My dad was visiting me in Pennsylvania. We were flipping through TV channels while my wife cooked dinner, and I paused on a hockey game to check the score.

As we watched Flyers pretty-boy Eric Lindross get repeatedly smashed into the boards by a Pittsburgh thug, my dad smiled.

&uot;If I’d have been born a Yankee, I’d have played hockey,&uot; he said.

While recently watching an ESPN special (I’m not sure what it was about, but much of the footage was of hockey players spitting out teeth and playing with broken limbs), my dad’s statement occurred to me.

I’ll bet there’s a lot of Southerners who would play hockey if given half the chance.

The enthusiasm for football in the South is amazing, and I think football and hockey share several traits.

Many people claim football is the hardest-hitting of all contact sports.

Hockey players get to add the speed of skates to their hits, and instead of a sideline for escapes, hockey players are treated to a face-full of bullet-proof glass. Hockey players also get sticks.

Many people enjoy the aggressive nature of football, especially when compared to more passive sports such as golf or baseball.

But nobody does aggressive like hockey. Fighting in all other professional sports will get you tossed out of the game and likely fined. In hockey, you sit for five minutes, no hard feelings.

I’m not saying that I think fighting is a good thing and we should make fighting a part of other sports. But fighting is a necessary part of hockey. You just have to understand the philosophy, if you will, of the sport.

Hockey is about attitude. In a sport with so few goals, there almost has to be something else going on to keep everyone interested, player and fan alike.

So when a player shows disrespect to another player or team, he’s checked. Hard. If the disrespect continues, he’s checked harder. If he just doesn’t learn, well, the gloves literally come off.

And of course no team is going to let one of its own get knocked around, even if the other team’s feeling are hurt. Lucky fans get to sit back and watch the drama unfold.

Did you know some professional hockey players can barely skate? They are kept on payroll just to ensure other teams play nice and keep the disrespect to a minimum.

You have to love a sport in which winning comes second to attitude and respect. I’ve seen plenty of pro coaches send out a bruiser to inflict justice on an opponent who took a cheap shot on a star player. It doesn’t matter how close the game is, or how much losing a player to the penalty box hurts the team’s chance at winning.

Nobody takes a cheap shot at our star.

Maybe hockey’s not for everyone. Maybe I spent too much time up North and my brain hasn’t quite thawed out yet. But I don’t think so.

More and more Southerners are starting to watch hockey. The Nashville Predators and the Atlanta Thrashers have joined the NHL, and there are plenty of minor league teams closer to home. The East Coast Hockey League includes the Baton Rouge Kingfish, the Jackson Bandits and the Mississippi Sea Wolves, and the Tupelo T-Rex are members of the Western Professional Hockey League.

Check ’em out if you get a chance. Football will be over before you know it, and winter is a long, cold season with no bone-crunching sports to watch.

Nick Adams is sports editor at The Democrat. He can be reached at (601) 445-3632, or by e-mail at nick.adams@natchezdemocrat.com.