The hockey season is now in full swing and not unlike previous years I find myself in a love-hate relationship with the sport. I like the fact that players slam into each other, talk trash, and drop gloves to trade blows. I like that it’s fast paced. The Zambonies are cool. I appreciate the 20 minutes between periods to get beer and nachos. I eagerly await the drunken debauchery among fans. I, however, don’t like the fact that you could spend 60 bucks on a ticket, spend three hours at the arena and have to leave without the satisfaction of a declared the winner. Tie hockey games infuriate me more than paying for warm, stale beer.

The whole point of playing games is to have a winner and a loser. I get so frustrated when teams finished locked in a tie that I want to grab a stick and whack the league upside the head, a la Marty McSorely. I can’t believe hockey players stand for it. It seems absurd that these thugs would spend three 20 minute periods and a five minute overtime skating around banging into each other and be content to leave with the score dead even.

If it truly doesn’t matter that there is a winner, then why is there an overtime period at all? A quick check of the rules book and you’ll find it was put into place in the 1983-84 season to avoid having so many games finish in a tie. It hasn’t worked. Over the past three seasons 20% of all NHL games have gone into overtime. Of those games, nearly three-fourths have ended without a winner.

Hockey purists will tell you how great tie games are by trying to explain to you the NHL point system. It makes you feel like a third grader trying to understand the Presidential Election mess in Florida. Who’s Chad again and what’s it matter if he has dimples? In both cases the bottom line is that I’m not going to feel good until a winner is declared. In hockey, I have to wait until the Stanley Cup Finals. It may be longer for the President.

I grew up watching baseball and football. I’ve never gone to a baseball game that finished in a tie. Can you imagine if after the 10^th inning with the game locked at three a piece the teams just quit playing? Green Bay Packer’s football coach Vince Lombardi who said, "winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing" is probably rolling over in his grave. A tied game is incomplete. It’s like peanut butter without jelly, popcorn without butter and Ernie without Bert. It’s just not meant to be.

I honestly feel like I have come a long way with hockey, but I can’t seem to get over that tie game hump. It’s my own fault. I should have followed my instincts and stayed away from the game. Five years ago, I couldn’t have named five hockey players. I didn’t know they played in shifts. And I thought the blue line was a some sort of transit system in Canada.

I’ve grown to really enjoy hockey and I’d hate to turn my back on it now, but I just can’t get past the absurdity of the tie. It seems like such a wussy way to end such a violent game played by a bunch of brutish men. It’s not as if I’m asking them to throw down their gloves and fight it out, though I wouldn’t mind that. I just want somebody to score a winning goal.