I can’t think of a sport more boring than hockey (unless you count tennis or figure skating or the like). It is a FRINGE sport. Too much space is wasted in the sports pages on hockey, especially now with the playoffs starting. Sometimes I want to see a baseball score or football score on ESPN’s Bottom Line, but it takes them five minutes to cycle through all the stupid hockey scores and statistics. Why do the newspapers and networks go through all the trouble of covering a minor sport so heavily? Why can’t we live a nice, hockey-free existence?
Ever watched the WNBA? Or the NBA fer that matter.
Hockey is boring? I’m not even a fan and this rings all kinds of “does not compute” alarms. The action is near-constant, you don’t (typically) have the same insipid and interminable commentary, as from baseball announcers, and there’s the occasional fistfight for a change of pace.
Baseball is comatose by comparison. Football is prone to endless stoppages and slow-mo replays, and basketball… well, I just don’t like basketball.
So let me get this straight you don’t like football, baseball or basketball and you’re not a hockey fan whats that leave NASCAR? Now that is a truly boring sport.
Hockey is soccer on ice. Which makes it totally irrelevant to me in any way whatsoever. The is but One True Sport. All others are minor distractions or outright Abominations, not to be suffered. 
mmmm, all that safety equipment!
NASCAR is a whole other level of tedium. I’m okay with a crash highlight reel but actually watching the race? Bleargh.
This is, without a doubt, the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard in my life. Soccer is slow. It’s a 90-minute marathon. Hockey is a short-distance sprint. If a player takes a 1-minute shift on the ice, his coach is likely to bitch him out for staying on the ice too long. In hockey players are expected to go full out for 30-50 seconds, rest up on the bench and then go out and do it all again. Comparing hockey to soccer displays a stunning ignorance of the two sports.
And I defy any sports fan to watch NHL playoff overtime and call hockey boring.
Sure, OT. Personally, I think the shootout rule is boneheaded in the extreme. When I was a kid, a game could end in a tie and that was just fine. In playoff games, they should just keep going full out, fuck this shootout crap.
No shootouts in the players, Bryan. They only have shootouts in the regular season.
They do drop the shootout in playoff hockey. I don’t have a huge fundamental problem with shootouts in particular, but their implementation needs to be tweaked. Either the 3-2-1 points system, and/or simply extending the regular season OT to ten minutes would change things dramatically.
Huh, I’ve been misinformed. Or perhaps I’m conflating NHL playoffs with Olympic tournaments.
Oh, I forgot the other reason: it’s played by furriners.
Rysto, I see absolutely no need for me to ever see more hockey or soccer than I have already seen in my life. Both are boring sports that are meaningless to me. I see no reason to waste a single more minute of my life watching either.
My problem with hockey is simple - I can’t see the %#@*!%#* PUCK!!. I’ve tried to watch, but I get completely lost.
So screw it, I’ll take my other sports and be happy.
Joe
Even the fights in hockey are boring. Usually it’s just one guy from one team and one guy from the other team going at it. Fights in baseball, basketball, and football are more fun to watch because they usually involve more people and they’re less common, making each one something to savor. Also, people criticize soccer for being too low-scoring, but hockey is the same way. At least soccer has the Spanish-speaking announcers who keep the game exciting to watch.
Soccer averages well under 3 goals per game. In 2006(admittedly the lowest scoring Premiership season in history) they averaged 2.45 goals per game. In 2007 it was 2.48. The NHL averaged 5.57 goals per game this season.
If you don’t like hockey that’s fine, but don’t just make things up here.
I’ve learned how to keep track of the puck without having to see it specifically, but that takes some time to figure out. High-definition TV helps a lot, too.
I do wish the old puck-tracking graphic they tried out a few years back was an optional feature you could turn on at will. It showed a blue glow around the puck and a nifty red streak when it was shot at high velocity, but it “insulted” real hockey fans so it was dropped. (The technology was adapted to now show the down markers for football.)
With any sport you have to enjoy something beyond simply the scoring of points or runs. A nasty curveball, a sweet double play, or a diving catch. A punishing tackle, a one-handed catch, or a first down made on second effort after being stuffed. Deft footwork on the soccer pitch.
Scoring in basketball happens so much it becomes the different ways to score: a three-point swish or a dunk.
With hockey, it becomes hits, checks, deft puck handling, and saves. Of course a spin-o-rama finished off with a backhand through the five hole is spectacular, too.
Football is a closer sport than soccer. It’s armored large men moving very fast bashing each other up. Shots on goal are like first downs, chances become like field goals, and goals are touchdowns.
The key to following the puck is to realize that it almost always travels in a straight line. I lose sight of the puck all of the time, but because I can predict the play I can pick it up again pretty quickly. It’s far easier to follow in person than on TV, especially US TV. A lot of the American telecasts have trouble keeping the puck on camera, because the cameraman can’t predict the play properly.
What non-fans often fail to realize about hockey (and what seems to be innately born into Canadians) is that you don’t watch the puck in hockey, you watch the players. If there’s a scrum of three or four players by the boards working each other over… well, that’s where the puck is. It’s the battle that’s important, not exactly where the puck is at that exact second.
Go to a live game. It is the only sport I prefer live to TV. It takes a little while to learn how to anticipate the play. A whole lot of the action takes place behind the play or away from the puck. I spend a lot of time watching the bench to see who’s coming in and out. I know I’m not going to change anyone’s mind if they are dead set against liking the game, just like no one is going to convince me to love baseball. 
They have shootouts without GUNS?
Pussies.