I can’t believe it’s been 40 years!

Sydney Crosby – down and out.

The injury to Sid the Kid was international hockey news. His anticipated return to competition was the topic of speculation for months through 2011 in coffee shops from Cole Harbour to Trail. This particular photo of the young superstar on his knees captures both the individual’s hurt and pain, and the sorry state of the NHL with its inability to deal properly with head blows.   2011 was the year of the concussion-discussion – and Sidney was at the centre of it all.

Honourable mentions for Canada’s photo of the year include the victorious smile of Prime Minister Stephen Harper on election night; the cane-waving of campaigner Jack Layton; and the hockey rioters in Vancouver after the seventh game of the Stanley Cup Finals. 

Across our great Canada, we all have it – HOCKEY FEVER!

And to celebrate the dropping of the puck for the first game of the Stanley Cup Finals, By George Journal is posting a few gems relating to this grand game and classic championship series.

#1 – An excellent expose of Don Cherry

Here is a must read by Vinay Menon of the Toronto Star:  “The wonderful, unlivable life of Don Cherry”

http://www.thestar.com/sports/hockey/article/998677–the-wonderful-unlivable-life-of-don-cherry

(ed. – By George will be tweeting “Cherry Bombs” thru the next few days – nobody can call ‘em like Grapes!)

# 2- One of our favourite hockey quotes of all-time is the gem from Flyers coach Fred Shero.

“We know that hockey is where we live, where we can best meet and overcome pain and wrong and death. Life is just a place where we spend time between games.”

#3 – Here are 10 Stanley Cup quotes to whet your appetite.

• You know, I’ve held women and babies and jewels and money, but nothing will ever feel as good as holding that Cup. – Wayne Gretzky
• Nothing has ever matched that thrill! – Gump Worsley
• It was crazy. At the moment it’s just like, ‘We won the Stanley Cup’ and that’s all you’re thinking about. To play this game, this is the only thing I want to do in the world and be a part of moments like this. – Patrick Kane
• We’re brothers for life now. We’re champions. We’re champions for life. This is the pinnacle of our sport, and we won it, and I can’t tell you how I feel. – Kris Vertseeg
• A lot can happen during a season. You have to have an awful lot go right to win a Stanley Cup. – Bob Clarke
• Win today and we walk together forever. – Philadelphia Flyers Coach Fred Shero
• This dream is gonna last forever. Don’t you dare wake me up! – Jim Paek
• Nobody’s a natural. You work hard to get good and then work to get better. It’s hard to stay on top. – Paul Coffey
• It is a feeling I cannot explain, like seeing the sun coming up in the morning…it’s wonderful. – Pavel Datsyuk
• I’ve seen it in the Hall of Fame in Toronto. I have stayed away from it… the day that I even get a picture or touch it will be the day that I’ve earned it. – Claude Julien

Enjoy! GOOOOOOO CA – NUCKSSSSSS!

This is from the department of “Only in Canuckistan.”  Straight in from left field, we have two aspiring PhDs claiming that Don Cherry is warping Canadians’ minds and altering our national identity.

In their review of Hockey Night in Canada’s Coach’s Corner, the brains of University of Western Ontario observe that Cherry goes unchallenged when making his statements about Canada’s military. By presenting “an understanding of Canadian identity through the lens of hockey analysis,” Cherry is promoting a “tougher”, right-of-centre national identity – one that doesn’t reflect our diverse country.

Co-author John Nater states: “His view of Canadian identity would appear to be a limited one, focused very much on traditional Canadian immigration from western Europe and the United Kingdom. The concern is it does exclude a large segment of the population . . . from non-traditional ethnicities. He is entitled to represent these views and put out his understanding of (national) identity, but the challenge with his position is they are not challenged. He is presented as a hockey commentator and there’s no challenge function to what he says on non-hockey related issues.”

