On Sunday I went to see an ice hockey match. No, not Canada vs the United States at the Winter Olympics, although that was taking place at a similar time. It was the rather less glamorous line-up of ‘Guildford Flames’ vs ‘Milton Keynes Lightning’, taking place at the Guildford Spectrum leisure centre.Ten years ago or so I used to go and watch hockey matches quite regularly, supporting what was then known as the ‘Swindon Chill’. Alas, this team was as lousy as their name and the attraction of seeing them lose every week soon wore off. Nowadays they appear to have reverted to the infinitely better name of ‘Wildcats’, but are alas still languishing near the bottom of the league.
Ice hockey is a rapidly-moving sport in which the players alternate between highly skilful puck passing and beating hell out of each other. Only the most blatant infractions are called up by the referees, who then give out penalties with wonderfully euphemistic names: ‘hooking’ appears to mean jabbing a stick violently into an opponent’s stomach and trying to haul them backwards, ‘holding’ can mean physically sitting on another player to stop them from moving, and my absolute favourite ‘roughing’ means attempted murder.
As I watched what was a very entertaining match it struck me that ice hockey is the diametric opposite of snooker, the ‘sport’ (yes, I know that any game with Stephen Lee as a top player can’t really be called a sport) that I go to see most often. Now, this may seem a senseless comparison, what with hockey being a team game played on ice and snooker being a rather more sedate affair played on a posh table, but I’m going to make it nonetheless. I also can’t confess to knowing a great deal about ice hockey, but then again I’m not convinced there is a great deal to know.
My first point regards tactics. Snooker matches are as much down to clever thinking as they 
are down to skill with the cue. Players have definite strategies and plan out several shots in advance. When taking a shot the goal isn’t simply to get the object ball in the pocket; in addition the white needs to land in the perfect position for the next pot. If no pot is obvious then the white needs to bring a ball into a pottable position and finish neatly lined up with it. The precision required, and the rapid calculations of velocities and angles, are extraordinary.
In ice hockey on the other hand, any tactics employed are rather less obvious to a casual observer. The aim is to get the puck into the goal. That’s pretty much it. There don’t appear to be any great over-arching strategies, and indeed there is no need for there to be. Play moves so quickly up and down the rink that there simply isn’t any time for carefully planned-out formations. The players don’t have the opportunity to consider their next move; they have to react at almost the same instant that they receive the puck. Hesitate for even a second and they’ll find themselves bashed up against the wall by an opponent.
An entire ice hockey match is over in 60 minutes of play, separated into three equal periods. Given the constant stops and starts, and the need to resurface the ice, it does in reality take rather longer than this. However, it's still pretty short for a sports match. One of the reasons for this is that it's a supremely knackering game. The players charge up and down the rink at ferocious speeds and bash into each other at full-force. To allow the team to cope with this constant exertion there are plenty more players available on the bench than are needed on the ice at any one time, and they chop and change constantly.
For the snooker player there is no hope of a substitute when feeling Tired. Here the exhaustion is mental not physical and the match is very much head to head. It also lasts for much, much longer. Ronnie aside, most players take a good few seconds over each shot, and can deliberate for well over a minute if it's a tricky snooker. In the same period of time in ice hockey there could well have been two goals and a handful of penalties. Snooker frames can be over in 15 minutes if one player dominates and has a good run of the balls, but the majority will contain more safety play and so will last for rather longer. And of course one frame is not the entire match; the final of the World Championship is the best of 35 frames. 35 frames! That's insanely long.
Another difference is that struck me was the behaviour of the crowds. At the ice hockey there was constant cheering and chanting and bashing of drums, and the rink positively exploded each time a home goal was scored. In contrast, snooker audiences keep incredibly quiet, bursting into applause after good shots but rapidly quieting down lest the referee turns and tells them off. I can't imagine any hockey referee complaining to a fan unless they actually chucked something onto the ice, and even then if it was something small and fluffy they’d probably get away with it. After all, the refs are too busy trying to stop the players from committing grievous bodily harm to pay much attention to such minor matters.
Strangely, and despite the differences of the loud and brash versus the quiet and collected, the atmosphere at both sports is really rather good. The ice hockey crowd is more obviously entertaining and being entertained, but the tense excitement at a snooker game can't be matched. Both are niche sports and have small but dedicated fanbases which give events a real welcoming feel. Personally, snooker appeals more due to its more cerebral nature and the sheer variety of play from match to match. But when I want a good burst of adrenaline, I'll certainly give ice hockey another try.
