Puck: a Shakespearean Reference? READ ON TO FIND OUT!
Written: Jul 22 '04 (Updated Jul 23 '04)
Product Rating:
Pros: Indestructible, allow the playing of hockey, allow goals to be scored
Cons: Hurt a lot when they hit you, allow goals to be scored against you
The Bottom Line: Pucks are essential for the playing of hockey. Of course, given the actual cost of playing, I really should have tacked another 500 to the amount paid, but who's counting?
penguinman's Full Review: NHL Official Ice Hockey Puck
I came home from hockey tonight, sweaty and stinky (I'm sure I've now turned on all those that stalk Mr. Penguin, trust me, there are many), when it struck me: I haven't written a review about the most important part of hockey! It's extremely hard to play hockey without a puck, so why in God's name hadn't I written a review? Aided by a six pack of beer (any cop in the world would waive the apparent age violation after seeing the punishment I took on the ice tonight), I set in to write this fabulous review.
Noone is quite sure how hockey pucks came about. If I was a betting man, I would figure it was because early games of shinny were probably played with rocks. As you know, there are many more puck-like rocks than ball-like rocks, so there's PenguinMan's Theory of Hockey Evolution. I expect it to be banned in bible-belt communities shortly.
The NHL standard ice-hockey puck weighs 6 ounces (about 170 grams for those of you on the other side of the unfrozen pond). Despite being made of rubber, they don't tend to deform; usually, they deform whatever poor object (or soul) happens to stand in their way. This is due to a nifty process known as vulcanization, which makes the usually soft and bouncy rubber roughly as hard as a piece of cherry wood. Every puck I have seen is made in the Czech Republic or Slovakia; several of my older pucks my father played with in his formative years were made in some odd land named Czechoslovakia, wherever that is. Most good pucks have a nice waffle pattern on the edges in addition to the "Made in" label that allows you to get a slightly better grip on the biscuit.
Now, how does a puck perform? Tonight, I would say that the puck we used was crap. My reasoning is that I failed to convert on either of my breakaways (my solo goal for my team notwithstanding), and I think I have a broken bone in my foot after taking a heater right above the toe, right where there is literally NO protection. You see, pucks, being hard, hurt quite a bit when they hit you. When they hit non padded areas, they often break things. Like bones.
A good puck will last for years; I'm still playing with a 40 year old Cooper puck that is pretty much still unscathed. The edges have worn down ever so slightly, and there's a tiny chunk taken out, but on the by and large, these things are pretty much indestructible.
And now, for the piece I'm sure you've waited for: why puck? I never quite understood why a little disc is called a puck. Why not little disc? Hell, the oft-used nickname of "biscuit" makes a whole heck of a lot more sense. The only real explanation lies in, yep, you guessed it, the Canadian education system. You see, back when hockey was invented up in Canuckistan (a province of Britain at the time), the guys on the pond needed to call that little rubbery thing they were shooting something. Guys calling for passes couldn't be bothered saying, "Hey, pass the vulcanized rubber disc, eh??" all the time, so they had to resort to something else. Now, due to the classical British education, all the schoolchildren were probably well acclimated with the works of Shakespeare. One of the characters in his works is a mischevious sprite named Puck. My bet is that after seeing the rubber bounce in directions directly contrary to the intended motion (happened to me tonight), some smart kid said, "Damn that Puck!" Somehow, the name stuck.
So, there's my tale.
Edit: Let it be known that the $3 price is for a NHL game used puck; the one I have was given to me by the Bruins trainer, the honorable Don Del Negro. There are perks to having a father who is a team dentist.
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