Friday is Hockey Day in Canada — one thing I say with delight, as a result of it started on the flip of the century, in my last 12 months at Hockey Evening in Canada.
Once we began the mission, there was an actual perception that it might flip into one thing particular, an unofficial nationwide vacation to replicate the fervour and delight we soak up hockey.
It wasn’t to be about simply the NHL, however reasonably the place the sport has in small cities and massive cities, and amongst English, French, Inuit and First Nations — and new Canadians.
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We felt there have been apparent issues that ought to change within the recreation, together with the facility and politics of the volunteers who ran minor hockey associations, leagues and groups. Hockey Day was an ideal car to dig deep into the roots of the sport — its historical past — and the position it performs in Canada.
This was to be about on a regular basis Canadians who had been pushed by their love of the sport, and never the cash they constructed from it.
Hockey Day was about all of us. How we performed the sport, watched the sport, coached the sport and tried to make the sport higher, for everybody. It was about being Canadian.
On that first present, there have been to be no mentions of the NHL within the first 4 hours. Simply speak concerning the Path Smoke Eaters, the Hounds of Notre Dame, volunteers who had been up on the morning time to open the snack bar, rinks in Saskatchewan that also used pure ice and pond hockey tournaments that went on for days.
That first Hockey Day was, and stays to this present day, a supply of nice delight for all of us concerned. There are Hockey Days everywhere in the continent, and in Europe too. It has been so gratifying to see everybody loving the sport the best way we love the sport.
Hockey Day has survived work stoppages, strikes, community shuffles and climate of all kinds. We knew it was particular, however by no means in one million years did we envision it might final 1 / 4 of a century. But it surely has, and it’ll for 25 extra. Greater than the rest I’ve completed, it exhibits the facility of hockey.
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