So Don Cherry’s gone. What’s next?
Many years ago I would often find myself defending Don Cherry, or at least making fun of his most hysterical detractors. He deserved most of the grief he got, but he also had a knack for sending people off the deep end. I mean, did the Official Languages Commissioner really need to get involved when Cherry suggested francophones were disproportionately fond of wearing visors? Over the years he was accused not just of practically inventing hockey violence, but of helping to transform Canada itself from a nation of peacekeepers into a nation of warriors. Some neat trick for a guy who argued in vain for years just to change the NHL’S icing rule.
But that was 15, 20 years ago. To see some of these more grandiose charges against Cherry resurface on Twitter this week, now that he has finally and with just cause been yanked off the air, felt anachronistic. No one had really pretended he was relevant, let alone dangerous, for ages; he was as easy as the mute button to ignore; the only question was if and when he would finally cross some invisible line and what exactly he would say. His career’s obituary was in the can ages ago: he loved old time hockey and the troops, and said a bunch of dumb stuff, and it made him very rich.
I don’t want to diminish his mean, storebought, Saturday- night rant against “you people” — ungrateful urban immigrants, it is reasonable to infer. Popular culture often casts hockey as the epitome of Canadian-ness, as Arpon Basu, editor-in-chief of The Athletic Montreal, observed on Twitter, and “for many people of colour, feeling fully Canadian can sometimes be an elusive goal.”
“All it takes is ‘you people’ for … incremental gains to be wiped away,” Basu wrote. “Two words on our ‘ national’ hockey broadcast, and you’re right back at zero.”
Indeed, HNIC couldn’t possibly tolerate this on any level — least of all as a business proposition. On its good nights, the NHL game has never been more compelling. But Rogers’ expensive takeover of Canadian NHL hockey has been a financial disaster. Hockey simply isn’t the golden goose it used to be in this country, for well-known reasons.
As journalist Sean Fitz- Gerald details in his excellent book Before the Lights Go Out, many minor hockey associations are shrinking year by year amid parental concerns over cost, time commitment and brain injuries. Regardless of their means, many immigrants simply aren’t gravitating toward hockey, and that’s perfectly logical. Cost and time commitment aside, kids tend to be inspired to play sports by the exploits of their local heroes. Between the spring of 2004 and the spring of 2017, the Maple Leafs played seven playoff games — the seventh of which was an unforgettable, soul-destroying catastrophe. Over that time, bars in Toronto that used to show every game with the audio on would sometimes forget to put the Leafs on at all.
Meanwhile, the Raptors won a championship.
In a sane universe, there would have been other teams for unaligned Torontonians to fall in love with. There are four KHL teams in Moscow. There are five London teams in this year’s English Premier League. But there is one NHL team in Toronto, its AHL affiliate the Marlies, and that is literally it. There isn’t even a major junior team. One team, in the biggest hockey market in the world, and it has spent most of my lifetime as a laughingstock — and we wonder why first-generation immigrants aren’t compelled?
Meanwhile there are three NHL teams in the New York City area. Two in Los Angeles. And Hockey Night in Canada is there every weekend to assure us this is all perfectly normal. The universe is how it should be. Hockey is a business, and it would be juvenile to pretend otherwise. This is a production so completely bloodless that its second-intermission panel can discuss a “hockey Ryder Cup” without a single member calling it an abomination. In general, the international game is ignored except when it’s insulted — who can forget the Canada vs. Lesser European Hockey Nations World Cup final? If the NHL doesn’t want to award the Stanley Cup one year, no one complains — HNIC isn’t on the air anyway!
In essence it’s the voice of the easy, don’t-rock- the- boat, NHL- dominated status quo. And no matter how much he might complain about things, Don Cherry was the epitome of that simply by dint of his very presence. He was there, basically, because it was easier than firing him. Until it wasn’t.
Look, I just want to watch the hockey — ideally with the insipid, mind-numbing commentary off. ( Yes, Craig Simpson, it is amazing that a game can be 2- 0 and then 2-2 not very long after.) I don’t need or care about intermission content. But if HNIC wants to put on a halfway compelling show, ditching Grapes was but the first sledgehammer blow in what ought to be a total teardown.