|
Heart of ice >> Rheostatics guitarist Dave Bidini circled the world searching for the Tropic of Hockey by ANDREW ELKIN
But this is hockey--the sport that gave a lot of young Canadians their dreams. No hockey lover can simply give up. Dave Bidini is proof of this: his second book, Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Unlikely Places, grew out of love for a game that has become hard to like. "There's very little flamboyance left in a game," says Bidini. "But for a while, it seemed like every player was flamboyant." That empty feeling Bidini got from watching the 1998 Stanley Cup Final inspired the Maple Leafs fan and Rheostatics guitarist to go searching the world for hockey in its purest form. "Hockey seems to have lost a lot of it's colour," he says. "There was a sense of dignity to hockey's tradition for so long, which was just traded in. Sold. It almost seems as if they've made a conscious attempt to package hockey as entertainment. "I've been to Columbus," Bidini complains, "and they don't deserve a hockey team. That just makes it hard to like the game." 
Back to the street Bidini's quest for the soul of the game took him through some exotic and far-flung locales: Hong Kong, northeastern China, the United Arab Emirates and Transylvania. In each place he found hockey had a distinct history and was played like "street hockey on ice." Bidini's Tropic of Hockey is like an epic game from the '70s or '80s, composed of three parts, each with a different rhythm, emotion marking every change in pace. It opens with Bidini probing behind China's blue line, wary, but closes with a high-intensity, brawling goal-fest in Transylvania. "One of the things the trip proved for me is that this game arrived because the game is great," says Bidini. "Not because the NHL had gone there and set up shop." Bidini argues that a big problem with the NHL today is that the people who are making the decisions that shape the game have no sense of what hockey is, or was. Intimate Wurlitzer interludes and functional seating have given way to Jumbotrons, annoying jukebox/PA systems, advertising and corporate boxes. The Toronto Maple Leafs decided they needed a new rink to help the team establish its new identity. "Being the last team to play in an Original Six arena, that wasn't enough of an identity for them?" Bidini asks, disbelieving. As for Montreal, Bidini, 37, still mourns the Forum's standing room, "the best ticket in the world of sport." He also misses the crunch and streak of the '70s, complaining that corporate control and a thirst for goals have stifled a game that was once free. Plugging the thugs "The thugs' behaviour, however reprehensible, was an extension of their self-expression. It gave a certain freeness to the game," he says. "Now, it's as if they wanted to drum out fighting and eliminate that element of self-expression--to control the athletes." The violence can only be understood by playing the game, he argues. "It's easy to look at what Marty McSorley did and not understand. But there are those who will get to that point and turn away, and there are those who will get there and go beyond. "Everyone who plays has gotten to that point--that's when you understand the alchemy of the game." For Bidini, hockey proved a great ambassador. His Koho hockey stick broke language barriers and elicited smiles in Beijing, Dubai, and Ciuc, Romania. Today, fans are sending a message by staying away in Carolina, Pittsburgh, New Jersey, Anaheim, Tampa Bay, even Montreal. Meanwhile, registration in Canadian minor hockey programs is at an all-time high. "It's about not getting what you want from the NHL," says Bidini, "and finding it for yourself on your own terms." So the next time a bad Habs performance gets you down, strap a newspaper to each shin and hit the rink. That's the way the Chinese do it. Tropic of Hockey: My Search for the Game in Ulikely Places, By Dave Bidini, McClelland & Stewart, hc, 320pp, $32.99 |
