Hockey Night in Canada

We saw our first hockey game early last month. The 59th season of Hockey Night in Canada on CBC opened on Thursday, October 6. The night included a doubleheader of the Toronto Maple Leafs hosting the Montreal Canadiens, followed by the Vancouver Canucks, beginning its quest for another Stanley Cup Final berth, against the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The opening ceremonies were a little different this year from previous years, I suspect.

There was a good half hour of apologies for the riots that accompanied the last Stanley Cup final, which Vancouver lost to the Boston Bruins. Vancouverites were sorry, for sure, but also embarrassed at exposing the underlying rage of a segment of a passive-aggressive population who apparently needed to let off steam. Maybe it's a Vancouver thing, where there seems to be real and increasing income inequality in an expensive city fueled partly by with regressive taxes. Maybe it's something else entirely. And every country has its drunk knuckleheads. But who riots when a team loses?

The organizers trotted out all the "heroes" of that infamous and embarrassing evening: policemen, mounties, medics, and injured "innocents" and passersby.

And then, after the contrition, Vancouver lost to a Pittsburgh team playing without standout star Sidney Crosby. I'm no expert on hockey—in fact, I know little to nothing about it—but it sure seemed to me that Penguin's goalie, Marc-Andre Fleury, was superior in every way but bulk to the imposing but slow Roberto Luongo of the Canucks.