A Sixties Scrapbook, Volume 14 #1

Hockey Had Not Yet Lost Its Soul

One night in the 1960s I was in the Montreal Forum watching a National Hockey League game. The details are hazy now: even the identity of the Canadiens' opponents escapes me. But I vividly remember the sheer excitement triggered by the speed of the game, the roars of the crowd, the championship banners hanging from the rafters. And I also remember the moment when the Canadiens' great centre, Jean Béliveau, burst up the ice on a breakaway. He "deked" the goalie so effectively that the fellow was left lying helpless on the ice, then casually reached around him to flick the puck into the net. It was vintage Béliveau.

I have seen many other beautiful goals, but it is only this one that keeps playing itself back in my mind. Why? I suppose it has something to with my being in the Forum in the first place; even in the 1960s, it was virtually impossible for someone without the right corporate connections to get a seat to a Canadiens game. I made it into the temple only twice. Another reason involves Béliveau himself. The Canadiens captain was a giant of the game in the 1960s, because of both his skill and his sheer elegance. He skated in long, smooth strides, stickhandled brilliantly, passed with precision, and was a master playmaker. Novelist Hugh Hood called him "poetry in motion. "

Since that night in the Forum, hockey has changed almost beyond recognition. The most obvious change is in the number of teams: the six-team NHL expanded to twelve in 1967, by 1974 there were eighteen teams, and today there are twenty-six. Another change is all about money. Until the 1960s, most hockey players earned modest salaries. Today the average salary is well in excess of what most people can expect to earn over several years, while the superstars' salaries defy imagination: Wayne Gretzky earns $6.5 million annually, exclusive of endorsements. Such players, with their retinue of agents, lawyers and accountants, are corporations on skates.

As for the game itself, it is frequently said that the quality of play has been in a downward spiral since the 1960s, the result of excessive expansion. I am not convinced. There were indeed great players in the 1960s, but great players came afterwards too; the likes of Gretzky, Guy Lafleur and Mario Lemieux would have been stars in any era. Further, in the 1960s there were far more gifted players in Canada than the six-team NHL could accommodate. For a few years after the expansion of 1967, hockey did suffer, but the Soviet-Canada clash of 1972 gave the NHL the kick it needed. Following that epic series, Soviet and Canadian hockey each borrowed the best from the other's game. In Canada, the results were apparent with the Canadiens' dynasty of the late 1970s and the Edmonton Oilers' dynasty of the 1980s. Both teams played superb hockey, even by 1960s standards.

Yet there is something wrong with 1990s hockey, which I think can be traced to commercialization run wild. Hockey has always been a business, and we should not romanticize the past. The recent film Net Worth showed the ugly side of the old six-team league, with greedy owners shamelessly exploiting underpaid players. But in the 1960s, the business part of hockey did not dominate the sport's public face; hockey fans could close their eyes to that side of things and concentrate on the game itself. Today, the millions earned by owners and players have carved a chasm between the sport and ordinary people. Omnipresent advertising--during TV broadcasts, on rink boards and even on the ice itself--makes the message that hockey is a business inescapable. The mere existence of the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, the Disney empire's contribution to the sport, reinforces the point.

Commercialization, moreover, has developed alongside growing Americanization. The NHL had always been American in its structure; four of the six pre-expansion clubs were in U.S. cities, after all. But at least those cities--New York, Boston, Detroit and Chicago--knew something about snow and ice; the current NHL boasts teams in such wintry places as Tampa Bay and San José. Still more grating, the number of Canadian teams is shrinking and may shrink even further, while there seems no end in sight to the proliferation of teams in the United States. The Quebec Nordiques have become the Colorado Avalanche, the Winnipeg Jets will soon be history too, and other "small-market" Canadian franchises are similarly endangered. Money talks.

For many of us, hockey has lost its soul in the course of its transformation into big business, and so we cannot help but look back on the 1960s with some nostalgia. In those years players actually seemed to play for the love of the game, the small number of teams gave the sport an intimate feel, and the rivalry of the Toronto Maple Leafs and Montreal Canadiens was part of our national life.

I seldom watch NHL games any more, although no doubt I will when the next round of playoffs begin. For the most part, I prefer watching old timers' matches or even kids' shinny on neighbourhood rinks. Whenever I do that, or on those rare occasions when I do watch an NHL game and am treated to a beautiful play, I am reminded what a great game hockey is. For me, such moments conjure up ghosts from the 1960s--Bobby Orr, Gordie Howe, Terry Sawchuk, Johnny Bower, Bobby Hull, Frank Mahovlich, and of course Jean Béliveau.

Curtis Fahey is an associate editor of Compass in Toronto.