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- Hockey’s draw thawing
- Hockey’s draw thawing
Back in his Japanese homeland, Takeshi Nishida was more than content to cheer his local major league baseball heroes, the Hanshin Tigers.
Upon his arrival in Canada 12 years ago, however, the sun rose on an entirely different sport for the native of the Kobe-Osaka area.
Within a few years, he and Japanese-born wife Itsuko’s five-year-old daughter Koko laced up the skates for two seasons.
Now, son Tetsu, 5, takes to the ice every week as a Timbits-level player.
“he loves it every time, so excited,” says Nishida.
For the man who still flexes his Japanese heritage as a sushi chef, adopting Canada’s sport as a household ritual was inevitable.
Much of that was spawned by Calgary’s professional sports scene, namely the NHL’s Flames.
“Calgary has no major league baseball team,” says Nishida, noting the rocky fates of the city’s Pacific League ball teams. “in Calgary, it’s hockey … in Japan, hockey was very specialized, not so easy to find ice.”
After moving from Banff to Calgary, he found a city in the throes of the Flames’ 2004 playoff run, a Stanley Cup crusade that sealed the deal for the family.
“It was like a fever,” he says.
Besides, he says, there’s no denying the game’s muscular charms.
“The speed and power — it’s exciting,” says Nishida.
Fiery-C jerseys are a common sight in their northwest home and the spirits of his wife rise and fall with the Flames’ fortunes.
Itsuko rued the day the club traded her favourite, Chuck Kobasew, to the Boston Bruins in 2007.
Koko’s hockey run came to an end when her next age group meant too much travelling for the family — a conundrum that crosses all demographic boundaries.
But in an amateur hockey system worried about contraction and immigrant participation, there’s still expansion potential in the family.
should be following in the skates of her sister and brother, says her dad.
“hopefully, it’ll happen four years later,” he says.
But the NHL shouldn’t take for granted such devotion among newcomers to Canada, states a new report by the Conference Board of Canada.
The agency states professional sports leagues like the NHL must do more to cater to Canada’s rapidly changing demographics to remain viable in the long run.
That’s largely due to the much easier accessibility and loyalty to the dominant game of the native lands, states the report.
“for many, soccer is the team sport,” it says.
“Ignoring the demographic reality today could hurt the financial viability of professional sports franchises in the future.”
Calgary Flames spokesman Peter Hanlon admits nurturing interest in the game among youth is synonymous with fostering his club’s future market.
In Toronto, where 40% of the population consists of immigrants, soccer has become a sport force where MLS pro soccer has flourished, notes the board, just as it has in newcomer-heavy Montreal.
In Calgary, nearly 30% of the population are immigrants and more than 22% visible minority — a trend ripe for either a soccer renaissance or a potential hockey bounce.
Because of its international cachet and affordability, soccer is easily the most-played game among youth in Canada, with 20% of them getting their kicks from it.
That compares to about 9% for hockey, a figure that in 1992 was 17.5%.
The organization overseeing minor hockey across the country has done a dismal job in attracting immigrant kids, says Glen McCurdie, vice-president membership services for Hockey Canada.
“we really haven’t done a very good job recruiting anybody,” said McCurdie.
Male youths, in particular, are increasingly turning their backs on the game.
A plummeting male membership threatens to pemanently bench more than a third of minor hockey’s current number of skaters by 2021 unless that trend is halted — and appealing to newer Canadians is one key, he said.
Those numbers would be even worse if it weren’t for the rise in female participation, driven partly by Winter Olympic inspiration, he said.
Hockey Calgary says their player numbers have defied the national trend over the past few years by holding firm.
Prime barriers are the game’s high cost, said McCurdie, and the perception of hockey as a violent pasttime.
“We’ve got to espouse low-cost options and we believe at the amateur level, the game is really safe but a mother and father who don’t have any knowledge of the game see it as a violent sport,” he said.
For newer, younger immigrants, the sheer unfamiliarity of a sport played on ice can be the biggest intimidation, adds McCurdie.
