i, unlike most of my peers, can remember the first time i ever sat down with my family to watch a hockey game. i can even tell you the exact date because it was such a momentous occasion, not only in my own life, but in the lives of the approximate 70,000 people who took part in or were witness to the events that followed the game. i think june 14th, 1994 was also the first time i ever ate a meal in front of the television. i grew up in a home where we were only permitted to watch channels 3 (the knowledge network) or channel 9 (kcts) because they were commercial free and only if the program was pre-approved by my mother. so the fact that she would okay, let alone cook a meal who's soul purpose was to be eaten in front of the tube was enough to drop a jaw.
i always wanted to play hockey but was never allowed. i'm not sure if it was the extortionate cost of gear and ice time which prevented my parents from condoning my participating or whether it was their shear lack of interest in the sport and desire to drive my brother or myself to 5 am practices. either way, my ice dreams were never realised and instead i was pushed in front of a piano at four and had a violin thrust into my arms at ten (neither of which i regret now looking back) among many many other musical endeavors.
as far as i remember, my mum made us pork chops or some other kind of red meat and potato dish that she would have deemed as t.v. dinner appropriate (probably never having eaten one herself). she might have even splurged and bought a two litre of coke although there is the slight chance that i am fabricating this part of my memory. we grabbed our plates and piled into the basement and crowded around the coffee table, cheered and booed at what we were sure were the appropriate moments and all were genuinely disappointed when the canucks lost game seven of the stanley cup play offs to the new york rangers.
we were not, however, as disapointed as the fifty to seventy thousand angry fans who took to the streets of vancouver, causing over a million dollars in damage to shop windows and other city property due to supposed impartial judging by the referees during the New York home game. i can neither confirm or deny these allegations because i was, at the time, only nine-years-old, and, as previously stated, a rookie fan and the fifteen years that have since past have blurred the memory slightly around the edges.
although i didn't, at the time, live in vancouver, i still remember the riot that ensued. the images that plastered the
television and newspapers the next day still play themselves in my brain every now and then. 540 officers from both the VPD and the RCMP were deployed into the downtown core to attempt to subdue the crowds. 200 people were injured including one 19 year old male who was hit in the head with a rubber bullet, putting him in a coma which lasted four weeks and left him permanently brain damaged. the chaos continued through the night and into the early morning leaving the corner of robson and thurlow in ruins.
and this is my earliest hockey memory. i doubt my parents have watched a hockey game since the 1994 stanley cup riot aside from, possibly, while watching the winter olympics. i, on the other hand, have continued to support the canucks, perhaps a little fairweatheredly, but have supported them all the same. not enough to ever wear a jersey and not enough to miss another opportunity in favour of the game. enough, though, to call myself a fan. and enough that, if there is a game on and i am free, i will be there whether solo in front of my own television or with a group of friends, brewskies in hand, with my face on.
tonight, when burrows slipped the winning puck past mason and his magic beard, making the canucks the first team inducted into the second round of the Stanley Cup play offs, i felt excited and proud. and, i will feel just as proud if we don't make it past the next round because that, in itself, is a feat rarely made this side of the country. i am, however, manifesting a triumphant stanley cup win for our team so that (not only) i can have it as the hockey moment that sticks out along with the olympic victories of 2002.
good luck team!
