Around 1870, a handful of Montreal lacrosse players who were bored in winter, having put on skates, decided to adapt their sport to the ice. They quickly swapped the stick with a basket for a stick ending in a blade.
But these guys, in the summer, also played rugby, and the game they invented was to retain its imprint: at the beginning, the teams had nine players and only the back pass was authorized. Half a century would pass before the introduction of the forward pass, and this presence of English rugby in its DNA could explain the predilection of our national sport for physical roughness and checking.
When the Russians finally got into hockey in 1946, the forward pass had been around for 20 years. The first hockey players there were, in the summer, mostly soccer players, and Russian hockey, played on a larger surface, naturally evolved around the game of passing. The famous 1972 Series of the Century was not only the clash of two ideological systems. Two stories of the same game met there.*
There is, even today, a North American history and an international history of hockey, and they do not often coincide. Thus, taking advantage of the exclusion of the Russian enemy because of a war of aggression, Canada has just won a so-called world hockey championship against powers as intimidating as Germany and Latvia (!). It was in Finland, and where were the country’s sons?
Answer: On the rinks of Florida and Carolina, where no less than six of them (including the Panthers captain, a skilful fake knitter named Barkov) were playing in the Eastern Conference Finals of the NHL.
In hockey, as in baseball, football and basketball, everyone knows that the real world champion is the one who will win a final held on the American continent. For the second time only — after that of 2020 between the Dallas Stars and the Tampa Bay Lightning — the decisive series of 2023, the ultimate celebration of a game invented among the snowbanks of Montreal, will take place entirely in the Sunbelt. Which leads me to point out an interesting misinterpretation: why is an organization called the “National Hockey League” which, in fact, has been binational for almost a century?
As with the subjection of Canadian power to the British monarchy, I imagine that whoever asks this question will be answered something like: it is not important, and besides, it would be too complicated to change. And it’s true that the NHL has more pressing issues to deal with, like its continued expansion southward, that concerted push that feels like an old dream of ” snow bird “.
It has been said enough, this cup under the palm trees is Commissioner Bettman’s triumph. It becomes tempting to speak, in his case, of a Lindros syndrome: Anywhere goal Quebec “… But the explanation of a disdain so clearly displayed for a city that millionaire skaters look up to as the depths of Siberia is undoubtedly simpler and it can be summed up in three words: ” Follow the money. »
The league originally consisted of only four teams, all Canadian, of which only the Canadian and the Senators remain today (who still remembers the Toronto Arenas and the Montreal Wanderers?). Through expansions, mergers and bankruptcies, the proportion of American teams has fluctuated, from two-thirds of the “original” core in 1942 to ten out of twelve in 1967 and 25 out of 32 today.
The Cup has spent the last thirty years in the United States. During the same period, Canada has provided four finalists who, with the exception of the Senators in 2007 (4-3), have performed as honest extras and dropped in five games. So who will bring the Stanley back to Canada? With the current free agent market, we no longer build dynasties, only teams capable of winning everything in the coming year.
We thought the Maple Leafs were equipped to stay up late, but Toronto remains Toronto… In Edmonton, Connor McDavid is the best player in the world and he can count on Leon Draisaitl, but when Gretzky and Kurri left the ice, their opponents found themselves caught with two other future Hall of Famers: Mark Messier and Glenn Anderson. First news from the Oilers since their elimination: they have put their defense hope, Philip Kemp, under contract at minimum wage, a miserable $ 775,000 a year. Let’s wait a bit before we start getting angry…
As for the reconstruction of our Sainte-Flanelle around the Caufield-Suzuki tandem, it will surely make the heyday of manufacturers of alternative sports reality and hollow opinions for another year or two, but connoisseurs are unanimous: on the financial level , where everything is now at stake, the Canadian formations can no longer follow the parade.
Why would a young hockey player want to face the expectations of a whole people at the grocery store when he can go from the arena to the golf course without changing clothes? More and more, hockey from here will resemble Canadian cinema: we develop local talent, and then, those who stand out cross the border.
And for Quebecers, there will always be Las Vegas, where the Golden Knights made it to the grand final with musketeers called Jonathan Marchessault, William Carrier and Nicolas Roy. In the third game of the Western final, won 4-0, these three names found themselves on the scoreboard. A beautiful story like Uncle Angélil loved.
Carrier, Roy, Marchessault… the three doves?
*This information can be found in The gameby Ken Dryden.