Did you see that hockey game Tuesday, the one played outdoors at a Buffalo football stadium, the one romanticizing the face-chapped, teeth-chattering joys of Northerness?
Right. Teeth-chattering joys. Columnist Jay Mariotti of the Chicago Sun-Times enthuses about this outdoor NHL game...
It was an artistic triumph, with a sport largely left for dead reminding us of its core beauty: players growing up on ponds in the U.S. and Canada, wearing head sleeves and toques, dealing with snow swirling in their faces...
So what if 71,000 history-watchers were reduced to icicles by the overtime period? So what if falling snow left a steady layer of wet stuff that made it difficult to pass or even see the puck? So what if they occasionally tripped on holes in the ice? So what if the game often was stopped for the Zamboni machines, which tried to smooth the mix into a manageable glaze? This was hockey in its natural habitat....
Which is why anyone whose brain isn't frozen solid (Canucks excepted here) plays it indoors. Duh.
Mariotti, you can bet your puck, watched it on TV.
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