Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Hockey Pucks

Episode Date: March 14, 2022

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedy writer Dan Hopper (Ranker, The New Yorker) and comedy podcaster Will "Kristi YamaGuccimane" ('JortsCenter' podcast, #Zeitgang) for a look at why hockey pucks are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Hockey Pucks. Known for being discs. Famous for being sports. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Hockey Pucks are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode. A podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. I'm joined by returning guest Dan Hopper and by new guest Will, aka Christy Yamaguchi-Main, aka at Wapple House on Twitter. Many pen names for Will. Dan Hopper is an incredible comedy writer. He's written for The New Yorker, also for The Washington Post, more fine publications. He's a managing editor at a great site called Ranker, which involves many friends of the show,

such as Tom Ryman. And Dan is also one of the biggest hockey fans I know. He formerly co-hosted a podcast called The Only Pittsburgh Sports Podcast, because it was that. And one of the main teams they focused on is the Pittsburgh Penguins. So glad my very funny hockey fan friend Dan is here. And then as I said, Will, aka Chris Giamaguchi Main, aka at Wapple House on Twitter. He's the co-host of the Jorts Center podcast, which is a comedy show often tackling sports. That's why the name is a pun on SportsCenter. Will is also a beloved guest and community member and more for the Daily Zeitgeist podcast, of course, hosted by Jack O'Brien and Miles Gray, and, you know, involving many other friends of the show. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca

to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape people. Acknowledge Dan recorded this on the traditional land of and Lenape people. Acknowledge Dan recorded this on the traditional land of the Lenape people. Acknowledge Will recorded this on the traditional land of the Lumbee people. And acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about hockey pucks. And great news, hockey pucks are a window into history, physics, technology, cultural exchange. You're going to be thrilled to discover that stuff, and you do not need to be a sports fan to enjoy this episode. Also, if you are a sports fan, it's going to enrich and deepen your enjoyment of that sport hockey.

Also, extra fun thing about this topic. As you know, there are patron topic suggestions and polls to select patron picks for episode topics. Listener Alceldo has often suggested hockey pucks as a patron pick in those polls, and I proceeded to make it after forgetting that it was his idea. So thank you very much for the idea, Alceldo. What a great pick. It incepted me, and we got a great episode out of it. So, please sit back, or pull the other guy's sweater over his head, because then it's easier to strike him with your fists. Part of the sport. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Dan Hopper and with Will, aka Christy Yamaguchi-Main. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Dan, Will, it is so good to have you.

Off mic before this, we were talking about a bunch of winter sports, and then Dan presented a puck, so I'm very excited about this, but either of you can start. What is your relationship to or opinion of hockey pucks? How do you feel about them? When I found out this was the—and I hope you don't mind, because my relationship is going to be very short to hockey pucks. Short is good.

So I'll jump in here first. You could not have picked a more perfect thing for me to have less of a relationship to. I don't think I've ever seen one in real life. I know what they are conceptually. I know that I try to squint and find it on the screen whenever I come across a hockey game on television. I have grown up at the beach in the southeast my entire life. I have grown up at the beach in the southeast my entire life. So hockey is not like it just it, you know, as far as I'm concerned, it's like an abstract concept in faraway places where it actually snows regularly and in countries that we were in a Cold War with for decades. Canada. Yeah, Canada, exactly.

Canada. But other than that, I think hockey is really cool, but that's about it. I think it's absolutely wild that it's a sport that people play regularly. It's hard for me to wrap my brain around that, but I literally don't think I've ever, I've never held a hockey puck and I've never, I don't think I've ever seen one in the sporting goods stores around here, to be honest with you. That adds up. Yeah. Well, and Dan, you have a hockey puck there.

Do you want to hand it through the zoom too, Will? Like just put it through the pipe. Yeah. He can take it. Just to get motivated for the SIF pod. I like to be holding the object the entire time last time i held the u.s forestry service i don't know um in your heart yeah in my heart as i continue to i i feel like an overachiever now because for once on one of

these recordings i have a huge relationship with the topic i have played hockey my whole life. I watched hockey my whole life. It's probably my favorite thing. Um, still watch every night and talk to my family about it. I've coached a ref, you name it. Wow. Love it. Cause your team is the Pittsburgh penguins when they're not playing. Are you just checking out other games? Yeah. I usually throw on some other game in the background and either do work or whatever. Yeah. Nice. Um, but yeah, watch, watch it all the time. So, uh, you, I can, I can actually say it's my favorite thing. some other game in the background and either do work or whatever yeah nice um but yeah watch watch it all the time so uh you i can actually say it's my favorite thing so you you know i'm lying if in a future sift pod i'm like alex uh mops have always been my favorite thing something like

like wait a minute he says it's every episode like i love mops always love mops i think i'm like the third goldilocks bear whatever because i am from the cold place of around chicago but i haven't learned ice skate i haven't ever played hockey and then also when i was a little kid the the Chicago Blackhawks were very bad. And also they had an owner who would keep them off of TV unless it was a national game because he wanted to induce people to come to the stadium. So that meant I was kind of in a hockey desert. They weren't on very often. And I didn't watch a lot growing up. In a blackout market, television-wise. Yeah, kind of before anybody did that.

