ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD – During the whole Leno-O’Brien conflagration at NBC I was struck by one commentary that said Conan O’Brien, being a Catholic male, was averse to conflict and wanted everyone to get along. I immediately understood that characterization and saw myself, reluctant to engage in and hating that no one can get along. I am fine with that. But I am also fine with confrontation.
This week I received an email from a Pro Hockey News reader referencing a column I wrote describing the new International Hockey Association with corporate offices in Nevada. The column was intended to give some space to a new league looking to entertain and open up the sport of hockey.
Today, the NHL has 16, yes 16, skaters (including officials) on the ice at any one time. Skaters.
The intention of the IHA is to open up the ice by dropping the starting lineups from 6 to 5, a goalie and four players skating out.
In our own local rec league, NMHockey , we play on a small sheet of ice with full squads on each side of the red line and two officials for a total of 14 skaters when at full strength. Even we feel crowded on the ice. Now add two more officials for a total of 16 world class-skaters on the ice and imagine the frenetic pace and sudden loss of room to maneuver. Hence Norb Ecksl’s efforts to open the ice and permit the sport to regain the speed it has lost to limited space and the clutching and grabbing we have seen over the years.
It is within this context that I received the following email from a reader of Pro Hockey News.
You sir, are a moron and have no business writing about hockey:
HENDERSON, Nev. – “At full strength the ice surface in an NHL hockey game has 16 people skating. Sixteen adults skating on a 200 foot by 85 foot sheet of ice.”
Yeah and there’s 15 players on an NBA court at the same time and 82 players on an NFL field at one time, we should really cut down on that too!
I don’t know if you were trying to exaggerate the number of players on the ice in the NHL at full strength to make this league not look like the joke that it will be but, there are 5 skaters and a goalie for each team when in full strength. To save you the time of taking your shoes off to count it up on your toes, it’s 6 per team. Ummmm…… 6 plus 6= 12 SKATERS ON THE ICE DURING FULL STRENGTH, NOT 16. You shouldn’t even count the goalie as a skater because he is not skating around, so that makes 10 SKATERS.
Stick to writing about things that you know in Vegas, Whores and Crap(s)! I bet you’ve never seen a hockey game.
I won’t include the first name or last initial (presumably) of the sender. I abhor conflict but this email gave me pause to reconsider my position.
Reading, writing and comprehension are foundation stones in the development of intelligent discourse, regardless of language, country or philosophy. Add reason and one has the basic tools to discuss, debate and argue one’s point over another. Remove but one of these stones and we suffer and are poorer for our failure to consider them.
Remove two and we are shadows of the creatures that crawled from the primordial ooze to tread this planet. Ignore but two stones in the foundation and we are confronted with the sender of the above email. Reading, writing, comprehension, and reason are neglected and we are left with reactionary, ill-conceived comments without thought. Pre-conceptions drive the email and strike out blindly with rudeness and venom that is misdirected and indeed aimless.
My friend and colleague, Brian Hennessy, is among the most brilliant people I have been privileged to meet. His theories on identifying our moments of understanding are tracked by our Paths of Ah-Ha! His theory, Ecology of Mind, looks at the ability to comprehend our innate abilities. I regret to say today’s email author apparently does not possess the capacity to understand the Path of Ah-Ha and thus has no capacity beyond the inane email he sent and the conflict within me that he engendered.
We are barraged by other such worthless and pointless communications all day. There is not the pejorative that can be used to adequately describe this email or the person who penned the diatribe.
What provides a person sufficient self-anointed worth to send such an email? Is it talk radio? Perhaps Twitter? Or FaceBook? Or any of the other social networking sites?
Whatever the medium that is employed, the lack of a rheostat is the real issue. The lack of a qualifying voice, someone saying “You might want to rethink your motive and your entire thesis before sending that out.”
For instance, 12 players? Agreed. But should the sender have not considered the four officials on the ice? For a total of 16 skaters.
That lack of one tiny voice saying recalculate and recount.
I have been in the company of Nobel Prize winners (note the pluralistic ‘s’). I count among my greatest professional moments those where I was challenged by the best in science in intellectual confrontation.
Today I was confronted by a person lacking in intellectual integrity and one who ignores or abuses the foundation of discourse.
Pro Hockey News is driven to produce quality work that educates and entertains its readers. We (I) missed the boat in this article. Our pages offer no room for ridicule by anyone on staff. We promote the sport that all 250+ writers, columnists, editors, and photographers love and are dedicated to.
But we missed one.
Read, write, comprehend, and reason.
Contact lou.lafrado@prohockeynews.com
We would like to thank the team over at gamblingplanet.org for supporting this article and others at Pro Hockey News.
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