Hockey is a Winter Sport
Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s
So the overhyped 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver may be the last Winter Games that feature the players of the National Hockey League.
Well, life, and the Winter Olympics, will go on.
I understand the reasons why it’s a good thing to have NHL players at the Winter Olympics. I also appreciate the fact that the Games will go on without them.
Count me among the camp that just can’t get all that excited about pro hockey players at the Olympics. A big deal is made about how strong the teams will be for 2010, and a cursory glance at the rosters confirms that contention.
But so what? I find it very hard to get excited about a ringer team (pick your country of choice) that are thrown together for a scant couple of days at the tail end of August, and then don’t congregate together until a scant couple of days before the Big Event.
Outside of blind nationalism, which has never been my cup-of-tea, I have been unable to find the motivation to emotionally bond with any of these teams, be it 1998, 2002 or 2006.
Canada broke its (shameful, so we were often told) decades long Gold Medal drought at the 2002 Salt Lake City games, and it was one of the most watched TV sporting events in Canadian history. Hey, everyone loves a winner.
But outside of Wayne Gretzky popping a few blood vessels trying to circle the Canadian hockey wagons, I found it all a grand bore. Yes, these were the best players in the world playing hockey, but it came off a touch sterile, devoid of real emotion.
Sure, if I was on that team, I would have been caught up in the drama. But I wasn’t. Like most, I watched from the comfort of my couch.
And from that perch, the entire thing was over just as it got started. I had no time to identity with the team, as in the collection of individual talents and egos that make up any team in any sport. How does that disparate group of athletes jell as a team? What are the stories and subtexts of such a development? Such a narrative usually takes time to unfold; two weeks is not sufficient.
Still, the sport of hockey belongs in the Winter Olympics, because, well, because it’s a winter sport, despite the effort of the NHL to push the Stanley Cup Final into July.
So when Toronto Maple Leafs’ GM and all-around blustery guy Brian Burke mentions that he’d like to see hockey moved to the Summer Olympics, it makes me take off my weathered Kansas City Royals cap and scratch my head.
Why?
The men’s gold medal game is arguably the centrepoint of the entire two-week sporting orgy. At the very least, it is the winter equivalent of the men’s marathon; it’s the big bang that ends the Games. To rip it from its rightful place, and plunk it down in the midst of the Summer Games would be almost as stupid as signing Colton Orr to a contract.
First, as previously mentioned, it is a winter sport, thus it belongs beside its brethren; skating, skiing, skiing and shooting, skiing and shooting and racing, luge.
Second, in the Summer Games, Ice Hockey would get lost. Correction…it would get swamped. By the 100 metres, by basketball, by the marathon, by the swimmer-of-the-moment, and by women’s beach volleyball, just to name a few.
Third, do NHL stars really want to forgo a large part of their summer so that they can play competitive hockey? I agree with Burke’s point that it’s foolhardly (my words) to shut down the National Hockey League in the middle of the season, and troop off to a country and have the best players play while everyone else sits at home playing Rock Band for two weeks.
But that’s not enough motivation to remove hockey from the Winter Games. Why should the Olympic Games bow to the demands of the NHL?
Don’t get me wrong on that last point. The tall foreheads in the NHL often make frustratingly short-sighted decisions, but they look like humanitarian futurists compared to the Lords of the Rings. The Olympic Games continue to be a cesspool of graft and corruption, and stupid, stupid, stupid squandering of public funds.
Fellow Canucks, prepare yourself for the onslaught of propaganda insisting that the gold medal’s Canadian athletes take home this February far outweigh the public cash poured into someone’s pocket in the private sector. And remember this, Chicago, when you bid for the Summer Games. Almost without exception, every Olympic Games goes well over budget, and guess who get’s left with the bill. That’s already happening in Vancouver. Yet we abandon all reason and quiver at the knees at the prospect of holding the Games in our own city.
Ahh, but the Games will go on. Bread and Circuses persist to this day, so one might as well belly up to the bar and partake in the feeding frenzy.
And to that end, I’d prefer to see a return to a national hockey team playing in the Winter Olympics. Maybe, like soccer, they should set an age limit for participation. If a return to that system is unworkable, how about having the world junior’s forgo the Boxing Day tournament every four years, and play for Olympic Gold. Really, only Canadians care, on a large scale, about that fine tournament. Attach the allure of an Olympic Gold Medal to that event, and you’d probably broaden its appeal.
But whatever you do, leave the sport of hockey in the Winter Olympics. If the NHL teams and players wanna take their puck and go home, let them. We don’t need any more manufactured drama, nor does the league need to shut down its product during two weeks of the worst month of the year.
Then again, having NHL stars play in the Olympics means there’s no NHL All-Star Game that season.
Hmm, let me reconsider this.
- Mick Kern
Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s
Tags: 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, Live From Wayne Gretzky's, NHL participation in the Olympics