Another one from the Vaults (with some editing of the editing)...
Recently, WhatCulture stated they had a goal to increase their international sporting audience. I suggested that the easiest way to bring Canada back into the Commonwealth (of reading articles that spell colour and honour correctly) is to write about ice hockey. Pretty much any type of hockey will do it, just as long as you put the words ‘hockey’ or ‘NHL’ in the title and Canadians will link to it faster than an English granny to a picture of Kate Middleton’s ultrasound.
First let’s set the record straight again; this will be the last time I refer to this sport as ‘ice hockey’. To use the term ice hockey is like calling it foot-soccer. Now what better way to promote hockey to a wider audience than to compare it to the 2nd most popular game on the planet after ‘baiting Americans about gun control‘.
Hockey in a sentence is this; foot-soccer on meth, all centered around making things go faster. The pitch is shrunk down from roughly 360 x 230 feet grass playing field to a shoe box like 200 x 85 feet gladiator’s den covered in ice called a ‘rink’ from which there is no escape barring a small door to your team’s bench where another player is automatically supposed to take your place. To compensate for the smaller playing area the amount of players are cut down to six players per team, with four officials of varying abilities and responsibilities watching for penalties, offsides and the occasional stick to the balls.
The primary goal of hockey is speed, which is accomplished by wearing blades of steel on the soles of kevlar-leather boots to increase overall sliding velocity along the ice. The secondary goal of hockey is goals which are much like foot-soccer. Players use objects called ‘hockey sticks’ to move an object ‘the puck’ towards the opponent’s goal, which is much faster than kicking it. When they score into the net, there is much rejoicing on one side and much blaming of the referees on the other. They have 60 minutes to do this as much as possible before the game ends. Due to the need to repair the ice, games are broken up into three ‘periods’ of twenty minutes each. If after 60 minutes, the game is tied, there is a brief 5 minute overtime and then a shootout which goes on indefinitely or until one goalie gets bored and stops trying so he can go home, taking his equipment with him.
Due to the limited amount of space and insane amounts of speed, players can change direction by hitting into each other to stop and start over in another direction (if they are North American players) or turn away from each other and avoid all physical contact (European players). Because of this running into each other, some players get upset about it. In one of the greatest selling points to the game, players can decide to fight someone, or in some cases the other team, and be given only a 5 minute timeout by the referee. Sometimes these spontaneous fights can be quite fun and chaotic (if you are Canadian), other times just a little bit silly (if you are European). After their 5 minutes of quiet time are up, the players are usually allowed back on the ice to either continue to fight or stare menacingly at each other from their respective benches.
Hockey is probably the biggest thing that Canadians care about as they have precious little else to be proud of; they still talk of Vimy Ridge as their crowning military glory and their most beloved/hated hockey celebrity has the fashion sense of a handicapped Austin Powers with the gruff demeanour of your mean old uncle Sal at a family wedding.
The largest hockey league in the world is called the National Hockey League, (NHL) where wealthy, predominantly American businessmen buy franchises and then poach the world’s best players. Much like English football, there are a lot of teams in various leagues of decreasing talent, but only six that really matter. The points system is a convoluted mess that has been arranged so that nearly everyone finishes at .500 and allows for 1/2 the league to qualify for the playoffs. Often the team that finishes in third place in a conference has fewer points than the team that finishes in fourth place. It’s best not to think of this too hard but it happens.
They battle for the Stanley Cup, a 100 year old trophy that is so unique there are three of them; one that is presented to the Captain of the winning team who is congratulated by a chorus of boos by the losing team’s home crowd, another that is on permanent display in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, Canada and a third that is the official replica that goes around and does all the public appearances at fund-raisers, shopping malls and cancer wards.
But now, to the history of the game so you can impress those Canadian tourists at the pub.
The Evolution Of Hockey – The Early Years aka 1900′s-1960′s
During the early years of the NHL the pace was somewhat ponderous and slow. It was hard to keep anyone’s attention due to the myriad of factors that slowed down play; slushy ice, pucks going over the boards, world wars and short daylight hours. The NHL survived these lean years due to the fanaticism of the fans who insisted that hockey was a great game and that the hockey arena was a place where men of all types could wear fedoras and scarves and not look like some douche bag hipster.
Games were broadcast by radio across Canada so that people could have something to do on Saturday nights other than stare into their fireplaces and curse winter while eating ice cream. Hockey was a blue collar form of employment where the players endured horrible meals, horrible transportation and made less than minimum wage for the benefit of their wealthy owners. It was often considered the Golden Years of the NHL by the owners.
There were very few trades during this time; most players played their whole careers for one of the six teams in the league; the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Montreal Canadians, Chicago Black Hawks, Detroit Red Wings, New York Rangers and Boston Bruins. These teams are referred to as the Original Six and you can’t go wrong stating any of these are your favourite teams. Except Toronto, then everybody else will just laugh at you when you go to the pisser.
