Canuck

  Sunday, 23 November 2003

Happy fans endure cold < 2:02:42 AM>.

Parkas, gloves, mitts, sleeping bags, face-warmers [~] the nearly 60,000 people who flocked to Commonwealth Stadium Saturday did whatever it took to keep warm at the first NHL outdoor hockey game.

"It's amazing, it's a chance of a lifetime," said fan Janelle Conn of Beaumont, Alta. "I don't care if I freeze my butt off, it's worth every minute of it."

The good ol' hockey game < 1:47:52 AM>.

It is difficult to describe exactly what craving in the national psyche this one meaningless exhibition match has triggered. An idea that was first all but dismissed because organizers did not believe they could fill enough seats has become an event so magnetic, there had been by week's end some 900,000 requests for tickets.

It was supposed to be but an "add-on" to the real event, an actual NHL regular season match between the modern Oilers and Canadiens, but very quickly the old-timers' game -- no hitting allowed, no speed expected -- had so dwarfed the real game that many were wondering if the sellout crowd would stick around for the whole "main event."

What explains such a phenomenon?

There is, of course, the simple power of stars -- Gretzky, Messier, Lafleur -- at a time when professional hockey seems largely devoid of such personality.

But there is also a sense that here, on display, is something so special in Canadian sports and cultural history that it is already frozen in time if not in fact -- and that there is a national longing to return to that time, if only to look once again on a game as it is so fondly recalled, even if not always accurately.'

A very enjoyable article from the front page of today's Globe

< 1:42:38 AM>.

Forgive me while I show my sentimental side. This whole thing just gave me the warm and fuzzies.