Hockey? It’s a terribly flawed game

The sport alone can't sell itself, so fighting still is not discouraged

? For years I’ve been obsessed with why I can’t get obsessed with hockey.

I’ve tried and tried to warm up to the game played on ice. Now, treading on thin ice, I publicly admit I’d sooner watch another Aflac commercial than a minute of any NHL playoff game.

What a hockey puck I must be. Yet I’d feel much guiltier if I didn’t think the staunchest Sharks fan has a tough time watching every tedious tick of — hold on, let me look this up — Ottawa-New Jersey or Anaheim-Minnesota in the conference finals.

Please understand, I do not hate hockey. If your local team is in the playoffs, experiencing a game live can be as electrifying as any playoff game in any sport. Yet what has long baffled me is why I, a sports nut, can’t watch playoff hockey on TV when it doesn’t involve my local team.

I covered the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” Olympic game in Lake Placid. Loved it; didn’t last. I’ve asked coaches from Roger Neilson to Bob Gainey to teach me the game. Understand it; still don’t get it.

I’ll watch any football, basketball or baseball game on TV — regular season or playoffs, Bay Area teams or not. I buy the DirecTV packages so I can see virtually every regular-season basketball or baseball game, if I choose. I’d rather watch Hocking — the Minnesota Twins’ Denny — than hockey.

Hockey doesn’t have a single player I’d hurry home to watch. Not one. All 16 NBA playoff teams have at least one star — and usually two or three — who have kept me from channel surfing. As bad as the Boston Celtics are, I’d watch a replay of a Paul Pierce game before I’d watch a minute of the Bruins live.

My theory: Hockey is too hard for its own good. It can’t showcase enough of a star’s skills. Players blend. Defense dominates. Strategy blurs into a blizzard of turnovers. Scoring chances are agonizingly rare.

For me, hockey is a terribly flawed game courageously played by mostly good guys.

On radio it sounds like one continuous mistake: So-and-so passes to so-and-so but the puck is stolen by so-and-so who is knocked off the puck by so-and-so who can’t control the puck and loses it to so-and-so …

Imagine basketball if you could ram the man with the ball. Imagine Shaq on ice skates. Imagine Los Angeles Lakers 29, San Antonio Spurs 26.

But no, I didn’t play hockey growing up. Most hockey hounds 1) are from Canada or an Original Six hotbed; 2) were regularly taken to games by their fathers; and/or 3) played as kids. A game that features so much blood has to get in your blood early.

But through high school, I did often attend minor-league hockey games. My friends and I went strictly to see the fights and we were never disappointed. But why does big-league hockey still need to encourage fighting? Because the game alone can’t sell itself.