When not playing hockey back in the old days, men would return to their Prairie farms and ranches and tend to cattle and wheat and breed other hockey players. At one time, there were six Sutter brothers playing in the NHL; the seventh one had to stay home to run the family farm because that was the way it was back then. Eventually, the buzz of playing would wear off and players would find themselves still broke and sore while having the value of a used bag of pucks after retirement.
The 70′s Aka The Expansion Years
In the 70′s, the NHL began to change into something like an Irish family reunion being held in Scotland. An influx of new teams and players made for an interesting experiment in civil disobedience and bleeding head wounds. More owners wanted a piece of the revenue and brought in teams to compete with the established six. While for many players the primary goal of this era was to get out alive, others were relieved to find that their raging alcoholism was considered a job skill by owners willing to do anything to make a buck. These marginal players found that playing hockey and getting into fights diverted only slightly from their primary occupation of getting into fights outside of the hockey rinks. Then one team realized that they had been looking at this all wrong and changed the priorities.
Instead of trying to skillfully get the puck into the net via stick-handling and passing, teams began to beat the crap out of each other while one or two pacifists in the back moved the puck around the piles of pugilists and into the opposing team’s net which made one team stop fighting so that they could congratulate each other. It was during this time, the greatest hockey-related movie of all time was released called Slapshot. This is required viewing if you wish to talk hockey to a true Canadian.
With the advent of new teams and the new-found money to be found in televised games, a separate league was created called the World Hockey Association (WHA) which was great fun for the players because now owners were fighting owners over how much to pay someone to stay out of jail. It was during this era Paul Newman starred in the greatest hockey-related film ever, Slapshot, in case I haven’t mentioned it yet.
The 80′s Aka The Get The Puck To Gretzky Years
Of course, there was the other side of the spectrum too as the Drink wore off and the Cocaine years began in the 80′s. The WHA was assimilated by the much more financially secure NHL, leaving many potential future bar bouncers out of the sport. In the eighties, among the glitter of Reaganomics and Michael J. Fox, a small team from Canada’s most northern city called the Edmonton Oilers changed the face of hockey and started it towards the mess it is today, all due to one kid, Wayne Gretzky.
Even if you have never played hockey, you should know the name; he is hockey’s Michael Jordan, Pele, Tiger Woods, Luke Skywalker. You can read about him here. He broke nearly every record there is in the NHL and revolutionized the way hockey is played and players are paid. By relying on only one or two bodyguards that would beat the crap out of the entire other bench, the Oilers let Gretzky score points by the handful at a pace unprecedented in league history. He was often referred to as ‘The Great One’ and is one of the best ambassadors to the game the league has ever had. Plus his daughter is super-hot.
The Great One became the league’s leading draw and everywhere the Oilers went, the games sold out. Even people who didn’t know just what was going on had to see this kid play. Of course, with this new-found celebrity came the followers, the leachers, the former Union Boss who was embezzling union funds. Soon after another amazing player came along named Mario Lemieux who skills were comparable solely to Gretzky. Lemieux, aka ‘The Next One’ lived up to his billing in later years, especially after Canada’s wet dream of seeing the two of them play together on Team Canada. They teamed up to beat the former Soviet Union’s Red Army team in the Canada Cup in one of the greatest hockey series ever played. Interestingly enough this combination of Gretzky and Lemieux on the same team was a little known contributing factor to the end of the former communist republic (citation needed).
The 90′s Years Aka Please, No More Cotton Eye Joe
Like much of Yorkshire, hockey has evolved rapidly in the last few decades. In the 90′s, the hockey landscape changed. Gone were the close Canadian rivalries between Canadian cities, replaced by American teams in cities that only saw snow when it was cleared off the rink and left to melt in the parking lot outside the arena. The epitome of the decade was when an American team from Minnesota (made famous in the Coen brother’s movie Fargo) moved to Texas, made famous by not being remotely anything like Minnesota.
With Gretzky’s mega trade to the Los Angeles Kings, the NHL quickly hopped on board the public relations dream. They moved non-profitable teams in Canadian cities to non-profitable American cities. The demise of the USSR brought in an influx of Russian/European talent that introduced a new level of talent and flying elbows that new fans grew to appreciate.
To take advantage of this increased popularity, the league introduced a myriad of branding initiatives to gain a strong audience in America which only served to confuse new and old fans. Conferences were realigned to maximize profit and minimize travel costs. The much beloved Canada Cup tournament was retired, reborn briefly as the World Cup and then the league just said ‘screw it’ and allowed the players to go play for their native countries during the Winter Olympics. Teams were continually introducing ‘third’ or ‘matinee’ jerseys to go along with their home and away jerseys. The NHL truly jumped the shark when Disney released the kid’s movie series The Mighty Ducks, then created a real hockey franchise around it.
Despite all this, fighting in hockey was often mentioned as being too violent for an American television audience which is why it would never become truly popular. Yes, you read it right, American television thought it was too violent for America. The television rights and ratings they did receive were relatively small compared to the Big Three and NASCAR.
