Tag: ice hockey

Stanley Cup — The Final Battle

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Yesterday, while most of the world slept, two ice hockey teams began the final conflict in this year’s NHL playoffs.  They’ve already been playing for a month and a half — every second night — back and forth across the continent with one objective in mind: Lord Stanley’s Cup.  This is the most grueling tournament in professional sports.  Yes, I know: World Cup is the Big Kahuna; more people (around the world) watch baseball; rugby is strength and stamina; and Aussie Rules Football  is nothing short of legalized assault and battery.  But, big wow!   Kilo for kilo, the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy on Earth to play for and the most difficult to win. The Cup is reserved for the mentally strong and the physically resilient; no others need apply.  If you can’t cut it, go home: this is a game for the brave.

The rules of the Stanley Cup Playoffs are simple: win 16 games – four against each opponent.  If you do that, the Cup is yours, and, unlike most professional trophies, for 24 hours you can do what you want with it.  Most players take it back to their hometowns to show the parents and their friends.  That’s the thing about the Stanley Cup: it has an old-time feel about it.  It’s small town puppies and lemonade, not big city glitz.  The teams might be located in New York and Los Angeles, Toronto and Montreal, but the players come from Pincourt, Grimsby, Livonia and Ornskoldsvik.  They are the boys of winter who learned the game after school.  They played on artificially frozen ponds, just like their grandfathers did on the real thing.  They understand the heritage of the game and the structure.  They know what it takes to win: straight-edged mental toughness that destroys your opponents’ will before he does that to you.  So again and again and again and again — for two months — young men lace up their skates and fly at each other in a series of full-contact ballets, choreographed at 35 MPH!

Directing a 3 inch rubber disc with a curved stick on glare ice takes the hands of a sculptor.  Delivering and absorbing punishing body checks in full battle dress takes the physique of a dancer.  Constantly remembering your place on the ice — at top speed — takes the concentration of a chess champion.  But to do all these things, night after night, can only be learned by the self-discipline of desire.  These boys want the Stanley Cup more than anything else in the world.  As children, they dreamed about it, played and practiced and skated until their stick and that puck became an extension of their body.  As adolescents, they left their families, missed holidays, forgot birthdays and lost the friends and the girlfriends they grew up with.  Now, as men, they are willing to tape up their injuries, stitch up the gashes, patch over the bruises and ignore the pain and nagging fatigue to take just one skated circle with the Cup in their hands.  Superstition has it that no hockey player may even touch the Cup until he wins it.

To the hockey tribes of North America, the game is more than bone-jarring collisions on YouTube, bare knuckle brawls and concussions.  It is chivalry on ice, played by contemporary cavaliers, with no quarter asked or given.  It is brutal finesse; the meeting of Hermes the Swift and Thor, the Thunder God.  But the Stanley Cup Playoffs are not just a war of attrition, nor is the Stanley Cup a trophy given only to the strong.  In the end, when one team steps forward to touch the Cup for the first time, it will be their mental tenacity that prevails; the strength of mind that has always carried the warrior spirit forward.  It is that indomitable voice that says to each player, night after arduous night — “Once more into the breach  … once more.”

Me?  I’ve never wanted anything that badly.

Hockey’s Back: The Fans Have Spoken!

IMG_00000061As most of you are probably unaware, the National Hockey League of North America was in a labour dispute for nearly half of this season.  You’re unaware of this because ice hockey fans are far more devoted than they are numerous.  The very nature of hockey dictates that it’s a regional sport.  In order to play the game properly, you need large sheets of uninterrupted ice.  Since most of our planet — outside of Canada and Russia — isn’t frozen for half the calendar year, hockey has never caught on worldwide.  Besides, like tennis, jai alai and Grand Prix auto racing, hockey is an affluent sport.  Children, in a playground, don’t spontaneously play hockey.  The game needs some forethought.  One needs equipment: skates, sticks, pucks, body armour and, of course, that sheet of uninterrupted ice.  In reality (despite the myth of the backyard rink) if you’re not middle class and above, you’re not playing hockey.  Of course, none of this is important, now, because the labour dispute has been settled and the world’s finest professional ice hockey league is back in business.

So, what’s the big deal, you might ask?  Of the seven or so billion people on this planet, at a conservative guess, six billion of them couldn’t care less whether it’s game on or puck off in the National Hockey League.  This is true, but the recent labour dispute and its resolution gives us an unique insight into a part of the human experience – the sports fan.

Police_VersoJust a little background.  Humans have always had professional sports.  It was probably SRO at the Roman Coliseum during Slaughtermania IV in the 2nd century.  However, the only reason the Flavians could pack them in, back in the day, was they had a product to sell – in this case, mass homicide – and people who wanted to buy it.  Flash forward two thousand years, and we still have guys like Ronaldo, Lebron James and Joe Flacco who spend most evenings and weekends playing with their balls because tons of people are willing to pony-up unholy amounts of money to see them do it.  Professional sports have always been dependent on the fans (incidentally, the word “fan” is a diminutive of fanatic) and that includes hockey.

