Broadcasting legend Bob Cole will be called to Hockey Night in Canada's New York Rangers vs. Toronto Maple Leafs NHL game at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto on December 22, 2018 is.Klaus Andersen/Getty Images
When painting the recent history of hockey in this country, the theme is decline.
What was once central to Canada's cultural identity has been pushed to the margins. There are 100 indicators: the Canadian Hockey scandal, the mediocrity of NHL teams, the collapse of Don Cherry.
The gradual extinction of certain players – when was the last time you saw a great Canadian goaltender or a real bad guy on the loose? – speaks to an ongoing attrition.
Broadcasters regularly add to the sense that hockey has no appeal. Sports speculation is so out of control that everyone with a little money wants to start a professional pickleball team, but somehow Sportsnet manages to turn hockey into a loser. did. At least, that's the perception.
Canada still loves hockey, but not every night and not every game. Probably not, unless it's Leafs or Oilers, or better yet, Leafs vs. Oilers.
But I also get hooked on hockey.
Bob Cole was not young, but when he passed away last week, everyone mourned. There were many.
But everyone also knew that Cole could only be properly celebrated in the environment that helped mythologize him: in a Canadian city, on a Saturday night, in an arena before a major game.
Cole has done so much voice-over work in his half-century in the business that his gravel rumbling is as much a hockey sound as skates cutting ice. If you heard that voice at the airport, on the beach, or on the moon, all you could think about was hockey.
Hockey's greatest strength is nostalgia. That's what happens when the glory days are gone. As much as any other player, perhaps more so, Cole expressed a connection to the past. Back to the days when there was nothing else and those broadcasting the game had to wear powder blue and virtually sit on each other's laps to line up their shots. The game show host's long microphone, Harry Neal's nasal accent, and the uncertainty of whether the signal would hold up.
Cole was a more stable presence in Canadian households than any celebrity or prime minister.
In terms of monuments, that's a difficult hurdle to overcome. In other sports, you might not even try. But everyone in hockey in this country did it, and the results were great.
It wasn't rocket science. Cole spent much of his adult life recording his reel of highlights of sports' greatest moments, which were also his own. Please show them. But nothing is more prone to failure than something simple, but no one has ever failed.
If you remember hockey, you know the highlights I'm talking about because Cole did the narration. His dignity lay in his penetrating power.
I watched Cole's memorial performance from the gondola at Scotiabank Arena, the home of Cole's legend.
The crowd was not in awe of the celebration. They were thrilled by it. The inside of the building was filled with emotion.
The best hockey is never far away. All participants in the game take pride in their averageness, or at least the impression that they are average. No hockey player rides a helicopter to work.
There is no game more difficult to play live than this. In her later years, Cole was sometimes missed. That made Canadians love him even more. He wasn't just a sports champion, he didn't think too highly of himself. That's the rule that Cherry forgot.
When players spoke of his memory, including Wayne Gretzky, the fans among them shined. Love for a team or a particular player is passed down through generations in Canadian families. Hockey players talked about Cole as if he were his father's favorite, and the fact that Cole knew their names was the surest evidence of their success.
One of the memorial videos featured great footage of Cole talking to Leafs president Brendan Shanahan in the rafters. Cole is in talkative mode and is shaking her head as she talks. Shanahan leans over to him, a big smile on his face, and just listens.
It is only in the hockey world that a middle-aged powerful man who has won a cup game or won a gold medal is overjoyed to be lavished with praise by the man who called the game. Because in hockey, veterans always come first. The orderliness of that idea that we are all part of an unbroken chain is hockey's secret formula. Richard, then Howe, then Orr, then Gretzky, then Lemieux, then Crosby. The older children met the younger children at charity dinners in Chicoutimi, Kingston and Burnaby when they were children. When those children grow old, they will be responsible for the next generation.
This is how Canadians want to see themselves and their country. They're the kind of people who want to help, who are quietly working on big projects, but don't talk much about it because of who's going to do it.
Hockey may be in decline, but it still has a story to tell. That's what Cole told most people. Great players provided the highlights, but he was the sound of the game.
His loss doesn't weaken it. it magnifies it. Cole's contribution is now set in amber, ready to be reevaluated whenever “Remember the Good Old Days” is played anywhere in the country on a Saturday night.
