Beer Showers, Sippy Cups, and Canadian Hockey.

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We went to a Canucks pre-season game last night (Thanks Web!) and I marveled yet again at a Canadian (I think) invention.

I’m not really a major hockey fan, but Kirk keeps working on me and slowly but surely I am starting to get the rules and see the penalties as they happen instead of incessantly asking “What did he do” Why did we get a penalty?” Instead I find myself asking why so and so DIDN’T get a penalty.

Times change.

There are a few things that still bug me about going to hockey games though.

#1. The obnoxious, shrieking drunk (or sober) guy behind my head. Seriously…do you really thing that opposing team player or goalie is listening to you?

#2. Beer showers. You know what I mean. Our team scores and the guy behind you leaps up in excitement and his beer flies everywhere. Mostly straight down your back. Nice…you get to go home sticky and smelling like a brewery.

But Canadians are an inventive lot. Just look at some examples of our finest minds…

• acrylic (think the windows protecting the audience from flying hockey pucks)
• basketball (a game for people who aren’t good hockey players)
• cardiac intensive care units (required after hockey injuries in some cases)
• electric cars
• electron microscope
• the goalie mask (to keep the hockey goalie’s face pretty)
• the hydrofoil
• IMAX
• instant potato flakes
• insulin
• the jolly jumper (to condition future hockey players)
• kerosene (probably invented to light hockey arenas)
• lacrosse
• the laser sailboat
• the lightbulb (first patent) (so they could use electricity to light the hockey arenas?)
• Muskol (to protect kids playing street hockey in the summer)
• the Newtsuit
• newsprint (so we can write about hockey)
• pablum (something for hockey players to eat since they lose so many teeth in fights)
• the pacemaker (necessary piece of medical equipment for many hockey fans)
• paint rollers
• Pictionary (draw a hockey player)
• the radio compass
• the retractable beer carton handle (related to hockey in so many ways)
• rollerskates (for summer hockey)
• ski bindings
• snowblowers (important for cleaning snow off outdoor hockey rinks)
• the snowmobile
• the snowplow
• Standard Time (I’m sure this is related to hockey somehow)
• The Stanley Cup (Duh…totally about hockey)
• submarine telegraph cables (so we could transmit hockey scores around the world)
• Superman
• table hockey (so we can play hockey during commercials)
• the telephone (to call our friends about the upcoming/past hockey game)
• Trivial Pursuit (complete with hockey questions)
• the Walkie Talkie (invented so the officiates and the guys upstairs can debate the last goal)
• the Washing Machine (unfortunately they never quite take the stink out of hockey gear)
• Yahtzee
• the zipper

That’s kind of a cool list and only a smattering of what the great minds of Canada have come up with.

But the most recent invention I came across, and I’m only assuming a Canadian came up with it to be honest…mainly because anything worth being at a hockey game probably came from a Canadian mind. Why do I think only Canadians come up with good ideas for hockey? Just look at what the Americans tried to do…the FoxTrax. Also known as the glow puck, or the laser puck, it was a puck with internal electronics that allowed its position to be visually highlighted on-screen and display a trail when the puck was moving rapidly. In 1994, Fox won a contract to broadcast NHL games in the United States. A common complaint among American fans was that the puck was difficult to follow on the ice. Thus, FoxTrax was created to remedy this problem. The FoxTrax puck was first used during the 1996 NHL All-Star Game. It was last used during the first game of the 1998 Stanley Cup Finals. (From Wikipedia) Didn’t last long thankfully…from a Canadian perspective…let’s be serious…white ice, black puck…where is the problem here? Even I can find the puck on the rink and I don’t know what I’m watching half the time.

Sorry, off track there… so back to this great new invention found at hockey games? The beer sippy-cup lid! The first time I was presented with one I went to remove the lid and drink my beer normally. Kirk said, no, you leave it on. So I tried to pop the little tab out…Kirk said, no, you drink through it, it’s a sippy-cup.

BRILLIANT!!!

No more beer showers! This hockey thing gets better and better. And, as the Molson Canadian commercial says… “…You know the sippy cup lid isn’t as dumb as it sounds….”

Of course it will still leak if you drop it…like the guy next to me did last night…and then it runs all over the floor and I end up standing in it…. so now we need the anti-dribble beer cup.

Regardless, all hail the sippy-cup beer lid!