And also like are we talking about the 90s here i'm not sure your exact age yeah so so the chicago bulls were were everything like they i'm sure they overshadowed uh any other sport in that that city by a by a long shot yeah they're really there was just better more exciting and then like baseball got better in the 2000s and the bears had one super bowl run and so like the blackhawks had been good in the past decade but but then i had already decided what i liked it was over you know i think they attracted a lot of younger fans then because they they opened up to tv and stuff like that but you know back in the 80s and 90s

uh sometimes it's hard to find like your local team on TV. That too, yeah. And we only recently, you know, I mean, I say recently, I don't know exactly the first year, but the Carolina Hurricanes are comparatively to some of the other teams in the NHL newer. And they were the Hartford Whalers before, I believe. And I just know about the Whalers because I really like the logo as most people do. One of the more clever designs.

I know hockey purists got mad at the Hurricanes a couple seasons ago because after every victory, they were doing some kind of like celebration and people were getting mad about it. I believe Dan, do you have any insight onto that or do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, they did a thing called the Storm Surge, where they did kind of like a choreographed celebration.

It was different every time afterwards, just to salute the fans and be like, you know, thanks for coming out and that kind of thing, because it's like a non-traditional hockey market. But of course it became the lightning rod from like, yeah, let's have fun fans to like old school, like, ooh, I can complain about this fans. Yeah. Something Don Cherry would go on a rant about. He did.

He called him a bunch of jerks. And then they printed up a bunch of like bunch of jerks t-shirts and stuff like that. Just like politics, basically. That's great. In researching this, I have discovered some of a conservative strain of hockey fan, which matches what I've seen with baseball my whole life, where there's a whole fandom for the sport that is like, it should still be in a dirt field with no electricity, and really mad about all new elements of it.

There's that strain in every sport, I think. There's the old men I work with at my job during the week that only watch college basketball because they don't like the NBA. The college kids play it right type of guy. And it's like, okay,

buddy, I know what that's code for. We're in the South. I work at a car dealership. I know what you're hinting around at here. So we don't need to carry this conversation any further. You'll see the hockey memes, too, all the time of, like, LeBron James had cramps and came out of the game. This guy had a broken neck and finished the game.

You know, it's like, I don't know. He was playing on a stretcher. I don't think that happened. He was dead. He was playing on a stretcher. I don't think that happened. He was dead. His body continued to play through rigor mortis for the next two and a half periods and scored.

Oh, my God. I don't think so. I think hockey players get injuries and miss games all the time. It's a thing that happens. And anybody who's ever had a – like, if you're – if you think that you can play through a cramp play basketball especially at the size that these guys are through when your calf muscle or thigh is cramping up you've never actually had one it's impossible

to do right it's just it's the worst pain debilitating pain but I think they like you know they like to go after LeBron and they also it sounds a little you know menstrual feminine so they like kind of throw that in there it's like all this like hinting at stuff of like not toughness it's like you know it wouldn't be like lebron broke his leg and

came out of the game like yeah of course it's an injury you can't play yep you're absolutely right about that it's very coded yeah and for and for any non-sports fans in the audience like for one thing i think you still know what a hockey puck is that's exciting like like will said it's very international because of the soviets and just so many countries it's played in but it's an amazing object i think we can get into the stats and numbers all about it to start off because on every episode of first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics this week that's in a segment called I Did It All

for Statistics. Come on, statistics. Come on. So you can track logistics and stick it up your map. Stick it up your map. Stick it up your map. And, uh, folks, the name was submitted by Aaron Kelsheimer. Thank you, Aaron. We have a new name every week. Please make him as silly and wacky and bad as possible. Submit to SipPod on

Twitter or to SipPod at gmail.com. Look, as a parody, what I consider, I consider myself to be a parody writing aficionado a little bit. Yes, sir. That was excellent. That was really good. Limp Bizkit will always have a rotten place in my heart. Um, whenever I hear, hear their music.

So well done to whoever submitted that. Even a hockey, hockey adjacent story. Uh, our high school hockey team made a call up a goalie from like our eighth grade class once to play. And he listened to that song. He like cranked Nookie before games and like danced to it and then we started making him we're like oh let's make him like dance to nookie and we thought it was like hazing but he was like super into it and we're like oh he's like not embarrassed at all he's like getting really pumped up by this so we're like hey everybody wins we get to laugh and he's ready for the game oh that's beautiful that's that's that's kind of that's poetic i love that so much because like that's such a specific era where if you're an eighth grader and you're facing the terror of crossing the threshold into high school sports you like reach for olympus gets

nookie this will give me the fuel i require amazing oh. Yeah. That or like a kid rocks ball with a ball. Um, that was, that was like huge around like 2001, 2000. Like I remember eighth grade to ninth grade, I think is when that album came out for me. So, uh, yeah. Um, that, uh, all those, all those terrible rap rock bands. I don't know. I have a soft spot for them. I can't help it. I feel like the NHL specifically, you'll hear those songs from time to time.

