The morning e-mail did not surprise – not given the way things have tended to go in recent Canadian springs.
"No more hockey for me," she wrote, she being a professor at the University of Ottawa and a passionate, well-informed … well … fanatic of the national game. "Now all that energy will be spent in the garden – more rewarding."
It was officially over for Canadian teams in the Stanley Cup playoffs: the Montreal Canadiens, last northern team standing, falling 4-1 Tuesday to the Tampa Bay Lightning, the Calgary Flames having been doused 3-2 in overtime by the Anaheim Ducks two nights earlier.
We are now officially entering Year 23 of no Stanley Cup for the country that invented the game and, somewhat incongruously, is also the two-time defending champion of the Olympic gold medal in men's hockey.
It is, as well, 123 years since an aide to Governor-General Lord Stanley rose in the long-forgotten Russell Hotel here in Ottawa and announced that the GG had "for some time been thinking that it would be a good thing if there were a challenge cup which should be held from year to year by the champion hockey team in the Dominion of Canada."
Nothing there about the Los Angeles Kings, Pittsburgh Penguins or Chicago Blackhawks. Nothing there, in fact, about the National Hockey League. It has been more than a century since teams from Montreal, Winnipeg and Ottawa might win that trophy two or more times in a season, and teams from places like Sydney and Brandon and Dawson City could challenge for it.
The last Canadian club to win the Cup was the 1993 Montreal Canadiens. The Vancouver Canucks reached the final in 1994, the Calgary Flames in 2004, the Edmonton Oilers in 2006 and the Ottawa Senators in 2007 and Vancouver again in 2011– making for four fallow years now without late spring hockey in Canada.
It is impossible to count the number of Canadians who will now largely tune out. After the hardest winter in memory for so many, warm spring evenings or weekend afternoons are for spending anywhere but in front of the television watching, say, a team from Florida play a team from California.
There is no way to measure "intensity" of watching. Yet, there is a profound difference between having "the game on" in the background, perhaps darting in from the patio to see what the roar was all about, and living and dying with every rush and save.
On the bright side, perhaps the greatest gift of this spring is to no longer have to wonder if those Honda commercials are selling more garbage bags than cars, or whether that irritating couple eating ice cream will ever move into their house.
"We might keep watching by habit and because hockey is our national sport," says André Richelieu, a professor at University of Quebec in Montreal and an expert in sports marketing. "But the emotional involvement is not the same and, consequently, we don't commit as much as if one Canadian team or more were involved in the later stages of the playoffs."
It is not as if there are no Canadians still involved. The Anaheim Ducks, the team that eliminated Calgary, have eight Canadians, including their captain, Ryan Getzlaf, and both assistants, Corey Perry and François Beauchemin. The Tampa Bay Lightning, the team that put the Canadiens out, has seven Canadians on the roster, including captain Steven Stamkos.
But it is just not the same. The Canadiens might have an American and a Russian as assistant captains but the team is still very much Canadian.
Speculation as to why Canadian teams now regularly come up short range from bad luck to bad drafting to an inability to attract the blue-chip free agents that are widely believed to be the difference makers in the postseason. Whether they will not come because of the weather, taxes or spouses wishing their families to avoid the intensity of the spotlight hardly matters – the very best don't seem to come north.
Once there is no Canadian team to cheer for – or cheer against, which is equally important in sports – there is not much attraction to be found in a game reduced to chip and chase, blocked shots, gigantic goaltenders and low-scoring games that now seem never to feature the sort of glory goals children are scoring in their driveways at this time of year.
It has created a situation in this country where the climax of the season is no longer the day in June when the championship is decided, but a season that peaks in the opening round of the playoffs, might continue into a second round – but then enters a denouement wherein interest slips steadily, even if the televisions remain on.
Prof. Richelieu will even argue that tuned-in televisions are part of the problem. This season's new TV agreement – Rogers and TVA taking over control and CBC carrying broadcasts for free – "has led to a saturation because of the multiplicity of games being broadcast every night of the week. These games often involve teams that do not resonate with the average Canadian hockey fan. We could even say that, in the eyes of some consumers, the NHL product risks losing some of its appeal because of overextensive coverage. The balance between accessibility and exclusivity is tricky for any product or brand – but it is essential in keeping the interest of consumers."
The professor believes the situation over the past several springs has presented a golden opportunity for other games to fill the interest gap. It might be too early for football, but soccer is ever increasing in popularity and, of course, Canada does still have one team in Major League Baseball.
"If by chance the Toronto Blue Jays could start winning for real," he says, "we could then have a 'national' sports alternative to the Stanley Cup playoffs that involve only American-based teams. The fact that, for years now, Canadian clubs have been eliminated in the early stages of the playoffs has given the Blue Jays a glorious opportunity to strengthen the emotional bond they once had with the Canadian sports audience."
Prof. Richelieu says the Blue Jays retro-marketing campaign that introduced the "new old logo" in 2012, aimed at bridging the glorious World Series past of 1992 and 1993 with the team of today, was brilliant – at least in conception.
"Unfortunately," he says, "the Jays have not been able to deliver on their promises just yet."
And so we are left to choose between hockey games that mean so little and warm spring evenings that mean so much.
Not really a hard choice, is it?
Roy MacGregor