Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid is stopped by Florida Panthers goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky during Game 3 of the Stanley Cup Finals in Edmonton on June 13.Bruce Bennett/Getty Images
After losing Thursday night's game, and likely the series, the Edmonton Oilers were rambling on about bouncing back.
“We have proven that we can win. [Florida]”Even though they didn't win once all season, coach Chris Knobloch said, 'We're not losing.'
What does “losing” mean to Knoblock? Not just one game, but losing a doubleheader every night?
I know he's an employee and he feels compelled to say this, but please, put a little wink in there, something that tells us all that you get the joke.
I'm still waiting for a hockey coach willing to put his head on a tree stump and say something bold: “I'll guarantee you a win. Just call up one of your star players.”
Anything to get people excited is fine, but not hockey. This is show business run by tax accountants.
It's too late to talk about possibilities here. The Oilers are halfway through the wood chipper.
The NHL's Stanley Cup Final looks set to fail again.
This time it hurts even more than usual because it wasn't an organizational failure, it was a failure on the Canadian side.
The ratings numbers released were modest, but not great: Viewership was up in Canada, but not enough to suggest the Oilers have captivated the non-sports-obsessed public; the NHL said 7 million people across North America tuned in to watch Game 1.
When the Toronto Raptors were on their way to the 2019 NBA championship, nightly viewership topped 8 million — and that was just in Canada.
“Our game?” Yes, we're still the best at that game, but we just don't care about it as much as we used to.
Earlier this week, Leger released a poll asking Canadians and Americans whether they planned to attend the Edmonton vs. Florida game.
The headline was one that the majority of the country (58%) was paying little to no attention to. This was reported in the Canadian media the same way that tractor production was on page three of Pravda. Not as a conversation starter, but as an obligation. Nobody talked about what nobody cared about.
What gives me pause is the figure that 27 percent of Americans watched the Stanley Cup Final.
So you're saying that a quarter of the US, about 85 million people, are interested, but only about 3 million are watching? I think this is a whitewash.
This is one of those questions you get from people who aren't even sure there's a team in Florida and then they say, “Hockey? Yeah, sure. I'm kind of interested.” This is something you say to pique interest.
If that effect is at work in the United States, how much it is amplified here: There is still pressure to claim to love the Stanley Cup, not because it's good or because we watch it, but because it's all we have.
What would Canada have without hockey? What are its cultural exports?
Stop badmouthing Canadian born artists and performers. None of these people live here. The best ones left as fast as they could. The only star left is Margaret Atwood, but we should surround her with mounted police. If anything happens to her, there's nothing we can do.
The only reason the whole world knows USA Junior is because we put on skates. Forget the rest.
With that in mind, we deliberately associated hockey with our collective identity: a game of elaborate manners played by mild-mannered country boys who, once let loose on the field, really do try to kill each other.
Other sports are also said to be cruel: hockey is the only sport in which participants regularly lose half their teeth.
Hockey's depiction in popular culture is poor. Slap Shot Gordie Howe The Simpsons episode Shorecy And they all have props for the same story: “If Canadians are such nice people, why is hockey so cruel?”
There is consensus that removing violence has improved the quality of the game, but it has also caused the game to lose its identity.
So what does hockey mean to us now? Judging by the viewership, it seems to have become an entirely local interest. If your team is in, great, if not, move on to the next game.
People in Ottawa (or Toronto or Winnipeg or wherever) don't watch the NHL. They watch the Senators. This is the difference between a growing league and a declining one.
Across this country, hockey has become something to think about rather than something to enjoy. What does hockey say about us? Why can't we win at hockey? Is our hockey culture toxic? This is a topic for debate, not a catalyst for unity.
The divide between hockey's past (a multifaceted expression of Canadianness) and its present (a declining business struggling to attract a customer base) is never more stark than during the Stanley Cup Final.
No one has to like either team, but if the majority of Canadians can't be bothered to lie and say they're even remotely interested, that's worse than bad news: It means that any nostalgic feeling the sport had on the national imagination is now slipping away.
The next big loser in this trend after Canada is the NHL, or without Canada, Major League Soccer.
So what does the league and its employees do? They keep putting out the same boring programming that people are increasingly losing interest in. The same bland dialogue. The same boring expressions. Not a single word of fighting spirit, not a single word of fighting spirit to be found.
Maybe they're waiting for some magic formula, like a Toronto-Edmonton final, to emerge and save them.
None of these are existential issues. Canadian hockey is not going to go away. There's too much infrastructure around it. But it could also become irrelevant. The warning signs are flashing now.
If a series featuring the best players in the world who are Canadian and play for Canada can't capture the attention of Canadians, then I don't know what to suggest. Maybe we should start with voting.
