Tag Archives: Canada

Red's Ghost 9:57 pm on April 21, 2016
Tags: bobby ryan, Canada, , howtohockey.com,   

Mucking It Up With The Boys

With the NHL playoffs in full swing it’s hard not to think about Blues, Blackhawks and Blueshirts, oh my!

But sometimes it feels like Canada’s favorite pastime should be ours as well.  I know I wrote about it before and devoted an entire blog to it but I just can’t help but keep thinking about it.  Skating around on the ice and feeling the thrill of a vulcanized rubber puck going back and forth on a fiberglass stick (or carbon fiber – although purists still use wood) is still such a thrill.  I find it so hard to believe that anyone who feels that thrill wouldn’t want to get out there and do it again.   Even after they fall again and again like I do.

It’s so different and so hard to describe.  The feeling of skating and playing hockey while learning the different skills that you must acquire is tough too. Knowing how to play the puck against the boards has to be one of the most challenging plays in any sport.  You watch the guys in the NHL battle against the side of the rink and it might be one of the most natural plays in a hockey game because they make it look so easy.

Attacking team dumps the puck into the zone, chases it, the defense gathers it and the attacker pins their counterpart against the board trying to kick, dislodge, steal, poke or outright skate away with the puck for a pass or shot.

That little scrum against the board between two guys can happen so quick.   The attacker can pin the defender then poke it free.  Or the defender can stick his body in the way and wheel himself away and pass the puck out of danger.

Sometimes you can see the puck get “frozen” by a couple of skates.  Then the cavalry comes along.  Another defender comes to try to poke it along.  Or another attacker will join the fray.  Someone will swing a stick.  A player’s elbow may come up to try to create some space.  These are the places where a. penalties can occur and b. you start to see players get frustrated and tired.

You don’t realize how tiring it is for those guys (and women) who try to dig that puck out of the corners.

It’s so blue collar and it’s a worker mentality.  It reminds me of the Steam and Whistle brewery in Toronto.  Taking the tour this past October they said they were trying to come up with a name that made you think of something good.  Something that was rewarding.  For me, something like the Steam and Whistle is a blue collar brewery.  It’s all about the worker from inside the plant to the name of the beer giving you the impression that you are getting off shift, toot!

As you know, we love football – but for the touchdowns.  The wide receivers.  The primadonnas. We focus on the quarterbacks.  The running backs.  We never look at the linemen.  The dirty work.  Cameras follow the “skill” guys.  Guys in the trenches that do the tough stuff and break themselves see little reward.  The skill guys get the glory.

The celebration of hockey in America is the goals, the saves and the speed.  It’s not the work of the muckers.  The third line centers who spend their days icing themselves down so they can go out that night to dig the puck out that night and make a back hand give-and-go pass to a speedy winger.  The guys who don’t show up on the scoresheet but contribute in ways that the video guy and coach sees.

These are the guys that many people see and stop watching because say the game is boring.  But to me, these are the “heart and soul” guys.  These are the tough guys.  The intensity guys.  The guys that have to bring everything every night.  With the talent level, pace, skill and strength of players you have to have players who can jump in and give something extra on one, two or three shifts.  Winning that “extra puck” on that shift may be the difference between a win or a loss.  The puck is a fickle creature.

Jeremy Rupke, Coach Jeremy to most, runs his own site about hockey, Howtohockey.com.  He provides really useful tips for those of us who want to know more about the sport.  He just put up a set of videos from Bobby Ryan, the Ottawa Senators forward, that shows him battling it out with a couple of beer league players in different drills for a $100.  One of those is a board drill where Ryan has the puck and “dares” the guy to get the puck off of Ryan’s stick.  Ryan initiates a hip check to set the tone and down goes the beer league guy.  For the next minute or so, Ryan can do nothing wrong.  Ryan dances with the puck and beer league guy wears himself out.  It takes a lot to try to go back and forth while moving your stick.  You just don’t realize it until you get out there and try to do it.  It’s amazing to see someone like Bobby Ryan against a normal human being, I imagine he’d only crush a guy like me.

