NHL vs High School Hockey

Post date: Feb 28, 2018 8:43:28 PM

By: Chloe Schmidt, Staff Writer

Posted February 28th, 2018

This weekend I attended my first NHL game. It was a very different experience from the high school hockey games I frequently attend (I have to put that activity pass to use) and in case you’re wondering the differences between them, I’ll let you know in this article.

The first and most obvious thing that I noticed is the theatrics of it all. In other terms, the NHL is much more of a hyped up event than high school hockey is, with the pre-game video and dramatic lighting. I know this is due to budgets, the fact that the admission cost and attendance has everything to do with it. I just found it odd to go from high school hockey where the most they have is a flag to an NHL game where they dim the lights and then turn on the home team’s main color in strobe lights.

Going back to the ticket thing from earlier, the admission price is a huge difference. To go to an Ice Bears game it’s $2 or free, depending on if you have the activity pass or not. We were in the one hundred section in the Xcel Energy Center and those were over $200 each. The cheapest ticket prices I could find were $55. That’s just with the Minnesota Wild, more popular teams would be much more expensive.

I also found it odd that high school hockey is treated with more equality. For example, the lineups for both teams are announced during the start of the game. In the NHL the visiting team’s lineup was announced before the game even started and the home team’s lineup was announced during the beginning of the game where they were greeted with cheers and had pauses between each player.

Another thing is fighting. If you’re a hockey fan, you know how important the fighting is. Hockey is the only non-combat major sport that allows fighting, and if you watch the sport, you know why. In NHL hockey fighting is allowed with penalties as consequences. In high school hockey fighting is not allowed, and if you’re caught fighting, you get game suspensions. I’m talking like two or three game suspensions in high school hockey compared to a two to five minute penalty in the NHL.

The zamboni, the machine that cleans the ice, is something that’s different that surprised me. At high school hockey games there’s only one zamboni that cleans during the second intermission at JV games and during every intermission at varsity games. In the NHL, there’s two zambonis (and the fan cart) that cleans after warm ups, during the first intermission, during the second intermission, and at the end of the game. In this way, varsity games are similar to NHL games.

Intermissions are also something that’s different. At NHL games there’s two intermissions that are eighteen minutes long each. At the JV games the first intermission is one minute long and then the second intermission is about ten minutes. It depends on how long they take to use the zamboni, then the referees have to be on the ice before the players. At varsity games the intermissions are also about ten minutes due to the fact that they use the zamboni in the first and second intermission.

These are just some of the many differences I noticed. Although there are some differences between the two, both are games that I enjoy and would frequently attend if I had the chance.