For clarity I just mean watching hockey. As far as American sports go hockey is so much more appealing than football or baseball. It has all the suspense of baseball, the speed of basketball, and the physicality of football plus everyone's skating. Plus they're not constantly taking penalty shots and pretending to get hurt like in basketball. Also strangely enough illegal hockey streams are the only ones I've seen where no one is saying racist/homophobic/transphobic/other reactionary shit.
some good points about the prohibitive cost but i'd also mention it's a really regional sport for the most part for regular people. Ice hockey isn't something a chunk of the country can do in the winter cause we don't have ice, at least not enough to play hockey, and ice rinks are also not super common in a lot of places either. plus it's quite expensive to upkeep a ice rink compared to an indoor gym or outside field. I knew a few kids growing up that did roller hockey with like 2 or 3 friends but it never really had any school teams here in the bay area (as far as i know) and i'd imagine it's kinda similar in other places. A lot of people stick with sports because they may go professional or get a scholarship but i feel like hocky has much less, definitely much less money put into like say high school/college football. Personally I wish we had more hockey, it was always a more interesting sport to me than most ball sports.
What about street hockey? That was commonplace during the summer.