Death knell hasn’t rung for our game
Plenty of Canadians still vying for Cup, writes Ari Yanover.
Hockey is Canada’s game. It’s an easy phrase; one that rolls off the tongue. It’s helped by iconic imagery, from cold Snowy Mountains with rinks embedded in them to the simple act of camaraderie when celebrating an Olympic or world junior championship goal.
After all, hockey as we know it today was born in Canada: a game adapted to our environment, fitted to national values. It’s key to the national identity.
Except that as the NHL playoffs kick off, no Canadian teams will be taking to the ice. Forget hockey season, hello golf season.
Does that make hockey not Canada’s game anymore? Hardly, though that hasn’t stopped people from wondering. Even if no Canadianbased NHL team will be holding Stanley Cup parades this summer, the Cup is still coming back to Canada, as it does every single year.
Every winning player gets his day with it, and with 444 of the 881 players who played an NHL game this season hailing from Canada, it’s basically impossible to find a team without a Canadian on it.
From there, the picture becomes very clear: Canada is extremely good at producing elite hockey players.
Quantity doesn’t always guarantee quality, but having such a vast talent pool to draw from certainly helps. So much of that talent pool comes from Canadian kids absorbing the national culture and wanting to be a part of it. So they get skates — if they can afford them. They get outfitted with various protective gear — if they can afford it. And they pick up their sticks and go to the rink — if they can afford the ice time.
As great as Canada is at producing hockey players, minor hockey numbers are going down. It’s an expensive game; so much money goes into even just practising that the idea of playing full seasons year after year can be daunting. A Hockey Canada survey found parents were spending about $3,000 on minor hockey in
The picture is clear: Canada is extremely good at producing elite hockey players.
2011-12; a 2014 Global News report found it costs, on average, $5,500 per player to play in the Greater Toronto Hockey League.
Efforts are underway to try to reverse this trend. But while Bauer, the hockey equipment manufacturer, has a program geared specifically toward getting kids into the game at a reduced cost, it will always be cheaper to pick up a soccer ball.
But it isn’t just cost that can keep talent away from the game. Now more than ever, we’re aware of the impact of head injuries and concussions — and we still don’t even know that much about them. To expose developing brains, in particular, to potential repeated trauma is enough to give any parent pause.
One can take all the precautions in the world, but the very nature of hockey — its speed, its unpredictability, even just its icy environment — makes it dangerous. Why risk it? Because, simply: hockey is Canada’s game. It belongs to many others, too, but it’s such an integral part of this country’s identity that the phrase holds merit. We’re all in this together, and sometimes, that “this” is simply sitting down and watching a game, if not personally going to the rink to play.
But it also has to involve helping those who can’t get there. It has to involve continued sports science and head trauma research. People don’t have to play to be part of the culture, but some kind of participation is required to keep it going.
No Canadian teams in the NHL playoffs are the least of our worries; Canadians will still be playing in June.
What about the future Canadians who will one day be playing deep into the spring? Maybe it will be for a team north of the border — but that doesn’t matter if they never get the chance to begin with.