You'll just hear the riff from Beautiful People and stuff at NHL games. You'll be like, oh, I forgot that. The Marilyn Manson song or Dragula by Rob Zombie or something. You're like, oh, man forgot that. They're like Marilyn Manson song or like Dragula or like Rob Zombie or something. You're like, oh, man, like I forgot this music existed. And well, I never forgot that Dragula existed. I'm pretending. I'm like, society's moved on. I, of course, haven't.

But yeah, it's just a funny era of like, you know, the NHL is like, we need a hardcore song. And it's still like that from like, you know, 22 years ago or whatever. Let the bodies hit the floor. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah, makes sense. Absolutely. Well, there's only a couple numbers because we got plenty of takeaways.

But the first number is one inch by three inches. And those are the dimensions. One inch by three inches. And those are the dimensions, one inch by three inches of a standard hockey puck. It's three inches wide and then one inch thick. And Sports Illustrated says that specifically US inches is the standards. It's 2.54 centimeters thick and 7.62 centimeters wide. But either way, it's one by three in US and it's made of vulcanized rubber bonded together. So pretty simple object. How did it end up with the English measurements if it theoretically came from Canada or whatever? I guess that was Commonwealth. Was that pre-metric Commonwealth or something? Did Canada used to use inches yeah i i couldn't find like a good

explanation why yeah because apparently inches are precisely pegged to 2.54 centimeters so we do have a precise metric version but the nice round number is uh like american inch and that seems very uncanadian yeah yeah we probably threatened some kind of embargo or like sanctions. Like, I don't know. There's probably some weird, stupid political reason for that. The Americans just bullied their way into standardizing or some American company got the contract for producing all the, the hockey pucks and, uh, yeah, yeah. Some, there's something to that but yeah okay so one inch by three inch no wonder I can't see it

on television I cannot keep up with a hockey puck to save my life during a game most of that is because I have no idea what's going on ever when I'm watching one but following the puck I remember at some point I feel like in the 90s or

2000s they started highlighting the puck on television uh and and i could actually follow where it was and i thought that was really cool um but they don't do that anymore and that bums me out so now i just watch like hockey like highlights from time to time yeah that was uh fox did the glow puck okay try to like help casual fans. There was a halo around the puck while it went up and down the ice. And then there was a streak when they shot it. There was a red or a blue tail.

Yeah. And then also when it went against the boards, it would highlight so you could see through the boards and see it. Whoa. Which is kind of cool, except I think, of course, a lot of hockey fans were trying to appeal to casual fans who didn't know that much. But still, the main audience was just hardcore hockey fans who were like, this s***, I hate it. And they roped in three new fans and just pissed off all these old Canadian dudes. Wait, so is it just hating it for the sake of hating it? Or is there like a, since you're a hardcore viewer

does it take something away from the experience yeah i thought it was just like weird and unnecessary but okay you know i'm usually in favor of anything that makes the game more accessible to people but it's just weird you know it's like you know there was just like you know laser beams and stuff when you hit a baseball or something it's just like odd you know you're like i don't really need that yeah i also i could we there go ahead i got plenty more about that because one of the takeaways here i think we can get straight into all about it we'll get into takeaway number one you're gonna sing another limp biscuit song for this is that the only stat that you have no i there's more stats but uh i think i think we can there's like lots more info about this story we're getting into usually you have oh no this happens pretty often yeah this is great

uh because we can get straight into takeaway number one broadcasters caused a fan revolt and changed the future of sports when they tried to make hockey pucks more visible because we got a bunch of stuff here about this glow puck from the 1990s is like a singular event in the history of broadcast sports. It made a huge difference. Fantastic. And I do remember for, you know, whether or not it was successful for probably even to this day, like if I talk to like someone who doesn't know hockey that well or whatever they they're always like remember that glow puck like that's like the casual thing like people still remember that gimmick so like it had an effect like for sure it stuck in my brain

and again like I don't so what years did because I don't I couldn't tell you what years this happened I just remember seeing it on television um and thinking it was really cool uh because i could actually like because also like i feel like back then like standard definition television you really couldn't see the puck like you you like the the pics the the a single pixel on a crt television was also the same size as the puck moving across it so it was just like a blob more than anything you know that makes a huge difference like not just the clarity but the aspect ratio of the tv because like it used to be a square so it would like and the puck would move so fast it would like fly back and forth and like they pass it from like

behind the net to like the blue line and it would like jerk would fly back and forth. And they pass it from behind the net to the blue line, and it would jerk to the right. And then it goes down low, and they jerk it back to the left. But now you can have way more of the zone on the screen, and so it can just kind of glide right, glide left a lot easier. Whereas when it was a square, it was flying back and forth constantly, and it was lower resolution, so it was a lot harder to see. Just the weariest cameraman like it's yeah awful job i don't want it yeah because yeah this this is like a surprisingly distinctive memory because i i vaguely remember this too even

