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Sport
A hockey night in Canada to remember
By Kevin Potvin
A weird confluence of rare events took place this week, something we'll likely never see again
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A weird thing happened in Vancouver Saturday night. In an NHL hockey match between the Calgary Flames and the Vancouver Canucks—unarguably the most fierce and heartfelt rivalry in the entire 30-team league—the star of the hated visiting team was enthusiastically cheered by fans for scoring a goal. Then, following the match, the entire visiting team lined up to shake hands with and congratulate one of the home-town stars.
This particular game was, as recently as two days previously, billed as a classic for the ages, a big grudge match for two teams with a lot of grudges. Instead, it turned into a 7 - 1 stink bomb favouring the visitors. Yet few if any fans in the sold-out rink left the building even after the final buzzer. Typically, by the last few minutes in such a yawner, only a few boo-birds in the cheap upper-bowl seats would be left.
The game was the last on the regular season schedule for both teams, each from the same division, and each sporting virtually the same record all year, both being battered and bruised from a prolonged battle for playoff spots coming down the stretch. Had Vancouver beaten the Edmonton Oilers Thursday night as expected, this final game would have determined which team, among Calgary and Vancouver, would go on to the Stanley Cup playoffs, and which would go home early.
Vancouver, however, surprisingly lost to Edmonton. So even before Saturday night, it was already determined that Calgary would go on and Vancouver would stay home. What was to be one of the biggest regular season bouts in years, by game time became entirely meaningless.
It was, however ironically, only in that meaningless context that several wonderful and weird things happened. Fans were released from the emotional constraints of home-team fanaticism and instead spontaneously embraced their love of the game. Jerome Iginla, captain and star of the visiting Calgary Flames, had achieved third place in league scoring, right behind new Russian wunderkinds Evgeny Malkin of the Pittsburgh Penquins and Alexander Ovechkin of the Washington Capitals. And up until the third period of the last game of the season, he had scored 49 goals, standing just one short of the magically-revered 50-goal season.
The reverence fans have for players capable of 50 goals in a season cannot be overstated. Only two other players out of 600 this year achieved the feat, not an untypical number. A man who has since ascended to God-hood, Maurice Richard, had established the 50-goal gold standard as the greatest mark of distinction for a hockey player when he was the first to do it, in a 50-game season. Seasons today comprise 82 games, but the mark is still rarely met. All fans know that Wayne Gretzky's greatest achievement in a career filled with great achievements was to score the magical 50th goal in only his 39th game of one season.
Such is the reverence fans and players alike have for players who achieve the mark that, late in the third period of Saturday night's game, while Iginla, held scoreless and playing double shifts (in his coach's efforts to help him get the goal), the veteran Canuck Daniel Sedin, sensing a chance for Iginla, blocked his own teammate, rookie Luc Bourdon, from checking the Calgary centre, giving him an open lane to the net. Iginla buried his gift, surely giving rise to the only time in his entire career he'll ever receive a standing ovation for scoring a goal in Vancouver.
However, an even bigger drama was taking place in the same game. Long-time former Vancouver captain Trevor Linden, who famously lead his team to within a goal of a Stanley Cup triumph in a sensational seventh and deciding final game in New York City in the memorable spring of 1994, was likely playing his last hockey game.
It came sooner than expected. Vancouver fans knew this was his last season, but they expected the Canucks to make the playoffs, and Linden, though far from the player he was in 1994, had always had a touch for coming up big in big playoff games. He lead the team in playoff scoring just last year, before the team was eliminated in the second round by the eventual Stanley Cup winners, the Anaheim Ducks. But last Thursday's surprising loss to Edmonton meant that suddenly, Saturday night's game against Calgary would be his last in his long illustrious career.
Had Saturday's game had the meaning fans expected it would, it is as impossible to imagine the opposing Calgary Flames lining up after the game to shake Linden's hand as it is to imagine fans cheering Iginla's 50th goal. The dramatic post-game send-off for a retiring star from the opposition is unprecedented. Often the great players don't know themselves when they've already played their last game. If they do, rarely do fans know about it till the following summer when the player announces his retirement. Even more rarely would the last game be a meaningless one thereby allowing players to bury the hatchet and shake hands. And it's even more rare yet, perhaps having now happened only once in the history of the league and among all the great players who've come and gone, when such a game featuring such events is played between the league's most bitter rivals.
The confluence of all these rare circumstances leading to players spontaneously shaking hands with an opposing retiring star on Saturday night might never align again. The fact the same game saw fans cheering the leader of the most hated opposing team for scoring a goal against their own goalie made this night surely one that the odds dictate will never happen again in any major sport.
It was quite a moment for those who watch sports for the chance to notice such very rare moments so packed with meaning and irony. And it all took place, appropriately enough, on that venerable CBC institution, Hockey Night in Canada.
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The Republic of East Vancouver masthead
The Republic of East Vancouver supports no party, advocates
for no cause, represents no group, serves no master, and considers
problems with no preconceived notions. We hope to afflict the comfortable,
both materially and intellectually, and comfort the afflicted—of
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time.
Publisher, Editor
Kevin Potvin
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