Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Civilization took a wrong turn. Not when we invented social media. Not when we decided pineapple on pizza warranted congressional hearings. It was the moment we, as a species, decided that not everyone needs to play hockey.
That was it. That was the fork in the road where humanity chose the path marked “Unresolved Rage Issues” instead of “Drop Your Gloves, Sort It Out, Shake Hands After.”
I present three pieces of evidence from This Very Week proving my Grand Unified Theory of Hockey Sportsmanship: the world is falling apart because nobody is getting cross-checked into the boards before dinner.
Exhibit A: The Pickleball Massacre of Port Orange
On Super Bowl Sunday, a pickleball game at the Spruce Creek Country Club in Port Orange, Florida, devolved into a geriatric cage match. A sport with zero hockey sportsmanship infrastructure and all the rage of a Home Depot checkout line on a Saturday.
It started, as all great tragedies do, with a kitchen violation.
For the uninitiated, the “kitchen” in pickleball is a seven-foot zone near the net where you can’t hit a volley. It is not, as subsequent events might suggest, a place where someone insulted another man’s wife with language that would make a longshoreman blush. But that happened too.
Anthony Sapienza, 63, accused his opponent of stepping into the kitchen. Words were exchanged. Insults followed. And then, because this is Florida and Florida is where the social contract goes to die, Sapienza allegedly punched a man in the face and hit him with a pickleball paddle. Prosecutors classified the paddle as a “deadly weapon.”
A pickleball paddle. A deadly weapon. Sit with that.
The brawl sucked in over twenty people (retirees, country club members, possibly a stray golf cart) like a black hole of suburban fury. Sapienza’s wife, Julianne, allegedly joined in by punching a 70-year-old man whose crime was trying to restore order. The couple then fled the scene (the pickleball equivalent of a hit-and-run) and were later arrested at their home.
They’ve been permanently banned from the country club, which feels like the system working exactly as designed.
You know what sport has a kitchen? Hockey. It’s called the crease. And when someone violates the crease, they get a stick to the shins, the goalie gives them a look that could curdle milk, play resumes, and everyone goes home with their criminal record intact.
Exhibit B: The Cursing Canadian Curling Caper
Meanwhile, at the Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, the famously genteel world of curling (a sport whose primary sound effects are the gentle scraping of brooms and polite Canadian murmuring) erupted into a profanity-laced international incident.
Swedish vice-skip Oskar Eriksson accused Canadian vice-skip Marc Kennedy of “double touching,” which is essentially fondling the granite after releasing it. Kennedy, a 44-year-old who has been curling for 25 years across four Olympic Games, responded with the composure you’d expect from a man unjustly accused of cheating at shuffleboard’s pretentious cousin.
Kidding. He told him exactly where to stick it. On live television. With microphones catching every glorious syllable.
World Curling (yes, there is a World Curling, and yes, they had to release a statement) issued Kennedy a verbal warning and threatened sanctions for “inappropriate behavior.” They also admitted, in what might be the most Canadian sentence ever recorded in an official document, that they don’t have enough officials to monitor all the hog lines simultaneously. They literally cannot tell if anyone is cheating because they are short on eyeballs.
CNN compared it to the U.S. Open, trying to call foot faults across four courts with two people. That’s generous. I’d compare it to officiating a prison yard basketball game with one guy and a whistle.
And it only escalated. Canada’s next opponent, Switzerland, accused them of the same thing. Social media descended into chaos. Memes were born. A sport built on honor, trust, and competitive sweeping is now mired in a scandal that requires video replay technology nobody bothered to install.
In hockey, you think someone’s playing dirty? Drop the gloves. Go to the box. Come back out. Move on. Hockey etiquette already solved this. There’s no governing body issuing statements about “inappropriate language.” There is no inappropriate language in hockey. It’s all appropriate. It’s encouraged. The penalty box is a meditation retreat where you sit quietly, reflect on what you’ve done, then come back and do it again.
Exhibit C: The Jet2 Battle of Brussels
Because the universe wanted to make absolutely certain I was right, a Jet2 flight from Antalya, Turkey, to Manchester, England, had to emergency-land in Brussels because passengers decided to reenact Fight Club at 30,000 feet.
Flight LS896. Remember that number. It will live in infamy alongside the Hindenburg and whatever flight number Spirit Airlines assigns to it, as a matter of principle.
Allegedly racist remarks from an intoxicated passenger escalated into a full aisle brawl. Multiple people are throwing punches. A flight attendant standing on a seat screaming, “Sit down! We’ve got kids on board!” Nobody sat down. Nobody cared about the kids. One man was placed in a headlock. Eyewitnesses reported blood on the seats and tooth fragments on the floor.
