| A Country In Name Only 2009 Edition Same old, only some of the teams have changed. Lucien Bouchard, former provincial Premier and one time leader of the Separatist movement in Quebec, in 1995, the year that Quebec almost achieved separation from Canada, said that “Canada was not a real country.” Every year, at this time I am reminded of Bouchard’s remarks. Can you guess from the following “playoff” (elimination) schedule which country’s national sport is being celebrated with a tournament to decide which team excels at this country’s National Sport? Eastern Conference Washington Capitals vs. New York Rangers Philadelphia Flyers vs. Pittsburgh Penguins Carolina Hurricanes vs. New Jersey Devils Boston Bruins vs. Montréal Canadians Western Conference Anaheim Ducks vs. San Jose Sharks Columbus Blue Jackets vs. Detroit Red Wings St. Louis Blues vs. Vancouver Canucks Calgary Flames vs. Chicago Blackhawks If you said the United States of America, you can be forgiven for making the mistake of thinking that, if 13 of the 16 teams that qualified for this tournament are based in the U.S., then it must be the national sport of the United States. No, that sport would be baseball. Americans, on the whole, could not care less about hockey which is why the majority of players on all these American teams that will be competing for the Stanley Cup are Canadians. Hockey is Canada’s national sport although you could not tell this by the National Hockey League’s (NHL) roster of 24 American teams and 6 Canadian. The NHL was the first professional hockey league. It was established in 1917 to foster competition among Canadian teams. For more than 30 years now, the NHL has been the plaything of American lawyers, the latest, Gary Bettman, a lawyer from New York. Meetings of the league owners are usually held in Florida, which boast both a semi-tropical climate and two NHL teams. Almost half of the NHL’s teams are now located in the southern United States where snow is a rarity and hockey fans even more rare. Some denizen of the "sun belt" will go to the arena to watch hockey as to get out of the stifling heat. This may explain why Canada’s winter sport is in danger of becoming the United States’ summer sport as it is the only way that the NHL can get Americans into their arenas by promising them a few hours of air conditioned comfort. More than half of the U.S. based NHL teams are money losers which is why Canadians must pay a premium to watch their Canadian teams play via tax subsidies to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and watch games saturated with commercials* to raise money to pay the Americans owners of money losing teams. Yes, I know it's ridiculous, but we put up with foreign control of our national sport, like we put up with control of our oil and gas production, our mining industry, our television and film industry (English Canada), our forest industry our high tech industry ... Maybe Lucien Bouchard is right, we are a country in name only. Boreal April 15, 2009 ---------- * During the 2007 play-off year you had up to eight minutes of commercials per period. That is up from none before the first major expansion into the United States.
|
