For many years, people have been wondering which is the tougher sport, ice hockey or football. Although the normal american would answer football without a doubt, they would be wrong. On June 7, 2011, in the Stanley Cup Finals, a very scary moment occurred. As Nathan Horton was entering the neutral zone, he dished the puck to forward Milan Lucic. Not even a second later Horton looked back in front of himself, and got drilled by Canucks defensemen, Aaron Rome. Horton was carried off the ice on a stretcher and later hospitalized. Lesson learned: never have your head down while playing a contact sport. Ice hockey is a dangerous sport, and if you think you have a ton of time to play around with the puck, you are wrong. Always think twice before taking your time skating down the ice with the puck.

In football, although the many big hits and risks of injuries, the players have nowhere near the amount of endurance and stamina as the players in hockey. Football players do hit or tackle someone on each play but not as much as hockey players. Football players also do not play nearly as much as hockey players either. According to the Wall Street Journal, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field in the NFL is a mere 11 minutes. While the NFL games are over 3 hours, one hour of that is taken up by commercials. Wall Street journal says the average telecast devotes 56% of its broadcast to showing replays. Compared to ice hockey, football just seems uneventful. Why would you want to watch a game with 11 minutes of action?

While huge hockey hits don’t happen every single shift, you do get bumped around quite a bit. In hockey, when you get hit, you definitely feel it. The average NHL player skates 25 mph or faster, according to calculations at the NHL skills competition, and they can reach a maximum of 30 mph while skating full flight. If you got checked by a guy skating 27 mph at you into the boards it would hurt you a lot. Now if you think about an open-ice check...it’s a ton worse.  When you compare these statistics to football, football is left in the dust.

You could argue all day that NFL hits look and feel much harder than ice hockey hits, but you would be shocked once you know the truth. ESPN’s Sports Science has proved that “NHL hits are 17 percent harder than NFL hits, despite players being nearly 20 percent smaller”. Imagine Ray Lewis charging at you on the field to tackle you. Now imagine Ray Lewis skating 27 mph at you on ice. In hockey, in order to succeed in the game, you must be able to skate at full speed, handle the puck well, have a strong sense for the game, and know who is around you at all times so you don’t get blown up by a physical check. This proves that hockey is one of the toughest and most skillful sports of all time. ESPN’s criteria for ice hockey shows that you must have: power, speed, agility, flexibility, nerve, hand-eye coordination, endurance, and many more.

In the NFL they play a total of 16 regular season games, one game every week. Compared to ice hockey, that is awful. In the NHL, players play a total of 82 regular season games, usually every other day or 2 days. This shows how NHL players need endurance to play back to back nights on long road trips away from home. Many players also play the entire regular season and they achieve the nickname “iron man”. All Star defensemen, Jay Bouwmeester just recently missed a game ending his 738 consecutive NHL game streak. Anaheim Ducks’ Andrew Cogliano has played more than 642 consecutive NHL games. This is extremely hard to do with all the risks of injuries that the NHL has to offer. Including all the tiring road trips these players go on, the many planes leaving in the early AM hours, and morning skates these teams have, they deserve all the credit they get.

Another reason that puts the NFL to shame is that hockey is played on steel blades, in which you must be proficient in skating and acceleration, involves sticks, in which you should be able to have great stickhandling, passing, and shooting, and the game is also played at such a fast pace. The NFL has so many stops and starts and they get breaks roughly every ten seconds. In the NHL, there are only stoppages in time when there is a penalty, offside, icing, commercial break, or timeout. With not many stoppages in play this leads to players getting more tired easily and they have to call for line changes. Players get fatigued more often and this leads to mistakes that could result in your team giving up a costly goal late in the third period. With frequent play and line changes, it makes hockey the toughest sport compared to any other.

The final and most exciting reason why hockey is tougher than football is the fighting. In football, you simply cannot fight and therefore players can’t always take out their anger on someone else who infuriated them. In hockey, fighting is allowed and increases the excitement of the fans and the energy of the game too. If successfully done, fighting can cause the other team to be intimidated by you, both mentally and physically. Fighting makes ice hockey an intense and extremely fun sport to play. If you intimidate the other team, chances are you have a good chance of winning.

Ice hockey is one of the most underrated sports in all of America. Besides some false assumptions and people who don’t understand enough about the sport, ice hockey is one of the toughest, most competitive sports of all time. It is an extremely hard sport to play that requires a lot of different skills, and if you don’t have those skills it is almost impossible to play the game. For anyone who doesn’t understand or agree with what I am saying, go play a couple of games. You’ll understand what I mean after the first five minutes of playing.