Up All Night for Sledge Hockey At The 2018 Winter Paralympics

After the party is the afterparty; after the Olympics is the Paralympics. Since the 1960s, the Paralympics has provided a space for athletes with disabilities to compete for the same international stakes as their able-bodied fellow athletes. Like the Olympics, the Paralympics are in Pyeongchang, South Korea, so there is the same time difference. It’s a slow time of year, especially if you don’t care about college basketball – football season is over, the NHL and NBA are wheezing through the tail end of their regular seasons, and baseball is in the preseason.

Luckily, there is sledge hockey. If you enjoy hockey, but wish it were a little more like NASCAR, sledge hockey is the sport for you. If you think demolition derby would be more fun without the cars, sledge hockey is the sport for you. Also known as para ice hockey, sledge hockey was invented at a rehabilitation center in Sweden in 1960. After some hiccups, the sport now has teams around the world, with teams from eight countries competing. Since 2010, women have been allowed to join men’s national teams, but there is not a separate women’s tournament as there is in the Olympics.

Here is an introduction to the game. The players sit on a small platform with two runners, and each has two short sticks with a blade to play the puck on one end, and teeth on the other end so they can propel themselves around the ice. The rules are the same as traditional hockey, with the only variation being that there is a penalty for teeing, or striking an opponent with the front of your sled.

Team USA, led by Declan Farmer, is looking for a sledge hockey threepeat. They’re off to a good start: they waxed Japan 10-0 on Saturday, trounced the Czech Republic by the same score on Sunday night, then defeated South Korea yesterday. These wins have the USA through to the medal round.

Team USA is favored to return to the gold medal game to defend its title. You can fold watching the championship game into your St. Patrick’s Day observances at 11 pm; catch streaming and broadcast action on NBCSN. The full schedule of games leading up to the final is here. On the other side of the bracket, Team Canada has been wrecking shop, and odds favor a USA-Canada rematch in the final.

Even if hockey is not your thing, treat yourself and take advantage of the massive quantity of Paralympic coverage NBC is streaming this year. There are Nordic and Alpine skiing events still on the schedule for athletes with a variety of visual and mobility impairments. For curling junkies looking for another fix, there is wheelchair curling. If you want to catch up, you can also stream replays of completed events.

One strong point of NBC’s coverage so far has been a focus on these athletes as athletes. By focusing on their capabilities of their effort in the present, rather than on the circumstances of each athlete’s disability, we are reminded that the Olympic athletes who compete in March work just as hard and make us just as proud as the Olympic athletes who compete in February. Who needs March Madness when you can stay up late with Declan Farmer?

Jonathan Beecher Field was born in New England, educated in the Midwest, and teaches in the South. He Tweets professionally as @ThatJBF, and unprofessionally as @TheGurglingCod. He also sometimes writes for Avidly and Common-Place.

Watch Sledge Hockey at the 2018 Winter Paralympic Games on NBC