DESIGNATED HITTER AWAKENING

Years of cynicism about the NHL has melted away after a long sojourn through far away hockey hotbeds.

Dave Bidini is the rhythm guitarist for Rheostatics. He has written two books. His last was Tropic of Hockey, which inspired the film, The Hockey Nomad. Photo by Erin Riley

By DAVE BIDINI -- SportsXtra

 My friend Pujee lives in Ulan Battor, the capital city of Mongolia. Growing up, there was hockey everywhere.

 The Russians, who occupied the city for much of the last century, built myriad rinks for neighbourhood kids and homesick Soviet workers. After the Russians left, Pujee pretty much assumed the mantle of Mongolian hockey, helping to run the six-team, outdoor national league where, in neighbouring Banganoor, games are attended by nomads on horseback, cheering on players skating in borrowed boots in minus 35 degree weather.

 While there was something vaguely utopian about being a Mongolian hockey player during the Russian era, the same could not be said of the Mongolian hockey fan. Because state television only broadcast twenty hours of programming per week, you can imagine what percentage was devoted to the NHL. Growing up, Pujee's only knowledge of Canadian hockey was cribbed from two sources: Bobby Hull's Hockey, My Way in Russian, and the Czechoslovakian text of Dryden's The Game. Other-wise, Pujee wouldn't have known the Brothers Sutter from the Karamazovs. Players like Howe, Orr, Gretzky were only a rumour to him.

 But as conditions started to change and Mongolia, after eighty years as a Soviet satellite state, established its independance with the fall of the Iron Curtain, Pujee's world became filled with light; suddenly, with the influx of the internet, cable television (when I was there in October, I watched stations from India, France, Dubai, China and Russia), and VCRs, Pujee was able to take in the players and teams he'd once imagined. His knowledge of the world game was such that, upon visiting him last fall, he told me about a few then-unknown European players whom I later watched lead their respective teams at the World

 Junior Championships. He also asked me: "How is Nik Antropov doing these days?" I was astonished that he knew the name of the Leafs' third year centre, but then he told me: "In the '98 Asian games, Antropov scored fourteen goals against Mongolia. He was so big!" he said, pretending to reach around me with his stick.

 I'd like to report that I shared Pujee's desire to absorb as much of the NHL as possible, but it wasn't the case. Before embarking on my world hockey tours, I was wracked with cynicism regarding the pro game. So much of what hockey is today, it wasn't yesterday: the obvious corporate environment of the glassy new rinks, the conservative nature of the playing styles, the muted, guarded personae of the players, and the sheer length of the season, which should still be running at full-force as you read this. But it was because of Pujee's enthusiasm (and other players whom I'd met in Dubai and Transylvania), that I made an effort to love what I'd once grown to despise, to try and appreciate the game despite the trappings of contemporary sport.

 It wasn't easy. Hockey in the modern age is so systems-oriented that most fans pray for a tie so that teams can open up in overtime with one less player aside. The late Billy Harris once told me: "In my day, the main job of the coach was to organize the players into lines, then write them down on the chalkboard." But in the twenty-first century, teams are drilled by a troupe of bewhistled, sweat-panted men to play defense first, resulting in a high percentage of games that are as much fun to watch as televised surgery. And while I understand that there are handfuls of Floridians and Californians for whom the local team is the source of great joy, it still confounds me that anyone ever came up with the idea to sell hockey in markets where the consumer has the choice of either floating in the soft bubbly surf or sit shivering in the cold while under threat of being konked by a flying plug of vulcanized rubber.

 Yet, as I discovered upon returning from the great beyond, hockey still possesses great beauty and drama, which no measure of hurtling mascots, exploding scoreboards or t-shirt cannons can destroy. Brian MacFarlane once told me that, "Twenty years ago, guys couldn't even flick the puck up with their sticks to the referee," illuminating the vastness by which the NHL's talent base has expanded. Really, you have to try hard not to behold the graceful skating of Sandis Ozolinsh, to say nothing of the Seussian nature of his name; Roberto Luongo's butterfly, Martin Brodeur's glove hand or the way Curtis Joseph throws himself at the puck like a man being pushed from a moving vehicle; Joe Thornton's sliding bookcase skating style; Mike Comrie's stooped-guy-stickhandling-under-a-tabletop; Peter Forsberg's mercurial hellhound; Mike Ricci's nose; Bryan McCabe's hair; Chris Phillips' teeth, or lack thereof; or whatever small miracle Mario Lemieux, Mats Sundin or Mike Modano has most recently shown fans, and players who, like myself, figured they'd seen all that was ever meant to be seen on a hockey rink.

 Being a follower of pro hockey is to work at the sport like the above-mentioned craftsmen. These days, you can't just happen upon a game and expect to be drawn in; after all, you can't see many of the players' faces, those attention-grabbing moustasches of the 70s have met the same fate as the Cleveland Barons, and, these days, athletes say very little to the press to suggest that they share the same dreams, worries and lifestyles as the rest of us. Instead, the fan needs a more powerful lens. After all, if Pujee could see it from so far away, there's no reason to turn our backs on what we love about hockey, even though many have tried to distort it to serve their needs.