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Game on! It was a very Canadian feeling weekend.On Wednesday we got our first real dump of snow for the year. Up until then, the sky had only made a halfhearted attempt at giving us a 'white Halloween' like we were used to. For wednesday the weather guys had predicted 5 cm of snow, not enough to slow our city down normally. Their prediction was wrong by a fair bit, leaving us all bogged down and traffic moving at less than a crawling pace. Not that I blame the actual weather on the weathergeeks, I figure God and Mother Nature must coordinate on these things. I literally could have logrolled to Sherwood Park faster than I got there driving, although it was nice that nobody was driving crazy and dangerously (except for the semi that tried to run me off the road. Jerk.) On Friday night Bear came home from hockey practice all chilly and crawled into bed with me to talk about how the practice went. I miss being able to go and skate with the girls on Friday nights, but I should get to play again starting in January. Saturday was the 'real Canadian' day in Edmonton: the day of the Heritage Classic Game. This was the day that brought the greatest Edmonton Oilers' Hockey old-timers back together for a game of (basically) shinny on an outdoor rink created in our Commonwealth Stadium, playing against the Montreal alumni team. It was followed by the first outdoor NHL game in its 86-year history. An astonishing 57,000+ fans turned out to watch in the -20 degree weather. Brrrr! Only in Edmonton could you pull this off. Only in Edmonton would you be so proud that the weather was so cold. We take pride in our crappy weather; I think the cold has frozen our brains. It embodied all of the elements that make up the idealized Edmontonian image of Hockey. (Only in this context are the words "the good old days, in the 80's" a valid statement.) The names we knew and loved: Ranford, McSorley, Messier, Coffey, Simpson, Kurri, Gretzky, Tikkanen, Huddy, Semenko, and so many more (I'm sure someone will tell me who I missed). It had announcers shrieking, "Oilers score", "Gretzky to Messier�", "Oilers WIN!!!" in flashback and in real time. It had all the elements of 'the good old hockey game': toques with pompoms that your mom made you wear, smiles so big on faces so frozen that a smile is barely possible, camaraderie on the ice, shovelling the snow off the ice when it got too deep, and everyone went home friends. I kept expecting people to yell "car!" when the Zamboni came out, and "game on" when it was finished. There was no booing, no stopping every 10 seconds for a penalty or a commercial break, no fighting (Canadians are too polite for fighting, no it was just too freaking cold!) It was real hockey! I grew up hating hockey. I was very non-Edmontonian, even non-Canadian in that sense. My little brother played hockey and we always had to go along to 'watch' his games. The kids were little and they fell down a lot. My brother was really small for his age and my mother was constantly terrified that a bigger kid would cream him, but he was really fast so he was generally safe. Hockey to me was annoying little boys, smelly ones at that, and a cold butt from sitting in the bleachers. Having a brother that loved hockey meant that I grew up with it, whether I wanted to or not. "Grain Gretzky" was his idol before he could pronounce Wayne. Paul Coffey was the first hockey player that I ever knew of, and he'll always have a special little space in my memory. We ate "Grain Gretzky" Pop Stars cereal in the mornings (Whooo sugar buzz!) Even not liking hockey, I was proud of what our team could do. We had Oilers toques; that's Edmonton! I cheered along with everyone else every time they brought the Stanley Cup home. The first time I ever played was in a 'moms against sons game' that I was recruited for because I could skate. I was on the mom's team at age 13 (precocious!) The moms broke all the rules, even going as far as picking up the kid goalie and putting him on top of the net while the one mom that could skate and I tried to get the puck away from the little speedsters. At this point, I could take hockey or leave it. Meh. I played street hockey with the neighbourhood kids and grew up with the eternal Canadian childhood chant of "car!" (wild dragging of sticks, ball, nets, random clothing and younger siblings from the road) "game on!" (wild dragging of all of these items back to their places). Even ball hockey in the gym was okay. Field hockey is the creation of the devil designed to maim junior high girls. The score: road hockey whooo!, ice hockey meh, field hockey hatehatehate! And then in University that all changed. My choir had a girl's hockey team (yes you read that right, the CHOIR had a GIRL'S hockey team). The only requirements were a desire to learn, a good attitude, a pair of skates, a stick, and five bucks. How can you go wrong with that? The only rule was: if you're going to fall, take a player from the opposing team with you. We weren't good but we had more enthusiasm than all the other teams put together. In the first season our team scored one goal (again, yes you read that right: our TEAM scored ONE goal that SEASON). The cheering for that one goal nearly brought the arena roof down. Slowly, slowly we built the team up: having practices on community rinks to learn to stop and bake sales to raise money for sock tape. One year we bought jerseys. We fundraised some more and moved our practices to indoor ice. One year we got a sponsor who gave us hockey socks to match our jerseys. Two years ago we won the recreational level championship. We moved up to the semi-competitive level. Now other teams come out onto the ice and we'll sometimes hear the intimidated whispers: "they have JERSEYS!" We're still the same team at heart though. We apologize when we knock another girl down and make sure she's okay. We have new girls every year that don't know how to stop in hockey skates, don't know how to receive a pass or even hold a stick. We have a girl that skates on her ankles but powers through the opposing players with the puck as if they weren't there at all: she runs on pure determination. Every word we speak to each other is full of encouragement and that gives us room to grow as players and as people. The only bad game is the game where we didn't have fun. The girls that are still with us that played in the first year are now our pros, one of the early coaches is still our 'honorary head coach', and we still have more spirit than you'll see anywhere else. Hockey is our heritage. It flows in our blood and stays warm in our hearts. The rest of the world can mock us or ignore us as they will, they can call the Heritage Classic game a money grab or pure foolishness, but this was important to Edmontonians and to those that joined us from farther away. I wouldn't trade it for the world. So thank you Oilers for doing this for us, and thank you Montreal Canadiens for coming out to play. Same time, same place next year? Game on!
2003-11-24 || 11:36 p.m. |