There was one telling feature of the recent hockey league labour dispute, though.  Even as the billionaire owners were fighting it out with their millionaire employees to see who gets the lion’s share of the fan’s folding money, the fans (those same faceless nobodies who pay the bills) were treated like crap.  Both sides made a show of being crocodile tear sorry for shutting down the league, but everybody knew neither side was all that sincere, including (there are those folks, again) the fans.  In fact, every word I read, saw or listened to during the entire dispute that even mentioned the fans (there weren’t that many) essentially said they were getting screwed – again.  My point is nobody (owners, players, the media or Marge the traffic cop) made any attempt at disguising the fact that the National Hockey League and its employees didn’t give a rat’s left buttock for fan loyalty, fraternity or any of the other “tys” they so proudly expound.

Fast forward to the end of the lock-out.  Gary Bettman, Commissioner of theIMG_00000060 NHL, walked up to the microphone and said, “Sorry!” and that was supposed to make it all right.  Ready for a shock?  It did!  Less than a week later, every pennant-waving, jersey-wearing, overpriced-beer buying, “I’ve just been treated like dirt” hockey fan was back at it, as if nothing had ever happened.

I know there are thousands of people sitting in classroom all over the world right now, studying sociology and the behaviour of groups.  Save your money, folks: it’s obvious human groups are stupid.  It would have taken exactly one hockey game with zero attendance to scare the National Hockey League into treating their fans properly — three hours of silence, after four months of getting pooped on.  Not a bad use of the fan’s enormous purchasing power; unfortunately, nobody even considered it.  Instead, hockey fans all over the continent were literally standing in line to start shelling out their coin again.  This proves, beyond all argument, that in groups of more than a dozen, sports fans haven’t got a brain cell among them.  I suppose that’s why they’re called fan-atics.

The Stanley Cup Playoffs: The Rites of Spring

Although it’s going unnoticed by most of the world, today is the start of the toughest sporting event on the planet: the annual Stanley Cup Playoffs.  Yes, I know: World Cup is the Big Kahuna; more people watch baseball; rugby is strength and stamina; and Aussie Rules Football is nothing short of legalized assault and battery.  But, big wow!   Kilo for kilo, the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy on Earth to play for and the most difficult to win.  Tonight, sixteen ice hockey teams will start a two month marathon which is the most grueling tournament in professional sports.  Lord Stanley’s Cup is reserved for the mentally strong and the physically resilient; no others need apply.  If you can’t cut it, go home: this is a game for the brave.

The rules of the Stanley Cup Playoffs are simple: win 16 games – four out of seven against each opponent.  If you do that, the Cup is yours and, unlike most professional trophies, you can do what you want with it.  Most players take it back to their hometowns to show the parents and their old friends what they’ve been doing for the last couple of years.  That’s the thing about the Stanley Cup: it has an old time feel about it.  It’s small town puppies and lemonade, not big city glitz.  The teams might be located in New York and Los Angeles, Toronto and Montreal, but the players come from Pincourt, Grimsby, Livonia and Ornskoldsvik.  They are the boys of winter who learned the game after school.  They played on artificially frozen ponds, just like their grandfathers did on the real thing.  They understand the heritage of the game and the structure.  They know what it takes to win: straight-edged mental toughness that destroys your opponents’ will before he does that to you.  So every second night (or thereabouts) for the next two months, young men will lace up their skates and fly at each other in a series of full-contact ballets, choreographed at 35 MPH.

Directing a 3 inch rubber disc with a curved stick on glare ice takes the hands of Picasso.  Delivering and absorbing punishing body checks in full battle dress takes the physique of Baryshnikov.  Constantly remembering your place on the ice — at top speed — takes the concentration of Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer combined.  But to do all these things, night after night, travelling back and forth across the continent can only be learned by the self-discipline of desire.  These boys want the Stanley Cup more than anything else in the world.  As children, they dreamed about it and practiced and skated alone with the puck until the stick they carried became an extension of their arm.  As adolescents, they lost teeth, forgot birthdays and missed the girlfriends they grew up with.  Now, as men, they are willing to tape up their injuries, stitch up the gashes, patch over the bruises and ignore the pain and nagging fatigue to take just one skated circle with the Cup in their hands.  Superstition has it that no hockey player may even touch the Cup until he wins it.

To the hockey tribes of North America, the game is more than bone-jarring collisions on YouTube, bare knuckle brawls and concussions.  It is chivalry on ice, played by contemporary knights, with no quarter asked or given.  It is brutal finesse; the meeting of Hermes the Swift and Thor, the Thunder God.  But the Stanley Cup Playoffs are not just a war of attrition, nor is the Stanley Cup a trophy given only to the strong.  In the end, when one team steps forward to touch the Cup for the first time, it will be their mental tenacity that prevails; the strength of mind that has always carried the warrior spirit forward.  It is that indomitable voice that says to each player night after arduous night — “Once more into the breach  … once more.”

I’ve never wanted anything that badly.