You’ll all have to pardon me this week if I seem to have hockey on the brain. The Lewiston Maineiacs of the QMJHL returned to training camp, and aside from waxing poetic about golf, they are one of my primary responsibilities here at the newspaper.

But, that is not to say that I haven’t at least been thinking about golf, even though playing a round or two has been completely out of the question.

The thought that immediately popped into mind this week was: Why do hockey players always seem to be associated with golfing?

Think about it. When a team gets bounced from the playoffs, particularly if a team gets bounced early, the comment always surfaces that the team’s golf season started early.

“Time to dust off the golf clubs” usually rolls off of announcers’ tongues like many of the other tired cliches radio and television announcers love to pretend they are using for the first time.

But why?

Comparisons can be drawn to the basic equipment – stick hits object toward a particular destination – but that’s about it.

There was a beer commercial not too long ago that proposed a new sport that combined both: Full contact golf. Interesting concept, for sure, but not something I would ever like to see happen. (Although I wouldn’t mind seeing Tiger Woods try to hit a 350-yard bomb down the middle of the fairway with NHL bad boys Claude Lemieux or Tie Domi bearing down on him. That would be fun to watch.)

But during my Sunday game, leave those NHLers caged up, please.

I’ve also heard a more practical reason having something to do with the kind of swing each kind of athlete has. A golfer, according to this myth, must roll his or her wrists a certain way as they power through the ball to achieve a long, straight shot. A hockey player, meanwhile (at least a hockey player with a good slapshot) will use a similar wrist motion to control the direction of the puck.

Could be, but I don’t buy that, either. The real reason? Hockey players are gluttons for punishment on the ice, and that personality type does not disappear for the summer. Golf punishes its athletes, too, although mentally rather than physically.

It makes sense, then, that a hockey player, who has taken way too many pucks to the head (or been in too many fights), wouldn’t be able to discern the difference between the kind of pain felt on the ice and that dished out by the golf game we all love so much.

That must be it.

Justin Pelletier is a staff writer. He can be reached at [email protected]