“It’s like Glen McCurdie going to play cricket in Pakistan — kids want their first experience of the sport to be fun and not embarassing,” he says.
Hockey Canada has begun an outreach to those communities by almost literally speaking their language by providing — for the first time — downloadable annual planners in 12 dialects including Spanish, Punjabi, Tagalog, Mandarin, Arabic and German.
“our hope is those who saw our members with them would download their own,” said McCurdie of the planners, which include comic strips with multilingual word balloons.
Greater use of social media and other digital technology is also in the crosshairs of Canada’s pucksters.
McCurdie says he harbours the hope that the first generation immigrants he does see in the stands will ensure their children are more than just spectators.
Calgarian Harnarayan Singh has done some fancy stickhandling to promote a sport alien to many in his community.
As a co-host for CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada’s Punjabi language broadcast, he’s become the game’s face to Indo-Canadians across Canada.
“When I got the original call about the job I didn’t think it was serious,” says Singh.
But after calling the 2008 Stanley Cup finals, what began as a novelty morphed into a three-year running outreach of sorts to Canada’s south Asians and a fantasy job for the Alberta native.
“My whole purpose getting into broadcasting was to get into hockey but little did I know I’d be doing it in my native language,” says Singh.
Sadly for him, the CBC in October pulled the plug on the show, citing a lack of sponsors. It’s a repeat of what occurred a year ago, but a fan insurrection revived the Punjabi show for the 2010-11 season.
Singh said he’s convinced its demise isn’t because of ratings, adding the broadcast snowballed among the south Asian community while building another fan base for the NHL.
“because of the broadcast, people in the community are talking about the last night’s game,” he says.
“The game is such a part of our national fabric, it makes them feel more Canadian.”
He’d call 52 regular season games a year, with last year’s finals appearance by the Vancouver Canucks a highlight, with the Lower Mainland’s large Indo-Canadian community revelling in both their team’s success and a broadcast in their own tongue.
“There would be parades in Surrey after each Canucks game and that was really the Indo-canadian community…and there were no riots,” he says.
Singh grew up in Brooks, Alta. at a time in the 1980s when the now-multi-ethnic town was overwhelmingly Euro-Canadian.
The game broke down barriers for him, just as it did for his TV audience, he says.
“Hockey let me make friends, it’s when people forgot I wore a turban, there was a camaraderie,” he recalls.
A major hurdle in fostering an interest in hockey among the newly-arrived — particularly those hailing from the southern hemisphere, says Singh, is a simple factor.
“The parents don’t know how to skate so they don’t put their kids into hockey automatically,” he says.
The sometime hockey broadcaster agrees with the conference board, saying the NHL and other leagues must do more to capture a young and growing immigrant market.
“Hockey needs to make materials in different languages and put on seminars — they’ll definitely have to do a lot more to make sure the game grows,” he says, while acknowledging some of those steps are now being taken.
Elias Abdow wears a somber face recounting the dim memories of the days he lost his father amid Somalia’s civil strife.
“I was only this big when it happened,” says Abdow, motioning three feet from the rubber dressing room floor of the Max Bell Centre.
His family were refugees before coming to Canada in 2005 from Kenya, a country where the slashing sounds of skate blades is rarely heard.
But his face brightens at talk of hockey, a game he found through the Powerplay program, hosted by city police and Hockey Calgary that provides ice time once a week for immigrant and underprivileged kids.
“I enjoy it a lot — it’s a lot of new stuff I’ve never seen before,” says Abdow, 17, from under a black helmet.
“I’d like to play hockey better but ice hockey’s a hard game — I’m more basketball and soccer.”
When he brings the hockey topic up with his Somali friends, it’s a hard sell, he says.
“they don’t even want to talk about it,” says the lanky Abdow.
Even so, he says, hitting the ice creates its own comfort zone, if not on always on skates.
“It makes me feel more Canadian a lot…hockey is Canada,” he says.
