Dumb, dumb-dumb, dumb-dumb: CBC loses ‘The Hockey Theme’

Nothing, absolutely nothing, is forever. Traditionalists are spinning in their graves, or over their lattes

I won’t pretend I’m 17 years old all over again and start gnashing teeth over the CBC’s decision to allow Canada’s iconic ’second national anthem,’ The Hockey Theme, to take up residence on a rival network. I can’t summon that fearsome, youthful anger for what amounts to the same product being heralded by the same song on a different channel. I mean, oh well.

But for every lapsed hockey fan like me, there is one who can’t focus on the Sunshine Girl today because CTV Inc. has paid up for the rights to air the song during its hockey broadcasts, meaning that the stirring, orchestral march will no longer be heard Saturday nights on Hockey Night In Canada (HNIC). Instead, it’ll get lost in the mid-week crush of reality shows and early bedtimes. Yuck. No pomp and circumstance there.

What’s unsettling for me is how little tradtion exists in our culture nowadays. I’m old enough to remember lax indoor smoking laws, retailers staying closed on Sundays, “Merry Christmas” as a seasonal phrase free of denominational grumbling and people paying for CDs. I’m enough of a traditionalist to get rankled when the ground beneath my feet shifts a little. Even when, presumably, I don’t care.

Amid negative PR, the CBC has announced a $100,000 contest to find a new theme for HNIC. I have visions – okay, these are full-fledged NIGHTMARES – of either The Barenaked Ladies or Nickelback winning the contest. It’s either excrutiatingly bad punning couplets, or Chad Kroeger’s musclebound yodelling trampling over soggy, mid-tempo rock, and there’s nothing memorable or appropriate about either option. Worse yet, the CBC could choose a new ‘theme’ every few years, thus ensuring that tradition never again takes hold during the titles of Canada’s best-loved homegrown show.

Now consider this solution. It goes against my yen for an instrumental theme. But it’s Canadian. It’s even called The Hockey Song, although we know it better as The Good Old Hockey Game, by Stompin’ Tom Connors. It’s been around since 1973, so it’s only five years younger than the outgoing theme. And it wasn’t written for a contest, either. It was written out of love for the game, a complex emotion I only wish had been present during the negotiation process. Choosing The Hockey Song might save the CBC some face as it prepares to stare down some irritible traditionalists over the coming weeks.

Sing along with me, now:

Oh! The good old hockey game,
Is the best game you can name;
And the best game you can name,
Is the good old hockey game!

It’d do.