Hockey In Canada

An article here in “The Tennessean” calls Canada a bunch of ‘hockey snobs’ for wanting the Predators to move to Canada, presumably Hamilton. David Climer, Senior Writer, accuses us of being hockey ‘snobs’, and that we have been watching too many Hee Haw re-runs. Also, that this desire to see more NHL teams in Canada is driven by patriotism, that “Our Sport rhetoric is as thick as a Saskatchewan accent.” (At least he could type Saskatchewan – wonder what that did to his spell checker?)

Hmmm. Interesting this, coming from a country where baseball is considered the national pastime, and is (or at least, was) so revered that it is exempted from anti-trust laws. And a sport so arrogant that it bills is championship as the “World” series, and did so long before any non-Americans played at the highest level. Even then, I am willing to bet that the number of nationalities represented in both sports is similar. And then NFL, that Goliath of sports, recently folded their league in Europe.

No such exemption exists in this country for hockey. When hockey holds a World Cup, it North America vs. Europe. The World Championships are countries competing, and the IIHF is not based in Canada or North America. And it is the Stanley Cup, the largest trophy for sports in the world, named after the man who donated the original cup, Lord Stanley. Yes, we fret when a team leaves Canada, and that is because we care about the game here, its birthplace. More Canadians watch hockey on Saturday nights than Americans, despite having one tenth the population. And we actually pay money for the broadcast rights. If his line of reasoning was true, we would have seen much angst over Anaheim winning this year – and it didn’t happen because the best team won.

Snobs? More like custodians of the game, who care about where it is played, how it is played, and want to see it succeed wherever it is played.