Fun and Games - Hockey Culture

"He shoots! He scores!" is one phrase that defines Canadian culture. No one here has to ask "He shoots what?" A puck, of course. And "scores"? Well, it does have other meanings, but #1 is always a GOAL. Hockey is the game that unites this country. Hockey fever is hottest at this time of year, play-off time, when teams from the National Hockey League (NHL) vie for the Stanley Cup. Like believers who only attend their place of worship for the Big Holidays, fans who never sit through an entire broadcast all year become fanatics again. Grab a bag of munchies and some dip, and come on over.

In my hometown of fewer than 300 people, I started life as a hockey fan. With brothers in two different age groups, and senior men's league games, I spent hours in the rink every winter. Total immersion. I was privy to miles of hockey talk. With everyone in the car analyzing goals and assists and the plays that set them up, good penalties and bad, disputed calls, the verbal abuse hurled at opponents, the fights, I learned to love and appreciate the game. Maybe that's why, even today, I like to listen to the play-by-play, but I sit and watch the intermissions closely, especially Coach's Corner.

But my favourite hockey memory is of a story in Peter Gzowski's The Game of Our Lives, when a player recalls the magic of racing with the fishes--on first ice, when that glass-clear layer on sloughs and rivers suspends the skater between a world of cold crisp air and the reeds and pond life below. A perfect image of our connection to nature, of how play puts us in our place.

You can tell that my memories are those of a fan, so I asked the player I know best for his perspective. Neil Bridgeman plays for the Notre Dame Hawks, a Bantam (under sixteen) minor hockey league team in Manitoba. Ten years ago his parents made him take two years of skating lessons before he was permitted to start, at age, seven, playing organized hockey. He came into his own some five years later when his height and weight and skating skills combined to help him master the bodycheck (permitted in Manitoba only for players older than twelve years). "I found I used my size as a weapon as much as I could," Neil says. " My opponents played differently around me because I focused on playing the body."

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