though again hockey was like off our television a lot of the time. But National Broadcast by Fox Sports, Fox in the US, they got the rights in 1994 and decided when we start airing these games in 1996, we need to have a killer app to make hockey more popular than ever. And so they rolled out this glowing puck in 96 and only kept doing it through 1998 when they lost the broadcast rights to ABC and did not give ABC that technology. Wow. So for two years. So it was just 96 to 98. It was like a really brief window of this glowing puck. And even non-hockey fans were like, I hear there's a sport where where the ball has a halo i must remember this forever you know better better to burn out than fade away yeah two hard years and neil young canadian yeah

like he was hockey yeah absolutely all comes back around what if what if the soundtrack of hockey games was like butt rock and then the slower tracks off like Harvest and after Gold Rush and stuff? The needle and the damage done is playing after like a goal is scored? That would be the weirdest vibe I think of all time. If you just, you know, a man needs a maid comes on after a hat trick or something. Oh, man. after a hat trick or something. Oh, man.

So two years, you weren't kidding how singular of an event this was. This puck is burned into my memory, and it only happened for two years when I was, you said 96, so 11 to 13 is when this glowing puck was on television for me. That is wild. That's pretty cool that it stuck in people's memories like that. Yeah, and they were very proud of it. Fox named the technology Fox Trax. And it was also very difficult to implement because they couldn't just set up a program that would do this.

What they did is they took the actual puck, sliced it in half, hollowed it out a little bit, and then put a circuit board and LED lights into it. And the lights weren't visible to the human eye, but a computer could see it. And then after they bonded the puck back together with epoxy, like then they had modified cameras that could see the lights that they installed in hockey pucks like they were doing a bunch of work to make sure the weight stayed the same and everything it was very complicated that's wild it's i mean it's almost when you describe it that way it's almost crazy that it like worked and wasn't like yes it wasn't like some huge intrusive i was picturing like a hockey with like the the borg like headset on it you know from

like star trek it's just this huge intrusive thing it's like all wobbly the whole game it's like we gotta we gotta light it up that's that's amazing so they uh i'm wondering if there were any player complaints uh about the puck feeling different yeah i would have guessed there would be but i don't remember any specifically maybe the nhl was like that's what we're doing everyone shut up like when baseball when when major league baseball juices or or deadens the ball from season to season because there's there's one or two stats i can just seed in here and one of them is 5.5 ounces to 6 ounces and that's 154 grams to 168 grams but five and a half to six ounces is the acceptable range for a puck's weight apparently they come out different weights when you're like milling them or whatever and so i think that partly helped the players be

okay with this weird thing because if you have that range to work within you can make a puck that feels normal even though they can tell it's varying they're a little used to that wow it's weird yeah it's interesting when you know when sports try to like be so so so precise in some ways and then with something like that that is like just like, eh, it's close enough. Let's decide everything on it. It's kind of like the Tom Brady's footballs and Deflategate and all that stuff. There's an acceptable range of PSIs. And you can warm the ball up

and kind of get a pound or two more of psi in there uh that's that's funny and it's monitored by like the least focused employee in the league in every league exactly like apparently baseball this past season they were playing with two different kinds of balls across the games and no one noticed till now it's just i'll link about it yeah that was just going on that's wild like like with with football again i i find it hilarious how uh football does this all the time where um there's just old dudes guessing where the ball went down like on each play you know and they just spot it it's literally called spotting it because like i I think that's where his knee went down. And they just plop it down, and it's like it could be right on the money or it could be, like, an entire yard off.

And, you know, they're using chains and flags to measure this thing. It's, like, the least precise way possible. Yeah, they eyeball where it is and then measure to, like, the millimeter. Yes, exactly. Where, like, it's just like, the first part of that was fine, but yeah. And hockey's kind of like that, too. I mean, every sport, I guess, is a little where it's like, you know, the dimensions of the rink are very precise. And, like, you know, the clock and stuff like that.

And there's all these uniform rules and stuff like that and there's all these uniform rules and stuff like but then it's like but then they play the playoffs in june and the ice is definitely like softer than it is during the season or if you like play in june in like los angeles like the ice is like gonna be different and it affects everything in a huge way and it's like oh well we tried you know it's like it like so precise about so many things and then these like huge aspects of the sport are like we got as close as we could i don't know well and then and then this glowing puck it's like it's like weirdly not impacting the game that much compared to a lot of this other stuff but it was criticized mainly because either pundits or announcers or fans just didn't like it and apparently the big criticism of it was just that like if you were a true fan you don't need

the glow like a true hockey fan can just figure out where the puck is and they don't need it so gatekeeping so we're doing some goalkeeping. A goalkeeping, right? For hockey. Yeah, so the NFL just did the simul broadcast with the Nickelodeon version where there's like slime on the field. Have you seen clips from this? I did. I saw one of there was a touchdown and slime sprayed virtually all over the end zone.

