Have YOU jumped onto the band wagon yet?

For certain, soccer IS a passionate sport ;-)! Growing up with soccer in my native Austria, I attest to that.

But from the standpoint of a late comer hockey addict, it truly galls that the coverage of other sports, takes up more space in the media, even during the Stanley Cup Play offs.

Sure it IS amusing to see a soccer player named KAKA (yes, dear Viennese friends you read that right ;-)! Real name Ricardo Izecson dos Santos Leite (he'd have to have a huge jersey to print all those names ;-)!

Or NENE (no, not after the Hawaiian goose).. and such other nicknames.

For sure it is a lot easier to pronounce that, than the often very long real Brazilian or Spanish names with their mother's and father's names attached and interspersed with the obligatory de, dos, or whatever!

I even enjoy the occasional football and basketball ones.

Rugby is OK, too, but cricket (sorry, Anglophiles) is not.

Polo, yes, mostly because of the smart, well-schooled ponies-not because it's a hip thing to do ;-)!

Golf, with or without Tiger, makes me want to go sleep.

Tennis - I can take or leave, more leave than take, though.

Do so love to watch skiing, sledding, luge, ski jumping,

Nordic combination etc. especially snug ;-) near a fireplace!

Hey, I may watch bowling (maybe), boccie, horseshoes, archery, and such.

I might be tempted to try curling, might, I say!

The lure of Baseball, dear American readers, simply is no lure at all.

BUT HOCKEY-YESSSS!

The scrunch of skates, ice spumes flying, pucks skittering, the sounds of hits that wobble the glass, cowbells, the horns, less so the perennial chant, impugning certain actions of the OTHER goalie, of fans when WE goal.

And the dead silence, even those boos, when THEY goal.

Hockey books, DVDs and such will be scant solace during the few months ahead.

And even more so for many other fans who do not have the passions for the arts, opera and the like, which , luckily, I do!

So naturally, I suffered with The Texas Stars in their loss of the Cup. But did find the super team work by the Hershey Bears, well, really rather superlative and exciting to watch.

It was truly amazing to see these guys, so well oiled and long schooled in team work, take over the games 3-6, with no let up! The reason, IMO, the Stars won the incredible first 2 games at Hershey? Heck, the Bears surely underestimated their foes and ...

Then they came back with a vengeance to simply out skate, out shoot, out score and out smart the Stars. And having some refs being 'blind' did not hurt either, too much! Despite Brent Krahn, fresh from injuries, stop 32 shots.

And again, in my modest opinion, whenever the Stars collected penalties, many times out manoeuvred by the other team with, the help of the soi disant 'blind' refs... the Bears scored.