When
a sport becomes really popular, it's no longer something that only the fans
discuss. Rather, it becomes part of the greater public lexicon and collective
consciousness, and even people who don't follow it start to use terminology and
analogies from the sport whether they realise it or not.
A
Successful Legal Department is Like a Hockey Team
Benched
By Penguin?
Bachmann
and Pawlenty Drop the Gloves
Loving
Shirley (The Hockey Analogy)
He hit that one out of the ball park!
It's like trying to understand the offside rule!
Three strikes and you're out!
Three strikes and you're out!
You get the
idea... so the question is, where are all the hockey phrases and metaphors?
Well actually there are more out there than you might think, and hockey seems
to provide a popular analogy for many political and business writers. Read on
to see some examples of great hockey metaphors being used to describe all
manner of situations from Disney Land to law. Well that's one way to get sports
fans to read current events anyway...
A
Successful Legal Department is Like a Hockey Team
I'm fairly certain that the title tells you
everything you need to know about what this article deals with. It's a nice
little analogy that anyone can get their head around, but some of the links are
rather tenuous. Client satisfaction is like hockey fans buying tickets expecting
their team to win apparently... (if your lawyer keeps losing, you might support
another team).
Benched
By Penguin?
This article uses the great example of two
hockey players getting benched during the playoffs as a way to explain Google's
decisions surrounding their 'Penguin' upgrade. In the upgrade, Google decided
to penalise a lot of sites that had
used spammy techniques to get to the top of the search engines - showing how
serious they were about the rules even though it severely damaged those
businesses. The parallel is obvious - sometimes a big organization has to make
a harsh-seeming rule in order to show they're serious about the rules and for
the good of ;the game'.
The New Yorker
Not a post, but a print piece, a 'The New
Yorker' article from hockey aficionado Adam Gopnik on Liberal leader Michael
Ignatieff uses various sports metaphors in describing the particulars of
politics. 'The thing that politics most strongly resembles is being on soccer
teams and hockey teams when I was a child' it reads. 'It’s not a lonely writer
in his den thinking thoughts.' Later he goes on to say how some of the natural
greats have 'jaw dropping' skill in both fields (pun not intended).
Hockey, Metaphor and the Next Canadian Election
This article is becoming ever more
self-aware, so why not include a post that refers to another post commenting on
the hockey metaphor within? Perhaps this post might some-day wind up in a
countdown of the top 'articles about articles with hockey metaphors'? This post
discusses the refreshing use of hockey metaphors in the previous article...
Disney Management Apathy/Hockey Analogy
In this one, a writer known only as 'Fritz'
compares the lack of Disney history knowledge that many park managers display
with the way that he feels about hockey. He doesn't know much about hockey
explains, but imagines he might still jump at the chance to work for the NHL.
It's just 'fun by nature' he concludes. Good work Fritz!
GOP Debate Draws Metaphors From Hockey, Not Boxing
Ever heard the expression 'drop the
gloves'? It's a popular expression lately that one would presume comes from boxing,
but in fact it comes from hockey as this article explains. When two boxers get
serious the 'gloves come off', but in hockey the players 'drop the gloves'.
This article notes how political commentators are switching and starting to use
the latter more frequently and points to several other articles where this is
the case...
Bachmann
and Pawlenty Drop the Gloves
This is one of the articles discussed in
the above entry, which describes the rivalry between Congresswoman Michele
Bachmann and former Govenor Tim Pawlenty using the hockey metaphor. Though
there's no actual mention of hockey in the article, suggesting perhaps that
they don't even realise where the reference comes from.
Loving
Shirley (The Hockey Analogy)
Another hockey analogy on a business
website; seems the two go hand in hand! This article discusses conflict that
you might encounter in the world of business and how you might handle it in the
context of hockey. But fatal mistake! The writer uses the expression 'gloves
come off' instead of 'drop the gloves'. If only he'd read this article first...
To end with and in the spirit of 'hockey
word play', here's a little riddle to leave you with... Highlight the text below for your answer.
Q: A Rink is to Ring as Hockey is to...
what?
A: Finger
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