Hockey Day in Canada goes heavy on schmaltz

by WILLIAM HOUSTON
Sports Media Columnist
Globe & Mail
February 11, 2008

If you woke up with a tummy ache yesterday, well, it's understandable. When the entrée consists of sugar and syrup over 13½ hours, it can happen.

And if you had a bad dream about outdoor rinks and small-town arenas closing in you, that's hardly a surprise, either.

The feel-good programning of Hockey Day in Canada on Saturday accomplished everything it set out to do, but it was also repetitive and, at times, tedious.

After a while, you wanted to yell: "Enough. I'm tired of the smiling faces and happy accounts, and here-we-are-and-isn't-this-wonderful message."

Was there nothing else to say?

Here's how one journalist, who is hockey fan, put it in an e-mail message: "Anyone landing here from another planet seeing this would think we were a nation of 32 million, each and every one of us living in a small town, volunteering all day long, loving our fathers and able only to say, 'This is what it's all about.' "

Ron MacLean did yeoman's service as the host of the day-long show. The features were inspiring, moving and slick. And there were no technical problems that we noticed.

But this was the idealization of grassroots hockey, a game without issues or problems, aside from perhaps the decrepit condition of an outdoor rink in Montreal. A piece on the Boston Bruins' Glen Metropolit, who grew up in the Toronto neighbourhood of Regent Park, touched on the challenges confronting urban poor kids, but just barely.

The CBC needs to balance the Hockey Day fluff with journalism. Or is everything in the game, as Hockey Canada and the establishment media would have us believe, so perfect there is no need to ask questions or criticize?

From the CBC's perspective, Hockey Day primarily serves as a promotional vehicle for hockey, for which the network has, starting next season, about $100-million a year invested in NHL rights.

It is therefore important for the CBC to sell the game as important to the country. And to make the case that hockey is part of our soul and embodies all good things.

But, perhaps, during the network's homage, there is room for a report that doesn't invoke a happy face. Surely, there are subjects worth looking into, whether it is bodychecking for kids, shots to the head starting in minor hockey up to professional hockey or the steep dropoff in participation after the ages of 12 and 13. Are eight-year-olds still playing too many games and receiving too little instruction?

The CBC would argue Hockey Day is about telling the good news stories. It is the one day of the year set aside to celebrate the game.

But when do the other stories get told? Certainly not on the parent show of Hockey Day, Hockey Night in Canada, which airs features consisting almost exclusively of profiles and human interest stories. Issues, assuming the establishment is wrong and there are some, are rarely if ever reported in a serious way.

The point that should be important to the Hockey Day producers is that strong journalism will enhance rather than diminish the telecast. Good news by itself, after all, is a pretty bland offering.

With the Vancouver Olympics two years away, it might have been interesting to hear some analysis, aside from the usual excuse making, of what went wrong with the men's team at the Turin Games in 2006 and what to expect in 2010.

Doom and gloom shouldn't prevail on Hockey Day, but a dose of reality would be a welcome counter to the image of the game, largely mythologized, that Hockey Day presents.

CBC scores with true patriot love stories

Feb 11, 2008 04:30 AM
Chris Zelkovich
Toronto Star

There were times during CBC's annual tribute to hockey when a viewer might have considered taking a blood sugar test to ensure that the day-long ingestion of saccharine wasn't going to be fatal.

It's easy to dismiss Hockey Day In Canada as an orgy of CBC cross-promotion, an attempt to sell hockey as the answer to all our woes and an excuse for host Ron MacLean to mention Don Cherry's name every 90 seconds, heralding his arrival as if the man were Santa Claus.

The parade of fresh-faced youngsters and heart-warming stories without even the slightest hint of hockey's dark side – except for Cherry's weekly tribute to fighting – might be enough to have you swear off sugar for the rest of your life.

But watch long enough and you realize that this is one of the most amazing examples of Canadiana ever compiled. Hockey Day is what the CBC is supposed to be about.

This is what a public broadcaster should be doing, telling stories from coast to coast to coast and focusing on the grassroots instead of guys at the top. That CBC did, with hockey-related tales from the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic shores.

And what could be more Canadian than seeing the host, wearing a hat that Cherry said resembled a squirrel, standing on a wind-swept outdoor rink in tiny Winkler, Man., diligently doing his job in minus 23C temperatures?

And you knew MacLean was feeling the cold when a feature on the Big Stick monument in Duncan, B.C., wasn't followed by a risqué pun. Maybe CBC should keep him outside all season.

With MacLean flirting with frostbite, the CBC presented a series of stories that could have been made into a movie. There was one about volunteers building the only skating rink in tiny Ingonish, N.S., a lump-in-throat piece about special needs kids coming out of their shells through hockey, another about a boy who'd graduated to junior hockey despite being born with only one hand. There was some fun stuff: a piece on Blue Jays outfielder Matt Stairs coaching hockey in Maine and one on a 92-year-old Zamboni driver stood out.

The best part of the day was that it was all so Canadian. Where else would you see a half-dozen small-town guys in the loudest blazers imaginable show up to escort Cherry to the rink in Winkler? Where else would you see a feature on Sk8 hockey, a game played on skateboards with a crumpled beer can for a puck?

When Hockey Day started, it looked like three NHL games surrounded by filler programming from the hinterland. But as was the case Saturday, it was the NHL guys who were the intruders.

czelkov@thestar.ca

I liked it. This is one thing the CBC does well.

(Although I'm still trying to figure out how and when Cassie Campbell became "legendary".      )

But that not withstanding it was nice to watch a few hours of the CBC without hearing about "The Global Warming and the American Corporations

For comparison's sake, they should do a story on the FOR profit boys teams that play in the GTHL.   All of the kids extremely priviledged and parents with WAY too much money.  

The best part of the entire day was bringing in Winkler's local Junior A Play By Play radio broadcaster for a spot on the Hot Stove.  You're spending the day talking about the grassroots of hockey, how about the grass roots of hockey BROADCASTING.  Nice touch, I thought...

Aw... what the hell. I get enough "real life" from the Reality-shows anyway. A little (or a lot) of self-promotion will only lead to a small tummy-ache that will go away and we'll all feel much, much better. Yez we will.

Besides, Ron's the poster-boy for straight-arrow sincerity. And a damn fine presenter/host/interviewer/promo-man.