No sport has as many stupid traditions as hockey.
They’re stupid because they are inexplicable except through tautologies.
For example: Why do they still fight? Because if they didn’t, they’d hurt each other some other way.
It’s the sort of thing hockey people say all the time, and it’s enough to drive a logician to the bottle.
That’s the least supportable of them, but it’s not the worst.
I don’t have anything against the playoff beard or the refusal to touch the Conference trophy, but I can’t cheerlead for the hive mind that reinforces these customs.
Where’s the one guy who doesn’t care? That’s the guy I want to have a beer with. He’s the guy who doesn’t let his male friends determine his grooming habits; the one who doesn’t like to be told what he can and cannot touch.
In life, we all love that guy. In hockey, he’s a pariah.
In some ways, this isn’t a sport. It’s the world’s most boring cult.
Of all the “traditions” in the NHL, the most insipid is the sanctity of the logo.
You can sort of understand this when it comes to the Maple Leaf (a national symbol) or the Canadiens’ “C” (a much more important national symbol).
It gets a little ridiculous when guys don’t want to let the Coyote or the stylized Hurricane touch the ground. Until someone in the NHL announces they’ve converted to Animism, you cannot “respect” a Panther.
If that insipidity were to be boiled down to a strong, gelatinous goo, the result would be the sudden, frothing homage paid to the logo woven into the carpet of the dressing room.
Every NHL locker room has one of these. It’s always placed in the midst of the easiest path from one side of the room to the other. There is always someone — usually an intern destined for work on the lowest rungs of law enforcement — hovering beside it, trembling slightly as he waits for someone to slide an errant toe onto the Holy of Holies.
Generally speaking, these are not big rooms. When they get filled up during a major game, the crowd bunches up at the periphery, where the players’ lockers are located. The only way to get from one side to the other is through the middle.
But you can’t, because HockeyCop is watching you. So you end up clawing your way across the backs of 10 guys, tracing a 10-inch path around the outline of the logo, like you’re the world’s least co-ordinated mountain goat.
It is, if nothing else, a wonderful reminder of your place in the great order of things.
This is not a “tradition” in any real sense. A tradition suggests a long-standing habit that has, over time, taken on some greater meaning.
As best anyone can tell, the sanctity of the carpet logo sprang fully formed about 10 years ago and spread through the NHL like a flu at fat camp.
This is not to say there weren’t logos on the carpet before that, but that 10 years ago, someone decided that no one could walk on them any more.
I’ve been to St. Peter’s. I knew enough not to hop the barricade and begin trodding around on top of the altar.
They don’t leave the chalices spread out on the steps, and send a Jesuit out there to scream at you when you get near them.
You see how that works? Sacred objects that are not meant to be stepped on are rarely placed on the floor.
This is why we don’t celebrate the inventor of the shelf. Because, outside the NHL, we take for granted that all humans can figure this out for themselves.
On Saturday, Justin Bieber played in Boston. They gave him the Bruins dressing room.
Before he arrived, some incipient Fascist roped off the Bruins logo, lest Bieber step on it when no one (and there couldn’t have been anyone) was looking.
Bieber’s already been raked for standing on the Blackhawks logo while taking a photo of the Stanley Cup a couple of weeks ago.
Yes, of course. How dare he show so little respect to the cartoon Indian chief all the white guys wear on their fancy costumes?
We have no idea how Bieber reacted to the off-limits exploding “B.” If the kid has an ounce of punk rock in him, he took a leak on it.
Hockey has its great traditions, prime among them the post-playoff handshake.
This was never mandated. It happened organically.
Every once in a while, someone refuses to take part. That’s a healthy part of it — a good tradition does not drift into taboo. It’s something you choose to do out of respect, rather than are forced to do out of a sense of obligation.
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