We like to think we can get out there and play with top notch athletes but seeing things like this and going through skills training is reinforcement of the fact that they are elite athletes for a reason.  NHL players are top athletes for many reasons, not just because they can skate but because they are strong.  Think about the fact that at 6 foot 2 207 pounds Bobby Ryan might be quite the man but going against a guy like Zdeno Chara who is 6 foot 9 250 pounds, he’s going to get run over.  Then think about you or I going on the ice against Chara.  We’re going to pay a price ourselves.  It’s an interesting question, how do you hit something that’s 6 foot 9 when you are 5 foot 10?  How do you pin that guy against the boards?  With a bulldozer?

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Red's Ghost 4:39 am on March 24, 2016
Tags: , Canada, , , don cherry, , , , hockey night in canada, , , , , , revolution ice rink, , , winnipeg   

Why Can’t Hockey Be America’s Game?

Every time I go to Toronto I find myself drawn to the Hockey Hall of Fame and its marvelous displays of greatness.  Not that I make it to the Great White North all that much but it seems like since I’ve gotten older I’ve made it more than when I was younger.  I’ve been to the HHoF at least three times and to Toronto at least five but every single visit to the museum I’m always struck by the wonder of it all.

I know that Canada invented the game (although some may argue that it’s roots are in the Middle Ages – the game as we know now is Canadian in origin) and is celebrated as a religion country-wide.  In fact before it was replaced in 2013, the Canadian five dollar note featured children playing winter sports, including hockey, and wearing a number 9 sweater to honor  Montreal Canadiens great Maurice “The Rocket” Richard.  Included with the picture was a quotation from Canadian novelist Roch Carrier’s short story “The Hockey Sweater”:

The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons.  We lived in three places-the school, the church and the skating rink-but our real life was on the skating rink.

Yeah I get you Roch, the rink is where I’d be too if I lived in Canada.  Cold, brutal winters where you are forced inside, you might as well find something to do right?  Time for some hockey and after your legs are burnt out from skating turn on the television and watch some Hockey Night in Canada?  I mean come on, we don’t have anything like that here in America.  Sure we have Monday Night Football, but Hockey Night in Canada, there’s no chance.  The tradition and the history, plus Canadians have Don Cherry and his outfits.  No contest.

But here’s the thing.  Most places in America don’t have access to a rink.  In the South you are lucky to find a rink.  It’s getting better but when I was growing up I could only tell you where one was.  Even living in New York, where you think there’d be a bunch – it’s cold!, I have to drive an hour and a half on a good day to find a rink to play hockey.  True, I’ve read Derek Boogaard’s biography where it talks about his father driving him all over.  If my daughter is going to play she’s going to have to go at least three hours in multiple directions to play.  All over the Eastern Seaboard.  I can’t imagine doing that as a kid to play a sport.

But what’s funny about hockey, is that for as much as it costs-and trust me it costs, at some point you start to find this itch.  You can’t get enough ice time.  You can’t get even time on your skates.  You want to feel that stick in your hands every chance you get.  Even getting back into it at my age, I’m proud to say that I skated for an hour without falling-finally!  I’m getting better but I’m still pretty terrible.  Watch me skate backwards if you need a laugh.

However I’m bothered though, for all that hockey means to Canada there will probably not be one Canadian NHL team in the Stanley Cup playoffs.  Yes the teams are loaded with Canadian players, but I want to see Toronto or Calgary or Ottawa or Edmonton or Winnipeg or Vancouver go deep in the playoffs.  It just doesn’t seem right not to see a Canadian team.  I don’t like it at all.  I realize some of it has to do with the direction of the club, some has to do with the value of the dollar and some has to do with the quality of the team but no matter I don’t like it.  I’ll trade a potential Florida team or two for a Canadian team any day.

