Welcome to the first edition of 2024 for the Blitz. Based on my headline this week, as usual I’m getting into the same hard-hitting subjects as you’ve come to expect from past entries, which have included such controversial topics as wacky inflatable arm-flailing tube men, singing in the shower, and the never-ending saga of driving an unattractive station wagon older than most current junior hockey players. Here we go…
As a semi-occasional part-time sports reporter, I spend a lot of time in arenas during the winter months. It literally comes with the territory of covering all walks of hockey, including my fair share of junior.
Stationed in Listowel, obviously most of my arena time is spent covering the Junior Cyclones, as well as the minor hockey circuit in town. It’s extremely rare that I make my way up to the Blue Line Club, the Steve Kerr Memorial Complex’s designated bar area. Certainly not in a drinking capacity, as I’m tasked with covering the game and not the bar, as refreshing as a cold beer can be on a frigid January evening.
It’s tough not to run into people you know at these games, especially in your hometown of many years. And whether in the Blue Line Club or not, the festive folks who are taking part in some adult beverages always seem to find you for a semi-drunken chat. Whether it be about hockey, life, or what they believe should be appearing in the next edition of the newspaper. These conversations are unavoidable in my line of work, and at the very least they make for some amusing anecdotes for later.
Listowel has weekly instances of this for me, and I don’t mind. Any time I go out to my native Howick for a game, especially on a weekend, the instances increase tenfold. Some folks you haven’t seen in a while just want to catch up, even if it’s by delivering their words through a shout highlighted with a bit of inadvertent beer spittle mixed in. All part of the gig.
These close encounters of the drunken kind happen fewer in my less-frequented territories of Wingham, Monkton and Milverton, but they still occur. Last weekend I took in an Ironmen road game in Mitchell, a place where I expected to know maybe a couple people going in. I did indeed, but the highlight of the night was a lengthy chat with an obliterated attendee I had never previously met. This guy claimed he had just wandered down to the game that night and wasn’t a regular. Also, that he didn’t drink too often.
And while I believed neither of those claims, the guy could still hold a decent conversation as drunk as he was. There’s always lots of arm nudging and close talking with these kinds of guys, but he was harmless. It was also an entertaining way to kill the last period of what was a fairly unentertaining game.
I’ve been to a lot of sporting events and concerts where a great many people gather at once, with a great many indulging in those afore-mentioned adult beverages. And for the life of me, I can’t recall an instance where things got overly ugly at a hockey game in particular (other than me nearly getting assaulted in the washroom of a Buffalo Sabres/Philadelphia Flyers playoff game in 2006, although I may have brought that upon myself somewhat), especially at a local junior game. Major League Baseball? Yep. National Football League? Definitely yep. Iron Maiden concert? Saw a lot of blood at the last one I attended, so also yep.
Hockey fans seem to just be a little more good natured; they can dish out the barbs to the opposing fans and take them as well without having to resort to violence. I know it doesn’t always go that way, but the vast majority I’d surmise would. And I think a lot of that has to do with a decent amount of beer in the system. ‘Let the liquor do the thinking,’ as the late great Jim Lahey once said.
Not bad advice to take to heart every once in a great while. Maybe some of those ornery U11 or U13 parents I’ve seen over the years should consider bringing a flask along to their kids’ next minor hockey matchup…
Thanks for reading and I’ll see you back here in a fortnight.
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This is a bi-weekly opinion column; for question or comment contact Dan McNee at dmcnee@midwesternnewspapers.com.