The authors of the study have gone so far as to suggest that the popularity of Cherry may be indicative of a shift in the Canadian politics. Nater observes: “This very much reflects a lot of the things that are happening politically. You look at Toronto (with the election of Mayor Rob Ford), you look at nationally now, it seems to be a shift to more of a small-c conservative point of view. I think Cherry reflects that — going to traditional values, the support for the Canadian Forces, the support for a strong questioning of patriotism or one’s love of country.  It’s very much a strong view that Canadian identity rests on a tough image, a support for the troops and (goes) back to an older era — an idealized era — that looks at how you see Canada being a traditional British Anglo-Saxon country.”

Here are some of the findings from the study that looked at every Coach’s Corner segment from the 2009-10 NHL season:

• On a consistent basis, Don Cherry is almost as likely to talk about the military as he is to talk about hockey itself.
• The words “troops,” “battle” and “war” appeared nearly as frequently as references to hockey teams. “Leafs” was mentioned 11 times; “troops” 12 times; the “Princess Pats” (Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry) 9 times.
• The most mentioned word, with 47 references, was “fight,” “fights” or “fighting.”

Seriously, only in Canuckistan would we be criticizing someone who honours and is vocal about his support of our troops…. Don Cherry’s Coach’s Corner is very popular, perhaps iconic in our country. Canadians love of Grape’s frankness speaks for itself. 

The PhDs’ work is entitled The Wrath of Grapes: Don Cherry and the Militarization of Hockey. Read more about this study here [SOURCE]:

http://www.canada.com/technology/CHERRY+ALIENATING/4799224/story.html

The Walrus feature article this month is a review of the current state of hockey in Canada. David MacFarlane and Michael Adams take a look at how Americans are hijacking our game. It’s an up-dated review of an old lament as MacFarlane travels to arenas in Nashville, Florida and Phoenix.   

http://www.walrusmagazine.com/articles/2010.06-sports-hockeyland

What makes this article noteworthy is the public opinion polling that accompanied the authors’ reflections. Three-quarters of Canadians (76%) believe that hockey is a key part of what it means to be Canadian. Now, having said that, here are a few findings that challenge our view that hockey signifies Canada’s heart and soul.

• One in two Canadians (54%) say hockey should remain Canada’s national sport.
• Only 36% of Canadians say hockey is their favourite sport (football comes second at 10%).
• Only 21% of Canadians say they love hockey. 31% of Canadian men say they love it, while only 12% of women say they love the sport.
• Only 38% of Canadians think fighting is an acceptable part of hockey. 42% of all Canadians like what Don Cherry has to say about the game – and this admiration rises to 60% amongst huge hockey fans.     

On the same subject, there is a recently published book from McGill-Queen’s Universities Press called Canada’s game – Hockey and Identity. This 2009 collection of learned essays focuses on the game of hockey and its impact on the psyche of Canadians. 

In one essay, Bruce Kidd’s and John Macfarlane’s 1972 work “The Death of Hockey” was quoted:

     … not very many Canadians play the game we call our national sport. Despite the soaring teenage registration of the CAHA there are just two kinds of hockey in this country: the hockey we play for a brief few years during adolescence, and the hockey a few hundred professionals provide as a televised spectacle. Left out are hundreds of thousands of Canadians who ski and curl, play golf and tennis, who love hockey as much they did when they were kids but who have been relegated to the sidelinbes as spectators. We play hockey to win, we play hockey to make money, but we have forgotten what it is to play hockey for fun. That, more than anything else, signals the death of hockey.

BTW – the subtitle for “The Death of Hockey” is  “Hockey no longer a dream of the Canadian Everyman”

From reports the whole of the Canuck nation watched spell-bound as our Canadian heroes battled victoriously for the gold medal of hockey! Canwest News writes:

     More than 22 million Canadians were glued to the tube when Canada’s Sidney Crosby scored his Olympic gold medal-winning goal against the United States on the final day of the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

      To put that into perspective, that’s pretty much the number of people who lived in Canada in 1972, when Paul Henderson scored the game and series-winner in the epic Canada-Russia showdown. Guess we like our hockey, eh?

