An actual cutline in Sunday's NYT sports section

Page 10 (my emphasis added):

Andy Oliver got the idea for GearWash, a company that cleans and repairs hockey equipment, when his wife got a whiff of his stuff.

 

it said "stuff" not "junk" or "package"

 

Bad enough!

 

That was my thought. If I'd gotten that page proof from my deskers, I would have had s good laugh and sent it back to the lab.

 

There IS something to the stank that's attached to hockey equipment, though.

Far and away the worst-smelling locker room I've ever been in...

 

Glad it wasn't a scratch-and-sniff feature, I was.

 

I thought this was gonna be a d_b with the chick that wants to smell her dude's dick.

 

Second that. Nothing's even close.

 

Hockey locker rooms smell bad, that much is true. I don't think it's the equipment, I think it's going from ice to regular temps. Kind of like getting all bundled up while going sledding or playing in the snow, you generally don't smell that good after that.

But nothing smells worse than the postgame interview with a baseball coach who sweated through his wool uniform on a hot, humid day/night. Ugh.

 

Nah. I can take the baseball smell (duh). God bless 'em, but hockey's something else.

I think you're right about the ice temps-to-room-temps factor. The wetness causes a rancid humidity that you don't find in any other locker room. Suffocating.

 

I remember walking back to the hotel after the Chicago Marathon one year. Me and several other sweaty runners got into the elevator along with a woman who was decked out in a dress with perfume and everything. I felt bad for her because all of those runners in a small elevator sure did smell. It may not have been as bad as a hockey room, but it was bad.

 

I always assumed that hockey has the worst odor because of the amount of pads they wear that can't be tossed in a washing machine after each game.