By TONY PEYTON
Special to the AV News
There’s nothing quite like it in Canada: playoff hockey in hundreds of small towns across the land. The teams know each other well from a season of hotly contested games, the players steeled by the contests through the year. During the playoffs the tempo increases, the intensity doubles and the exhilaration of the winning teams is uninhibited.
Professional teams are followed enthusiastically, their loyal fans’ hopes rewarded and dashed in equal measure. It is a passion which holds this country in its tight grip for three full months each spring as the gruelling playoffs grind on to the finale. But that is not where hockey lives.
Hockey lives in Port Alberni and Wetaskiwin and Prince George and myriad other towns in Canada, their fans passionately devoted to the local teams made up of players who have come from other cities, provinces and countries in pursuit of their own hockey dreams.
Ken Dryden was a goalie for the Montreal Canadiens, backstopping the team to six Stanley Cup championships. He left the game in his prime becoming a Member of Parliament and best selling author, writing about the game he loved and its importance to Canadians. Dryden understood that hockey has long since transcended the natural limits of any other sport in Canada. Hockey, Dryden said, glued our country together, provided a common cultural experience which all of us can understand, giving communities across our vast country a sense of connection with Canadians living thousands of kilometres apart. He knew as well that hockey is a tough, uncompromising game, rewarding commitment and unbreakable resolve. That is how Canadians like to think of themselves. It is a good fit for us.
My friend David Michaud is an owner of the Alberni Valley Bulldogs, a team in the B.C. Hockey League. He recently ninvited me to take in a playoff game in Port Alberni.
The Bulldogs have attracted talented players from across North America, many of them with commitments to Division 1 NCAA hockey programs, all of them still harbouring dreams of professional hockey. Playoff hockey is where they are tested the most and where the best of them shine.
The game was as expected. Exhilarating. Fans arrived early and dressed up in home team colours. Some even brought in brooms just in case the Bulldogs completed the sweep of the Chilliwack Chiefs who were down 3-0 in the seven-game series. To win the BCHL title the Bulldogs will have to win four gruelling seven-game series and the toll has already been taken on the young players.
I am seated in Section 103, Row K, Seat 3 right between two couples, both of them quick to welcome me.
“Hi there, you’re not from around here.”
“I’m in from Nanaimo. My friend David Michaud owns the team and invited me up.”
“Good man he is. Done a lot of good for this community.”
Turns out my friendly welcoming ‘committee’ was Fred.
“I’m 83 you know. Seasons tickets for 20 years. We love this team.”
By now the arena was full, packed with a sold-out crowd of 1,800 fans, about 10 percent of the city’s population. The ‘wave’ started across the arena and came our way as each section raised their hands to do their part. It was lots of fun. As the wave came around again, Fred raised his arms one more time with everyone else in our section and with a gleeful smile on his face he turned to me
“This is where I get my exercise.”
His friends all laughed at his joke.
We rose to our feet and sang the national anthem in full voice and the game was on. Fast skating, hard shots, tough checks, it was a blur of sustained effort extracting all manner of ‘oohhs’ and ‘ahhhs’ from the fans as play went from one end to another in a dizzying frenzy. And then it happened. A goal. For the home team. Bulldogs 1-0 and my new friend Fred was on his feet barking like a dog! Well, let’s just say it was Fred’s version of a Bulldog. I mean at 83 you gotta cut Fred some slack.
Fred, all 83 years of him, was exactly what playoff hockey means to us. It is spellbinding, the tension mounting with each second as our team competes for victory, that tension released as ‘we’ score, inching ‘us’ one step closer to victory.
I loved it and when the Bulldogs scored again a few minutes later I jumped to my feet with Fred and barked like a bulldog, although mine may have more mimicked a Bassett Hound. I’m 74 now so if you’re going to cut Fred some slack, I mean fair’s fair. Just below us and all of our off key baying, three young boys barely 11, were barking like a bulldog in their prepubescent pitch
The final outcome was undecided until the very last minute of the game, the crowd standing, cheering, hoping, exhorting with every ounce of energy they had. And the Bulldogs won. It was a sweep and dozens of brooms were thrown out onto the ice, a small town tradition like few others, understood without words across the country.
I admire my friend David Michaud who invited me to the game. Owning a junior hockey team is the most unusual of jobs. There is no clock to punch, no time off. To own a junior hockey club in the BCHL is to own a small business which needs constant everyday attention, year round. And it requires emotion. There is no ‘not caring’ at this job. Caring about people, the players, the community is everything to the job and it is draining.
I admire all the ‘David Michauds’ among us. People with dreams and the courage to pursue them. People who understand core values and how to trust those values to help them stand their own inevitable test.
People who have made a choice to take the harder road where simpler routes were offered. People we can trust to lead young men and women, teaching them along the way, teaching them about much more than hockey.
I don’t know where this will all end for David. Hockey finds talent wherever it is in Canada and I expect opportunities will come calling. I am as sure as one can be that big things are ahead.
It is on the backs of people like David that hockey has become what it is for Canadians. They give us more than hockey, they contribute in a most important way to the culture of our great country. They know without being told that the game is far more than just a game.
And they know that in Port Alberni and small towns just like it, that this is where hockey lives.
Tony Peyton is a blogger from Nanaimo and longtime friend of Alberni Valley Bulldogs’ owner David Michaud.