Warm Hockey Nights

Order is restored as Canada's teams return to prominence

Certain countries are identified with one sport -- for example, golf in Scotland, sumo wrestling in Japan -- but surely no nation is so emotionally connected to a game as Canada is to hockey. This is the golden anniversary of television's Hockey Night in Canada -- or La Soirée du Hockey -- 50 years of one CBC program, and Canadians of a certain age can still recite the announcer Foster Hewitt's classic old opening: "Hello, Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland!" With those words, a whole nation would instantly be joined together. It is ever so. Many Canadians still swear that the Hockey Night theme song is more familiar than O Canada itself. Don Cherry, an old bush-leaguer and the controversial feature announcer on Hockey Night, is now alleged to be the most recognizable Canadian of all ... well if it isn't Wayne Gretzky.

Alas, this sustained devotion to hockey has led to trauma and angst up there in what we Americans rather paternally refer to as "our neighbor to the north." (I have the feeling Canadians don't ever call us "our neighbor to the south.") For Canada has seen first the Soviet Union become world champion, and then all sorts of other European countries grow into serious ice powers, while the National Hockey League -- once almost wholly peopled by those of the Canadian persuasion -- is now barely half-Canuck. Moreover, in a league that is suffering huge financial losses, Canadian franchises are particularly fragile because the American dollar is so strong.

But, glory be, the worm has turned. In February, Canada won its first Olympic gold medal since 1952, and both the nation's flagship franchises, Montreal and Toronto, are in the NHL playoffs. No, neither is expected to win the Stanley Cup, but both the French favorites, Le Canadiens and English-speaking Canada's Maple Leafs are at least, at last, competitive again.

What is so curious about hockey and Canada is that the game seems so ... well, so un-Canadian. It is not only Americans who think of our neighbors to the north as tolerant, reserved people, so disposed to be gentle that even the mildest of observations are qualified with a rhetorical "eh?". In polls, Canadians themselves boast of their diffidence and politeness. But, of course, hockey is a pell-mell, take-no-quarter game -- "organized chaos," in the phrase of Ken Dryden, the great goalie who now is President of the Maple Leafs.

Perhaps hockey is the outlet Canadians need for their Walter Mitty alter ego. In particular, Cherry dresses outlandishly and speaks outrageously, expressing opinions that range from the jingoistic to the antediluvian. He regularly questions the manhood of all European players and longs for the days when unhelmeted, unteethed, uneducated Canadians yet filled the NHL rosters, scrapping like real men. The consensus is that whereas most Canadians disagree with Cherry, they live vicariously through him. Would that we, too, could be so pushy, eh?

A hockey game is a far, far better thing to see in Canada. The fans watch with devotion and wisdom, alike. And in their pride they have decided that they have not lost their love to the wider world, but, that by embracing hockey, other nations have only shown good taste. Every rink, wherever it is, is a little bit of Canada.

Sports Illustrated senior contributing writer Frank Deford is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com and appears each Wednesday on National Public Radio's Morning Edition. His new novel, The Other Adonis (Sourcebooks Landmark), is available now at bookstores everywhere.

The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

 

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