from Ann Killion of the San Francisco Chronicle,

So you want to hop on the hockey bandwagon?

The Sharks have been around for a quarter century, but unless you’re a San Jose resident or a transplant from the frozen north, you may have been holding out for a big moment.

Here it is. The big moment. The Stanley Cup Finals open Monday with the Sharks in Pittsburgh against the Penguins.

And here’s why hockey is the coolest (pun intended) sport around:

Speed: We live in a video-game culture, and hockey is played at video-game speed. Bay Area remote controls have been worn out in recent weeks, clicking between baseball and basketball and hockey.

The first thing you notice is that hockey seems to be operating at a different speed: crazy fast. Flipping between baseball and hockey is like going from a dead stop to 130 mph.

The athletes: They are almost all nice guys. They’re normal size; though they look huge coming off the ice, when they take off their skates and massive amounts of equipment they shrink to size of average folk (except for Jumbo Joe Thornton).

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