I know these teams are all because of the Gretzky effect – the same Gretzky who perfected the so-called Gretzky buttonhook.  A move that Pittsburgh Penguins forward Tom Kuhnhackl perfected in a game on March 20, 2016 when he assisted on Bryan Rust’s goal.  The Pens took out the league leading Washington Capitals 6-2 that night behind Kuhnhackl and his spin moving self.  I’m not sure Gretzky could have made a better pass, this was text book.  Maybe Chris Becker taught him that at the Revolution Ice Rink in Pittston at skills night while he was playing for the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Pens?  It’s a possibility.  You never know where he may have picked that one up.  Then he sold him some Ribcore skates?  Just kidding Chris.

Because of Gretzky’s influence on the league we’ve seen more and more Americans jump into hockey.  I was probably exposed to more hockey because of him and I have to thank him for that.  It is one of those sports that gets in your blood.  No matter what other sport you think you love, until you actually get on the ice and strap on the pads, skates and grab a stick, you don’t know what you are missing.  I can understand why it’s Canada’s sport and you know what?  I don’t think we’ll ever be good enough at it to best them.  We’ll never have the access or the commitment to hockey.  Our focus is on baseball, basketball and most importantly football.  There’s no way we’ll take up hockey as our number one sport.  I think Canada should take hockey, mold it and each year make it better and better.  Each visit to Toronto make the HHoF a place that I never want to leave at the end of the day, a place where those that gave everything they had to the game have a chance to pay tribute to their teammates and those they respected.  Hockey deserves a place where it can be worshipped and I think that place will be and should always be Canada…O Canada.

Red's Ghost 4:26 am on October 16, 2015
Tags: , Canada, joe carter, joey bats, , October, October's Very Own, roberto alomar, , ,   

Owning October In Ontario

Like a multitude of Jays’ fans, I was tuned to Game 5 of the Jays-Rangers game but I was only able to catch it after getting home from work.  By that time, the Jays were down, 2-1, and it was starting to feel like all those years of dreaming of getting back to another World Series were going to come to an end.

I should back everything up and tell you what it was like to be the kid growing up in Virginia that was “weird” because he liked the Jays.  Or when the Jays played the Atlanta Braves in the 1992 World Series where I was the only kid in a Virginia resort (where they filmed Dirty Dancing) and the room was ready to run me out of the building when the Jays took the lead in the game and won?  This was of course before the Washington Nationals and most people who weren’t Baltimore Orioles fans loved the Braves, so I was enemy number one not only because I was rooting against the beloved Braves but this was the Southern team, “America’s team” at the time, and I was rooting for the Canadian team.

They would look at me and ask “what’s wrong with you?”

“Why the Canadian team?  Why can’t you find an American team?”

“Because Robbie Alomar is my favorite player,” I would reply, “Because he is the best second baseman in the game.  Because I like the Jays.  I don’t question who you like.  Why do I have to defend who I like?”

Keep in mind that Joltin’ Joe Carter was from Oklahoma, Minnesota’s Dave Winfield was the DH, the SS was Kelly Gruber from Texas, John Olerud and his batting helmet hailed from Seattle and he patrolled first base and Pat Borders the catcher was from Ohio among the countless other players from America.

All anyone saw was the name on the front of the jersey, they didn’t see the players and who they were.  What they saw was a maple leaf or a “Toronto” and instantly they saw it as an insult to America.  Suddenly I was the outcast because I was the fan of the “foreign team.”  In a way, I think it was a wake up call for me, I think it was something that made me realize that the world can be such an unforgiving, unassuming and definitely a biased place.

While I was cheering for the Jays I also grew to love the Maple Leafs as well and I knew all their players.  It was a huge time for the city of Toronto, as the Leafs and Jays were winning and it seemed that entire city was feeling great.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned about Bill Barilko but also that the Leafs haven’t won a Cup since 1967.  I watched that Western Conference Final with the Kings and the Leafs and I still don’t know how Gretzky was not penalized for high sticking Killer.  That Leafs team has and probably always will be my favorite.  Dougie will probably always be my favorite Leaf as well.  So for someone who doesn’t live in Toronto or Canada, I’ve followed the Jays and Leafs from afar for years, unlike many of the people commenting on the game in the broadcast booth or in the Texas dugout.

