Today I saw my first Olympic events in person! I went to two women’s ice hockey games: Germany vs. Japan at noon Olympic Time and Russia vs. Finland at 430 OT. Germany beat Japan 3-2 and Finland beat Russia 4-0. But I know you don’t come here for the scores, so let me give you some of my impressions.
Women’s Ice Hockey is not the same as men’s and it took a little while to get used to. The biggest difference in the rules is that body checking is not allowed in the women’s game. You’d think that by disallowing body checking, you’d get a game that looks the same, just without the body checking. Totally untrue! The biggest difference is that by disallowing body checking, you give the hockey players all sorts of freedom unavailable to men. The women today were doing all sorts of things like skating towards the boards to retrieve a puck with an opponent barreling down on them or looking down to gather a bouncing puck while skating through the middle of the ice that are totally impossible in the men’s game because anyone who tries it will be flatter on the ice than a pancake within thirty seconds. It took almost the first whole game for me to stop having the cringing “oh my god, don’t do that, you’re going to get crushed” instinct. Tactically what this means is that puck possession is an even bigger imperative in the women’s game because it’s so much harder to get the puck from an opponent if you can’t hit her.
The other major difference is that the puck looks heavy. This is something you don’t often think in the men’s game because everyone who plays it at a high level is so darn strong that the puck looks weightless. In the men’s game, the puck moves in straight lines whether being passed or shot. In the women’s game, except for one or two of the most impressive players, the puck moves in curves. Shots have arc and passes noticeably dip as they run out of steam.
The atmosphere was great. Shayba arena seats around 5,000 so it’s very intimate. There are only around 20 rows of seats in two tiers surrounding the rink. The Japan vs. Germany game had around 2,000 people attending; the later game, because it involved Russia, was almost full with over 4,000 fans. During the first game, the crowd shouted “Shaybu! Shaybu!’ I asked some fans what it meant and they said it meant “let’s see a goal!” I wondered if it was a little bit of a sarcastic comment shouted when a fan feels the game is lagging. Later on, when the whole crowd was shouting it fifteen seconds into the Russia game, I understood it was just an exhortation. The crowd seemed to be tilting towards rooting for Japan. Not sure if there are socio-political reasons for that or if the Russian crowd just preferred the team that was loosing for most of the game.
I was really thrilled to get to see a Russian team play in person but unfortunately they never really had a shot in that game. Finland’s goalie (just like the men’s team) was rock solid and their top line of forwards, #77 Susana Tapani in particular was head and shoulders better than everyone else on the ice.
Women’s hockey was lots of fun to watch in person and it gave me a few ideas about rule changes. It drives me a little crazy that the rules prohibit women from body checking but I also understand that the men’s game is prohibitively violent, particularly as we understand more and more about the long term effects of brain injuries. So, if you think about it this way, that it’s not because the players are women that the rules are stricter, it’s because the game is more recently established and it’s certainly easier to establish strict rules than to change established ones to be stricter. Here’s my proposal — it seemed from watching that women could make contact with an opponent to shield the puck from her, just not in an effort to take the puck from her. Men are allowed to hit each other as long as the puck is nearby. Why don’t we meet in the middle — outlaw any body check that is not clearly intended to either keep the puck or get the puck?
Speed skating tomorrow!! Thanks for reading,
Ezra