A 9-Game Best of Seven Series?

It will be a thrilling night of hockey around the league at the NHL Playoffs will see 3 Game 7’s…the culmination of the Minnesota-Colorado, NY – Philadelphia, and San Jose-LA series. Perhaps the most compelling will be the LA-San Jose game in which the visiting Kings attempt to do what only 4 other teams have done in the history of the NHL ….come back from a 3-0 deficit to win a series.

I love the 7 game playoff series not only for its breathtaking action but also for the broader psychological battle that takes place between the teams. The ebbs and flows of the series can be fascinating. It seems that at a certain point one or the other teams finds some crucial flaw or weakness in the other team and exploits it moving on to  victory or until some counter – maneuver is put in place to stall it.

Beware the first round series victor that is pushed to the edge only to come back and win. These teams – the ’90 Oilers, 2011 Hawks – tend to bend and not break – and in understanding their resilience build the confidence and courage to go all the way.

Every time a Game 7 is played I go back to the most exciting series I ever played in my life -as a 15-year-old. It was the Minor Midget AAA OMHA finals between my Hamilton Huskies and our arch rival the Burlington Optimist Lions. It was the third time we played Burlington in the finals. This time we felt we could finally overtake them. Since this was minor hockey we had limited ice time – with time allocated for only ONE overtime period each. What took place was a great battle.

We were tied after the Game 7 Overtime period.

We were tied after the Game 8 Overtime period.

We lost in Game 9 in regulation time.

We lost to a great team. We were a great team as well having won 27 and tying 3 of our first 30 games that season. But there is still the pain I feel from that last game not being able to give my all after suffering a tailbone injury in overtime in Game 8 trying a wrap-around to get the winning series goal –only to be cross-checked across the chest and landing unceremoniously in my rump. The whole thing is still a pain in the butt to me today.

 

The Post – Game Handshake

At a  session on hockey safety that I took a few years back I remember vividly the instructor’s story about a time when he was in the dressing room before a game  and he overheard one of his young players say ‘I hate that team’.

He responded quickly

“No you don’t. You don’t hate them, because if they didn’t come to play the game here today , you guys wouldn’t be able to have any fun”

I think it was a profound insight into the game, and offered a perspective on hockey that is too often missing. While the nature of the game means that you divide up into opposing sides, the two teams are complicit in making the game itself, a worthwhile endeavour for each other.

And I believe that this insight explains the power and unique tradition of the post-game handshake or in the case of the NHL playoffs the post-series handshake. Many fans must wonder

‘How can two guys who go at other so hard in a game, even fight, shake hands at the end of the series. Some even patting one another on their respective shoulder pads, almost a sign of appreciation?’

If you haven’t ever experienced it I can only say that it is amazing to experience something akin to a catharsis that comes over you, like the air coming out of a balloon, as the final horn sounds and our realize that the ‘battle’ is over. For some its elation while for others its deflation.

This comes from an understanding that greatness and achievement on the ice,  on the field of battle as it were, comes only from hard work and determination, a willingness to overcome the obstacles to achieve something of meaning. In doing so you find it important to acknowledge that your opponent, the tea,  or the person you just defeated, gave you that unique opportunity. Without it, your win would not have had as much meaning.

It’s why in the words of Don Cherry a 3-0 lead is hard to protect because the team leading loses some of its will not having or perceiving that such a struggle lies ahead. It’s why they many change the psychology of the battle from winning the game to preserving a shut-out with the other team just as determined to prevent it, as Patrick Roy chose to do in pulling his goalie one time when he was down 4-0 late in the game.

It’s why little kids dream of scoring a Stanley Cup Winning goal like Patrick Kane or hitting a World Series winning homer like Toronto Blue Jay Joe Carter. To cruise to an 8-0 win just doesn’t have the same zest.

