Every four years when the Winter Olympics roll around, your correspondent is engaged in ritual debate, defending the claim that the Games of ice and fire are self-evidently better than the “other” Games. Your correspondent does not ski, can’t skate and has never had the remotest inclination to holiday in the snow. So where does this partiality to the Winter Olympics come from? Usually, these five reasons come up in argument:

1. Steven Bradbury. A parable for the ages.

2. Because of Australia’s more modest status in cold sports, the Winter Games are blessedly less polluted by oi-oi-oi-ism.

3. Jerry Seinfeld’s classic joke about biathlon: “It’s skiing and shooting. That makes about as much sense to me as swimming 50 yards, getting out of the pool and strangling a guy.”

4. When the IOC let those scruffy snowboarders through the door in 1998, the first snowboard gold medallist, the mellifluously named Ross Rebagliati, did his subculture proud by testing positive for – you guessed it – marijuana.

5. Ice hockey.

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The first four reasons reflect a key idea – the Winter Games are more fun because they’re hard to take seriously. And if the five-ring non-circus can be faulted for something, it’s that it takes itself way too seriously. The levity of the Winter Olympics is an ideal tonic.

Reason no.5 is the exception. The ice hockey competition is serious stuff, a world-class sporting affair that just might be the most underrated of the great Olympic events, winter or summer. The game itself has a lot to commend: fast, skilled, easy to understand, with a rather relaxed attitude toward in-game biff. With the stars of the National Hockey League rallying to their flags, the tournament has gained an added gravitas.

Imagine if the Aussie cricket team came together just once every four years, and then only had a short, two-week window to prove its historic pre-eminence in the game. Now you know how Canadians feel about Olympic hockey (and it’s not “ice” hockey to them). Normally placid denizens of the True North go street-riot crazy over the fortunes of this team. If you thought John Howard was a cricket tragic, consider that current Canadian PM Stephen Harper wrote a book about ice hockey history.

Better yet, think of Olympic puck as State Of Origin brought to the Games, if Origin was a five-way rivalry. There’s United States-Russia, of course, burnished by the Miracle of 1980, which the Americans still can’t stop talking about. But there’s also US-Canada (big brother-little brother) and Canada-Russia (ask a Canadian about the 1972 Summit Series). For deeper historic reasons, there’s Russia-Czech Republic (ask a Czech about 1968), and then the most surprisingly vicious rivalry of all, Sweden-Finland. When these two meet, it blows the Scandinavian reputation for agreeableness out of the ice.

With the previous Games in Vancouver, hockey was the hottest of tickets. It should be again in Sochi, where the Russians are out to redress a record of underachievement (one silver, one bronze) since the pros started playing in Nagano in 1998. There’s a fair measure of psychodrama involved – those dominant old Soviet teams, the Big Red Machine, won seven of nine golds over four decades through a mixture of revolutionary style and military discipline, while today’s Russian players are seen to be living the good life in the NHL, earning millions and dating hot tennis babes. Russia’s best player, Alexander Ovechkin, is the archetype: three MVPs playing in Washington, 13-year/$124m salary, engaged to Maria Kirilenko.

Perhaps the most compelling reason to relish the hockey in Sochi is it might be the last chance. The NHL is considering staying out of Pyeongchang 2018. There’s always been a feeling that the NHL hasn’t gotten as much out of its Olympic involvement as, say, the NBA has with Olympic basketball. Part of the reluctance stems from the disruption to the NHL season, but there’s a harsher, unspoken truth – Olympic ice hockey makes regular NHL action look bad.

Here’s hoping the ice hockey pros stay in. If they were to leave, all we’d have left is to try and take curling seriously ...

- Illustration: Christopher Neilsen