:: Sunday, December 1, 2002 ::

The Hockey Hall of Fame

On Friday, November 22, my brother Rick and I departed the Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting in Toronto for a pilgrimage to the Hockey Hall of Fame. A shuttle ride and subway jaunt later, we arrived before the venerable building only to find that it was locked. We followed the signs into a mall basement where we finally made our entrance into hockey's holy of holies. If they ever decide to rename the facility, I would recommend "The Hockey Sweater Hall of Fame," "sweater" being the preferred sobriquet (over "jersey") for most hard-core fans, and a vast array of wildly-colored international sweaters being the dominant visual in the Hall. Ironically, many of them were labeled as "the jersey worn by so-and-so on such-and-such occasion," a breach of hockey etiquette in the hallowed hall that reeked of heresy or at least untoward compromise with unorthodox factions on the fringes of the hockey community. Were I less busy, I might well be tempted to start a petition drive to properly relabel the displayed items as "sweaters."

Another possible alternative title is "The Gretzky Hall of Fame." The vast amount of real estate devoted to hockey's Great One substantiated his enormous impact on the game. The actual net into which he deposited his record-setting goal number 802 (breaking Gordie Howe's career mark) was present, filled with 802 pucks. Numerous video screens played interviews about him, footage of him playing as child, and highlights of his NHL career. A plethora sweaters, sticks, skates and life-sized cardboard cutouts adorned the premises as well.

An upstairs room turned out to be the original stone building that we had found to be locked. It housed all of the trophies, including both Stanley Cups. Yes, both. The original is in a glass case inside a vault, while the one they display publicly was sitting out where we could examine it closely. The last time I saw the Cup was in Denver during the All-Star game, when a wait of two hours allowed you to get within a few feet of the heavily-guarded chalice. This time my brother and I walked right up to it unhindered, studying the names engraved from decades long ago, as well as examining both sets of entries for my beloved Colorado Avalanche. The Cup sat directly in front of the wall picturing all Hall of Fame inductees, from my favorites as a young hockey player in Manitoba (Toronto Maple Leafs Borje Salming and Darryl Sittler), to Tim Horton, the tough defenseman who was killed in a car accident, but whose name lives on throughout Canada thanks to the Tim Horton's coffee & donuts chain. I doubt he ever dreamed that thousands who knew nothing about hockey would clamor for "Tim-Bits" decades after his death.

We finally exited the Hall, not because we had exhausted its potential, but because we had to catch our bus to Ottawa. Cleverly, the exit was designed to go through a souvenir shop. Succumbing to commercial pressures, we ended up in line for the cash register where we ran into a Dallas Stars' fan wearing a NET Bible shirt. He turned out to be a hockey-loving pastor from Texas, undoubtedly a rarity from a demographic more typically characterized by allegiance to the Dallas Cowboys.

I bid him adieu as I left, happily clutching my 4-DVD set containing 19 hours of coverage--including all 8 games--of the monumental 1972 Canada-Russia summit series. Three decades earlier, as a small farm boy, I had been transfixed before an even smaller black-and-white TV, carefully recording statistics as the godless communist automatons shocked the world by winning the Canadian half of the series, only to be eventually vanquished on their own dark soil by the ever-resilient forces of good, led by valiant superheroes Phil Esposito and Paul Henderson.

As the series progressed, I flirted with the dark side, developing a fondness for Soviet goalie Vladislav Tretiak and star forward Alexander Yakushev, succumbing to a temptation to see the robotic Soviet storm troopers as individuals. However, I was ultimately overjoyed as Canada won game 7, forcing the final game to be the deciding battle in the epic conflict. My euphoria was unbounded as my father granted the unthinkable--I would be allowed to miss school in order to watch the final game as it happened!

Just when it appeared that the final would end in a tie that would taste more like defeat, Paul Henderson accomplished the inconceivable, scoring his third consecutive winning goal, ensuring himself immortality in the annals of Canadian hockey. My father returned from work aware of the triumph, excited enough to agree to my plan for us to watch the entire rebroadcast following the nightly news. That time of bonding was momentous in its singularity, as I'm not sure that we ever again watched an entire televised game together, certainly not late into the night. Now I will relive that period in hockey history when a collection of disparate stars from a dozen teams united to become Canada's sports team of the century. This time I'll be watching a color version with my son Michael, who is about the same age as I was back then, and equally given to tracking obscure statistics for personal satisfaction.

As the commercial might say, "One DVD boxed set of the '72 series: $50 CDN; reliving the moment with your son: priceless."

:: Randy Brandt :: | Discuss |