Casman Blog

I woke up this morning in Honolulu, Hawaii, and after a light breakfast watched three plus hours of the National Hockey League’s Winter Classic, broadcast from Buffalo, NY. The game was great, the first professional outdoor game in the United States, with over 73,000 people attending. It is a bit strange looking out the window at the palm trees swaying in the breeze, sitting in my surfer shorts, and watching a game played on ice, snow coming down, with the wind chill factor at somewhere around 20 degrees Fahrenheit.

Hockey could never be a real sport in Hawaii, right? It’s not natural.

What makes a game natural? In tropical Hawaii, surfing qualifies, for both connection with the environment and tradition. There’s canoeing and a bunch of other smaller sports. But football, baseball and a handful of other modern summer sports have really taken root in the volcanic soils of Hawaii. They’re considered summer sports. Does that make them fit in Hawaii? What about football is natural? Major stadiums, major budgets. Sure you can play touch football on the beach, but that’s far removed from the University of Hawaii’s game today, for instance. Golf? Nothing very natural or local about a golf course.

So why not ice hockey? Unpopular, sure. Unnatural, no. Not any more unnatural than any of the other modern sports.