Okay. I like football. I like watching football. Unfortunately, it's got its rife with its problems and stuff. That broadcast is awesome. It's so much fun to watch like SpongeBob be like stretched out in between the goalposts and get hit with a football and stuff. So what I'm saying is they need to simulcast.

Like they need to allow me to download an app, whoever is broadcasting the games, and watch hockey with the Globhook again. And then keep it off the regular broadcast so that I can tell what the heck is going on. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like something like that makes a lot of sense. Like, now that you have the option to have, like, different ways to watch the thing, then it won't won't like intrude if people don't want it like and it won't become this like i'm sure it was like a you know serious fan versus casual fan schism that they're trying to be mad about but i remember yeah i remember being mad about it too i'm not above that but uh but yeah you know it's it's the fact that there's no option it's just like oh you're watching like a playoff game and this is and you have to watch this it's

a big deal yeah Yeah, for sure. That's so true, though. We do have the ability to divide it up now because, yeah, it was it was not just a wedge issue of like true fan versus fake fan claims, but also apparently some people claimed smart fans didn't need it. Like it became an intelligence thing. And then also there's one source for this is a great blog called puck daddy by greg wischinski and he said that he remembers at the time one of the announcers said that canadians

will hate the glow but american fans will probably like it you know like canadians good fans canadians yes they won't like the glow but these these americans sure you know These drooling morons down south. Yeah. Yeah, it's glowing. Yeah. That's an impression of all Americans. That's me. I'm not saying that his analogy is completely off base on the whole, you know, like as far as Americans being dumb about a lot of stuff but uh yeah that's definitely some

some serious gatekeeping there uh particularly when it comes to the glow puck yeah and then and then as you guys said and also we're linking an article from slate by aaron gordon talking about all this uh he argues that the glow puck was the forerunner of pretty much everything in modern broadcasting now for sports because in football you have a yellow line for where the first down is now. In baseball, a lot of times there's a box drawn on the screen where the strike zone is. NASCAR will do little pop ups over the cars to say who's in there. You know, like we have seen this. It's augmented reality.

have seen this it's augmented reality basically it was like not that nice in the 90s but the advanced version is in basically every other sport now except for the glowing puck rip yeah that the first down line i feel like is one thing that kind of suddenly was everywhere and i feel like everyone was fine with it it definitely like makes it easier to watch and improves the game like i don't remember any backlash about like get this line off line off the field. I'm a real fan. Let's start a Twitter campaign. Get rid of the first down line. If you're a true fan of football, you don't need

the yellow line. You know exactly where the flags are. You know how many yards the running back has to get on this third down to convert. If you're not an idiot, you know exactly how far they need to go. The players don't need it. Why do the fans need it?

Get rid of the yellow line. It's BS. Right. Just angry at the dumbest thing possible. That's what sports fans are usually good for. If you were a real fan, you'd be down there holding the orange thing, right? You'd have that job and do it full time. I listen to games on the radio because I can just

perfectly imagine what's happening. I don't know if you need the crutch of television because you're a casual fan. Off of that, we are going to a short break followed by a whole new takeaway i'm jesse thorne i just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes.

I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie,

Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because, yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Well, and I think from here we can go straight into the next takeaway,

because here we go. Takeaway number two. Most hockey fans watch the hockey puck by predicting where it will go. And I think a lot of fans know this, but especially people who don't watch might be surprised. Unlike many other sports, a lot of hockey fans are psychologically, even brain activity-wise, seeing the puck by just getting context clues from how the players are moving. I think that's got to be true for sure. Okay. So you jerks are smarter.

Dang it. Okay. But you're just like, it used to, yeah, where people dump the puck or who's reacting or who, you know, who,

where they were arch probably trying to go with it and stuff. It's not just like, it's randomly going around the screen and you have to find it every couple seconds. Like, you know, Speak for yourself. Because another number to sprinkle in here is 114.1 miles per hour. 114 miles per hour or over 183 kilometers per hour.

That's the fastest recorded speed of a hockey puck. That was a slap shot. Is he, he has the like NHL record at 108.8 miles per hour. And then there's a guy in the KHL, which is the Russian hockey league, the KHL player, Alexander Ryazantsev set that record at the 2012 KHL All-Star Skills Competition. Do you think Russia is juicing there? I was about to say the same thing. I don't trust any records they set. Wow, he's five miles an hour faster than every player in the NHL, including that 6'9 guy. And he's half the size of normal hockey players.

Wait, he's 12 years old? I don't know. How did he do this? He's also Vladimir Putin and a Mr. Snrub mustache. I don't know if that's an issue, but I believe it. There's not a radar gun. They just shoot it, and then there's a panel panel of like those three, like shady Russian officials off to the side.

