The not-so-lonely end of the rink

Equipment all bought and tried on once (everything from the early entries plus a neck guard which, to their credit, came from Canadian Tire...), I went into the weekend feeling good. Better than good, I was excited. Hyper, even.

Friday night I made it down to the former home-away-from-home of renowned hockey fans and players such as Stompin' Tom Connors, Blue Rodeo and The Tragically Hip: the Horseshoe, where a friend's band - The Stormalongs, if I can shill: www.myspace.com/thestormalongs - was opening a four-band bill, and in on the fun were my good friends Marshall and Ian, equally suffering Leafs fans who were once my colleagues at the Gazette and the Globe and Mail, with the latter also being a roommate during the internship summer of 2005, my first round of life in Toronto.

Toronto may be commonly thought of as the biggest hockey market in the world - though it's not the biggest market with an NHL team (New York, Detroit, L.A., Chicago, Atlanta) - and sure, our city's passion for its team wanes with every own-goal or give-away only to swell back up when the slightest of wins is eked out, from game to game and season to season. But I don't know that it's right in Toronto where you find the true die-hards. Leafs Nation, as it's called, covers most of Ontario, though the Detroit Red Wings seem to have defended a few Canadian settlements successfully over their near century of professional hockey (Windsor and Sarnia, of particular note). In SouthEastern Ontario, if such a place truly exists, you'll get a few Sabres fans, and this is a sect that, unlike deeply-entrenched Wings fans, has (I believe) willfully turned its back on the Maple Leafs, and chosen a team that only joined the league in 1970. While they - and the Ottawa Senators, who joined in 1992 - have made the Cup final more times than the Leafs since they each joined the league (twice, 1975 and 1999; and once, 2007, respectively, to the Leafs' goose egg) - so far, rooting for these teams has been equally futile. Especially you, Ottawa - see you in the playoffs...

Ottawa and Buffalo are to an extent manufactured hockey markets, and in all, this might be what's wrong with NHL expansion in general: we have fewer and fewer fans that truly spring up from the soil, that is to say from the players. These two towns are better than most, because in these cities, at least there are players being home-grown. Ottawa has a tradition, though it was dormant for over 60 years, and the original Senators won some Stanley Cups for which this new franchise shamelessly claims the glory. And hockey in Upstate New York might be still more synonymous with the Rochester American than with their beloved "Sabe's" (as the border guard we talked to on our way to the Bruins' game called them, proving that there is at least a following). This tradition in mind, though, expanding to these markets requires unnaturally tearing fans away from their beloved Leafs, Canadiens, Rangers or Bruins and demanding that they root for their home team. These markets are somewhat created, but it at least makes sense, as there will be some passion already there.

But the last four teams to relocate left Hartford, Winnipeg, Quebec and Minneapolis, cities surrounded by remote outposts where young boys (and increasingly, girls!) fall in love with this game because they have a ton of open space complete with ponds, small communities that have no points of interest beyond their rink and coffee shop, and what seems like six months of winter to practice in and look forward two. (There are two Canadian seasons: hockey and road work... and young hockey players build muscle doing road work all summer, by and large.) These teams moved to Raleigh-Durham (NC), Phoenix, Denver and Dallas, none of which can truly be thought of as hockey markets. The trick, I suppose, is to follow the money: just park your franchise in a booming city and hope that it sticks. In other words, step in and lose your shirt trying to compete with the NFL, NBA and - in the last ten years, in two of the three markets - Major League Baseball. I don't know that similar difficulties were faced in the opposite direction by the Expos and the Blue Jays in their early years, but at least they played in different seasons than the hometown favourites.

Look at the American marketplace: Football starts in August, and is number one in that month, number two for the month or so of the MLB playoffs, then reclaims its crown in November. Into that second spot, though, hockey never slides: hockey's opening night is overshadowed by baseball's brightest moment, and about a week afterwards, if that, basketball opens its season and takes over that spot, keeping hockey a distant third in the minds of most sports fans in these markets. Hockey stays third until after the Super Bowl, then may spike for the month of February. By the end of March, baseball's spring training is in full swing, and their season opens in April, about four days before the NHL playoffs usually start, leaving the best part of the season to go head-to-head with the return of the boys of summer. Add to this mix the PGA (which is pretty much year-round, nowadays, and has been helped by a Wayne Gretzky of its own in Tiger Woods) and in hockey's new favourite markets in the American South, NASCAR (again, Jeff Gordon is the prodigy), and hockey is hard pressed to capture the eye of most fans in most of its markets. (Actually, in Nashville's opening season, a poll was taken around the city, and it came back something like 3-to-1, Jeff Burton to Wayne Gretzky, as the most famous sports figure to ever wear no. 99. One-time Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Mitch "Wild Thing" Williams also received a few votes.)

If you really sit down and think about it, you'll notice that only a few cities in the NHL are really intuitive hockey markets: Montreal, Toronto, Detroit, Boston, New York, Chicago (pushing it), Buffalo, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, Minnesota, Cleveland/Columbus, and squeaking in, Vancouver, along with the three that were killed and didn't get their teams back; the sort-ofs would include Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and in three of those cities, it took a couple of Stanley Cups before a following was developed. In the rest of the league, though, it's been a case of going where the economy goes: Los Angeles and St. Louis joined the league in 1967, and have had equally pointless existences 40 years on, with the Blues making three Cup finals when they were the best of the bad teams (six new expansion teams in one division, the six originals in the other - yeah, that was fair!), and the Kings getting through once in the 1993 Screw Job only to get man-handled by the Canadiens. (Interestingly enough, both teams the Blues and the Kings employed Wayne Gretzky for a time.)

Many a Leafs fan, instead of blaming chronic mismanagement, will point to an anti-Toronto - or rather, anti-traditional - agenda in the league: the L.A. Kings had to make the finals in 1993 and show off the league's best and most marketable player because, with teams from San Jose and Tampa having just joined the league, it would sell hockey to the South. Within about seven years, in addition to Dallas and Phoenix, added to this list were Anaheim and Miami, then Nashville, Atlanta and Carolina, so it makes for a more and more convincing argument as it appears to have borne fruit. That and Montreal vs. Toronto for the Stanley Cup, though it would have gone down as the most significant Stanley Cup final in recent NHL history, would have been ratings suicide. And while Pittsburgh was just this summer barely supporting its team (despite that it is now owned by the captain who brought two Stanley Cups to town AND currently features the best hockey player in the world), hockey-mad Hamilton again flirted with - and lost its chance at - an NHL team when the Pens' relocation bid fell through. The newest city being kicked around for expansion now appears to be Las Vegas.

Seriously.

Everybody loves their Ice Capades... there's a pile of money to be made by just getting lost as one more show in this wasteland, but this is the precise opposite of what the NHL should be doing. In those 10 or so true hockey markets in the NHL, we live vicariously through our heroes, some of them seeming almost like uncles, big brothers or surrogate fathers our entire lives. I know I won't be the first to admit to crying when Wendel Clark was traded out of Toronto in 1994... and this is exactly the problem in the NHL these days. Now that Ryan Smyth has been dealt out of Edmonton, Steve Yzerman retired and Joe Sakic winding down in Colorado instead of Quebec, who is left that will truly be a heart-breaking deal should he be unloaded? Maybe I'm more impassive than some, but short of Calgary trading Jarome Iginla, or Montreal trading its adopted son Saku Koivu, not one of the over six hundred players in the league will cause a city to mourn if they were shipped out of their current market by morning. Mike Modano is a great player who's been through a lot with only one franchise, and brought his team a Stanley Cup, but do either the city of Dallas or young Texan boys and girls (a) play hockey now that they've identified in little more than a geographic sense as Dallas Stars fans, or (b) really care if Mike Modano lives or dies? Is he anyone's favourite player? Do any kids use his name in running commentary during a game of road hockey, wearing a beat up no. 9 jersey and forcing their little brother to be the dreaded line-mate... who? Jere Lehtinen?? Were Tampa to trade their superstar, Vincent Lecavalier, tomorrow, the city would look to the Bucs' coaching change - the only people who would notice would be the Canadian snowbirds, who are the regular season fans that helped propel the Lightning to the Stanley Cup, keeping the seats warm for the fair-weather locals. And they wouldn't cry - most of them are transplanted, disgusted Leafs fans as well.

