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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   975 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for February 20, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Problems for Hockey that hold it down:

-- You can't see the puck on TV. The author in the linked article defends that you don't need to, but that's kinda goofy, and also pretty telling that he isn't saying "yes you can," he admits it is a problem even if he claims that it shouldn't keep you from liking hockey. Not being able to see the ball in any other sport is an immediate crisis.

-- It's freakishly expensive for kids in the USA. Travel team hockey costs around $7-15k/yr and some higher than $20k. That's crazy numbers. Competitive youth golf is cheaper than that. That's getting into "cost to keep a horse" territory in a lot of places. While travel teams are a problem in all sports, the rest of the big team sports in America still have a viable path for a kid who joins rec league teams and then makes the high school team. In hockey there's very little pipeline to the NHL other than through elite youth programs. It's a rich kid sport.

-- The population center of gravity in the US keeps shifting south, and even the northeast has had mild winters preventing ponds from freezing to safe levels in recent years, so nobody is playing hockey outside the way it was meant to be played.

It's 2026. Can't we just have a neon green simulpuck indicating where the puck is for those following along at home?

It would turn off the purists. It's an indictment of our society that we haven't developed technology that allows the TV viewer to select whether they want a neon green simulpuck or not on their own TV. This is truly the most important technological challenge of our time.

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