And they like determine what they believe the speed to be. They just hold up a sign that says 114 miles an hour. Wow. Some bizarre boardroom meeting and like a, like a brutalist architecture building, and then they come out with the report. You're like, what the hell? That's weird. Hey, new record, guys. We did it.

That guy, who's not even in the NHL. Yeah, and so the puck's not always moving that fast, but apparently since the slap shot became common in the 1960s and, you know, just player speed strength has increased, the puck is moving very fast. TVs have not always been very good. And so the average hockey spectator, especially if they've been watching for a long time since before good TVs, apparently the thing they are doing is just predicting where the puck is going based on how the guys move and then they see it later. And last year scientists did a study to try to track this and analyze it. This was from a German university. It was published in the journal Current Biology. The team took subjects and they showed them some videos of just pucks on a gray screen with no players and some videos of a puck moving on a rink with nets, but still without players. And with those videos, they found they did very advanced eye tracking, like they monitor what your eye is doing.

And they found it took subjects about 150 milliseconds for their eye to catch up with the puck. seconds for their eye to catch up with the puck. But then they showed those same subjects regular videos of hockey. And there was no lag time because they use the context clues of the players and their movements to just say, oh, that guy did a passing motion, the puck will be at that next guy. I just look there. And sometimes you can see the puck, but other times you do that. It's similar if you go to a baseball game in person i feel like you know once i hit a fly ball it's like you can't immediately track it in the air but you see which fielders running where and you kind of figure out you're like oh that's a problem oh that's a pop-up you know yeah that's a foul ball because no one's reacting like you don't just like immediately find it and track the ball and i'll link a few, I'll link a Reddit thread and also a CBS sports

column. But apparently there's a lot of hockey fan frustration when they try to show the sport to somebody who's not a fan yet. And the person gets frustrated with not being able to easily see the puck all the time. And the CBS sports columnist, the way they put it is that you need to not treat the puck like you're a cat tracking a laser pointer like if you lose it for a second just follow up with the action and you'll see it again like you don't you don't need to be frustrated with what's in the middle attacking okay so i like like breaking the screen of my television by pawing at it. That's not. That was my bad then.

Okay, so it's not the sport itself. It's not the technology. That was me. Okay. Got it. He gets so mad every time you turn it on. Oh, he means business. He's like hunting, like stalking the screen.

I end up spraying my couch or something, like, you know, tearing up the furniture. Just sending the commissioner of hockey a letter that says, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. Really angry. Mail him a dead rodent, you know, like a dead songbird in a box or something. Isn't that a compliment from Katz? Yeah, he saw the puck again. That's a big gift. Thank you.

The puck is at least a little bit being seen this way by actual players on the ice, even though they're usually lifelong hockey players who practice this all the time. And my favorite example is a super recent game. We're going to link an article from Defector.com because they covered a February 21st of 2022 game between the Vancouver Canucks and the Seattle Kraken. Six players, which is most of the players on the ice who are skaters, all started battling for the hockey puck in one corner of the rink.

And then the other four players who saw where it was, kept playing in the middle of the ice because the six guys all piled up, just followed each other's context clues. They thought the puck was there. And so they did it wrong. They were all playing. I watched that video. It's very funny because they are fighting for this puck that is not at anybody's feet.

And then suddenly you see the guy at center ice take off with it. And finally the recognition that they're fighting over a ghost puck is pretty great. Yeah, it's a funny video. is pretty pretty great yeah it's a funny video yeah it's one of the few sports balls if you can call it a ball that that is like kind of invisible a lot of the time or like we're all just sort of adapting to it being extremely hard to see i love it what a fun thing it is pretty cool i don't know is there uh dan are there like trick plays like that? Like I feel like there were scenes in like the Mighty Ducks franchise where they like did like a hidden puck trick or something. Like a lasso guy in the game. Yeah.

Yeah, that happens all the time. Okay. All right. I wasn't sure. You know, like in a beer league or something like that. Is that a common occurrence? But are there like trick plays in hockey like that where you like misdirect people and stuff?

Not like the hidden ball trick, you know, like in baseball, that doesn't happen that often, but like sometimes they, you know, when they get together with the pitcher for like a mound visit and they give the ball to like the third baseman and they wait for the guy to lead off and tag him. Like that happens like once every three years and it's like hilarious. It is. I don't, I can't think of like a hockey equivalent to that i mean some you know there's little fake

out things sometimes like you'll see a goal like players like going for a line change and they're about to dump it in the corner and then they shoot it on goal and the goalie was like coming out of the net to like get ready to like stop the puck behind the net like stuff like that happens sometimes yeah um but it's i've never seen like a like wacky like i don't know rookie of the year style like total gimmick play right yeah baseball players sometimes if like a ball is like an obvious hit and there's a runner on second they they, like, react like they're going to catch it no problem just so that, like, the runner can't, like, immediately take off to score. And then the ball drops, and then they start running, but they might only get one base instead of two, stuff like that. Yep. I love that.