Jump back to Game 5 and after Edwing ties the game with a monster shot, there’s nothing but nerves in the crowd for minutes to come.

That 7th inning that played out in Rogers Centre, the most bizarre 7th inning I’ll probably ever see, or you may ever see.  A ball bounces off a bat, an ump waves off play, a manager questions an ump’s decision, a run scores after the ump changes his mind, panic ensues, the ump calls his boss, more questioning, fans throw stuff on the field and then play starts back with the Jays down 3-2.  Phew.  I think I got all that.

I don’t condone what the fans in Rogers Centre did when they threw stuff on the field, but I will say that there’s a lot of pent-up feelings about the way Canadians have been treated.  Harold Reynolds’ jab at Canadians and the feeling that once again someone was going to screw their team out of advancement (Kerry Fraser not calling that high stick) among other things.  But I would never throw anything on the field. I don’t understand when fans throw home run balls back, keep that ball, what’s the point?  So it wasn’t your team, but it’s a Major League baseball, who cares who hit it?

When the bottom half of the inning played itself out all the way up to Joey Bats, sorry I had to call him that, it just felt like this is the way the game was supposed to be.  Jeff Banister can say it came down to bad fielding and this that or the other, but in reality, the better team won.  But I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Joey Bats.  The homer.  THE HOMER.  Joe Carter said it was the second best home run in Jays history, Joe should know.  I still remember Joe’s home run.  I think I jumped through the house like Joe.  I couldn’t stand Mitch Williams.  For Joe to slam that ball over the fence like that and beat the terrible Phillies, it was the best.  But in some ways this was almost better.

I almost think Robbie’s homer off Eckersley in Game 4 of the 1992 ALCS is up there too.  Robbie who hardly ever was a home run threat against a guy that all those damn A’s fans thought would shut down the Jays and he just sends it down the line.  I had a poster I got from Toronto with him winning the ALCS MVP that showed him holding up his arms after hitting that home run.  I remember I had rigged up an antenna in my room so I could listen to radio stations all over the country (and Canada!) and I happened to catch that game and I still remember that home run.

Anyway, Jose hits the home run and flips his bat.  He just has no more use for a bat because in reality the ball is on its way to Vancouver.  They are going to need to send out the RCMP to find it.  Apparently some felt that Jose was showing up the pitcher which led me to ask the question, why is that in baseball everyone is so against showing emotion?

In football, you score a touchdown and you celebrate.  Guys run down the field to grab each other and jump up and down.  A quarterback makes a toss to a wide receiver who burns a safety to score and the safety doesn’t say after the game he felt like the wide receiver showed him up by celebrating.

In basketball some guy makes a huge three in the corner to tie the game late in the fourth and the entire bench goes crazy.  No one is over there saying that they are being shown up.

In hockey, you score a goal and you go celebrate.  You jump up against the glass and celebrate with your linemates.  You celebrate.  No one says you are showing up the goalie.

In soccer, it’s the same thing.  Goal.  Celebrate.

The pitcher’s job is to throw the ball by the batter and the batter’s job is to hit the ball.  That being said there’s emotion because we are human.  When humans do jobs, emotions get involved.

What I can’t understand is why are we still talking about people being shown up in 2015?  When this gets brought up I think about those two old guys on the Muppets.  I imagine baseball as being a game for old guys that want to see a boring game.  If that’s what people want to see then it’s time to change the game.

Steve Phillips of SiriusXm’s The Lead Off Spot made a comment on the day after the game that David Price had a note left in his locker by Joe Maddon when he was playing for the Tampa Bay Rays.  Maddon told him if he didn’t want to be shown up that he needs to make the pitch.  In this situation if Sam Dyson throws a better pitch we aren’t talking about the second greatest home run in Jays history occurring on October 14, 2015.  How ironic is it that Sam Dyson was drafted by the Jays in 2010?

Now it’s time to move on to Kansas City and hopefully the Jays don’t let all the emotional energy of a comeback win and odd 7th drain them.  It’s time for them not only to take October but Own October because October is for bats…Joey Bats!