. Here’s the reasoning: “What players try to do in fights is try to pull sweaters over the other guy’s head so they have the advantage,” he said.

A player can’t kick the puck into the goal, either. It counts if it bounces off a guy’s head, off a shin, off his chest. But no kicking.

“It’s just not safe,” Jamieson said. “You can’t do it.”

If all of that still doesn’t satisfy a budding fan’s lust for knowledge, Jamieson has one last offering: “the book.”

The Chiefs’ hockey guidebook is available during games at the Arena.

If you’re curious about hockey but worried about the blood and violence for which the game is known, give it a try, Jamieson urged.

Changes in the past few years have made the sport safer and more exciting, he claimed.

“It doesn’t have the goon image it used to.”

, DataTimes