It’s defining moment came in 1994 when the New York Rangers defeated the Vancouver Canucks in one of the most exciting best of seven Stanley Cup Finals in history and the hockey world was poised to see what the next year would bring.
Then came the first NHL player’s lock out and after that, the wide-spread use of a team game plan called ‘The Trap’ which basically relied on a defence first mentality. While it was widely stated that defence wins games, the Trap was the probably the first real example of it at work. And boy, did it work. Teams that played the much more boring Trap style went on to win Stanley Cups and other teams soon adapted it. Gone were the high scoring games, the end to end rushes replaced by a smothering defence and a media that soon learned that the only real important statistic was the number in the wins column.
1995-Present Aka ‘What The Hell Happened is a Bettman?’
There have been three work stoppages in the last 2 decades of NHL hockey after the appointment of a man named Gary Bettman as commissioner, a dubious record in itself that works to weed out those with only a passing interest, those with a vested interest, and those who just basically stop giving a shit about millionaires trying to get more money from billionaires. Bettman has worked diligently to try to grow the hockey market into the United States, create parity among the strong and weaker teams and take all semblance of violence out of the game; which is pretty hard when the your league’s star player recently gets a puck to the teeth.
What is left after all this are the die-hards, the fanatical, and/or the old and cranky who just like to remind everybody that it was way better back in the old days and they should just watch Slapshot.
Hockey has evolved into a blink and you will miss it reel of highlights, video reviews and dubious sports blog commentators. As much talk is spent on contracts and salary caps as actual goals and assists and any potential controversial decision is analysed from a plethora of television experts. Yet, despite all this, there are moments of true hockey passion, a mixture of grit and talent that remind Canadians of why we love it so much; it is a sport that is integral to our culture, where the idea of policing comes from a player’s code of conduct and not from an outside source that has never felt the thrill of a good tic-tac-goal or the feel of waking up to drive to a 5am hockey practice in the middle of winter.
Hockey is a game that reminds us of the coldness our ancestors faced settling Canada and the joy that they found in the middle of the cold, hard winters, where as long as they had a patch of ice and a couple of sticks, they had fun. It is a sport where you could spend hours skating circles and shooting pucks into a net in freezing temperatures then want to go do it again the next day. It is a game that for the players that love the sport, don’t care if there are 2 people in the stands or 20,000. It is what it is. Hockey. Here to stay.
Bonus Material
Important franchises to know about when discussing hockey:
Toronto Maple Leafs - you either hate them or live in Toronto, in which case you hate them more. A safe conversation starter when you run into a Maple Leaf fan is to ask them what they can do to make their team better.
Way to Make Friends; talk of how Wendel Clark and/or Doug Gilmour were the best leafs ever.
Way to Make Enemies; talk of how Wendel Clark and/or Doug Gilmour were overrated.
Vancouver Canucks - Toronto Maple Leaf light. You love them if you are from Vancouver; hate them if you are from anywhere else. They have the distinction of having some of the worst uniforms in sports history. You blame every loss on your goaltending.
Way to Make Friends; discuss how great Trevor Linden was and how Mark Messier destroyed the team forever.
Way to Make Enemies; say that Marcus Naslund and Todd Bertuzzi respectively got what they deserved.
Montreal Canadians - the Canadian franchise actually in French-speaking Quebec. Everybody loves them no matter where you are from. They once won a record 5 Stanley Cups in a row and love to riot after any playoff series victory.
Way to Make Friends; talk of their record 24 Stanley Cups and how Patrick Roy was the greatest goalie ever.
Way to Make Enemies; remind people that they haven’t won anything since 1993.
Boston Bruins - The Big, Bad Bruins once had the greatest player in the game, Bobby Orr and Don Cherry won’t shut up about it. Their Cup-winning goalie, Tim Thomas refused to meet President Obama because he didn’t vote for him. So, there you go.
Way to Make Friends; talk of how they did everyone a favour by beating the Canucks for the Stanley Cup in 2011.
Way to Make Enemies; Point out that Zdeno Chara, their 6’9 Captain is a freak of nature and should climb back up his beanstalk for the benefit of all the normal-sized hockey players.
Detroit Red Wings - long considered the classiest team in the league, they are consistently among the top teams in the league for nearly 2 decades, having been bolstered by an all-star predominantly European handful of elite players that nobody had ever heard of before the NHL.
Way to Make Friends; Just make a toast to ‘Bob Probert, the greatest enforcer in the game’, while wiping a single tear from your eye.
Way to Make Enemies; State that their team is nowhere as good as it used to be without long-time captain Nicholas Lidstrom.
Philadelphia Flyers - once considered the toughest team in the league and often referred to as the Broad Street Bullies, they have consistently made surprise Stanley Cup appearances only to always lose to some other team that everybody forgets about immediately after.
Way to Make Friends; talk about how crazy Flyer fans are.
Way to Make Enemies; talk about how crazy Flyer fans are.
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