sports// no. 6

theotherpress.ca

A personal epiphany as to why there is
more scoring 1n basketball than 1n hockey

» This might be obvious to some, maybe new to others

Mo Hussain
Sports Reporter

 

[ was January 13, 2021—the date
of the Vancouver Canucks first
regular season game in the 2021
season—and I was stoked. I'd
just wrapped up an NHL fantasy
league draft with my friends a
couple of days before and was
reminiscing over how good the
Canucks played last season.
Surely, this season would be the
start of something special.

I turned on Sportsnet Pacific
just before the puck dropped
and watched the pregame
ceremonies. I was getting excited,
and I'd been so hyped to finally
see NHL hockey back. The only
problem was, I immediately
turned over the channel toa
basketball game five minutes
after the puck dropped.

For some reason, all the
excitement and anticipation
suddenly evaporated, and I
was quickly bored. Switching
the channel relatively fast after being
that excited made me ponder. Why did I
switch channel that quick?

The first thing that came to mind was

that basketball has more scoring. Last year,

NBA teams averaged around 41 field goals
per game. Meanwhile, NHL teams average
around three goals per game last year.
Even though that number for NHL teams
is steadily increasing each year, it is still
relatively lower than scoring in the NBA.

 

This then led me to ask another

question, why is there more scoring
in basketball than there is in hockey?
I then broke the game down into the
fundamentals. The way a puck moves
throughout a hockey game is on the floor
(the ice). The objective of the game is to
shoot the puck into a six-by-four-foot net
planted on the ground, which is usually
guarded by a goaltender that is 6’3” tall
on average.

This, in addition to the five other

From Super Bowl
champion to hospital
worker, why one NFL

player decided to give back

» What Laurent Duvernay-Tardif did was truly remarkable

Mo Hussain
Sports Reporter

here and to try to help to the best of my ability,’ said
Laurent in an interview with Sports Illustrated after

 

Was the Kansas City Chiefs continue to try and
b

uild on last year’s Super Bow! victory on the
gridiron, one player associated with the franchise is
looking to build on that success on the front lines of

battling the coronavirus pandemic.

Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, a Canadian-born football
player who last played for the Chiefs when they won the
Super Bowl in 2020, is also a medical school graduate
from McGill University. Earlier this year, months after
he won the Super Bow] and the pandemic hit, Laurent
decided to opt out of the 2020 NFL season and use his
medical experience to work in the front lines. “Five
years from now, I don’t want to be looking back at this
year and saying, ‘well I could’ve helped, I could’ve done
something about it. I really felt like I needed to be

the year.

remarkable.

named the 2020 Sports Illustrated sportsperson of

Laurent worked in a long-term care facility in
Montreal as an orderly, where he is “doing nursing
tasks and handling medications on a day-to-day
basis with patients.” He also says that his job requires
him to see the same patients repeatedly and “feed
them, change them, wash them, give them their
medication.” He came to realize that his job is also
about “taking the time to embrace the role of trying
to be the patient’s closest friend in this challenging
time because they don’t see anybody else.”

Laurent still has to complete his residency in
order to become a fully licensed doctor but the fact
that he is using his platform and contributing to
help those in need at such a crucial time is truly

 

skaters that are usually on the ice for one
team, makes it relatively more difficult to
score than in basketball. While basketball
also has five players on the floor for a given
team, the nature of the game makes it
easier for teams to score.

The only time the ball really touches
the floor in basketball is when you are
bouncing it. Other than that, the ball
is being moved around with the players
hands, and the objective is to shoot the
ball upwards and into a ten-foot hoop.

 

Even though blocks obviously
occur, most shots usually cannot
be blocked in the air at the
professional level because of
goaltending rules, and because
blocking a shot so high usually
requires a supernatural vertical.

If what was said was
confusing, take this example:
hypothetically, if all frve hockey
players for a team “built a wall”
around their net (which would
be very painful by the way)
including their goalie, it would
be almost impossible to score
because they would cover the
entire net. Whereas in basketball,
“building a wall,” around a ten-
foot hoop when most players
height ranges from six to seven
feet is essentially useless because
trying to cover a net much higher
than them, in addition toa
ball that is high up in the air, is
incredibly difficult.

This isn't to say that one
sport is more fun to watch than
the other because some people
like a lot of scoring, and some people like
the anticipation before someone scores.
But it is quite interesting to think about
why there is a lot of scoring in one sport,
and there isn’t relatively much in the other.

This was just my outlook on this
subject, if you have your own ideas or
“epiphanies,” as to why you think basketball
players score more than hockey players,
send your ideas to the Other Press!

Photo by Arnaldo Fragozo

  

Photo of Laurent Duvernay-Tardif by Jeffrey Beall via Wikimedia Commons