he Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club has announced further details of its 25th Anniversary season, which will include the first ever NHL regular season game played outdoors. The game, to be titled “The Heritage Classic”, will be the centerpiece of a year-long celebration commemorating the Oilers 25 seasons in the NHL, and will take place on Saturday, November 22, 2003, at Commonwealth Stadium. The date of November 22 is significant, as it also marks the 86th Anniversary of the National Hockey League, which was formed in Montreal on that day in 1917.

The Heritage Classic will feature two of Canada’s premiere “heritage” teams – the Edmonton Oilers with five Stanley Cup Championships, and the Montreal Canadiens with 24 Stanley Cup Championships, in a regular season match-up in the 50,000 seat facility. A festival atmosphere will be created around the game with special events, live music and fireworks.

Hockey fans attending the Heritage Classic will also be treated to a historical alumni game featuring some of the most celebrated names in NHL hockey history. Wayne Gretzky will be lacing up his skates and donning an Oilers jersey for the first time since 1988, as he leads a team of Edmonton Oilers alumni against Guy Lafleur and a team of Montreal Canadiens alumni. The game will mark the first time Gretzky has participated in an alumni game, and the Great One is excited to return to the City of Champions, “I’ve already promised Kevin (Lowe). If Kevin will lace them up, then I will too. And it will be a thrill.”

Patrick LaForge, President & CEO of the Edmonton Oilers, is equally enthused, “The Heritage Classic is what playing in the Heartland of Hockey is all about – pulling on a toque, bundling up, and getting out into the great outdoors. We’re turning back the clock for the Heritage Classic, and giving fans the chance to relive hockey’s golden heritage. It’s going to be an unforgettable weekend for hockey fans everywhere!”

Pierre Boivin, President of the Montreal Canadiens agrees, “It is a great honour for the Montreal Canadiens to have been selected to play against the Oilers in the Heritage Classic in Edmonton. Many hockey players and fans in Canada enjoy playing the game outdoors and this very special event at Commonwealth Stadium will bring us back to the origins of the game we so dearly love. It is a wonderful initiative by the Oilers that will generate a lot of interest and excitement for people in Edmonton and for hockey fans from coast to coast tuned in to Hockey Night in Canada.”

The gridiron at Commonwealth Stadium will be completely redesigned for the Heritage Classic, as a sheet of ice will replace the stadium’s renowned turf. A complete set of regulation NHL rink boards and glass will be erected, as well as players benches, penalty boxes, and much more. This once-in-a-lifetime event also has the potential to set a Guinness World Record for the largest crowd at a professional hockey game.

-Ian.

——- http://www.tsn.ca/nhl/news_story.asp?idB629

Roy announces retirement from NHL

Canadian Press

5/28/2003

DENVER (AP-CP) – Patrick Roy’s piercing blue eyes gave no hint of the emotional moment. While those around him choked back tears and had trouble speaking, Roy barely blinked.

One of the greatest goalies in NHL history had been preparing for this moment for nearly a year.

“I feel great about my decision,” Roy said Wednesday after announcing his retirement. “I really feel like I emptied the tank and I’m ready to move on. I step aside with no regrets.”

Roy is just two years removed from his best regular season and is still considered one of the league’s premier goalies at 37, but he figured it would be better to go out on top rather than tarnish his image.

“It’s always been important for me to play with consistency, but also leave on my own terms,” said Roy, who made the decision to retire before this season. “I think I’ve accomplished everything I wanted and I think I’ve done basically what I think I should.”

It’s hard to imagine doing much more.

Roy won four Stanley Cup titles – two each with Colorado and Montreal – and holds nearly every major goaltending record. He is the only three-time winner of the Conn Smythe Trophy, awarded to the MVP of the playoffs.

He is the league’s career leader in victories with 551 and games played with 1,029, and he’s also tops in playoff victories, games played and shutouts.

His 23 playoff shutouts and his 247 post-season games and 151 wins are well ahead of Grant Fuhr, who is second with 150 games and 92 wins. He also popularized the butterfly style of play.

“You always knew you would have a chance to win with Patrick in net,” said Mike Keane, who played with Roy in Colorado and Montreal.

Roy announced his retirement at a news conference attended by his wife Michele and three children, Avalanche coach Tony Granato, and teammates Keane, Joe Sakic and Brad Larsen.

The biggest sports news in Denver since John Elway retired three years ago was carried live on several local television stations was beamed live via satellite to Montreal, where reporters were able to ask questions. The news conference was also carried live in Canada on Rogers Sportsnet, CBC Newsworld, The Score, RDS, the Quebec all-news channels RDI and LCN.

