Hockey theme contest hits sour note
After my floor hockey team lost its fourth consecutive game by a double-digit margin, my teammates and I trudged off to a sports bar in order to complain about how dirty the other team was. The place was packed with men wearing hockey jerseys and baseball caps. Eating chicken wings and nachos, they used swear words like commas.
As fate would have it, the Leafs were playing the Red Wings that night, kicking off the first Hockey Night in Canada broadcast of the season. This proved to be cause for a kind of boozy jubilation, and in no time at all, a sincerely fraternal atmosphere permeated the place.
As mawkish and boring as it might be to hear, there’s nothing that brings people together in this country quite like hockey. In the first intermission, when Coach’s Corner came on, everybody put down their chicken wings and listened to the inarticulate raging of Don Cherry, now in his mid-70s. Beside him, as always, was Ron MacLean, who’s reputed to be the nicest person on the planet, which is really the equivalent of being called the most Canadian person on the planet. As usual, he played the semi-cool uncle to Cherry’s crabby grandfather.
Although it’s almost impossible to imagine Coach’s Corner without Cherry, there are many who think that this might be his last year. With an eye to the future, the CBC has brought to HNIC another combative ex-Bruin in the form of Mike Milbury. Those of us in Ottawa will fondly remember him as the Islander GM who traded us Zdeno Chara, and the draft pick that became Jason Spezza, for Alexei Yashin. Milbury just signed a two-year deal to serve as an analyst, but it’s clear that he’s being groomed to eventually take over for Cherry as the resident truth-telling vulgarian.
And when that day comes, we will all miss Don Cherry something fierce, as we will Bob Cole. Cole, about the same age as Cherry, has been the defining voice of Hockey Night in Canada for over 30 years. For many, his voice is an authentic part of our culture. However, he’s now a treasure for the past he evokes, rather than the present he captures, and, as such, it looks like HNIC is looking to gently ease him out of his regular role as star announcer.
If the potential of these two changes wasn’t cataclysmic enough, HNIC has done the unthinkable this season and replaced Dolores Claman’s iconic opening theme. This piece of music defined Canada in ways that the official national anthem — which you may well have to mumble through in a language you don’t understand — never even came close to. That the CBC lost this theme song to rival CTV is utterly mind-blowing.
It’s hard to imagine what they were thinking, but they were no doubt infused with the arrogance that comes along with being a ratings juggernaut. Within the culture of the CBC, HNIC stands alone, boasting a Bay Street swagger. Responsible for bringing in the lion’s share of advertising revenue, they likely view all the pointy-heads who want to fund quirky arts programming as nerds. Like a big, dumb jock bullying his way down the high school corridors, it’s easy to imagine this sort of entity thinking it would be a good idea to play hardball with a cultural institution. The rest, as they say, is history.
However, from this rubble, the CBC still had an opportunity to salvage the situation. Their idea to have an open contest for the new theme song was brilliant, as the nearly 15,000 entries — more than ten times what they expected — proved. With promises of a show — kind of like American Idol, only cool — in which the selection of the theme was documented and voted on by the public, it seemed they’d struck gold.
But the whole thing just kind of fizzled out. Instead of taking their time to evaluate and promote all of the submissions, the CBC blasted ahead, as if they just wanted the whole, sordid mess behind them. It would have made a lot more sense to take the entire season to decide on a new anthem, featuring a different candidate’s tune each week. They could also have created an actual reality show, instead of a hurried special, which was more a cross-marketing opportunity for George Stroumboulopoulos and The Hour, than anything else. If they had taken their time, they could have generated all sorts of publicity and momentum, but no, they decided to do a half-assed job so the new theme would be in place for the start of the season.
It should be noted that the 36-year-old Stroumbo — who is always clad in black — is starting to feel more like a fetish than a person. Whenever the CBC hopes to appear contemporary, they summon Stroumbo, who appears like the Devil’s familiar to do their bidding. In this case, it was to announce the winning theme with Don Cherry.
And so, last Saturday, after all the voting, the new theme song was announced. No matter that the evaluation procedure was vaguely worded, leaving the weasels at CBC enough wiggle room to ignore the popular vote if they hated the democratic decision.
Tuning in for the historic moment, I saw Stroumbo twitching about on stage, while Cherry — wearing contrasting white — pushed through the joyless crowd standing in the studio. With great alacrity, like maybe he’d forgotten his lines, Cherry announced that Colin Oberst was the winner of the competition. Confetti fell from the ceiling, as if from a generic New Year’s party, and Oberst smiled awkwardly.
Amidst a cotton candy swirl of bagpipes and samples from HNIC broadcasts over the years, the new anthem, Canadian Gold, was played. It was anti-climactic, and the moment felt shoddy and inauthentic.
Immediately after, HNIC cut to a melodramatic video montage of heroic hockey players, featuring the voice of Tim Robbins, an L.A. actor who likes hockey. It was corny, but appealing and, while watching, I noticed repeated images of Trevor Linden.
Linden, who retired from the NHL last year, was never a great player, but he was always a very good and dependable one. He was respected by the media and fans alike, always playing the cagey, hard-working game that we value so much.
I happened to be channel-surfing when his last game was unfolding at his home rink in Vancouver. After the game, the final one of his career, was over, Linden came out to make a farewell circuit of the rink. In the stands, his parents, holding one another, watched as the son they’ve always loved was giving something up that had defined him, and perhaps their relationship to him, for the last 30 years. As the teary crowd stood and applauded, I realized that although I’d never thought much about Linden, he’s been a part of my life, however peripherally, for the last 20 years.
It was a sad moment, but it was wonderful and dignified, too. It’s too bad that the CBC couldn’t have stepped back and done something similar with the passing of the anthem, instead of cynically attempting, and failing, to make a glitzy virtue out of tawdry necessity.