As David Backes and Tsawwassen’s own Brent Seabrook showed the other night with their handshake at the end of a marvelous series between the Blues and the Hawks, the beauty and power of this marvelous game comes from the way two combatants handle themselves after the weapons are laid to rest. They showed once again why its important to ‘win with honor’ and ‘lose with grace’. We should thank them for that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Toughness, Meanness and Intimidation

A great article in this Saturday’s Globe and Mail by sportswriter Sean Gordon on the role of meanness and intimidation in professional hockey. The article has several quotes by David Backes of the St. Louis Blues who vouches for benefits of playing a mean game. The irony of the Seabrook hit on him is not missed. The reader can see how one who ‘lives by the sword’ may someday ‘die by the sword’.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/playing-dirty-in-the-nhl-doesnt-trump-having-skill/article18237368/#dashboard/follows/

At its highest level  hockey is not only a game of speed and skill it is a game of physical and mental intimidation. You not only have to be tough in order to create some room on the ice with the opposition, but as Edmonton Oilers defenceman Brad Ference, relates you also need to show toughness to get the respect and acceptance of your own teammates.

For anyone in minor hockey intent on getting their child into the ‘pro’ game make no mistake, this will be a journey rife with physical, mental and to some degree emotional intimidation.

I remember accidentally walking into the opposing team’s dressing room before one playoff game. I laughed at myself and as I was walking down the hallway I heard the other team launch into the chant

“Pratt sucks &^%$, Pratt sucks *&^%”

I was the leading scorer in the league and naturally I was a target for the other team. I could feel the eyes of all my teammates in our dressing room watching me wondering how I would respond.  As I skated around during the warm-up – full ice with the other team in that day and age! – I went over to the goalie on the other team, a close school buddy and fellow football teammate, and asked him who started the chant. He told me his teammates name. As I suspected, it was their second biggest and most intimidating guy. The only guy bigger was his younger brother!

Opening face-off, the pucks drops and gets dumped into the zone. A defencemen, he goes in to get the puck. As a centerman I track on him and he comes around the net with his head down.

Boom! I cross-checked him across the chest and shoulder and he crumpled to the ice in a heap.

I went to the penalty box with a 5 minute major (you were not tossed for a major in that time). His brother dropped by the box to point his stick as me as his older brother made his way to the bench yelling and screaming at me.

I yelled back “let’s get it on boys”.

But the message was clear. I would not be intimidated. WE would not be intimidated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ‘Habs’ ..and the ‘Hab Nots’

With Montreal clinching a well earned series victory in their sweep of the Tampa Bay Lighting this week the Montreal Canadiens now becomes a serious contender for the Stanley Cup and with a likely match up against the Bruins in the next round become the team that Canuck and Leaf fans apply their allegiances. Local boy, Brendan Gallagher, has potted 3 goals in the first 4 playoff games and every night shows the commitment and energy that it takes to win a series. I don’t think anyone should underestimate the Canadiens with Thomas Vanek added at the deadline and Daniel Briere always posing a solid scoring threat. I hearken back to those Saturday nights in Edmonton in the early 70’s, in our TV room at 6pm ready to watch a Boston-Montreal playoff game….think Orr, Esposito, Belleveau, Savard. It was enough to make one forget that you were actually eating a Hungry Man dinner!   http://www.theglobeandmail.com/sports/hockey/gordon-self-assured-habs-are-their-own-biggest-believers/article18137046/#dashboard/follows/

Chasing Immortality

Winning the Stanley Cup is surely the most arduous task in professional sports. The champions who get to hoist the cup will have been on a journey of some 20-28 games in which every shift, every puck battle leaves some sort of scar on the body.

It comes at the end of a season of 82 games and the Stanley Cup winner will have played some 100 games, travelled thousands of miles, and played thousands of minutes of hockey all to get their name engraved on the cup. It’s hard to imagine that someone like Henri Richard has his name on the cups 10 times while some of the other greats of the game are still seeking Stanley. This year it will be interesting to see if the Bruins will return as champions driven by the desire to win it all for veteran star Jarome Iginla.

Tough Hit from our Tsawwassen Boy

It was a difficult hit to watch.

