You’re reading this because you like sports, so we don’t have to tell you there’s nothing better than watching a jaw-dropping highlight.
What we want YOU to tell us is this: which sport has THE best highlights? Are slick defensive plays in baseball more entertaining than a Mario Lemieux rush, or a Blake Griffin dunk? Is a Barry Sanders touchdown run more electrifying than a Christiano Ronaldo strike?
Each day from Dec. 29 and Jan. 2 a different sportsnet.ca writer will be making a written and visual case for their favourite sport and we want you to vote using our poll below.
Dec. 29: Hockey
Dec. 30: Football
Dec. 31: Baseball
Jan. 1: Soccer
Jan. 2: Basketball
Of course, with a competition like this, there is no loser and only the real winners are our eyes.
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So hockey highlights aren’t your favourite?
I get it. Hockey highlights are not your favourite in the same way Kendrick Lamar singles aren’t my favourite. You’d rather hear Good Kid, M.A.D.D. City in its entirety. I understand. But “Backseat Freestyle” (or this Pavel Datsyuk reel) isn’t a bad consolation prize?
The hockey highlight snatches a fraction of the drama borne out of ebbs and flows, of gaffes and scoring chances that could’ve been. The boiling tempers, the trading of crossbars pings, the makeup calls — all that fails to exist in a three-second show of hands.
So while highlights actually do better service to basketball (Is that the fifth timeout they’ve called in the last two minutes of play?), soccer (But those 13 passes in midfield were poetry!), football (45 seconds between plays) and baseball (Jays in 30 exists for a reason), hockey is the best game to watch end-to-end.
Yet even though highlights might not treat the nuances of hockey with the respect they deserve, man, you gotta watch this goal/save/hit.
They are ridiculous.
1. The Goal
“Holy jumpin’! You’ve gotta be kidding me. His tongue’s hangin’ like Michael Jordan!”
Must-see goals happen every week if not every night in the NHL. Scoring in hockey is rarer than in baseball, basketball and football — but, mercifully, not as sleepily rare as in soccer — so when a lamp burns red, it means more.
But with 12 moving parts on the ice, it’s the variety of each one that keeps us coming back to the half-hour morning sports shows. Each goal is a snowflake. Some melt away and are forgotten; others deserves to be held and examined from every angle imaginable.
And though hockey’s a team game, there is something about the individual-effort goal that pulls us in, and twists us up, like Alex Ovechkin did — with Wayne Gretzky in the building:
P.S. As awesome as Ovie’s goal is, this kinda athletic wonder happens every year, right, Tyler Ennis?
2. The Save
“I tell ya, folks. That is an incredible save.”
While catches over the wall and not-in-my-house blocks are impressive, there is a sameness to them compared to the great hockey save. Goaltenders have so many different tools and styles to prevent a score — stick, glove, stacked pads, face, blocker — and the definitive box they guard (red line, posts, crossbar) creates a neat little matrix of possibility for drama.
One of our favourites comes from a Pittsburgh backup whose NHL career lasted just 95 games. Sebastien Caron’s leather-bound heist of Philadelphia’s Brian Savage in 2005 was so last-moment, it fooled the commentators and goal judge (the light and horn both fire) and spurred Sidney Crosby to cuss on camera, shocking his mother:
3. The Hit
“I think Linden got to Jeff Norton this time.”
Even the clean ones can end careers. Hockey might not have the biggest bodies, but it is the only sport where there are no out-of-bounds areas for its athletes to roam. Thus, collisions are not only inevitable, they are encouraged. Heck, one of hockey’s biggest icons has curated 26 volumes of the bone-rattling stuff. What elevates the body-check above, say, the football tackle is that even the skilled offensive players can deliver big ones.
Take for example this 1995 glass-buster from Vancouver’s Trevor Linden, who now sits in an office, wears glasses and makes important decisions: