The Good Ol' Hockey Game

Stompin’ Tom hit the bull’s eye with this one!

When I was growing up in Winnipeg, the fire department flooded the local park baseball diamond every winter and the kids would play hockey after supper. They eventually put up lights, so that we could play later and even maintained the ice through the winter.

One Christmas when I was about 8 or 9 years old, my dad enlisted the help of our next door neighbor who had a woodworking shop in his garage, and manufactured what looked to be regulation style hockey stocks for me and my brother. Never mind that they broke after a couple of games; I can still remember the thrill of holding that new stick in my hands.

I was not a good hockey player by any stretch, as I could never master the art of skating backwards, which some friends seemed born to. Also it was too easy to crush a skinny guy like me along the boards.

When we weren’t skating, we were playing those great hockey board games (a new one every second or third Christmas) with the little flat players in our favorite team colors that swiveled on their posts. This was before the Winnipeg Jets and so the players were usually the Leafs and the Canadiennes.

Hockey is to Canadians what apple is to pie, and though I am not a real hockey fan, I jump on the bandwagon with everyone else when the home team is in the game.

And I am looking forward to my evening as tonight is the Canucks/Ducks first playoff game, and I plan to order some pizza and enjoy. What a relief for fans that Linden scored in the 7th game with Dallas and brought it for Vancouver!

That night as I left work it was wall-to-wall traffic, non-stop horn blasting and the savage wail of victory-intoxicated fans counting coup.

As I passed the little square at Bute and Haro a young Asian traveler stopped me. He looked thoroughly confused and even worried. In halting English he asked, “What is this happening?” The cheers and shouts were also resounding from apartment balconies in every direction.

I replied evenly, “The Vancouver Canucks have beaten the Dallas Stars and are still in the playoffs.”

He looked at me blankly, as though briefly attempting a translation and walked away without a hint that he understood what I had just said!

On reflection, I think “hockey game,” might have been a better answer!