The game moves so fast that when I first saw  it, I thought that David Backes actually had the puck.

It was only with the benefit of slow motion replay  that I  was  able to see the punishing hit delivered  on Backes by Brent Seabrook in Game 2 of the Chicago – St. Louis Western Conference quarterfinal.

The games have been a particularly mean-spirited affairs – the psychology reminding me of the Oilers-Flames games in the 1980’s when the champions do everything to maintain their status while the challenger is willing to pay any price to topple the incumbent.

The focus for the Blues has been to deliver aggressive body-checks to the Hawks Captain and leader Jonathan Toes whenever they could, so you could see that some payback would be coming the Blues way. Unfortunately this hit crossed the line, not necessarily a dirty hit, but one that is no longer permitted in today’s game.

If you were to watch the highlight reel of Scott Stevens’ hits on the TSN segment on best body checkers of all time, this hit would have been seen 3-4 times in that reel — Paul Kariya, Eric Lindros – but in today’s game, with worries over concussions, this hit will warrant a suspension.

Chicago will unfortunately lose one of their leaders for probably 2-5 games which, along with the injuries to Toews and Kane, will make it difficult for the defending Stanley Cup champions to repeat.

A sad day for hockey in BC

http://www.theprovince.com/news/quite+graphic+Hockey+charged+with+threatening+year+player/9742232/story.html

 

Great Contest at Timmys!

And you don’t have to keep searching for that long lost shaker……..er …..Tim Horton’s card.

You can now use your phone to pay for your coffee!

Just don’t spill it on your phone!

http://visa.ca/paywavetowin/

 

 

When you win say little and when you lose say even less

These words of wisdom were shared with me the other day by my friend Jack at the Home Office here at Tim Horton’s central in metropolitan downtown Tsawwassen. Not too much excitement occurs here but there was quite a commotion when the corporate head office trimmed its menu of crullers and discontinued ice cream, which just goes to show that January is the crullerest month in the calendar.

Jack’s words that day stuck with me. Not only for their infinite wisdom but because they come from a humble man living in our community who lives by that credo. Only after a year of getting to know his interest in golf, in baseball….and in lawn bowling when he was the president of our local club did I get to hear about some of his accomplishments.

Not many of us would know that he had played in the Canadian Open in the early 1950s and was exposed to such legends as Mo Norman (“I saw him tee his ball up on a coke bottle”) or that he was paired with a young legend to be ….Arnold Palmer.

Jack took his learnings from his youth and applied them in many ways in his business career and life that saw him work for Imperial Oil in the nascent days of the oil industry in Northern Alberta recounting a story of travelling up by plane to reconnoiter the area and to land and stop off in a little town – in a café and sitting at a table approached by a geologist who said.

“You guys from Imperial? I have been up here 3 months and there is enough oil to run the world for the next 100 years”

He went on to buy and operate a wooden sculpture gift business in Oregon for 25 years before retiring. Its success attributable to the fact that his products could be found in Hallmark stores around the world. Stemming from a chance meeting with the head buyer of Hallmark in one of the stores. Jack was a lucky man but he created his luck because he is a good man.

Despite the vagaries of aging he still trundles to Tim Horton’s in the morning and shares his thoughts and ideas about life and the world with a middle aged man, whose father is of the same age and living 800 miles away. Like my dad he has lived an enjoyable and engaged life…….still engaged in the world as ever.

Jack’s motto was taught to him by the principal of his school, who was also his Peewee hockey coach in the northern Alberta town of Vegreville. As Jack told me today, not only was it a wonderful lesson for his sports career it was a wonderful advice for how to live his life.

And in this day and age of ‘Sportertainment’, when everyone speaks about ‘the team’ yet acts like every play, every move is some audition for a post playing career Jack’s words meet the test of time and serve as a guide for how we should live our lives

“When you lose say little, and when you win say even less”

Thanks Jack.

Globe Article – Canuck Players on the Future

Globe Article – Canuck Players on the Future