5, 15, 19 for the hockey questions? :]
5) favorite jerseys, oof. The autism debates what this is actually asking so i am winging this lol. Favorite jerseys that actually exist are probably Fleet home, Sirens away, and the Kraken pride jersey w the unicorn. One day we will get pride jerseys for PWHL and my wallet will sob on that day.
15) Underrated players is hard for me to answer, mostly because I don't know how anyone rates any of the players. I am unused to actually talking to people who aren't the athletes about the sport that is being played rip. Players I personally haven't paid much attention to that I would like to moving forward are:
Mikayla Grant Mentis -- new to having her on my team, and I would like to see her kick ass
Anna Wilgren -- she stepped onto the ice and I fell a little in love, so its great that she is on my team now.
Olivia Zafuto -- idk what she has going on, but I like her energy. I'd love to see more of it :)
19) How I got into hockey is an absolutely hilarious story. Because it mostly isn't about hockey at all? My mom skated on a roller derby team, and if there is anything you should know about her team and her league its this: the hits were hard and there was absolutely no tolerance for anti-queer anything. So it wasn't exactly surprising that several of the women on the team had come over from skating hockey. One of em (I want to say Raspberry Slam but it could've been Shovey Chase) decided that it would be fun to take the whole team out to a hockey game. At the time we had no pro hockey in the state, so the team (with my brother and I tagging along, because well behaved children get to travel with the team) went to a local WHL game.
I came prepared. I had drawn out the rink, labeled every part and its purpose. I had written down what the penalties were, how they were timed, what processes were a part of that. Every players name and number was neatly written down, their positions carefully notated. This was very similar to what I did for my mom's team anyways, and I loved being able to clearly explain what was happening in a game.
It was an absolutely delightful time, doing anything with roller girls generally is, but I really enjoyed watching the game. At the end of it, however, I did in fact turn to my mom and say "I didn't know guys actually LIKED playing contact sports! That's cool!"
and pretty much everyone died laughing because all of them had grown up in the like, 80s and 90s where contact sports were a pretty much "boys only" thing and I had grown up with my mom playing roller derby. And my dad did bike races. Hockey was literally the first time I ever thought that men might actually play contact sports for fun and not just because they didn't really seem to have any other option.
ANYWAYS, as soon as the PWHL came across my screen and was free to watch, I immediately got hooked! Love sports, hate convoluted methods of paying to watch things especially since most of the sports I watch all stream for free viewing!