With a large mural of him as a backdrop and a cutout of his figure in front of a goal on the side, Roy reflected on a career that began with a six-year-old kid stopping shots in the upstairs of his parents’ house with pillows strapped to his legs.

“I’ve had a blast. It’s been unbelievable. I’ve been so fortunate to have lived a dream and have fun for more than 18 years earning a living by playing a game I love,” said Roy, who spoke in English and French during the news conference.

Those around him had a little more trouble accepting that Roy had left the crease for the last time.

Michele Roy got teary-eyed on several occasions and Avalanche general manager Pierre Lacroix choked back tears as he talked about his relationship with Roy.

“I was fortunate to share a lot of experiences with Patrick and his family,” said Lacroix, who was Roy’s agent before bringing him to Denver in 1995 in a trade with Montreal.

“Every hockey fan in Colorado and throughout the world will always remember your remarkable accomplishments,” Lacroix said as he turned to Roy.

Roy said his only emotional time came the morning after Colorado’s Game 7 loss to Minnesota in the first round of this year’s playoffs, a game in which he gave up the winning goal to Andrew Brunette in overtime.

“That morning when I got up, I had tears in my eyes thinking that could be the last game,” Roy said. “But from there I really felt good about everything.”

Roy has been bothered by arthritic hips and has lost some of his mobility, but said his health had no bearing on the decision.

“This year was probably the best year,” Roy said of his health. “Injury was not even a factor in my decision.”

In retiring, Roy walks away from one year left on his contract, which was at Colorado’s option, worth $8.5 million US. He is due a $1-million bonus upon retirement.

Roy said he’s open to serving in a management role with an NHL team, but his immediate plans are to move back to Quebec and work with the junior team he owns, the Remparts. He also wants to spend time following the career of his son, Jonathan, who will begin playing at Notre Dame, the prestigious prep school in Saskatchewan, in the fall.

Lacroix said the Avalanche will retire Roy’s No. 33 jersey during a game next season. It will hang next to Ray Bourque’s No. 77, the only other Avalanche jersey to be retired since the team moved to Colorado in 1995. The Montreal Canadiens wouldn’t say Wednesday if they will follow suit.

His relationship with the team ended on bad terms when, on Dec. 2, 1995, Mario Tremblay, who had replaced Jacques Demers as head coach of the Canadiens two weeks into the season, left Roy in for nine goals of an 11-1 loss to Detroit at the old Montreal Forum.

Roy raised his arms in defiance to the braying crowd and when he was finally pulled, he brushed past Tremblay, leaned over to team president Ronald Corey and said he was finished in Montreal. He was soon traded Colorado.

He also angered many Canadian hockey fans when he decided not to play for Canada at the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics. He said it was because he wanted to focus on his NHL season but many felt it was because he wasn’t guaranteed a starting spot. Canada went on to win the gold medal. Roy did play in the 1998 Winter Games in Japan where Canada finished fourth.

When asked Wednesday if he had any regrets about missing out on the gold medal, Roy didn’t miss a beat.

“Not at all,” he said. “I went to the Olympics in Nagano and I had a good time there. It was perfect. I had my chance, at the time I thought I had other things to do and I still have no regrets.”

I just read, my eyes filled with incredulity, the ignorance spewed by the Denver Post’s Woody Paige on April 12, 2001 in an article (sic) titled “Canada Can’t Cancel The Avs This Postseason”. As a Canadian, I found its content to be virulently offensive. It is also exemplary of everything that’s wrong with the attitude of some Americans (and unlike Mr. Paige I will resist the temptation to generalize by saying ALL Americans) toward the world that lies outside their borders.

Here is my response to Mr. Paige’s article:

Dear Woody;

It would behoove you to know, sir, that the nation upon which you urinated in your rambling and pointless column of April 12, 2001 is in fact the birthplace of the game of hockey which you Coloradans have so recently learned to worship. You see, the “National” in National Hockey League stands for Canada. And long before American money plucked a financially-strapped but talented young team from Quebec City minutes before their Stanley Cup Victory, a rich tradition of sportsmanship and grace began in the New World, in Canada.

You can be forgiven for your seeming inability to display such sportsmanship, since obviously the sport of hockey and its heritage are all new to you. I assume that adding another sport to your career-long diet of Football, Baseball, and Professional Wrestling has not afforded you the opportunity to perform in-depth analysis and research as to this seemingly new-fangled sport’s traditions.

Anyway, on to my lesson. Lord Stanley, sent to Canada in the 1880s by the Queen of England (can you name which one?) as Canada’s Governor General, repeataedly observed groups of teenage boys playing a strange sport called “hockey” along Ottawa’s frozen Rideau Canal. The word comes from the French word “hocquet” which means “bent stick” — Canada has always embraced both French and English cultures equally.

