Reason I Love Hockey #6

Europeans

MLS aside (I swear, Beckham, if I have to hear about you and the Galaxy one more time, I'll hurl), the NHL is the only American sports league that European players have managed to crack into. And that makes me happy. Don't get me wrong, I love cheering for the home-grown boys as much as the next guy (uh, provided that the next guy isn't one of the idiots who was chanting "USA! USA!" during the last Sabres/Sens game), and obviously, hockey isn't anything without Canada (that Reason is coming up), but there's just something about those Euros I can't help but love. The Russians and the Czechs, the Finns and the Swedes--and I would be remiss in my duties to both my major and to Jochen Hecht if I didn't mention the Germans--each add a layer of cultural flavor to the hockey mix. Even though I've learned plenty of things from various hockey-playing Europeans (for instance, "Ales" isn't pronounced like "Alice," unless Kotalik is playing like shit and deserves to be made fun of), it's not just the ethnic education I love. It's the entire European experience. It's the interviews they give, with their near-incomprehensible accents and distinct English-as-a-second-language speech patterns. It's both their exciting, dangle-heavy style of offense, and mobile, intelligent style of defense. And it's the way their names do a Nadia-Comaneci-style uneven bars routine off the tongue. (I'm convinced "Maxim Afinogenov," with its buzzers and velars, is the most fun seven syllables can have.) Whether they're performing the perfect wraparound or explaining the cartoon ducks painted on their masks, they're entertaining to watch and entertaining to listen to, on and off the ice, and the sport of hockey just wouldn't be the same without them.