Hockey in Canada

This is one of my favourite seasons of the year. A time to share a little holiday cheer, good food and gatherings with family and friends. It is also the time of year for the International Ice Hockey Federation’s World Junior Championships and a celebration of the game of hockey. 

 

Hockey Canada and the sport of hockey have come under intense scrutiny recently and rightfully so. Distressing allegations of sexual assault and secret hush funds are in the headlines. While Hockey Canada's CEO and entire Board of Directors stepped down in October, the people involved need to be accountable and Canadians want to know the truth. Hockey Canada is a grass-roots organization that works alongside 13 provincial and territorial branches, the Canadian Hockey League, and U-Sports. It is responsible for developing and stewarding the game for all participants at all levels. While they are the primary governing body, Hockey Canada is not hockey. Reprehensible behaviour by a few people involved in the game is not hockey. Hundreds of thousands of kids, juniors, university, senior, and adult rec league players and thousands of local volunteers, coaches, managers, administrators, referees, and billet families are 'hockey in Canada'. Critics asserting that abusive or criminal behaviour are part of the 'systemic culture of hockey' are offering sensationalized and outrageous conclusions.  This is a terrible disservice to the overwhelming majority of good people and families involved in the game. 

 

The ethos of hockey is defined by hard work, selflessness, and dedication. Hockey norms include dressing formally on game days, being gracious and humble, battling hard, sticking up for teammates, and then lining up to shake hands with your opponent, and using words like "us and we" after a loss or a win. For over a century, the most revered players have been admired for their hockey talents, but also their leadership, humility, and generosity as human beings. Red Kelly, George Armstrong, Jean Béliveau, Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr, Guy Lafleur, Ken Dryden, Börje Salming, Mike Bossy, Wayne Gretzky, Joe Sakic, Jarome Iginla, Steve Yzerman, Paul Kariya, Danielle Goyette, Henrik and Daniel Sedin, Niklas Lidström, Hayley Wickenheiser, Patrice Bergeron, Sidney Crosby, Marie-Philip Poulin, and countless others. With any team of high profile athletes (or any ‘celebrated’ group of men), entitled, selfish, or bullying individuals only thrive in a context where leaders model, ignore or tolerate these behaviours. This is not the 'culture of hockey' and it needs to be confronted and dismantled where it exists.

Like many Canadians, I have enjoyed a lifelong love affair with the game of hockey. As a kid, I embraced the full sensory experience of the game. I loved the quiet stillness of an arena very early in the morning, the smell and feel of the cold air on my face, the crunching sound my skates made cutting across fresh ice and the distinct clatter of a puck being handled and snapped off a stick blade or pinged off a crossbar. Chasing around a worn tennis ball in road hockey or playing shinny hockey for hours on a frozen pond or field were great, simple pleasures in life. While these exist in every team sport, as I grew older, I admired the spirit of 'doing the right thing' - hard work, selflessness, perseverance, and inner courage - that are embedded in the game. As a coach and father, these were the values I tried to instil in my players and our two children, as these will make you a good teammate, and more importantly, a better person.

 

Even Canadians who have little interest in sport or perhaps begrudge the popularity of hockey, will acknowledge that the game we invented is part of our identity as a nation with long, cold winters. You will find an arena in every Canadian town and hockey represented in our art, currency, and postage stamps. Many have written about the influence of hockey, including Richard Wagamese*:

Hockey’s grace and poetry...The thrill of it lifts people out of their seats. Dreams unfold right before your eyes, conjured by a stick and a puck on a hundred and eighty feet of ice. The players? The good ones? The great ones? They’re the ones who can harness that lightning. They’re the conjurers. They become one with the game and it lifts them up and out of their lives too.

Peter Gzowski called it "the game of our lives" and Bill Boyd wondered if the "wintry religion" was a metaphor for Canadian life. Intellectually, I understand that Canada is a diverse nation, home to millions of happy and proud Canadians who do not play nor care much about hockey. Emotionally, I want to believe the game is ingrained deep within Canada's soul. We all view the world through a lens coloured by our context and experiences, and Saturdays in our family was a time to gather around the TV to watch Hockey Night in Canada. I was an impressionable boy and young hockey player in 1972 when Canada defeated the Soviet Union in an epic 8-game series in the midst of the Cold War. Stephen Brunt reminds us that the world is changing and "Saturday nights are no longer a great, national communal moment", yet hockey is our game, and still holds a place in our collective identity.

 

'In the Dead of Winter' by Bill Brownridge

Canadians enjoy many sports and all develop skill and build character. More Canadian kids participate in soccer than any other game. 'Football' is easily the most popular sport on the planet, and the recent, thrilling World Cup reinforced that we still have a lot of room to improve. Fans long for the day when our men’s national team joins our women’s side and can win games and championships on the world stage. In the most recent men's World Cup of Rugby, the champion Springboks from South Africa defeated Canada 66-7. The Americans have won 16 Olympic gold medals in men’s basketball and seven in a row in women’s basketball. In Canada, we struggle to reach the podium in many international sporting events, and we should never apologize for being the gold standard in a game we play well. Men’s, women’s, and sledge hockey will continue to be among the featured sports of the Winter Olympic Games and all hockey playing countries are striving to reach and surpass the level of Canada, and several nations are close.