      On Friday, the Bureau of Broadcast Measurement confirmed 16,674,000 people watched the Olympic men’s hockey final and when the game went into overtime and Crosby hollered “Iggy” and then flicked Jarome Iginla’s pass past a startled Ryan Miller in the U.S. goal, that audience had peaked to 22 million.

Wow! In a nation of 34 million, there were 22 million from coast to coast cheering on Sid the Kid’s feat of timeless glory! The news article goes on to quote a sociologist as saying that in international matches involving our boys on blades, hockey is “Canada’s flag-bearer sport.”  View the full articles here:

http://www.canada.com/sports/2010wintergames/Gold+medal+hockey+showdown+netted+million+Canadian+viewers/2677509/story.html

So, when we consider what it is that unifies and provides a sense of belonging for Canadians, can anyone argue with this Journal’s contention now that hockey is the glue that binds our country!

https://www.bygeorgejournal.ca/?p=460

Sidney Crosby’s overtime goal will be etched in the memory of every Canadian who watched that gold medal performance. Like the Canada-Soviet ’72 series and Paul Henderson’s heroics was for generations of Canucks, the Crosby goal will be the defining moment of our country’s game for younger generations. 

It was a glorious goal. That goal will live on in Olympic lore, in Canadian hockey history – in infamy.

It is Canada’s latest, greatest moment!

Here are some memorable comments and reactions from Sid the Kid’s OT winner: 

• I didn’t see it go in, I just heard everyone scream. Every kid dreams of this opportunity — it could’ve been anybody else. – Sidney Crosby
• We’d been talking together all tournament as a line – and communicating with each other. He (Crosby) was yelling for it – was yelling pretty urgently. There are different pitches of yells; this was loud. – Jarome Iginla
• That’s Sid for you.  There’s a reason he’s the best player in the world. He always shows up in those big moments and scores those big goals. – Ryan Getzlaf.
• There’s nothing that Kid can’t do, or hasn’t done already. – Jonathan Toews
• Guys like that find a way. – Chris Pronger
• I’ve always been proud to be a Canadian. It doesn’t have to mean going to an Olympics. You could see the passion tonight, the passion for hockey, but also everything in general. I’m proud to represent that. – Sidney Crosby
• That’s a roller coaster ride to get scored on with 20 or so seconds left. Then to win it in overtime, and that’s really what you dream of, to win it in overtime. We had the right guy scoring the goal. – Dan Boyle
• I feel like shit. – U.S. goaltender Ryan Miller.
• It’s so fitting. It’s funny. There’s so much pressure on him. I mean, we win a semifinal game and we’re into the finals and all people are asking is: ‘But what about Sid? What about Sid?’ You know, he’s playing well. He’s playing hard. He’s getting lots of chances. They’re always trying to shut him down. That’s the first guy they think about. And he just keeps going. He just keeps playing hard. He just keeps battling. He had a great tournament and people aren’t satisfied unless he gets two or three goals a game. And it never fazes him. It’s all about the team and he just goes about his way. It is awesome to see him finish it. – Jarome Iginla
• I just keep going back to: He’s (Crosby) such a young person. And to have the weight of the country on his shoulders, and it’s not just necessarily good enough for him to win, he’s got to lead the team in scoring. That’s a lot to put on a young player. So I thought he had a good tournament. I thought he conducted himself well under immense pressure. I think he did fantastic. – Steve Yzerman
• It’s an incredible relief.  In October 2008 we became a staff and began our preparations. And we’ve been thinking about this day and dreaming about it daily for 18 months or whatever it’s been. It’s an incredible relief when our goal was just to win. Regardless of how well we played, we had to win. – Steve Yzerman
• This game showed all the good there is in hockey. The heart and determination everybody plays with; the battle level, the character of the athletes. It’s a pretty special sport. It was a fun game to be a part of. Wish I could be on the other end of it. – Jamie Langenbrunner
• The nation of 34 million fanatics is on top of the hockey world today thanks to Crosby’s magic, and all is well in the Great White North. – Wall Street Journal