Ask me about the local pro hockey team these days and chances are, I’ll tell you what I really think.
I might tell you who I think they should trade, how much they suck and maybe even why you shouldn’t bother cheering for over-paid athletes, let alone pay hundreds to see them live.
When did I become so cynical, cold and crusty towards our nations “most beloved sport” as some would tell you?
When did I evolve from a kid full of emotion for his home-town team and become so bitter and hardened?
Like many I remember the day when hockey was everything to me. I could tell you how many goals Steve Yzerman scored in his second season in the league (30 goals, 89 points). I could even tell you how many times Peter Worrell (former Colorado Avalanche forward) and Krzysztof Oliwa (former Flames fighter) met in fights and who won each fight.
I was too young to remember the 1994 NHL lockout and I was too busy watching the Dallas Stars, Florida Panthers and Anaheim Mighty Ducks lose in the Cup finals as a young kid to even begin to think that my beloved NHL hockey would be taken away for an entire season.
So it was no surprise that when my favorite team of all, the Calgary Flames, finally got rid of Greg Gilbert, Craig Button and the controversial wiener Marc Savard, a lockout was the last thing on my mind.
There was only the hope that the Calgary morgue at it was known, would once again become the illustrious Saddledome of old. Darryl Sutter was in the building and nothing was going to stop the Flames and my favorite forward Chuck Kobasew from getting to the Stanley Cup Finals.
I remember building signs “honk if you love the Flames,” “Vancouver Canucks suck,” and so on and so on.
It was a good time to be a kid; it was a great time to be a hockey fan.
But then, just when I thought dreams could come true, Dave Andreychuk and the Tampa Lighting stole the thunder from the red-hot Flames.
Not only that, but the Flames, an aging club built on character and grit, turned into a bunch of old men with walkers, thanks to the greed and struggle for power between what I soon realized was a group of billionaire owners fighting to take away wages from millionaire players who signed contracts fair and square.
But not only did I still feel there was an injustice committed on the players, I also realized then that these players were battling for the right to be multi-millionaires five or six times over, instead of two-three times over.
At a time when my parents were struggling to come up with the hundreds upon hundreds of dollars to dish out for my two brothers and I just to have the right to step on the ice, these guys were scoffing over how much they would be paid to step on an ice surface.
Two lockouts later, Sutter fired, and realizing that hockey is just a game, not the stuff dreams are made of (for me at least). I wish I could go back, but how do you turn back an ugly mess like this?
Hockey has changed; it costs a fortune to put your kids on the ice these days because of greed or whatever the reason, and it’s just getting worse. I don’t recognize the game and I don’t recognize the small boy with the “Canucks suck sign.”
He’s gone, all that is left is a guy who loves the off-season to see who will get traded and who will get fired. I love that stuff now.
Sad.
