Feb 15th 2014: Hockey

The Vinyl Cafe writers clearly have winter on their minds for the cold, cold month of February. Two weeks ago we were treated to a story about tobogganing, and now we have an episode dedicated entirely to that great Canadian pastime of hockey. The show even mixes up the format a little by featuring no Dave & Morley story. Instead, Stuart spends the better part of the episode recounting the greatest game of hockey ever played, the final game of an international European tournament held in 1945 between Canada and Czechoslovakia.

The Canadian team was fairly overwhelmed by the tournament, the biggest any of them had entered (they were all members of the Big Narrows Coal Miners, hailing from Cape Breton, NS and winners of the Allan Cup) but managed to scrape their way to the final game. By the end of three scoreless periods however, both teams realized that they didn't want to win if it meant that the other team had to lose. The spectre of the war still looming over both teams' heads: every player on both sides of the rink had been affected by it in some way, and neither had the will to inflict another "great loss" onto the the other team. So they did something that caused the officials to strike the game from the history books: they mixed their rosters together for the overtime period, and as a result they played a great game where neither side won.

Here's what I like about Vinyl Cafe: the message is always told in a very obvious way, but never in a way that feels preachy or condescending. The message that peace is more powerful than war is a simple, powerful message and it feels fresh here because of the presentation of the story: there's a small dash of whimsy to this tale that makes it feel like something your grandfather would tell you.

And in this case, it sort of is. Stuart frames the story as it was described to him: by three old men still living in Big Narrows, recounting their somewhat conflicting interpretations of the game. This episode makes a nice companion piece to the episode form a fortnight ago: three old men recount a story that seems to fantastic to be true, yet is, while the previous episode had a fictional old man recount a more down-to-earth yet fictional story. I don't have much more to add to this other than to say that I like these winter stories that the Vinyl Cafe has been favouring, and I hope it keeps things up because there's very little weather where I currently am and it's nice to be reminded of winter without actually having to live through it for 5 months of every year.