Does anyone remember that episode of Sienfeld where Kramer is at the airport waiting to pick up Gerry. While waiting he meets a Texan who can’t resist a bet, and Kramer being Kramer likes a quirky challenge, so they devise a game as to which plane from the arrivals board will land next, and they bet on it.
Somewhat like Kramer turning aeroplanes landing into a port, I will give most sports a shot and watch anything once. Sometimes that sport will stick. As it is with Ice Hockey, or Hockey as it is commonly called in North America. Back in about 1993-ish (?) I started watching Ice Hockey on Sky (you know the old 3 channel only version, Sports, Movies and News). I had already been watching American Football (or Football as they call it) for a number of years and had developed a passion for well, the passion for sport that Americans have. By default I became a Bears fan (they were the biggest and best when I started), then graduate to my own team the Denver Broncos. Luckily enough they were about to go through a golden period with John Elway at the helm (quarterback).
There’s one thing that the American media does wonderfully (all in the name of entertainment?) and that is foster the sense of occasion and history around their sporting achievements and competitions. As it was with the first games of Hockey that I started watching, there were references and imagery of the giants of the sport, Bobby Orr and Geordie Howe. However I started watching Hockey in a special time too, there were the modern greats still plying their trade on the boards right in front of me, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Pavel Bure, Patrick Roy (pronounced – Whar) and Mark Messier.
I had to get a team and real quick, and again in the finest tradition of Jerry Seinfeld, I picked the team with the coolest tops, and at that stage it was Vancouver. This turned out to be a good move as within a couple of years they were in the Stanley Cup (Grand Finals of the National Hockey League – NHL). And as modern Ice Hockey started in Canada, and it’s considered Canada’s game, this again was a good move. The third reason this became a good move, was I have now lived in Vancouver on 3 different occasions and get to go to Canucks games at GM Place in Vancouver.
I have a good friend from British Columbia, and he was pretty good in his day, almost made it to the draft for the NHL. Lucky for me, he didn’t and came to NZ to study, where we met in Wellington. We spent many a long afternoon at the bar in Zebos on Wellington watching Hockey, and was one of the several dozen who filled the bar each year for the Stanley Cup finals. Alas Hockey went through a painful and disruptive players strike which saw the entire 2004 season cancelled (the first in any professional sport). This was particularly painful for Kiwis who love Hockey, because the strike saw many media contracts re-negotiated, and unfortunately Hockey wasn’t resigned to ESPN in the Asia-Pacific region.
So for nearly 4 years I have been starved of Hockey. That was until last year when I spent 6 months in Vancouver, and for the first time I got to see just how important this sport is to Canadians. We think that the All Blacks are big here, bah, nothing compared to the media and fan frenzy that surrounds Hockey in Canada. The league just below the NHL is divided into regions, and the local Vancouver team were the defending champions. The WHL was primarily a competition for up and coming youngsters to show off their skills to the scouts. But with tickets coming in around $15CD compared to the $95-150CD per game for the Canucks, going to a Giants game was a slice of traditional Canadian life I will never forget.
So to get to a short point via a long story, welcome back to the Stanley Cup on Sky Sports. It was unadvertised and certainly a plesant surprise to see the finals series on TV here in NZ. It’s a sport with a big following here in NZ, the numbers of kids playing this sport across NZ are pretty remarkable really, and this exposure is great. I only hope that Sky somehow finds a broadcaster that is bringing the NHL to this part of the world, for the whole of next season, not just the last 7 games.
Cheers and thanks Sky.
