Ice Hockey For Australians

For those who don’t follow the sport, and thats’ probably everyone outside of Canada apart from a few die-hards in Northern US cities or isolated individuals worldwide with some residual Canadian connection, the Stanley Cup playoffs are on and a Canadian team might actually win the thing for the first time in 32 years.

That team would be the Edmonton Oilers, The same team Wayne Gretzky played for, who is regarded as the “GOAT” (as the kids say) of ice hockey and probably the only hockey player anyone who doesn’t follow the sport has ever heard of. (At time of publishing, the series is tied 2—2 after the Oilers just came back from the dead to win Game 4 in Overtime. Hows that for my US jockspeak.)

I spent a gap year in Canada so I am schooled in Ice Hockey lore, taking an outsiders anthropological view and being quite fascinated by it. In fact, like this lad I also first became acquainted with it when playing EA Hockey (‘98 demo version) on the PS1 and noting how much more fun it was then all the other EAreal-sport games apart from FIFA. It seems the antipodean hockey cult is stronger and more fanatical than one would assume.

I once played it, without shinguards, with a bunch of other Australian expats and wound up with bruises and gashmarks all over my shins. These were acquired through a combination of falling on the ice and getting whacked by the sticks of other ice-hockey-incompetent Aussies as we were all huddled around the puck trying to hit it and failing completely. It was a lot of fun.

There’s so many ways you can get hurt in Ice Hockey. As far as the North American team sports are concerned it’s the only one I’ve ever thought entertaining as a spectacle or as a game to play. Thats because it looks amazing. Unlike, say, Gridiron, which looks dumb as hell and is just packed with the lowest of the American low. And Taylor Swift playing halftime has cemented its bankruptcy of credibility now.

Apart from the risk factor, ice hockey is fast, flows well, has a scoring system that is simple and makes clear sense to anyone vaguely familiar with soccer (whack puck past goalie into net, score a goal, which only ever carries a value of 1). All the players look like axe murderers and in the Canadian version of the bush leagues, if there isn’t at least a fight per game then the fans tend to go home abit disappointed even if they’ve won. The logos and marketing are great too. There’s a team called the Seattle Kraken, for instance. Even Disney, probably the creepiest company on Earth and destroyer of all things good, couldn’t wreck the appeal of this sport. The Mighty Ducks were a great imaginary franchise that got turned into a real team after the success of the movie (the Anaheim Ducks, which won a Stanley Cup a few years back). The Guernseys look cool and the chicks wear them to games and look great in them, and they’ll play against the guys at grassroots level. This puts the test to the guys in Canada, if you can’t handle playing the game at least once then there’s something wrong with you.

This would be a game hated by certain types of people that I enjoy seeing disgruntled, and you always want to go in the direction your enemies hate. Ice Hockey, unlike pretty much all the football codes, has no real risk of in-game gestures of overly-amorous fraternal companionship on the ice, at least not that im aware of. Those scenes took over all the football codes years ago. But I can’t see how it can be plausibly achieved though with a sport as fast and heavily armoured and weaponed as ice-hockey.

Ice Hockey as a sport was alleged to have begun with the colonial inhabitants of French Canada playing against the local Native Americans, with rules that may have actually been adopted from a native game. Parallels with Australian Rules Football here.

Actually, the wiki article on the history of Ice Hockey describes it pretty well:

In 2024, it was noted that the post-internet discoveries of other hockey-like games have buried modern ice hockey’s true “lineal” origins.[1] Mark Grant noted that Montreal inherited a singular version of hockey on ice that was transferred from Halifax in 1872 or 1873. This version of hockey led to the extinction of all other hockey-like games, for being based on a superior stick, the Kjipuktuk Mi'kmaw's “flat thin-blade” stick, which "tamed the puck," and Dartmouth-Canada's Acme skate, "which leveraged the skater and weaponized turning." Grant argued that all other ‘hockey’ games should not be confused with the “Halifax-Montreal” game and were “non-lineal” games that are ancillary to modern ice hockey’s true narrative. He wrote that "these other games were all "background performers in an epic story of conquest that co-starred Halifax and Montreal."[2][3]

Let’s properly adopt this game in Australia. Let’s take over the existing exec body and junk out all the current corporate marketing and give it a real grassroots based on primal rage and the warriors thirst for goals and combat.

Ive attached my drawn business proposals to convey the vision:

If you think this is nonsense for a country mostly free of snow, i’ll contend with this:

Firstly, incredibly, there is already a league and national association (and let’s face it, it looks abit drab and needs a do-over).

Secondly, most of the current NHL teams are US based and many based in cities without any grassroots ice-hockey culture (because it isn’t cold enough). The fact that Dallas, San Jose, Vegas and Florida (who is the other team playing in this Stanley Cup and the reigning champions) all have teams tells you alot about what went wrong.

Florida: nothing against the place. I still solidly support President Donald Trump and the Bannon Doctrine, and I love Florida man, Mar A Lago, Miami Vice and Freestyle. It’s a place I want to visit. But its a clear blatant violation of nature that a place like this has a team that can outcompete Canada and the Northern US in Hockey. I doubt anyone in Florida plays this game as a passtime. In Canada, your first pair of shoes might often be a pair of ice skates (akin to football boots for Brazillians) and you’ll be sent out onto a local ice-rink with a stick as soon as you can stand upright. It was the corporate interests, motivated by pay-TV dollars, that are considered responsible for this absurdity. Prior to a post-60s expansion phase, there were only six teams, known as the origianl six: Boston Bruins, Chicago Blackhawks, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, and Toronto Maple Leafs.

So what team do you back Mike?

Well I’m glad you asked. For the record, in the tradition of idle Aussie sports nuts picking foreign teams in foreign leagues of no direct relevance to them, I consider myself a Detroit Red Wings man. I just kind of vibe with the city of Detroit and they won the Stanley Cup when I was in North America. But I could also be swayed to get behind the Calgary Flames or Montreal Canadiens. I like post-apocalyptic scenery, fossil fuels, rednecks and esoteric eurotrash. It’s just who I am.