solid. The hiss of a blade carving into a wet rink or the bang of a puck

After winning two medals and charming the world during the Olympics, Laurie Hernandez is bringing her talents to Dancing with the Stars. Announced last week as part of the new cast for the upcoming season, the 16-year-old gymnast joins the likes of Ryan Lochte, Calvin Johnson and Amber Rose.On Wednesday morning, the entire cast appeared on Good Morning America to promote the new season. And in the least surprising news ever, Hernandez stole the show when she showed off her robot dance moves.And if thats not enough for you, she and partner Val Chmerkovskiy posted a video Tuesday that shows why they might be the front-runners to take home the coveted Mirror Ball trophy.These two definitely have my vote.See something entertaining on social media that you think deserves to be shared? Let me know on Twitter, @darcymaine_espn. Custom Mariners Jersey China . - The Oakland Raiders re-signed offensive lineman Khalif Barnes on Friday. Edgar Martinez Jersey Large . Thats not a comment on the suspension that banished the Portland Winterhawks general manager and coach from his Western Hockey League teams bench for most of the 2012-13 season. http://www.custommarinersjersey.com/ . -- Matt Ryan needed one of the best games of his career to lead the Falcons and their depleted offence out of their three-game losing streak last week. Wholesale Custom Mariners Shirts .Y. -- Marcell Dareus and the Buffalo Bills defence made life miserable for Super Bowl MVP Joe Flacco. Cheap Custom Mariners Jersey . The phone hearing is scheduled for 4:30pm et/1:30pm pt. Winchester, who was not penalized for the hit, appeared to make contact with Kellys head early in the first period of Thursdays game in Boston. TORONTO -- The things that make hockey beautiful are the same things that limit its popular appeal. Its almost too exotic for its own good. It requires ice, and not a little bit: great big sheets of it, clean and flawless. The ice means that hockey also requires skating. Like mastering a language, learning to skate rewards early adoption. Most of us can run, so we can come to understand and even play a lot of sports that we didnt grow up playing. We have already met their first demand. Hockey has a higher barrier to entry. If you cant skate, you cant play.I cant skate. Im Canadian, but my family is an immigrant family, and I was too late to the pond. A Canadian who cant skate is like an American who cant light a firework. Youre surrounded by people taking delight in something that has escaped you, everybody laughing at a joke thats gone over your head. Theres a fountain in front of Torontos iconic City Hall. In the winter it becomes a rink, of course, and I cant tell you how many times Ive watched people circling that square with a grace and speed that fills me with envy.World Cup of Hockey schedule: Watch on ESPN, ESPN2, WatchESPNBut I still love hockey, and I can identify the moment I fell for it and why. When I was very young, maybe 5 or 6, my dad took me to my first hockey game. We watched the Toronto Maple Leafs at Maple Leaf Gardens. We didnt have a lot of money, and its the only game we ever attended together. I can remember walking to that fabled arena, holding my dads hand so I wouldnt get lost in the bustle of the building crowd. I can remember being almost blinded by the glare off the ice. I can remember watching the first period and maybe part of the second, trying to take in all of hockeys crazy action, to parse its peculiar brand of collision physics.And then I can remember leaning into my dad and falling fast asleep.In Canada, hockey occupies the same place in our collective consciousness that baseball does in America, only it has inspired more riots. The rink, the heart of so many of our small communities, is our version of the ballpark as cathedral. The back of our $5 bill used to have an engraving of kids playing shinny on it. The prime minister prior to our current dreamboat was a hockey historian. Arguably the most famous song by The Tragically Hip, our unofficial national band, is about a hockey player who was killed in a plane crash. Most Canadians can tell you that the last goal Bill Barilko ever scored won the Leafs the Cupp.ddddddddddddIf you havent watched a lot of hockey, that romance and poetry will probably be lost on you. Thats understandable. On the surface, its a brutal game, bloody and ferocious, with its welts and bruises and lost teeth. It moves at a frenetic pace, too, the tiny puck sometimes lost in the blur, the shifts only a minute long, the changes in momentum almost too quick to appreciate. Baseball is complicated but slow enough to digest. Hockey is simple but too fast to see.I think everything changed that night at the Gardens when I fell asleep. Thats when hockey started making sense to me, when I didnt try so hard to watch it and instead let it filter through my dreams. The sound of the game stuck in my brain like a song that makes you smile every time you hear it.The distinctive sound that hockey makes is one of its happier accidents, the twin benefit of constructing a game exclusively out of hard surfaces and playing it during the quietest time of year, when the birds are gone and no leaves are rustling in the trees. Ice instead of grass, boards instead of chalk, skates instead of shoes, sticks instead of hands, pucks instead of balls -- each of its base elements makes a noise when it comes in contact with any of its others, all of them frozen solid. The hiss of a blade carving into a wet rink or the bang of a puck shot wide are unmistakable, as distinctive as fingerprints.Hockey might be the only sport that you can follow nearly as well in the dark, which is handy when the winter sun sets well before dinner. Other sports have their telltale noises -- baseballs crack of the bat, basketballs infernal squeaking of sneakers -- but hockeys sounds combine to make a symphony that tells so much more of its story. In other sports, the best plays are often lauded for their relative quiet: the swish of the perfect basket, the soundless connection between a quarterbacks spiral and the soft hands of his receiver. Hockey might never be still, but it is also never silent.I didnt wake up that long-ago night in Toronto until my dad carried me outside the Gardens and the cold hit my face. I can remember looking up at him and feeling confused and lost, except that I was in his arms. That was good enough for me. I closed my eyes again, and for the second time in the same night, I didnt need to see to know everything I needed to know. ' ' '