There's all those little things. Yeah, fun trickery. Gamesmanship. The devil's sport. I don't know. Trickery is the devil's sport. I guess. I don't know trickery is the devil's sport i guess what that means well and and speaking of competition i'm gonna do one last number here and then we got one more takeaway and that's the main show but the the last number here is 23 easy number 23 that is

the world record for the most hockey pucks ever balanced on one hockey stick blade. And that's the Guinness Book of World Records. They say that Derek McKay of Cochran, Alberta set the record in December 2019. Also, apparently he used to hold the record, then somebody beat him. So then he beat that person with 23 pucks on one stick. So I think there's an ongoing challenge here to be number one. That's, that's a lot. And I'm sure probably seeing a photo, it's probably crazy, but I feel like the Guinness records,

I'm so used to them being so crazy that I might've guessed like 400 or something like that. So, so, okay. So that's just under two feet worth of hockey pucks. Oh, right. They're an inch. Right. So I forgot. feet worth of hockey pucks. Oh, right. If they're an inch, right? I forgot you could use them like rulers if you know this thing. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. And then we can get into the last takeaway here,

and this is a little more international, too. Takeaway number three. The first hockey pucks combined Irish sports and words with a legendary pile of cattle poop. One more time because that's long. The first hockey pucks combined Irish sports and words with a legendary pile of cattle poop. This is the surprising origins of the name and object, the hockey puck. I can't even parse the sentence you just said. I'm going to need more info i'm i'm uh zeroed

in on the cattle poop part got it and that's the show for this week he's like sign off for like what that music but uh i'm gonna save the poop for the end. The poop is like the object origin. But the name puck for hockey puck, it comes from Irish sports. And we got a lot of sources here, but one of them is BBC Travel, because they look closely at the history of like Gaelic games. of Mental Floss, the unofficial first birthday of the word hockey puck is February 7th, 1876. It was written about in an article in the Montreal Gazette newspaper. So that's the first time we get the name. But the whole sport partly comes from an Irish sport called hurling. And hurling is a high speed sport. It's a stick and ball game played on a grass field. Sometimes they call it hurley instead of hurling. And then in the 1800s, both Ireland and Canada were in the British Empire. There was a lot of migration from Ireland to Canada, also a lot of soldiers being stationed

in Canada from Ireland. And just at some point, they believe some Irish people said, hey, we're in Atlantic Canada. It's incredibly cold. Can we play hurley on ice? Some Irish people said, hey, we're in Atlantic Canada. It's incredibly cold. Can we play hurley on ice? And so from there you get ice hurley. And they adapted the Irish Gaelic word puk, which is a verb that means to poke, and turned that into puck.

They made that a puck for ice hurley. And you got a hockey puck. That's awesome. So it's Irish. That's pretty cool. never knew that yeah it's wild that this sport exists like that's it like i it's still again i've said it a couple times now just the the concept of this sport the fact that you have to be able to skate like on like a figure skater level like to play professionally and then you have to have the toughness of like a an nfl running back right yeah and then you have to have the dexterity

and the hand-eye coordination of like a baseball player um and then occasionally you need to know how to box people like you need to know how to like like. So it's just wild to me that anybody can combine those things on any level, much less a professional one, and get paid a lot of money for it. It's just nuts. I do think it's extremely fitting that the sports origins were probably some guy who was drunk being like, let's play on the fucking ice. Just making the dumbest suggestion he could possibly make and it becoming this thing for hundreds of years. And that guy probably immediately drowned. He probably fell through the ice and it was lost to time. Yeah.

Just like you said, making the worst suggestion he could possibly make. Yeah. And it also, and early and it's like, especially late 1800s time, it was, I think sort of seen as an Irish thing.

Cause the early teams, one of Montreal's first teams was called the Shamrocks and they won the Stanley Cup in 1899 and also in 1900. And then one of Toronto's first teams was called the St. Patrick's and they played in green jerseys. They won the 1922 Stanley Cup. And then in 1927, owner Con Smythe renamed them to the Maple Leafs. So today's Toronto Maple maple leafs they used to be like an all irish green team oh wow or at least irish vibe they didn't all have to be irish people you know what i mean yeah you didn't have a mick before your name you weren't allowed to

to be on the team no irish on the saint patrick's you're a mascot only and they're like eyes that sticks yeah that would be like uh changing the celtics to like the i don't know what would be the equivalent of like changing something super American? Yeah. Yeah. Like the, I don't know, the Boston baked beans or something or, you know, whatever. I don't know what's actually popular in Boston. Maple leaves. I mean, honestly, like maple leaves is a pretty good Canadian, you know, I don't know. I feel like it's a good Canadian representation. I don't know anything about Canada, though, other than apparently we were in a Cold War

with them for many decades according to dan and we colonized their puck measurements yes exactly yeah yeah so so pucks are american and irish and have nothing to do with canada and canada's lucky that we gave our let them play our sport is basically what we're saying. When's the last time they won a Stanley Cup, Dan? Of Canada? It was the Montreal Canadiens in 93.

