I’m a self-taught hockey fan. That means I don’t know shit. I’d be hard-pressed to have an intelligent conversation with a tradition-born fan.

But that’s okay, I still know enough to know that the Stanley Cup is cooler than any trophy in sports, that scoring on a slapshot from the blueline is about as likely as an expansion team winning a championship and that professional hockey is our last-best chance for serious sports competition that is played as a team.

Most of the hockey fans in these parts are from somewhere else. You bump into guys that are maybe from back East, who grew up either playing or watching hockey as a kid, maybe the Bruins or the Blackhawks or the Rangers. I can respect that and it can be fun to hear them talk about tradition and players.

Then you’ll run into “new-age” hockey guy, “California” hockey guy and this can be a douchey encounter. He’ll tell you about how he skated around a rink in Bellflower in the early ’90s, about how his favorite sports movie is “Mighty Ducks II.” He’ll have a hockey sweater with his own name on it and he’ll talk mostly about hockey fights and he’ll tell me about the time he met a hockey player at Sports Chalet and how hot the player’s wife was.

California hockey guy and the Anaheim Disneyland Mighty Ducks of Anaheim California are pretty much the reasons why I avoided hockey my entire adult life. And I know I wasn’t the only one. There has always been a running joke that in Southern California there only exists 17,505 “real” hockey fans, the number of people who could fit into the Fabulous Forum. Growing up here I can tell you that you rarely ever came into contact with one of these 17,000 people in real life.

It’s possible that Calfornia hockey guy is just smarter than the rest of us. That he was way ahead of the curve, that he knew a good thing when he saw it and decided to embrace his inner Canada. It’s possible, but not likely, because if this guy were some kind of clairvoyant, some type of sporting savant, sharper and smarter than the average bear, then he wouldn’t be driving a Scion with Mighty Ducks flags hanging from the windows on his way to a lacrosse tournament right now.

I don’t know what constitutes a real fan. I know it ain’t me. I’m a Johnny-come-lately. I’ll never own a hockey sweater (don’t get me started on grown men wearing sports jerseys). I’ll never say, “He put the biscuit in the basket.”

I’ll never be able to keep track of who’s Canadian and who’s American, the reason why they sometimes wave-off icing shall always remain a mystery and I’ll never understand why they named the Lady Bing Trophy after Bing Crosby’s wife.

Still, I may start collecting hockey cards, I’ve begun to look at the puck in the urinal with a vastly different perspective and I really hope that the Stanley Cup Final goes seven games because, well, while I’m not exactly sure what’s going on at times, I know enough to recognize that there ain’t nothing like the NHL Playoffs.

Photo credit: Jenn Durfey on Visual Hunt/ CC BY