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OK, I think I've finally worked up the courage.

I llll…

What I mean to say is, well, I lllllov…

You see, I love y…

I love you, hockey.

There, I said it.

I love hockey.

Castigate me. Chastise me. Cross-check me. I will be heard.

For I love hockey, the forgotten and neglected game. It is the Staten Island of major sports, if you will.

You could love hockey too. Really, I mean it. That’s why I’m here to plead the case for a sport that drops in and out of vogue in Los Angeles faster than you can say, “worn-down, vintage-looking shirt that’s actually brand new and costs $40.”

The old joke about hockey in Los Angeles (actually, it’s not old, because I just made it up, making it the exact opposite of old, but who’s into semantics?) is that every Kings game is sold out, but that the Kings only have 30,000 fans.

So it seems we need a primer for the 3.7 million minus 30,000 people in Los Angeles who may think “blue line” is the name of a swanky Sunset bar.

As fair warning, some of this is going to sound goofy because, well, hockey can seem kind of goofy sometimes. But that’s also what makes it so endearing.

Some fun facts about hockey:

• Hockey is played on ice. Strange!

• Hockey has six Canadian teams. SIX! And it’s totally different from baseball or basketball – people actually go to the games. Odd!

• Two hockey teams went bankrupt this year and stopped paying their players for a while. And one of them, the Ottawa Senators, had the best record in the Eastern Conference. Zany!

• Hockey fans do funny things. In Detroit, they used to throw octopi out on the ice following a goal. In Phoenix, the fans all wear white as part of the “Whitewash.” In Toronto, fans have this great tradition where they think they have the best team in the league every year, scoff at everyone else, then see their team lose yet again.

• Hockey has ties. Ties! I know, how European! But before you go John Q. Jingo on me and start calling French-Canadian hockey players “Freedom-Canadians” or something, you should probably know...

• Once the playoffs roll around, not only are ties gone (obviously), but hockey doesn’t wimp out of games with penalty shots. Nope, these guys go and grit out overtime upon overtime until someone finally scores a goal. Sometimes this means playing the equivalent of back-to-back games in the same night.

If you’re officially in spring quarter mode and looking for any reason at all to keep that course reader closed, hockey overtime it is. Trust me, watching a game go into four overtime rounds is way better for procrastination purposes than, say, “The Real World Battle of the Sexes Marathon.”

Or so I hear.

A sport rich in tradition but penniless in popularity (at least that’s what the Nielsen Ratings say), hockey distinguishes itself from other major sports with the tremendous intensity of its postseason.

It’s like hockey is one big Robert Horry once the playoffs come (pause while you picture Robert Horry on ice skates). Even the most timid Jekyll becomes a rabid Hyde.

This is probably because the Stanley Cup is the most famous trophy in sports. In fact, every player on a Stanley Cup championship team gets a day during the summer with the cup, free to take it wherever he wants.

Members of Detroit’s 1998 championship team discovered the cup could hold 17 cans of beer. The next year, it allegedly ended up in a pool during a Dallas Stars summer party.

Man, I could go on and on. I didn’t even get to talk about how you get penalized for flopping (there’s a reason Vlade Divac took up basketball), or how the mullet is still very much in fashion.

But don’t take it from me. Flip on a hockey game. The rules are quick to learn and the announcers do a great job of explaining the game’s nuances.

Who knows. You just might have some fun, eh?

Agase agrees with Trent from “Swingers”: “The ’94-’95 Kings were a bitch team.”