Respect

Well, the Olympics are over.  We got to see a lot of great hockey and hopefully showed the casual fans and first-timers how truly awesome this sport is.

What I also hope is that both American fans and, more importantly, players earned the respect of our hockey brethren north of the border.  I don't want this to sound like I'm a sore loser, so let me start off by congratulating Team Canada for withstanding the incredible pressure to win and coming out on top in their national pastime on their soil.  Because of the saturation of sports here in the United States, there isn't any international event that we would host where there would be that kind of pressure on our team.  Not baseball.  Not basketball.  Not football.  There are countless sporting events that are the crown jewels of their respective sports and everyone of them has a big following:  the World Series; the NBA finals; the Masters; the Daytona 500; the NCAA Basketball championship; the BCS National Championship; the Super Bowl.  (Coincidentally, the US-Canada matchup beat all of these in ratings except for the latter two).  Of those sports, only baseball, basketball and golf are played in any kind of international tournament like the Olympics (golf is slated to be part of the 2016 Rio Games).  Despite the great pride Americans take in some of these sports, it's nowhere near the pride Canadians take in hockey.  It's a pride and a passion I admire and try hard to match.  I'm not Canadian, so it probably never can compare, therefore I have to envy it. 

It's a birthright to them, but despite that, it's not an entitlement, as many of the fans seemed to think.  A birthright is something you are born to do.  You still have to do it to earn it.  It's akin to a rite of passage.  An entitlement is something that you're given for free.  Team Canada was not given this gold medal.  They earned it.  So to think of it as an entitlement diminishes its meaning.  I would think that those 34 million Canadians think this is all the sweeter because their players had to earn it.

That's where the respect factor comes in.  There is not a lot of respect when it comes to the way Canadian fans (and players) think of hockey in the United States.  In certain ways, I can understand that.  The NHL's struggles to expand the fan base have sometimes come at the expense of the Canadian hockey fan.  (Here I am, a fan of a team that used to be a religion in Quebec City.)  But there are millions of hardcore hockey fans here in the US.  Not casual fans.  Hardcore fans.  USA Hockey's enormous success in developing more and more NHL stars is evidence that the game has grown by leaps and bounds on a grassroots level.  Just the other night, a AAA game went into double overtime, delaying the start of my league game that night.  The talent of these kids is amazing and their passion and excitement for the game is easily as visible as it is in any Canadian junior game.  Just like their Canadian counterparts, their parents get up at ungodly hours to drive their kids to tournaments all over the region.  They pay the league fees and the equipment costs because their kids love the game (and if we didn't have 300 days of sunshine in Denver, there would be a lot more backyard rinks).  These fans aren't trying to steal the game from Canada.  We want to love it as you do.

I'm not saying they have to like each other.  They are rivals.  Rivals aren't supposed to like each other.  They're supposed to hate each other.  Respect has nothing to do with that.  But it's not a rivalry if one side doesn't respect the abilities of the other side.

Team USA made Team Canada fight for every inch.  That doesn't deserve love, but it does deserve respect.  It also reaffirms the beliefs of all Canadians and probably most American fans that the North American style of play is the way to go.  These two teams easily played the two best games of the tournament.

While the growth of the game beyond Canadian borders (and North American borders) may sometimes seem like a threat to a national passion, one needs to remember that better competition makes victory sweeter.  As long as Russia, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia and now Switzerland develop their talent and try to knock off the teams on the pedestal, it will make staying on top more difficult and much more satisfying when it is accomplished.  I can't imagine that Paul Henderson's goal in 1972 or Mario Lemieux's goal in 1987 would be near as iconic in Canada if the USSR's Red Machine was instead a B league team.  The same can be said for Crosby's OT winner.

Victories are going to be harder to come by for every team in international play.  I'm sure Canada is still going to be the superpower, but their standing will be all the more prestigious when they have to play formidable opponents to earn it.

I greatly respect the Canadian game and the development of its stars.  I hope that street is now going two ways.

Congratulations and party hard.

P.S.  Pretty good rating for the game in Denver despite the fact that the game had to go up against the Nuggets/Lakers game on ABC.  We finished 9th in metered markets but considering that the 8 cities that finished ahead of us didn't have a local team playing at the same time, the ratings were still very good.