Of course, an alternate take on how hockey is trying desperately to grow in the U.S. are those people who say "well, if you're really a fan of the game, aren't you happy that the game is growing?" And the short answer is, yes - but the long answer is no. Not when it's done at the cost of the genetic material in which the sport itself is passed from generation, that is to say people like my friend Ian.

Ian is one of the millions of die-hard Leafs fans who, though living in Toronto, was afflicted well before moving here (via London) from Stratford, ON - not too far from the boyhood homes of Mark Bell (St. Paul's) and Boyd Deveraux (Seaforth), who both currently wear the blue and white. He is one of the truly natural fans of the game, admiring hockey at its highest level from afar as a child while absorbing everything and channelling into his own game. In a large city, you can tune hockey out: the opera, plays, concerts, night clubs, more video stores, movie theatres and even more cable TV access can replace hockey pretty quickly for some. Where he grew up, though, much like where I did, there was never any question as to what was happening Saturday night; as we got older, our parents respectively got cable and such, but the reason Canada fell in love with its hockey night was simply that wherever you were in the country, you could be doing the same thing, watching the same game on the same channel - CBC - that, pending bad weather, might be the only channel on your TV. In most of Canada's smallest town's today, that is still the case, and CBC is the only channel that can be counted on to come in.

If I get any flak from Ian about hockey, though, it's often because I'm admittedly what he calls a fair-weather fan of the Maple Leafs - and maybe he's right. On the other hand, though, I don't know where one finds the energy time and time again to watch a listless group of have-beens and never-weres drag Mats Sundin down night after night, mailing in their performances and allowing the brass to use player injuries as a cover for poor management in what will almost certainly soon be 41 years without even making a Stanley Cup final, let alone winning the bloody thing. Never say never, though: Ian doesn't. If I can tell one secret about him, it is this: I was scared to leave him at home alone when the Leafs failed to re-sign Gary Roberts two summers ago.

Gary Roberts, Cam Neely, Mario Lemieux; Ray Bourque, Al MacInnis, Patrick Roy; Doug Gilmour, Joe Nieuwendyk, Mark Messier. These were the players that our generation was meant to idolize, the untouchables, the truly great among even the very good who brought talent, sportsmanship, class and work-ethic to the rink and everywhere else, every day of their lives. These core values seem to be the ones around which Ian's life is organized, and the players in the blue and white may never stop being his heroes. In short, while I believe in what these heroes may exemplify, I wish that I could follow these leaders as well as Ian does, but I think that I may just not quite understand yet what it is that makes them so special. Most of the time I hold most of the Leafs in a steady disdain, but not Ian. He puts his support behind them almost uncondtionally, and is slow to criticize too much. This makes me think there's a certain something missing in my case, as I haven't had to learn to bring that to the rink - and subsequently, to other parts of my life - as an almost ritualistic behaviour, and haven't absorbed what it truly means for hockey to be life.

Also out with Ian this particular evening, though, was James Mirtle, who many people know as the man behind http://mirtle.blogspot.com who is now an editor and writer at the Globe and Mail. James is one of the best hockey minds I've ever met, and he always has an instinct - and failing that, a source - that informs him of what will happen next in the hockey world. But tonight I would find out a (probably not-so) deep, dark secret about Kelowna James when he found out I was taking up the sport so many years on: "I started to play when I was 14, and I sucked." Point-blank, it was out there: another person whose hockey seeds were planted young, but didn't quite grow out the way one would expect.

This was one of my more encouraging moments so far, and I hadn't even been to the first practice yet: I knew that I might get away with not being good at hockey right away. And I mean, it's not like I necessarily expected to be - I can't even successfully stop on my skates yet! - but I think I had a little better sense of what to expect should this allegedly innate knowledge of hockey not turn me right into the next Gretzky, or even Kris Draper. James and I talked a lot about starting late, and some of my fears were allayed.