 

The World Junior Ice Hockey tournament pits the best hockey playing countries in the world against one another once a year. The International Ice Hockey Federation actually hosts six different U20 World Junior Championships annually. In 2023, 42 countries will compete in IIHF U20 World Championship Tournaments: Worlds (in Halifax/Moncton); Division I/Group A (Norway); Division I/Group B (Poland); Division II/Group A (Lithuania); Division II/Group B (Iceland); and Division III (Turkey). Canada has won the top U20 World Championship 19 times and are the defending champions. The Russians (or Soviets) have won gold 13 times, while the rapidly improving Americans and Finns have both won 5 titles, and the Czechs and Swedes have each been champions twice.

Russia has not won the tournament since 2011 and was scheduled to host this year, but the IIHF had the moral courage to ban the country from participating in response to the ongoing and brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine (#SlavaUkraini 🇺🇦). When hosted in Canada as it is this year, the games draw thousands of enthusiastic fans, the Canadian games are sold out, and millions watch on television. When held anywhere else in the world, the junior games mostly attract crowds in the hundreds.  Canadians love watching hockey, and especially the World Juniors. We recognize the game in its purest form. Highly skilled, hardworking, young, amateur players who are proudly representing their country playing a game they love. Coming together only ten days prior to the tournament, many are team captains and skilled players who are used to getting a lot of ice time on their respective junior or college teams, who willingly accept a much different and reduced role to play for their country. They skate every shift at full speed: they hit, they block shots, and they play the game with the heart, will and spirit that sets them apart as Canadians. Away from home at Christmas, these teenagers also face incredible pressure as the expectation for Team Canada is to win gold, always.

 

Hockey fans also appreciate the tremendous speed and talent of the American and European players. All of the games are fast, skilled and very physical but fighting and undisciplined play are unwelcome. Over the years, we have gotten a glimpse of international stars as teenagers, just before their rise to professional prominence. Brilliantly skilled players like Pavel Bure, Alexander Ovechkin, Auston Matthews, Trevor Zegras, Jaromir Jagr, Peter Forsberg, Mikko Rantanen, and Leon Draisaitl. However, not every World Junior tournament player is destined for the National Hockey League, and many do not go on to enjoy prominent careers as professional hockey players. Yet we still love to watch because seeing these young, amateur athletes play with incredible heart and passion while representing their countries is compelling, and often inspirational.

Joyous hockey fans celebrating a Team Canada victory. 

 

As in all sports, training and coaching have advanced incredibly over the years and the top hockey nations can match Canada in terms of skating, skill, and preparation. They know that if they play the perfect game, Canada can be defeated. They also know that if they get a lead, Canada will fight back until the final buzzer. Structure and systems are important, but hockey is a free-flowing game, and if you play together with heart, passion, and spirit, you can succeed. This is what separates Canada, still.

 

While I hope the Canadian juniors recapture gold, I look forward to all of the games that begin on Boxing Day. I expect that win or lose, these young athletes will play their hearts out and represent their countries and the sport with humility, pride and class, on and off the ice. This is the culture of hockey.

My dog, Hockey the Labrador. ❤️🇨🇦

*Richard Wagamese's 6th novel was the award-winning Indian Horse. The protagonist, Saul Indian Horse, is sexually assaulted by a teaching priest while living in a Canadian Residential School. Saul's tremendous skills as a hockey player help him temporarily transcend this unimaginable misery. The novel touches on many dark themes in our history. When confronted by peers about playing hockey, Saul takes his time to answer. "It's not a perfect country", he said, "But it's a perfect game."  The novel is well-written, and a powerful and important read.

 

 

Postscript:

Growing up with the game is my bias, and hockey is just a game. At the same time, my experiences provide some capacity to comment on the culture of hockey. Our Dad was an executive in amateur hockey for 30 years and his work emblematic of the efforts of most leaders in the sport. Against considerable resistance, he worked to eliminate stick violence and brawls once common in the game as he believed they were driving many kids away. He also focused his leadership on promoting a grass roots philosophy of 'learning the skills and having fun' and on strengthening the nexus between education and hockey. As a volunteer, he served as the president of the PCAHA and BCAHA (now BC Hockey) and was on the Board of Directors at the CAHA (merged with Hockey Canada in 1994). He was the founder and GM of a successful junior hockey franchise and president of the BC Junior Hockey league (BCHL) at the time of his death in 1991. While not talented enough to represent Canada or have a career playing, I had the good fortune to play Junior A and university hockey and for a few seasons overseas in the late 1970s and 1980s. Teammates and friends played in the WHL, NCAA, professionally in North America and Europe and in Spengler Cups and the Olympics. I later coached the game for many years and observed my son's hockey experiences in junior and college (he graduated in 2019). I spent thousands of hours in rinks, dressing rooms, buses, planes, hotel rooms and on road trips. I am a reflective person and acknowledge that people process the same experiences differently. I have also discussed the current firestorm with many former teammates. We are of the mind that while hockey was imperfect at times, we never once heard nor saw any "toxic culture of sexual assault" in the game. The overwhelming majority of experiences we had and good people we met in hockey enriched our lives and we feel grateful and fortunate. We also agree that the sport must continue to evolve, grow, and improve and that coaching and leadership must model integrity and respect, always. 

 

The greatest threat to the game of hockey in Canada is rising costs. Equipment, skates, sticks, and registration expenses are high. The increasing pressure on parents to pay for private training, skating and skills lessons, spring and summer leagues, and 'elite' or 'academy' hockey has become problematic. Skyrocketing costs will prohibit many kids from ever playing the game and this will be a loss for Canada. Hockey is for everyone is an important campaign - the fine print should not be 'so long as you can afford it'.