Moments later, he joins about 60 other kids on the rink, along with a clutch of blue-jerseyed police officers who take the youths through their drills.
Most of the young faces are black with some helmets fixed over few hijabs.
Const. Rayn Boyko arrives late, after having picked up more greenhorn pucksters from around east Calgary.
“they wouldn’t all fit in one van, so I had to make another trip to Dover,” says the coordinator of the Wednesday after-school program.
But that’s okay, suggests Boyko — there’s enthusiasm in numbers.
Seeing Sudanese youngsters taking to the game with a sense of wonder — and natural physical skill — is a happy revelation, she says.
“some of them are really catching on — some of the Sudanese are very tall and they really take off on those skates,” she said.
While some show up just to hang out with friends, “others are more serious,” says Boyak.
But weekly frolics in donated gear is one thing; seeing those kids skating on league teams is like winning shorthanded, said Boyak.
“So far, I haven’t seen any of them enter but hopefully we’ll instill in them an interest,” she says, though adding it appears one Russian teen is set to skate further.
“I see parents warming up to us — I can see it heading that way.”
And she notes Cenovus Energy has created a scholarship program for five of players a year to continue on into league hockey.
The program’s hoping to elicit the appearance of Flames superstar Jarome Iginla, adds Boyko, whose African-Canadian heritage could prove an inspiration.
Somali native Amina Ofleh — whose six kids were creasing the ice last Wednesday — said it’s an uphill battle to sell the kids on hockey long term.
“they come from a tropical country — they’re not familiar with this skating,” she says.
But the activity keeps kids off the streets and out of trouble, she says.
“I wish this was offered five days a week,” says Ofleh.
A big attraction for this single mom is that the cost of a normally pricey pursuit is waived.
It can easily cost $400 to deck out a hockey player with equipment.
StatsCan data from 2006 states that among recent arrivals, only 32% of their children participate in organized sports compared to 55% of those of Canadian-born parents.
Lack of financial stability, it says, is the main reason.
Back on the Max Bell ice, the diverse group of skaters manoeuvre around pylons and skirmish the width of the rink, led by cops in light blue.
Ofleh’s daughter, Sagal, eight, glides by on one skate, drawing her mother’s smile.
“The children enjoy it, and they socialize and participate,” she says.
And Boyko says cops build bridges with kids who often hail from countries where police are to be feared.
Soccer’s man in Calgary doesn’t see his sport as one scoring goals against the country’s icy national game.
In fact, members of Daryl Leinweber’s family have laced up skates and donned shin pads — and happily so.
But the executive director of the Calgary Minor Soccer Association can’t get around the reality that his sport is casting increasingly long shadows on hockey’s viability.
His association boasts 109,000 players in 700 youth and adult teams, compared to Calgary Minor Hockey’s 13,500 participants aged five to 21.
“It’s affordable, it’s accessible, it’s a great team game not matter what your skill,” says Leinweber.
And it’s also a sport with the advantage of being instantly familiar to immigrants hailing from almost anywhere on earth.
The soccer booster even sounds a bit like someone holding court for hockey in its Great White North stronghold.
“Other countries are envious of our grassroots organization,” he says.
“we now have our first generation of Canadian-born soccer coaches.”
In Calgary, participation in the sport had recently been growing at a torrid 10-20% a year — a rate that’s now cooled to around 5%, says Leinweber.
Given the challenges in finding indoor venues for winter soccer, that slower growth might be a silver lining.
But even given infrastructure challenges that share similar frustration with local hockey families, he says the quality of soccer players has vaulted by leaps and bounds.
“The technical skill of a 16-year-old in 1995 is that of a 12-year-old now,” he says.
What the sport hasn’t seen much of in Canada, he adds, is the similar growth on the professional side.
“we lack that role model,” says Leinweber.
But he says hunger for the sport in Canada is so insatiable, mushrooming ratings for weekend pro soccer broadcasts should put Hockey Night in Canada on notice.
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