Stop making sense

In the past I've made my feelings quite clear regarding hockey and, more specifically, the fighting that is tolerated within the sport. Last January the blog brought you the story of Garrett Klotz, who thankfully recovered after ending up in hospital as a result of a fight, but Don Sanderson was not so fortunate. In December of last year Sanderson, a 21 year-old player in the Ontario Hockey Association, was involved in a fight on the ice. His helmet came loose and his unprotected head slammed into the rink as he was forced to the ground; he went into a coma and died three weeks later.

Whilst idling flicking between channels this evening I came across a discussion on Hockey Night In Canada that centred around a new helmet that had been manufactured to make fighting safer, and the studio 'expert' informed us that it had been Sanderson's death that had prompted the new design. We then learned that rules are either already in place or will be in place soon - I couldn't hear exactly as the sound of my jaw hitting the floor momentarily drowned out the television - that will penalise players if they remove their helmets before fighting. Not penalise them for actually fighting, but if they fight without helmets.

At this point another 'expert' erupted into life, and you could quite plainly see him struggling to hold back the expletives as he lambasted this rule, stating that prospective players shouldn't bother getting into hockey in the first place if they weren't prepared to risk the physical consequences of fighting.

I could not believe what I was hearing.

Back in January, I concluded my post concerning Garrett Klotz with the following observation:

"So, what will it take for sense to prevail? I fear that someone is going to have to be killed for action to be taken, and even then I am not so sure. I sincerely hope that this will not be the case, but until action is taken, I cannot embrace hockey."

It is my sad duty to report to you now that there appears to be no sense in hockey.

End of an era

As I'm sure our non-Canadian readers will know, hockey (ice hockey to Brits) is Canada's national sport (technically it's lacrosse, but we'll conveniently ignore that fact for the moment), just as it's soccer in England and drinking in Ireland. Now, this past week has marked the opening of the new hockey season, and it has also marked something of the end of an era. CBC's Hockey Night In Canada is the premier hockey show over here as well as being the world's oldest sports-related programme still on air - to call it a national institution would be something of an under-statement - and after forty years the show has decided to change its theme tune.

I say decided, but it would really be more accurate to say forced, because the reason for the change was a copyright dispute with the theme's publishers, resulting in the commissioning of a new theme via a nationwide competition. The new music has been written by a schoolteacher from Alberta, and speaking as a relative outsider with no emotional ties to the old theme, I must say that I like it (I also think that it sounds not unlike Jean Michel Jarre's Rendezvous IV). See what you think; the first clip is of the old theme, and the second is of the new one:





The whole issue has been a major talking point over here, and although it has not quite forced parliamentary debate (there is the little matter of an election coming up, after all), emotions have run high in some quarters. Many Canadians view the old theme as the nation's second national anthem, and apparently some mischievous tour guides have been known to pass it off to visitors as the national anthem. The old theme will live on though as CTV, a rival network to the CBC, has bought the rights to the music for its own hockey coverage, but even taking this fact into account, it certainly is the end of an era for hockey fans all over Canada.