Just After the Olympics

The Hockey Tattler, Vol. I, No. 6

Tuesday March 2, 2010

Game on. Hockey’s back, the real world kind, with salaries, arbitration, franchises, player associations, farm teams, minor leagues, the “bigs”, fighting, local media and radio personalities, cheerleaders and mascots. NHL teams are shaking off the rust and welcoming their Olympic gladiators back into the fold.

This transition happens once every four years in the afterglow of the Olympic movement. Winter games have been held ever since 1924. Ice hockey’s place at the games actually started at the Antwerp summer games held in 1920. Canada’s Winnipeg Falcons took a gold medal, beating Sweden 12 – 1 in the final. The games were held in April with seven nations participating – Belgium, Canada, Czechoslovakia, France, Sweden, Switzerland and the original Team USA.

So, as the players reunite with their pro league employers, you get the melting pot mixture of players from all over the world sitting on the same bench. Their common language is English, although trash talk in any language can happen between players on opposite teams. What other sport on earth has this international dimension?

The adjustment, for the players, happens overnight. Friends on NHL teams become foes in the Olympics. And then, two weeks later, they become friends again. How do they integrate that kind of change, turning emotions on and off again? When careers are over, players tend to remember their shared experiences, but the transition time for that is months, if not years. No matter what, the NHL show must go on.

Meanwhile, hockey’s new hero now admits that he cannot go incognito anywhere in Canada. If there was a Canadian hibernating in a snowdrift somewhere who did not know about Sid the Kid, the snow has melted. Crosby is now a national treasure. Will he get a Mountie security detail? No way – the RCMP has no jurisdiction in Pittsburgh.

Sidney might still be able to walk down the street in a steel city suburb without paparazzi popping out and surrounding him. For the moment, he is content to grace the cover of Sports Illustrated. All doubt has been removed. Sidney Crosby, at age 22, is now the face of hockey. The Great One can now move over.

Last night, interviewed before a the first Penguins-Sabres game after Vancouver, Sidney said that the Olympics were like playing Game Sevens over and over again. Can this storybook peak ever be reached again? Who knows? But one thing is certain.

Fifty million North Americans had their televisions tuned into the final game on Sunday February 28, 2010. Two-thirds of Canada (some say 85% of the entire population) was following the game. 28 million Americans south of the 49^th parallel watched the game, the biggest audience since the 1980 Miracle on Ice. With these kinds of numbers, it was a great day for hockey. Popularity is bound to increase in coming years. I can see the kids asking parents for skates and sticks already.

On an even higher level, about ice, there was different news at the cusp of February and March 2010. NASA announced this week that the presence of water ice has been confirmed on the moon. There is a lot of ice up there.

The scientific and human exploration ramifications are mind-boggling. Water ice changes everything, in terms of propulsion and survival. The moon will be visited, explored and probably inhabited. It is no longer a question of if, but when.

Now, think of this. Astronauts have already golfed on the moon. So now we can add a new sport, lunar ice hockey. Take a puck and a stick up there, and see how far a slap shot can go. The puck won’t be blasted out into space, since an object needs 5000 mph to escape lunar gravity. But in the absence of any atmosphere, the path of a shot above the surface is likely to be very long – perhaps miles. A new skill contest can be added to an all-star game.

If lunar hockey ever really happens, my guess is that goalies will have a hard time. You cannot move quickly in low G environments. Expect some high scoring games. And, if the puck gets away, I doubt that players will be chasing shots for miles.

What a time for hockey, at the start of the 10^th year of the third millennium. Time to get back down to earth. The NHL regular season has only five more weeks to run, from March 3^rd to April 11th, roughly 20 games per team.

After that, it’s off to the races again. Will Sidney and friends three-peat?

Hockey Rules.