Joy of the boys "in the room," on the ice

David Sherman

With the grey hair has come a renewed interest in hockey. Specifically, the Montreal Canadiens. On the obsession scale of 10, it hits a seven, maybe eight. Bought a large el cheapo Roku data sucker TV screen just to see the sweat drip from players’ noses. More importantly, it has become a picture of the joy on faces of players and fans.

If you follow the Canadiens, even limiting the experience to headlines, you know they’re about youth and skill. They’re kids. Young millionaires, their life-long ambitions fulfilled. Blissed-out, some trying to grow beards, at the top of the mountain.

As you also know, Montreal, unless you’re a Torontonian, is the top of the hockey mountain. Yes, there are players who don’t like Quebec’s climate, taxes, language of the majority. The team’s fans rejoice with a collective, “Screw ‘em.”

The Bleu, Blanc, Rouge is a team of many nationalities but what matters is how they play but, as their celebrated coach said, the required palette of skills matteres not if they’re “not a decent human being.”

Here they like to call it a team culture. They talk not of the boys of winter, but the Boys in the Room, a one for all, all-for-one mentality. They celebrate en masse and grieve together when one “of the boys” is traded, injured or “sent down” to the minors where travel is mostly by bus rather than private plane and meals are often pizza and burgers rather than chef’s surprise or seared steak.

Despite the fraternity, all acknowledge the mantra, “It’s a business.”

Tremendously profitable business in Montreal, a team bought for $500-plus million, now worth about $3.5 billion.

Sports franchises are not vulnerable to stock market manipulations and Republican insanity. Professional sports are considered safe harbour for those looking to park a few hundred million and watch it grow by tens of millions.

Playing is not for the feint of heart; ownership not for those whose bank balance is below a dozen zeroes.

The National Hockey League, which kicks into gear this week, is about joy. About the brilliant smiles on the young men who have spent their lives fighting to get here. Their smiles brighter because they wore mouth guards and have teeth. It’s the unbridled joy of a childhood of working at playing, kids whose life consisted of school and hockey, interrupted by food and sleep.

No one’s bios list binge-watching TV shows, doom scrolling, schooled by Zuckerberg. School was mostly a place to play hockey, to fertilize the dream, practice more than play. Some schools are universities of sports — large revenue producers, publicity machines, magnets for alumni wallets.

Thanks to elite hockey schools costing tens of thousands, their emphasis on nutrition, weights, skills, the kids are faster, often bigger, quicker, smarter and gifted. Only a few can play a game on skates at high speed where your body is as much of a target as the net. Being “exploded” against a wall when skating at 30 kms/hr by someone skating at similar speed is not for normal humans. Nor is shooting a puck 100-plus mph into a few inches of space between a goaltender’s head and the iron goal post. Most of these kids were on skates before they were out of diapers, had sticks in their hands more often than bottles.

We watch, captivated by the game, but more so by the ebullience of millionaires who have yet to stop growing. Their joy is ours. The cameras scan the privileged and/or lucky who spent a month’s worth of groceries to be part of the giddy hordes in the arena while we smile from the cocoon of our homes or bars now wallpapered with screens.

On ice success warms winter and the heart, delays blahs, bill calculations, misbehaving automobiles, weighted credit cards, dissolving marriages, loneliness and a world on fire, figuratively and literally.

Their happiness imposes a temporary amnesia. Life is  on the ice. A temporary reality that misplaces the rest.

It’s an irrelevant reality. Once they get through flag-waving, hand-on-heart

silliness and the puck is dropped, we put the real world in a closet.

It’s easy to begrudge the vast salaries. But baseball, football and basketball players routinely sign for hundreds of millions. The celebrations of a player making a few hundred million, and maybe as much on endorsements, has the odour of greed. Owners and players. It’s obscene. Don’t know that $10 or $20 million is less obscene or just less money.

Can I relate more to a beaming, high-fiving, fist-bumping 20-year-old from Wisconsin than a high-fiving, fist-bumping Puerto Rican, Dominican Republican or wizard from Japan or a kid from California?

Yes. Hockey is a game we were weaned on, we played, we took our kids to play. We roasted frozen toes on radiators, used the wooden boards at the local park as brakes, shoveled rinks to make room for shinny. Our “swagger” – used in pro circles for those believing their dicks are bigger – was displayed on the walk to the rink, our skates slid onto out sticks and carried over a shoulder for all to see. We were players even when we weren’t.

The first football game was between McGill and Harvard in 1874 and basketball was invented by James Naismith from Almonte, ON, not far from Ottawa. Most of us played one or both in parks or at school. But time stopped for most of us Saturday nights for Hockey Night in Canada with Danny Gallivan or Foster Hewitt and the Esso theme song, or variation thereof, still an ear worm.

In Montreal, we have local guys making big bucks. The coach is from where I spent some teenage years – Laval, across the St. Lawrence from Montreal. Many speak French, a reflection of the team’s ambition to reflect and be relevant to the province. It’s succeeded.

The joy of millionaire kids is often our joy and has been part of us our life, all our lives.

It’s not just a game.