The greatness of our game

Long before a lot of us where born, or even our parents. The game of hockey had already been a uniting force in Canada.Thru international competition or just the backward shinny game on a Saturday morning or afternoon. In the end the love of the game conquered us all.

The passion, the desire to win, the thrill of victory, made us all champions. Even to ask the neighbour if we could borrow their aluminum garbage can, to use as the Stanley cup, imitating the great tradition of celebrating a championship with the routine skate around the rink, hoping to hear the cheers of a roaring crowd, after our shorten version of the Stanley cup playoffs.

As we would head to the frozen pound or rink, we had already written our scripts, we were going to be the heroes of our game. Often a game would be interupted by frozen faces and feet, agreements would be made to finish what we had started, or for a revenge game to tie up a series. Once home, and unthawing from the blistering cold, Mom would have a nice bowl of hot soup ready for us to gulp down. As we did this and blew on the soup on our spoon to cool it down, Mom asked us, ‘’ Did you have fun ? ‘’ No matter on how our game went, winning or losing, she wanted to know if we had fun. It’s always easier to answer that question when your winning, than losing, but either way Mom always had a way in saying things to cheer us up or to remind us, that in the afternoon you maybe on the losing end, but always cheered us on, no matter what happened.

My family and I moved to a suburb of Canada’s nations capital, as my Dad took a job with the Federal government. If people thought that the winter of 2007-08 was bad, they must of forgot the winter of 1970-71. March 4^th, 1971, on my Mom’s birthday, gave us one of the worse storms in our history. That same day, the Montreal Canadiens honored one of their most prestigious captains in history, Jean Beliveau, at the Forum. The missing piece of that great Canadiens cup run had not arrived yet, but was about to write one of the most important pages in that legendary team’s history. Just as Lyle, Ken Dryden had became my idol, and that’s when I really started to love the game of hockey. In my first year in organized hockey, I wanted to play goal, wasn’t very good, but tried. I guess it may have been because my team was called the Leafs, and got burnt for 9 goals in my first and only time as a goalie. But it never ended my love and passion for the game.

In the fall and winter of 1971-72, I had open heart surgery at the Montreal Children’s hospital, which was about a crawl away from the legendary Forum. My uncle came to see me, brought me a poster of Ken Dryden, a nurse who happened to date one of the Canadiens players at the time, I can’t remember who, arranged to get the legendary goaltender to come visit the ward I was in. Now can you imagine, a 9 year old, getting a visit from Ken Dryden. My eyes where as big as a quarter, Dryden took out a marker from his suit, and autographed the poster I had on the wall in my room. I will always remember that, just as I will remember the kind nurse that set the whole thing up. Where ever you are, thank you so very much.

The passion is still there, our memories, of those games where we were the heroes, the aluminum garbage can that served as an alternate Stanley cup, the heroes we worshiped, the game we still enjoy. But nothing will ever beat Mom’s warm soup and caring on those cold afternoons having fun.

That’s the greatness of our game.