A FAN’S NOTES

The Rise and Fall of Hockey Canada

The National Hockey League launched another endless season this week. The Montreal Canadiens appear to be a team somewhere south of terrible. These two related sports stories interest me because at least they’re about the game. It’s the other kind of sports stories that revolt me, the ones in the news section of my paper.

If you’re a Canadian reading this post, you know what I’m writing about. Two alleged incidents of sexual assault by a multiple of junior players who wore Canadian colours in 2003 and 2018. Hockey Canada has settled one lawsuit using hush-hush money from a secret fund financed by misappropriated player registration fees. This suggests sanctioned gang rape or at least business as usual, boys will be boys, and there’s no need to involve the courts or the insurance company. The existence of a second such fund came to light last week. This is not petty cash; this is a calculated cost of doing business with teenage boys. Two pools of dirty money suggest there are enough anticipated sex scandals lurking in dressing rooms to rival the Catholic Church. 

Hockey Canada was established in 1968; its purpose was to assemble Canadian national teams to compete in international tournaments nobody cared about. In 1994 it merged with the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association (founded 1914) thus becoming the sport’s national governing body whose remit now included growing and promoting the game at all levels for all participants.

I’ve long admired Hockey Canada’s logo. The concept, a pale player silhouette framed by contrasting colours, though unoriginal it is immediately recognizable; it pops. The organization’s corporate sponsors signed on to incorporate it into their own advertising and marketing materials. Some sort of gold by association for Tim Hortons, Canadian Tire and Scotiabank.

Hockey Canada metastasized into Canada’s premier sports organization during the nineties. The agent was television, and that term in turn may be used as a synonym or metaphor for filthy lucre. When the International Olympic Committee and International Ice Hockey Federation (of which Hockey Canada is a member and, who knows, an NHL proxy) agreed professionals could compete at the Winter Games, Hockey Canada took a star turn. It would choose Canada’s Nagano ‘98 squad, cherry picking from the NHL’s best Canadian players. This was not the Spengler Cup, baby! Canadian hockey fans would watch a national team assembled via some sick fantasy draft by Hockey Canada. This was power, this was prestige; this was dazzle, grape Kool-Aid to corporate sponsors, and eyeballs to advertisers.

The way Canadians experienced television began to shift around this time of exciting Olympic hockey news. Cable channels had proliferated, many of them focused on sports. Leagues looking to sell broadcast rights had more potential partners at the bidding table. The television signal was transitioning from analogue to digital. Advertisers quickly realized the only “live” TV available in the spectrum was either news or sports. The IIHF world junior championship, a Hockey Canada property, became a hot commodity for a sports channel with restricted or non-existent NHL broadcast rights. Every ensuing holiday season pimply Team Canada was as scrutinized and venerated as the Second Coming of the ’72 Summit Series or ’76 Canada Cup teams of seasoned professionals; the absolute career apex for most of the kids who made the roster cut. One of the perks would be a coddled, frat house sense of entitlement. And Bauer and Nike swag.

Last week Hockey Canada’s interim board chair Andrea Skinner (she has since resigned as did subsequently Hockey Canada’s entire Board of Directors) complained to a parliamentary hearing that her organization was cast as a “scrapegoat,” a witch hunt poster boy for a larger, endemic problem pervading society. There is some truth in her petulance. Various Canadian sports authorities and institutions are mired in allegations of sexual misconduct. But really, she spoke to Hockey Canada’s deafness to its entire mission, its raison d’etre. What if the dollars in those rainy day rape funds had been directed into the women’s and sledge hockey programs?

Hockey is to Canada like apple pie and baseball are to the United States, evocative of less complicated times. And though they never really existed, when we speak of them we’re implying higher behavioural standards, proper ethics, manners, morals and values. Life can be coached. Evolving boy-men segregated from normal development by elite hockey programs would benefit from a seminar or two or 20.

That Hockey Canada elected to cover up alleged sex crimes, pay out hush money and then create a second slush fund for tamping down future sex crimes beggars belief. This isn’t just cynical rot at the top of Canada’s hockey governing body, but putrid gangrene. Because nothing, not even pus, drips or oozes uphill, there was only one way for the infection to spread.

Remember, kids, hockey builds character! Play fair, play smart and obey the rules!         

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of Shakespearean tragedy  since 2013. The novella Of Course You Did is my latest book. Visit www.megeoff.com for links to purchase it in your preferred format from various retailers.