Tooth fragments. On the floor. Of an airplane. Still in the air.
The pilot diverted to Brussels. Belgian police boarded, removed two passengers, and the flight continued to Manchester several hours late in the kind of stunned silence usually reserved for the moment someone drops a casserole at Thanksgiving.
Jet2 banned both passengers for life and vowed to recover the costs of the diversion. Good luck collecting from a man who starts a fistfight in an aluminum tube hurtling through the troposphere.
You know where brawls happen constantly, and planes are never diverted? Hockey arenas. The brawl is the feature. It’s not a bug. Two guys drop their gloves, the refs stand back, the crowd cheers, and when it’s over, both guys skate to the penalty box like gentlemen. No emergency landings. No Belgian police. No tooth fragments in anyone’s legroom. Just pure, uncut hockey sportsmanship.
The Unifying Theory
Hockey players are, without exception, the most polite people you will ever meet in civilized society. They hold doors. They say “please” and “thank you.” They tip well. They complement your casserole even when it’s clearly from a box. The reason, the only reason, is that they spent their formative years being allowed (nay, encouraged) to beat the stuffing out of each other in a controlled environment with clearly defined rules, padded gloves, and a two-minute cooling-off period.
They have processed their emotions. Through violence. Sanctioned, regulated, beautiful violence.
The rest of us? We’re weaponizing pickleball paddles. We’re dropping F-bombs at the Olympics over curling. We’re turning budget airlines into airborne thunderdomes because nobody taught us that the correct response to rage is to grab a man by his jersey, punch him three times, fall down, sit in a box, and come back refreshed.
Pickleball has a kitchen violation. Hockey has enforcers.
Curling has an honor system with insufficient officials. Hockey has referees who fully expect you to lie to them and plan accordingly.
Air travel has a flight attendant standing on a seat begging for sanity. Hockey has a Zamboni that comes out between periods and literally smooths everything over so you can start fresh.
The math is right there. It has always been right there.
If Anthony Sapienza had spent his youth getting hip-checked into plexiglass, do you think he’d be swinging a pickleball paddle at a Florida country club? He’d be at home, watching the game, critiquing some kid’s slapshot, and offering his neighbor a beer.
If Marc Kennedy had grown up playing hockey instead of… well, he’s Canadian, so he probably did. Which explains why his outburst was essentially telling someone to buzz off rather than, say, hitting them with a sports equipment. The system works even when it fails.
And if the passengers on Jet2 Flight LS896 had all played hockey? That plane lands in Manchester on time. Everyone shakes hands at the gate. The only teeth on the floor are the ones they were already missing from last season.
Hockey doesn’t prevent violence. It curates it. It gives it a time, a place, a set of rules, a penalty box, and a postgame handshake line. It says: Yes, you are a barely domesticated primate with rage issues. Here are some skates and a stick. Go sort yourself out. Dinner’s at seven. That’s hockey sportsmanship in its purest form.
The rest of the world could learn something from this.
They won’t. They’re too busy hitting each other with pickleball paddles.
Key Takeaways
- The article argues that civilization suffers from unresolved rage issues, as people no longer engage in sanctioned physical confrontations like in hockey.
- Exhibits highlight incidents from pickleball, curling, and air travel where conflicts escalated due to a lack of sportsmanship and controlled outlets for rage.
- Hockey teaches players to process emotions through physicality, creating more polite individuals outside the rink.
- The author suggests the world could learn valuable lessons in conflict resolution and sportsmanship from hockey culture.
- Ultimately, society often resorts to petty disputes, while hockey provides a structured way to manage aggression.
Related Links
See my Amazon author page and buy my books.
His first manuscript was composed entirely of punctuation marks and confused sketches. He's since published "Not Bukowski" (poems that don't rhyme) and "Slop and Swell from a Festering Mind" (essays so concerning that bookstores check on his well-being). He once spent three hours photographing a rare bird that turned out to be a plastic bag, and he's the only person banned from church bake sales for "weaponized brownies." Inheriting absurdism from Vonnegut and Adams, sprawling narratives from Irving, and weaponized failure from Moore, he writes about conflicted everymen struggling through supernatural chaos.
He has two new, offbeat novels waiting for an agent or a publisher: "Truth Tastes Like Pennies" and "Elliot Nessie."
He remains unconvinced that birds aren't surveillance drones.
More biographic lies...err...info.
- Marrakech v. America - May 5, 2026
- They Parachuted the Beaver - May 5, 2026
- Red Eye Has Nothing to Fear - May 2, 2026