A few months later, he purchased a tin cup for 10 guineas on London’s Carnaby Street. He wanted to create a tournament and national championship with the aim of unifying a nation that was then fractured by distance and dissimilar interests. The tournament was first held in Canada in 1893 and was won, ironically, by the Montreal Amateur Athletic Association — the seeds of what would eventually become “Les Habitants”, or the Montreal Canadiens.

In 1917, after World War I, the amateur teams of Canada merged to create the “original five” teams of the National Hockey League — the Montreal Canadiens, the Montreal Wanderers, the Ottawa Senators, the Quebec Bulldogs, and the Toronto Arenas — flying under the banner of the Stanley Cup. The cup, though property of the NHL, was up for grabs by the top teams of other leagues, like the PCL.

Even in those days, Canadian teams competed for players with the deep pockets of American investors. As Amateur Athletics began to congeal around this new championship race, companies around the Eastern US began sponsoring their own teams in a loosely assembled corporate hockey league. Robber barons and other industrialists came to bet thousands of dollars on the outcome of games, and things started heating up.

Whether it was for corporate pride, personal ego, or monetary gain these teams made up of each company’s “employees” began importing seasoned, skilled Canadian hockey players to the US for exhorbitant amounts of money to secure victory. In a few short decades since its inception, Canada had become a hockey factory of sorts, turning out prodigies like Cyclone Taylor, Joe Malone, Cy Denneny, and others.

Eventually, the many teams and leagues folded under the economic pressure by growing salaries and the league converged around a mixture of Canadian and American teams from six cities, spawning the misnomer “original six”.

It was simple economics that drew many of these talents South of the border, beginning an oft-repeated tradition in hockey, which continues today. These days, Canada produces greater than 60% of the players in the NHL — an impressive feat for a country with fewer than 28 million people. Of the five Avalanche Superstars you mention in your article — Ray Bourque, Rob Blake, Joe Sakic, Peter Forsberg and Patrick Roy — all but one are Canadian.

Your revered (until he loses a few games) Avs coach, Bob Hartley, is Canadian. Marc Crawford, your former coach and present adversary, is also Canadian. In fact, reviewing the Stanley Cup victors of the last five years, each winning team has greatly exceeded the statistical average percentage of Canadians in the league on a per team basis. Clearly this is a winning formula and clearly American sports entrepeneurs have taken notice.

With enterprise and American money, the league has multiplied to cover such unlikely locales for ice hockey as Tampa Bay, San Jose, and Colorado. Through it all, the National Hockey League has retained its original traditions — as each team advances to the next round of the playoffs, for example, they go with the handshakes and blessings of those whom they defeated. These subtle gestures of sportsmanship harken back to the league’s amateur origins.

But what is it that makes Canadian players and the Canadian game so successful? Perhaps it is the hard work, dedication, and fortitude of the players coming out of our system. Perhaps it is education programmes, corporate funding, or community support that makes it possible. In all cases, though, these support systems pale by comparison to the influence of a strong and ingrained tradition of athletic excellence and sportsmanship.

Last night I watched with amazement as Barry Bonds became the 17th player to hit 500 home runs during his career — an impressive, but clearly not exceptional feat. The entire game ceased for 20 minutes to accomodate a special ceremony and photo op that had obviously been planned and rehearsed with every detail.

By contrast, when Wayne Gretzky (a Canadian) leafed his 802nd goal past a stunned netminder to surpass Gordie Howe’s career scoring record — a record which will likely stand forever at 894 — he simply raised a hand in modest celebration before the ovations of the crowd, returned to the players’ bench, and awaited his next shift.

Perhaps in this dichotomy you will see that our Canadian tradition of subtlety, humility, and above all respect (for the game, its players, and for its fans) embody the word “sportsmanship”. You will see that the game of hockey retains many such traditions that have been lost in other sports, to their detriment. You will see that, win or lose, all participants can stand proud and be counted among the elite few priviledged to play the world’s fastest sport.

You would do well to pay homage to this tradition rather than treading all over it with your shoddilly-written article (satire or not). As outright ignorance and lack of respect such as yours seeps into the game along with your money, you jeopardize the dignity and sanctity of the very sport itself. You can be forgiven, as an obvious newcomer, for not understanding — but you cannot for the tone in which you express your sentiments.

Today, as throughout the league’s history, a victory for any NHL team remains a victory for all Canadians. It is our game, our tradition, our players, and our National symbol. To date, the contributions Americans have made to the game are limited to your money, and the hackneyed opinions of a few small town columnists with a penchant for revisionist history.

Thanks anyway,

-Ian.