Sorry Stephen Cannella, but calling people who don’t follow the NHL ignorant isn’t exactly going to bolster a sport on the verge of dying. I realize he was trying to say that people just don’t understand the sport, but using a word with such negative connotations will draw the ire of those he labels. The word ignorance means “The condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed”. It is generally not used to describe the disinterest in one particular area (accept perhaps law, social behavior and other concepts considered a part of common knowledge). And the analogy in which we are all third graders and hockey is astrophysics? Don’t even get me started on how idiotic that makes him sound.
What’s even more humorous is that this comment follows a query in his opening paragraph: “What information could people possibly need on the [Cowboys] in the middle of March?” So you wanna talk about ignorance? Maybe you should click on some of the other sections of the site you write for. Maybe you’ll notice that March is the start of free agency and there has been non-stop headlines in the football world – probably more than the NHL during the season. Oh, and two days after you wrote this moronic article the Cowboys-Bucs swap of receivers (Galloway for Keyshawn) finally took place. Gee, I wonder what they could possibly be looking for about the Cowboys…
And lets just get one more thing straight here – an informal poll about why people don’t follow a sport doesn’t exactly give any sort of proof as to the real issues at hand. Hockey isn’t all that difficult to follow. It’s nothing compared to the rather cumbersome rulebook of the NFL, yet people still have trouble getting into the game. It seems to me that they just aren’t that interested. I find it ludicrous to complain that it is our ignorance, rather than the inherent violence that has led to a man’s broken neck, that hurts hockey.