Soon the Montreal Canadiens season will begin, one of my favorite times of the year with asparagus time and the arrival of Halloween candy at Costco. This is because I made a motto of the expression “bread and circuses”. Bread and games (especially games, since I’m trying to reduce my gluten consumption) are quite effective for entertaining the end of the world, the developments of which are happening on all platforms all day long.
This is a period where I discover an opinion on the composition of trios, even if most of the time I have no idea if the players are right-handed or left-handed. They will only have to play on the backhand, at worst. Around the world of hockey, the Dunning-Kruger effect, this bias which causes unsuitable people to overestimate their skills in a field, is well anchored, but without consequences. It is a parallel world where it is good to take refuge in order to pronounce in complete incompetence.
Minor hockey has been around for a while now, as evidenced by the smell of hockey bags in my basement. I spend a large part of my life in arenas since I was that tall (even lower than Cole Caufield, who is right-handed by the way). Having two children who practice this sport means about fifteen hours a week of freezing your behind while you contemplate the Zamboni tracing its path in a sort of hypnotic slowness.
Hockey culture has had a bad press in recent years. We talk about concussions, fights, initiations, attacks. We have to talk about it, of course. But after about ten years of touring the ice rinks, I have hardly seen any cases of parents jumping out of their caps, of coaches who wanted to fight with a prepubescent referee or of beardless attackers who thought they were Georges Laraque. However, I have come across tons of examples of parents who are dedicated, positive and generous with their too-pale coffee.
Team sports are a fantastic vector for promoting social diversity. If you’re an accountant, there’s a good chance you hang out with a lot of human resources managers and financial planners. I’m making a caricature, but it’s quite possible that your circle of friends is going in circles. Conversely, the arena will require you to spend a lot of time with an electrician and a philosophy teacher. You won’t even be destabilized.
Hockey is an excellent social lubricant since people who find themselves in an arena generally know the language. You don’t need to be able to talk about Descartes’ method, talk about sump pumps or creative taxation to lead a discussion.
“I think, therefore I am” capable of talking about hockey, as the other said.
This is a good thing for parents and children alike. A fun way (yes, I dared to use the word fun) to encourage emulation by bringing together young people from all backgrounds. Being confronted with each person’s realities undoubtedly helps reduce the chances of going crazy when we discover at too old an age that not everyone is like us. Perhaps we have less desire to insult those who have ideas different from ours on social networks when we have been around them since childhood.
We can also hope that parents who get looked at askance because they yell like crazy at their little pee-wee are likely to change their behavior. Last season, while I attended a Canadiens game in a section from which you can’t see much of the Bell Center, I was fascinated to hear throughout the game a young boy shouting ” Rotten, Jonathan Drouin, rotten! I didn’t wonder where he got his inspiration from since his father was shouting insults of the same ilk alongside him. All this at a distance from the ice from which even the voice of Marc Hervieux could not be heard. That a child and his father see fit to insult a player who is coming off a difficult episode is beyond me. I like to believe that if they had frequented the right arenas, they would have understood that this behavior should be avoided if you don’t want to look like a fool.
Beyond these idealistic virtues, there is this good thing about team sports that they are excellent for developing the spirit of the same name. The person who has played a team sport will have learned to sacrifice their little self for the benefit of the whole. He is a person who will know how to accept defeat and who knows that it is not the end of the world (especially since, well, a plastic medal from the Nicolet tournament, we have already seen better). A person who knows that in a gang, we accomplish more than alone. A person who will also be able to adapt, especially if she had a coach who made her play on the wrong side because he didn’t know if she was left-handed or right-handed.
One of the main challenges for hockey coaches is to make puck eaters understand that they are not working for the common good. And if they succeed in converting these puck eaters into generous pass players, we can hope that that will be one less person who would be quick to try to break down the (social) net all by themselves.