I've seen/heard more hysterical and creative trash-talking in one hockey game than I've heard in a decade's worth of any other sport.
Seriously, that made me laugh out loud...that’s hockey!
I played hockey for about 15 years (goalie) and I had what was kind of a funny experience in the last couple of years when I was playing in a men’s league… we had a playoff game against a team from Boston, and these guys were total jerks. When I play, I’m not one of those people who gets in the face of the other team or trash talks… it just isn’t my style. I don’t like it, I’ve never liked it. I’m just not one of those people who likes to rub their opponents face in the dirt.
Anyway, in this game they beat us pretty badly, as our entire team was fairly well outmatched. But every time they scored a goal, one or two of them would skate up to me, put their cages in my face, scream at me and yell things like “RED LIGHT!” As a goalie, you have to get used to that kind of thing, because sometimes that’s just the way it is. But these guys got me going in a slow boil, and by the end of the game, I was steaming. The next week, the other team came back to the same rink for the next round of the playoffs. A bunch of us from my team went down there to watch, and we yelled at them pretty boisterously from the stands. This is a man’s league, so it’s not like it was kids, women or even much of anybody there watching at 11 o’clock at night. Well, we torture the crap out of them, me much more so than anyone else. I was up in the stands, and every time the opposing team came down the ice, I would bellow at the top of my lungs “RED LIGHT! RED LIGHT!” Well, I must’ve started getting to the goalie, and the other team started pumping the goals into the net at a pretty good clip!
At one point, their whole team was clustered around the glass on the ice, with me on the other side of the glass, with a couple of those guys trying to take whacks at me with their sticks! I love it, to see a bunch of arrogant jocks from a liberal town like Cambridge Massachusetts who could dish it out, but just couldn’t take it!
We debated sticking around in the parking lot until they came out, but being a bunch of older, married guys, we figured it wasn’t really worth getting involved in something like that… :-)
I tore up my knee playing volleyball after that season, and was never able to play hockey again after that, but it was a memorable way to go out...