Part of my desire to take up this sport, I think, must come from some sense of being left behind, of missing out on a part of my heritage or my nostos, perhaps some bitterness at not receiving my inheritance given the pedigree before me in the fertile hockey soil that is small-town Canada. There is a sense of isolation, of disconnection from this sport, and while I have loved it for as long as I have, it has never been properly close to me. I have been, to cite the latest in a line of Tragically Hip albums - who, I should note, are properly Ian's favourite band! - at the lonely end of the rink most of my life. While Gord Downie seems to be singing about a goalie - the position he plays himself - this song is, to me, about the support a hockey player (especially a goalie) needs, and the speaker in the song is revelling in "joining the rush," with the words of support - "you won't die of a thousand fakes/or be beaten by the sweetest of dekes" - ringing in his ears all the while. It's like most Hip songs that feature hockey, in that it is most definitely built around hockey to some extent, but it is about some greater sense that you can take from hockey: "Fifty Mission Cap" is about the life experience contained in a hat that sits atop a hockey card (in its place of storage, presumably) describing Bill Barilko, while "Fireworks" is a story of love during the Cold War set to the backdrop of the '72 Summit Series. In both cases, the hockey takes a backseat to what the speaker in each song gets from it, which is where the sense of home-grown hockey players comes into it all.

Hockey is in the background of a lot of my life, but it is much more so the backdrop for people like Ian or James; while I can remember where I was when the Leafs were eliminated in '93, and when Canada won the Gold in '02, there's not really much built around it. There's a sense of family or friendship, I suppose, as I remember that I grew fairly close with my father watching the Leafs' magical run that year, and that in 2002, I watched and celebrated with my friends in London, only to call home in near ecstasy to get a completely flat response from him. In fact, if I was to write of my relationship with my father as it was before things got to where they are today, watching hockey would be a vital bonding experience. Not playing hockey, though. If I had to pick a more significant experience, it would certainly be playing catch with him in the yard in the summer while I was in the middle of baseball season.

Those who play seem to carry a sort of unspoken respect among them, for the most part, a code, a set of secret principles that must be learned over a long period of time, but once instilled, is not forgotten. Before even starting, I had an incredible amount of support in just this little conversation with James, from Ian and Aron (who helped Sid set the whole thing up), from Julia and Dan, who I haven't even met yet, who called her a couple of times after we'd bought his equipment - "Make sure you tell him to get equipment tape; Tell him he'll need to go get some long underwear" - and of course, from Sid, who, when arranging this gift, explained the situation to my friends, saying that I wouldn't spoil myself and start playing at this age, but that everyone together could certainly get me to do it.

I had my ups and downs over the last year or two, most significantly my year in graduate school which was a complete letdown (though I made some good friends) and my progression to a job that took a lot longer than expected to be merely satisfied with. At times, though I knew I had the support of my friends, I felt more alone in the world than I ever had. But from the moment we all knew that I would be playing hockey, the support has streamed in from all sources, and I've already had the chance to pass it on. It isn't at all the hockey that's important, though, it's the genuine interest in my progress and my enjoyment that has me most excited.

The lonely end of the rink, to the mindset of those hell-bent on selling this game to those who don't care about it, is Canada, particularly the small towns that might feed NBC or somebody's ratings if they live close enough to the border. They picture these few people from these few nowheres as a forgettable demographic and nothing more; and yet, at the lonely end of the rink, the section reserved perhaps for those unable to join the rush, it is the support among those there that matters most.

A rink, after all, is basically a circle, and though it's got corners, it's one continuous board that really has no end: the circle is only broken when you choose to enter or leave by opening the doors. And the greatest thing about this end of the rink is that just when you're faced up against it, trapped in your own zone with the puck and nowhere to go, a forward bearing down on you, with just a quick flick, though you might take the hit for it, you can play the puck off the boards and watch it skitter the whole way around - often to your defense partner, who will lead the rush back up the ice. This may be the lonely end of the rink, but here more than ever, the end is just the beginning.

Thank you to everyone who has been supportive of not only this hockey endeavour, but also this blog. I know that a few of you out there have read more than one post, which is a chore when they keep coming out so long. While this blog was supposed to be in real-time by now, it appears that the up-to-dateness of it will be bumped back another week or so.

Next: My First Class!