By Kevin Adshade
If I were running things, at every Canadian rink this weekend they should not play O Canada prior to the dropping of the puck, instead they should play "The Hockey Song," Stompin' Tom's iconic tribute to Canada's passion.
Baseball might have "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and "Centerfield," but neither comes close to capturing the feel of a sport like The Hockey Song: and if you're writing a tune about hockey, how can you top 'Hello out there/we're on the air/it's hockey night tonight'?
You can't, so don't even try.
That song gets hockey fans pumped in cold rinks big and small, right across this country; from Nanaimo to Flin Flon to Thorburn. I'll just say it up front: if you like hockey and you don't like that song there's something wrong with ya. And by the way, as a little kid I didn't learn Canada's provincial capitals from a Hilroy scribbler in Grade 3, years before that I got them down from "Name the Capital," which is a cool song and a fine lesson in Canadian geography. (Since I'm running things and truly in charge of all – think Stephen Harper but way less uptight – then I might as well go ahead and set the school curriculum while I'm at it. Not sure what they're teaching the kids these days, but I assume they've abandoned the "Louis Riel was a hero and not a murderer" fairy tale we used to read out of text books.)
And shouldn't a Saskatchewan-bred rock band like, say, The Sheepdogs, record a muscled-up version of "Roll on Saskatchewan," which would give the Roughriders the perfect theme song to blast out there in Regina, at what should always be called Taylor Field?
For those songs and many others (I'm rather partial to Luke's Guitar and The Bridge Came Tumblin' Down), thanks to Stompin' Tom Connors, a true Canadian legend who immortalized other Canadian people and places and who announced to all who listened that hockey is the best game you can name. Maybe we'll see you, further on up the road.
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Non-Sports Thought of the Week: There's nothing wrong with New Glasgow police acquiring a Cougar from the Canadian military. If you can get one of those for nothing, you take it and God help anyone who gets in your way (again, think Stephen Harper and his theory on governance). Essentially a tank, one could imagine it ramming through a drug house (I think it's safe to say we have a few of those in the county) and laying waste to whatever is crushed under the wheels. If nothing else, it'll provide cops with an opportunity to get rid of some stress by taking it out to the country and going 12 or 16-wheelin'. Be honest: who didn't look at the pictures of the Cougar (I'm not referring to the kind you might see up the pub on a Friday night... or a Wednesday afternoon) and say: "I'd love to take that baby for a spin and smash through something?”
Kevin Adshade is a sports columnist for The News.
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