Hockey

I had been planning to discuss the last Kings of France, but when the Capitals won the Stanley Cup Finals in game 5 against the Vegas Golden Knights last night, I decided this topic was more timely.   Those of you sitting on the edge of your seats dying to know about Louis XVIII, Charles X, and Louis Phillippe, will have to wait a week.  Hockey was not a big thing in France from 1814 to 1848.  Sorry.

Despite being from the DC area, I’ve never been much of a Capitals fan.  They’re affectionately known as the Caps.  I’d suppose they might be referred to as the Craps in Las Vegas, were it not that this word means something quite different in that city due to its main source of income.   

They share the same venue, the Verizon Center, as the basketball team, the Wizards.  That team was formerly known as the Bullets, until the crybabies whined that the name was a sad reflection on DC’s unsuccessful experiment with gun control.  I’d have renamed them the 9mm Jacketed Hollowpoints, but no one asked me. How many people died in DC because the basketball team was named the Bullets?  How much magic has occurred in DC since they renamed the team?  Zero on both counts.  Anyhow. 

I’ve been two a total of TWO hockey games in my life.  In the late 70s, a group of my young male colleagues were treated to a game at the Capital Centre in Largo, Maryland, between the Caps and the now-deceased Colorado Rockies.  I can’t remember who won the game, but I recall being modestly entertained.   Since we moved to Paris soon thereafter, any interest in seeing hockey in person would have been curtailed by its absence in Paris. 

The second game was in March 1991 when I was visiting my high school buddy Sean in Ottawa, Canada.  He correctly ascertained that a visit – however brief as a weekend, as mine was – would not be complete without a hockey game.  We watched – and enjoyed – a game between the Ottawa ‘67’s and the Sudbury Wolves.   As enjoyable as the experience was, it did not compel me to see any further games of any teams.   Then again, my most likely reason to visit a hockey arena is to see a band play, not watch a hockey game.

What I know.  This will be brief.

1.         It takes place on ice, in a venue which probably also holds basketball games.  Not at the same time (though that might be more entertaining).

2.         It began in Canada in the late 1800s.  The NHL began in 1917, but the NHL had its major expansion in the late 1960s.  Up to that point it was essentially six teams:  the Montreal Canadiens, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Boston Bruins, the Chicago Black Hawks, the Detroit Red Wings, and the New York Rangers.   All of Toronto's championships date from this era.    

3.         Like basketball, and unlike football and baseball, there’s no real offense and defense, those switch with whoever has possession of the puck.

4.         The goal is to hit the puck into the opposing goal past the goalie.

5.         Trophy.  It’s big and tapers down to a large base.   Joe Elliott learned this the hard way, but we all know what a major hockey team Sheffield United is, right? 

6.         Goalie.  He wears a mask, so he looks like Jason from Friday the Thirteenth. 

7.         Penalty box.  Generally the sport is fairly brutal (“I was at a bar and a hockey game broke out”).  If you are TOO brutal you wind up in the penalty box for some time, meaning your team is now down by one player.

8.         Finals.  Best of 7.   Probably a reason I’m not a fan – I prefer this one-and-done stuff like the NFL playoffs and Superb Bowl, where every game is effectively game 7.

9.         Canada is the country most associated with hockey, but competitive players come from Russia and Eastern Europe as well.  There was a player named Satan, which I found amusing. 

10.        The Miracle on Ice.  The US is typically not competitive in Olympic Hockey.   Oddly, despite 5 World Cup victories, Brazil has ZERO gold medals in Olympic soccer.  Anyhow.  In 1980, at the Winter Games in Lake Placid, NY (we had boycotted the Summer Games in Moscow) we managed to beat the Soviet team and win the gold medal.  And there was much rejoicing. 

I realize there is a certain amount of subtlety to any sport where you have to skate on ice, but so far as I can tell, ultimately hockey is still about smacking the puck into the opposing goal, which you do skating on ice and knocking your opponent out of the way without being sent to the penalty box.    

SCTV

“…Thursday at 9!”

 I suppose this entry could be called “Canadian TV”, although it only concerns one particular variety thereof.  I mentioned earlier that American TV and movies are the only ones in the world with any reasonable expectation of being exported to foreign markets.  The TV industries of most other countries, even England and its BBC, are primary inwardly-oriented with little pretense of appealing to foreigners as a broad category (leaving aside foreigners with some particular preference, e.g. married to a Brazilian so you watch TV Globo novellas). 

 I’ll also leave aside Canadian TV actors: Michael J. Fox and William Shatner being the big two.

 So SCTV is arguably Canada’s most important TV export.  It ran from 1976 to 1984, for six seasons, and was eventually picked up by NBC.  It pretended to be an independent network.  Some of the “sketches” (which I found the weakest) were intra-studio politics between Johnny LaRue (Candy), Guy Cabellero (Flaherty) and others.  If you watch closely, you’ll notice that practically every preview for a show promises the show’s airtime to be… Thursday at 9 p.m.

 Cast: John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Catherine O’Hara, Andrea Martin, Dave Thomas, Rick Moranis, Tony Rosato, Robin Duke, Harold Ramis, and Martin Short.  These names probably sound familiar!

 I liked Mel’s Rock Pile, featuring Levy as a hilariously unhip music show host (similar to his dad role in the “American Pie” films) – and the Russian TV spoof.
 Another survivor: Martin Short’s Ed Grimley character made the transition to Saturday Night Live.  Tony Rosato and Robin Duke also went on to SNL. 

 They sometimes parodied Hollywood types, with O’Hara as Lola Heatherton, Flaherty as Sammy Maudlin, and Levy as Bobby Bittman.  I thought these were just as weak as the intra-network dramas.  The impressions were the best: Dave Thomas as Lee Iacocca and Bob Hope, Andrea Martin as Barbra Streisand, Rick Moranis as Dave Cavett, Merv Griffin, or Woody Allen (surely his talents were wasted in the “Honey I Shrunk…” movies), Joe Flaherty as Gregory Peck (in “Taxi Driver”: Are you talking to me?).   Despite the low-budget look – which was all part of the charm and fun – the cast was incredibly talented and the writing was quality, in fact competitive with SNL.

 By far the most famous “skits” which survived were the Bob & Doug McKenzie “Great White North” segments, which even resulted in a full movie, “Strange Brew”.  Bob (Rick Moranis) and Doug (Dave Thomas) sat on a couch drinking Molson and generally acting stupid.  They had their own Canadian equivalent of Valley Girl slang, mainly to end sentences with “eh”, greet each other with “Good day”, and accuse each other being “hosers”.   The funny thing about this was that at the time (early 80s) we were going to high school in Paris, and several of our best friends were Canadian (all from Ottawa).   They did not talk like this, but they did find B&DM to be amusing anyway…so long as we didn’t let on that we thought these were typical Canadians (…eh).  Geddy Lee ended up helping them do “Take Off”. These skits were due to Canadian TV regs requiring “Canadian” programming.  Aside from Mounties and lumberjacks, what more could they do?  Well, they also parodied Canadian TV with such items as Monday Night Curling and Magnum P.E.I. (Prince Edward Island).