We're almost going on 30 years. I knew it's been a while. I'm just trying to anger your Canadian listeners as much as possible. I'm going to, my mentions are going to be a dumpster fire after this episode. I mean, they'll point out, they're like, there's so many Canadian players on the teams that won. We'll be like, yeah, sorry.

Nope. Los Angeles won twice. As we all know, it's more about the fans and where the team's located, not the players on the ice. They don't have any, they have little to nothing to do with it no tampa bay man hockey hotbed exactly there you go sorry guys yeah well and uh and then as far as the origin of the object so this there's like an unverified legend when i said it's a legendary pile of cattle poop. So we're not talking size here.

We're talking about actual verification? Yeah. There's like... Okay. Because early, early hockey was all played on a frozen body of water. They were just like, let's do hurling out here. They hadn't upgraded to using a rink. And so early players, according to the legend, they used frozen cattle poop as the hard object that they had around the ice because it was available.

There's no documentation of this, but this is part of the Abner Doubleday for Baseball story. You definitely misled me there. Because if I talk about a legendary poop that I have, we're talking size there. We're talking about like I had to replace my toilet, not there's no independent verification of the poop that I took. Okay, all right, I see what you're saying. You always independently verify. Oh, absolutely, yes.

You take a giant. Exactly, you contact Guinness, you have them send somebody out, and you try to set a world record. Atlas Obscura is there. First hand document it. The local news. The journal Current Biology, of course. Bring them in.

Always. It's like 84 page academic article about it. It's like 84 page like academic article about it. When the other fun thing about early pucks is that it was initially a ball sport when people finally moved into rinks or even when they were outside and and didn't want to use animal feces. And they said like, hey, we have balls, especially like lacrosse balls. Let's just hit those with sticks. It's even more similar to hurling that way if we use a ball. At some point, somebody realized that on a nice ice rink, you get something that bounces a lot less if you take a lacrosse ball and you slice off the top and slice off the bottom.

And like brutally turn it into a disc. And so that was the first like hockey puck was somebody chopping up a lacrosse ball. That's pretty cool. That makes sense. Did Art Ross have to do with the first pucks? And he did, yeah. He still has a trophy named after him. He's like an early, early, early hockey player.

And the scoring leader in the NHL every year wins the Art Ross trophy. But I thought he innovated the early puck design. I wasn't sure if that was an abder double day thing either because he might have just taken credit for it no right on that's a true one because yeah they like when they went beyond chopping up balls uh there was also an attempt to use pieces of wood because that's already kind of flat i guess some of the early ones were also square shaped instead of round, but the NHL player and later executive Art Ross helped start manufacturing actual pucks and also had a patent on one at one point. So yeah, there's also a guy who now has a trophy named after him who helped give us this object in the regulation way. All the anti-glow puck people at the time were like go back to cow feces

we don't need these balls real pucks gotta smell yeah and little pieces need to come off of it during the game and yeah stain your stick and clothes yeah true fans watch it with their nose right come on eyes get out of here. They can smell where the puck is going to end up. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Dan Hopper and to Will, a.k.a. Christy Amaguchi-Main, for accepting my email before this taping full of panda videos.

That's not a joke. I sent them a bunch of panda videos because if you stick around for the bonus show this week, usually there's just one story. We have three stories for you of incredible, futuristic, non-sports hockey pucks. No sports in the bonus. This is hockey puck style items that are being used for incredible things the world around. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of seven dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation.

And thank you for exploring Hockey Pucks with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, broadcasters caused a fan revolt and changed the future of sports when they tried to make hockey pucks more visible. Takeaway number two, hockey fans watch the hockey puck by predicting where it will go. And takeaway number three, the first hockey pucks combined Irish words and sports with a legendary, as in apocryphal, pile of cattle poop. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great, and they are particularly great on Twitter. Dan Hopper is at Dan Hop, D-A-N-H-O-P-P, and then Will is at Waffle House, which is like Waffle House, but with P's instead of F's.

And also, Dan is one of the most thoughtful sports tweeters I know, because he has an entire separate account specifically for his Pittsburgh sports tweets, because he's from Pittsburgh. So if you follow Dan Hopp OPS, Dan H-O-P-P O-P-S, you get Dan, but an all yellow and black avatar like the Pittsburgh Penguins. And you get amazing sports jokes about everything. If you don't want that, you have just Dan's regular account. One of my favorite ways anyone manages their Twitter, just period. Of course, both these guys have wonderful things going on beyond Twitter. Will is the co-host of Jort Center, which is a podcast that is very funny, very cozy, just great. And then I'll link Dan's comedy writing for Ranker

and for The New Yorker and for other places too. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. A great piece for Inside Science, also for ABC News, by science writer Joshua Lern. Another great piece for Slate by Aaron Gordon. And then many further resources from Mental Floss, Defector.com, BBC Travel, the Vancouver Canucks hockey team. Find those and many more sources in this episode's

links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by The Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that?

Talk to you then.