SENATOR BEMOANS ODIOUS PHRASES USED BY U.S. HOCKEY COMMENTATORS.

OTTAWA • One of Canada’s newest senators took a moment Tuesday — on the record, in the Senate chamber — to bemoan how American commentators are ruining hockey.

Sen. David Adams Richards, who recently quit the Independent Senators Group because he said he’s used to being alone, shared his thoughts on the pitfalls of Yankee slang such as “wrister” and “luscious.”

Inspired by it being “playoff time,” Richards mourned how traditional hockey language from “long ago and far away, when I was a boy” is being lost as Canadian commentators are “silly enough to imitate” their American colleagues.

It was an unusual topic choice — other senators that day were seized with things like Iran Accountability Week, Asian Heritage Month and the Aga Khan’s upcoming visit.

But Richards pressed on. Whatever happened to “dipsy-doodling,” the Canadian phrase he said came from knowing “the motion of the ice.” It’s hockey sweaters, not jerseys. Dressing rooms, not locker rooms, he said.

“We didn’t deny a shot; we actually saved it. We didn’t delay at the blue line; we stopped at the blue line. Nor did we take a wrister. What an insulting word. We took a wrist shot. Nor did we take a slapper. What an insulting word. We took a slapshot — and not the movie,” Richards recited. “And none of us from about the age of six months on ever needed a laser beam to follow a puck.”

Calling the phrases “odious,” he accused American hockey commentators of having “no respect for millions of Canadians” who love the game.

“Tragically, Canadians are often forced to listen to American play-by-play commentators if we want to watch U.S.-based teams in the first or second round,” he said. “I know, my fellow senators, that all of this seems petty, but nothing is petty about our game, nor the language we used to illuminate it. Our language enhanced and enriched every aspect of the play because our commentators actually knew what was happening on the ice.”

A few minutes in, Richards was making a point about how Canadians haven’t won a Stanley Cup since 1993, how 75 per cent of “our best players” are in the United States. He was taking significant issue with Fox News commentator Shep Smith when the Speaker cut him off because his time had expired. Senators applauded.

His office provided the tail end of the statement. The last paragraph began, “My fellow senators we still have Winnipeg.”

The acclaimed New Brunswick novelist, who was appointed to the Senate last August, delivered one of his first op-eds as a senator last week. In it, Richards describes an uphill battle to make language his life’s work. “I sold my first book for $200. I was a kid who quit university to write. That was the start of my career, over 46 years ago. When I was writing my third book, we sold the car to pay the rent. That was the year I earned $587.63.”

Decades later, in 2001, Richards wrote a book called “Hockey Dreams,” in which he worried about the foreign takeover of the sport. “They will not take this away from me,” he asserts in an excerpt.