Could a Canadian sports columnist choose a topic for the final week of December other than the Men’s World Junior Hockey Championships without facing likely deportation to a southern hemisphere without a hockey arena?
Of course interest in the Junior event is far higher in the last 20-25 years than it was in the days of my youth.
The championships have been around since 1974 (unofficially) and 1977 officially (my Grade 11 year).
It wasn’t until 1982 Canada won gold.
In the early days of the event iswas played in virtual obscurity. There was really only the Stanley Cup and World Men’s Championships which an average hockey fan was aware of when I was young.
To be honest even the World Championships were little talked of. The Soviet Union had progressed to far in hockey at that time they were eating whatever hodgepodge team Canada sent over. We countered our best played in the National Hockey League as a way to protect our hockey pride and went on with our NHL-centric lives.
In 1972 the best Russians proved they were at least the equal to the best Canadian NHLers, although those who lived and died on every shot of that famed series with remind the NHL blocked the great Bobby Hull from playing because he had jumped to the rival World Hockey Association. Oh, and Bobby Orr, a pretty fair defenceman in that era was injured and could not play either.
While that series was memorable for so much on the ice, it also re-opened Canada’s hockey eyes to international hockey.
But even then Junior hockey was … well it was Junior hockey. It was not seen as being top calibre hockey by many back then.
So what changed?
That is a simple one. Cable television happened.
In a multi-sports channel world there was initially an effort to find more unique programming, and if there is one thing Canadian sports channels know how to do its hockey.
The Juniors were ideal, content at a time of year when much of the country is sitting around home gorged on turkey, and frankly unable to do much more than channel surf the TV. (It is the same reason we now see the Spengler Cup on the tube).
The Spengler started in 1923, but was near unknown in Canada until the 1990s and TV coverage here.
I must add an aside here that is too bad the many channels with sports today aren’t more active seeking out new content. Leading up to Christmas this year how many 2015 Junior games were rerun. Come on, does anyone have nothing better to do than watch a game played last year? Maybe a classic from 20-years ago, a game remembered fondly but the details shrouded by the fog of time. But 11 months ago?
Of course I could fill this page based on the strange material Canadian sports channels waste airtime with, and that may be the case another day, but this week it is Junior hockey.
With the help of TV the Juniors became a focus, catching our collective attention at a time of year when we frankly need a little boost as it comes in that slightly depressing post present unwrapping, the culmination of some eight weeks of expectation and plum pudding.
Of course as the championships gained prominence so too did our collective expectations.
The pressure on any player to wear a Team Canada jersey is to win gold, or they have failed. Such is the reality for a country which lives and dies with its prowess on the hockey ice.
Some might argue that, but the proof of the view of things was summed up rather nicely in the opening to the Boxing Day game between Canada and the United States this year.
Clips of the two teams were mixed with clips from The Revenant, a new movie launching in a few days starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
The storyline of the movie is “while exploring the uncharted wilderness in the 1800s, legendary frontiersman Hugh Glass (DiCaprio) sustains injuries from a brutal bear attack. When his hunting team leaves him for dead, Glass must utilize his survival skills to find a way back home to his beloved family. Grief-stricken and fueled by vengeance, Glass treks through the wintry terrain to track down John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy), the former confidant who betrayed and abandoned him.”
That is pretty dark stuff, a movie dripping brutality and revenge, yet it was deemed a fitting way to preview a Junior hockey game between Canada and the U.S.
Yes we bleed hockey, and the pressure to be the best or have failed is always there, and now fully on Junior players as this tournament now has our eyes clearly focused on it every year.
Oh, and Canada lost the game 4-2, and that means they have just upped the pressure on themselves.
