Brian Viner: Hockey's festive origins still warm the stands while brutal battle rages on ice

On Christmas Day 1855, 150 years ago tomorrow, the first proper ice hockey match is said to have taken place in Kingston, Ontario. That claim is hotly disputed by the good folk of Windsor, Nova Scotia, whose municipal slogan is "the puck starts here", but I understand from people who know about these things that ice hockey's origins, at least as an organised sport, are generally considered to date from 25 December 1855.

That such a significant anniversary will unfold almost completely unnoticed on this side of the Atlantic rather reinforces George Bernard Shaw's old quip about us being two nations divided by a common language. After all, in North America, ice hockey is known as hockey; it is field hockey that carries the descriptive noun.

As for sport generally, I can't think of any department of popular culture in which there is such a gulf of understanding between Britain and America (and just to annoy the Canadians reading this, I'm lumping you in with the Yanks). When you think about it, it's extraordinary that the three major sports over there - football, baseball and basketball - have no real claim on the public imagination over here. And similarly, that our (dare I say, greatly superior) form of football, as well as cricket and rugby, has not gained much of a foothold under the star-spangled banner. We exported a passion for at least one of those three sports to every other English-speaking country in the world, yet the United States remain indifferent.

Their indifference to "soccer" has, of course, wavered these past few years. From Albany to Albuquerque it is the most popular sport among Under-11s, and the fact that Sven Goran Eriksson expressed concern that England might draw the United States in the group stages of next year's World Cup testifies to their growing potency as a football-playing nation.

Either that or it testifies to Sven's unerring ability to step on banana skins. But those of us who nurture a doubtless unhealthy fascination with America know soccer will never, ever register where it really counts, on prime-time network television.

Meanwhile, Shaw's dictum holds truer than ever. I once spent a surreally entertaining evening in the ante-bellum home of a wealthy southern patriarch called Gunby Jordan, trying, with my fellow house guest Peter Oosterhuis, to explain to old Gunby the laws of cricket.

"Just run that bah me one more tahm," he kept saying, as a white-gloved butler handed him another mint julep. Actually, it was probably a Michelob Lite, but if you can't bend the truth in pursuit of a good story on Christmas Eve, then when can you?

I had been similarly bamboozled myself at Tiger Stadium in Detroit a few years earlier, as the man in the neighbouring seat tried to unravel the more arcane intricacies of baseball during a match between the Tigers and the Baltimore Orioles.

It's always worth asking. American sports fans like nothing more than explaining base-stealing or defense drills to a befuddled Brit, just as Brits love to bore on about the offside law or the concept of leg-before-wicket to a confused Yank.

At Madison Square Garden three winters ago I duly turned to my neighbour, who introduced himself as Anthony Galioto of New Jersey, and asked him what the hell was going on in the hockey game between the New York Rangers and Tampa Bay Lightning. Predictably, he was delighted, and talked to me as if I were a simpleton, which was just the way I wanted it.

I had actually turned up at the Garden the day before, hoping to get tickets for that night's basketball game between the New York Knicks and the Houston Rockets. But as anyone who has ever watched Friends will know, Knicks tickets are a precious commodity in New York. There were only two seats left, priced at $253 (£150) and $188. And those were by no means the best in the house; prices rose to $1,500. By comparison, Peter Kenyon and Roman Abramovich are practically giving seats away. Don't tell them.

It was cheaper to watch the Rangers, a paltry $700 top whack. My ticket set me back $68, and happily landed me next to Anthony, who looked like Salvatore "Pussy" Bonpensiero in The Sopranos only in so far as he resembled him exactly. He was an extremely considerate guide, and only twice burst my eardrums by screaming "SHOOT THE PUCK!"

In calmer moments he offered the assertion that hockey is the supreme sport. "To do what they do, on a foreign substance, is amazing," he said. I felt compelled to agree with him, and not just because he looked so much like big Pussy.

It was an interesting time to be watching hockey, which had even been making news in England. A few days earlier the Boston Bruins defenseman Marty McSorley had clubbed a Canadian, Donald Brashear of the Vancouver Canucks, round the head. The National Hockey League promptly banned him for 23 games, and Vancouver police charged him with assault with a dangerous weapon.

It was nothing new. In 1905 Allan Loney was charged with murder after killing Alcide Laurin by belting him with his stick not far from where the first organised game took place 150 years ago tomorrow. Those guys can hardly have guessed what they were unleashing. But all the same, happy birthday, ice hockey. And happy Christmas to the rest of you.

Who I Like This Week...

It being the season of goodwill to all men, I have decided, as an Evertonian, to offer my weekly benediction to the Liverpool manager Rafael Benitez.

If Benitez has a flaw it is only that he seems to have adopted the Liverpool habit, almost a form of Tourette's syndrome under Gérard Houllier, of saying that they just need a couple more players to complete the jigsaw. For supporters of clubs who haven't lavished £150m on the jigsaw in the past five years, it gets a bit tiresome.

But he's plainly a nice guy, a fine coach, and furthermore should be warmly applauded for being what he's not, namely Jose Mourinho or Arsène Wenger. If he'll just cock up his tactics in next week's derby match, my admiration will be complete.

And Who I Don't

Paolo Di Canio, who in the Lazio v Juventus game last Saturday performed yet another of his fascist salutes, and was duly handed a one-match ban by the Italian Football Federation. His claim that the salute "dates back to ancient Rome and has nothing to do with racist ideology" is disingenuous at best.

He's an intelligent bloke who also happens to be, if I might be forgiven for an un-Christmassy expression, a total pillock.

b.viner@independent.co.uk