Being from southern Ontario, I will admit that my default team over many of my adult years has been the Leafs but that wasn’t always the case. As a very young kid, I recall a brief dalliance with the Habs as I learned to ties shoes, read and fish (the big 3 of life skills) and being all in a froth when number four’s crew beat them in ’72.

Then came the Summit series when the good and former bad guys suddenly all had the same logo on their sweaters. Sitting in my grade 2 classroom and watching on a grainy black and white television as Henderson scored, my sense of home beyond the family bungalow with the great hockey driveway was born.

And although I was no fan of the rough stuff as a player, ever, I had a weird love affair with the Flyers during the Broad Street’s hey day. Rick McLeish. Who didn’t like him? I still have a grizzled copy of Stan Fischler’s “Bobby Clarke and The Ferocious Flyers”. I vividly recall the game where the Flyer’s rag-dolled the Russians off the ice in Phili during the cold-war years when Canada’s contribution wasn’t nukes, tanks or spies but instead was a helping of Saleski, Hound-Dog Kelly and Dave the Hammer with a side of Moose Dupoint and Clarkie himself.

Being young, and sampling the world, I moved on from the Flyers. Gene Hackman’s French Connection never came up on my cinematic radar, but the Sabre’s Gilbert Perrault, Richard Martin and Rene Robert version sure did. I’ve always loved stickhandling and Perrault did it as well as anyone. My shot has been a non-starter forever but I sure did wish back then that I could shoot like Rick Martin did. And hey, they too beat the crap out of the Russians, but more the old fashioned hockey way with a 10-4 walloping if memory serves. Martin ripped a slapshot so hard that afternoon I remember it tearing the trapper right off the Russian goalie’s hand.

By my teen years, I was all-in on the Islanders. What a team there were, on many levels. A true sports dynasty. Lots to like there but Bossy was my guy. Said screw-you to the Flyer’s and refused to fight but he’d shoot the lights out of your goalie night after night even if he had to live through almost literal on-ice torture to get it done. I was becoming more confident in my pacifism.

There was the Miracle On Ice in there at some point, and with the friendly enemy of the real enemy being my friend, I celebrated like I was an American. (Canada almost beat the Russian’s that year too but for a missed gimme by Glenn Anderson late in the second, maybe it would have been our miracle that year? But I digress).

Gretz and the Oilers took hockey to another dimension. They really did. Today’s players are great but the highlights from those games still dazzle. And the stats they put up. Yikes. When Gretz went south, the weeping and gnashing of Canadian teeth was palpable. But hey, it’s a business right?

Then the wall came down, and the Russians started coming here. Choo Choo Mogilny, chasing a teenage lover at the world juniors or a prescient get-me-the-f-outta-here maturity beyond his young years? Fetisov – one tough hombre if there ever was one. Krutov, Makarov and Larionov all at once. They all paved the way for Ovie, who I love, and who I think has been great for the game. But there’s that Putin thing isn’t there? Sigh. But hell, we suffered through Don Cherry for decades, so tit for tat I suppose.

Then came the Olympics where Gretz gave his famous presser about how the hockey world outside of coast-to-coast on a Saturday night hated us Canadians. Hated us! As my mom would have said, “Can you imagine?!” And I am thinking, naw, everyone loves us Canadians, right? Friends of the world are we.

In the early aught’s, with Russians everywhere in the NHL, but nowhere as plentiful as motor city, those Red Wings were the object of my affection. Today, with so many games behind me, if you ask me who my favourite player is after all these years, it is my man Pav of the wings. He was a magician and sorcerer all in one. And a Russian. Once the enemy, now friend.

In the core-4 era of the Leafs, the regular season franchise has provided gripping entertainment for approaching a decade, but with each season finale leaving one asking…that’s it, it’s over, like that? But alas, it is just a game, just entertainment, so yes, it is over just like that sometimes. Your team wins or it doesn’t, no real harm, no real foul, right?

And so we come to today, modern times as it were. I like to utter the phrase “there’s an ill wind blowing” as I wander about with my wife, and when my adult kids visit. They used to ask why and I’d say I just like the sound of it. But today, this weekend, this past few weeks, it feels true.

So while I don’t watch a ton of hockey on TV, and especially the play-off’s when I find the angst and pain of sorta knowing the Leafs are likely going to lose, I did watch last night. Pre-game, fight-club at puck drop, and all 60 minutes in Montreal. The Jerusalem of hockey on a snowy night. I messaged friends that this felt like the most important game since ’72. I watched the Anthem booing. The scraps. The heavy game. All of it. The world within the game was on full display last night.

I am horribly mistrustful of the political machines known as parties. I hate the process of politics at all levels. But I acknowledge that most good things are a struggle, and even if the results are never as good as they could be, nor as good as we think they should be, the struggle is worth it. It is how we move forward as individuals and society. As Gordon Lightfoot once sang “the less we believe in, the less we belong”. The older I get, the more I struggle with what I believe in. But sometimes, you gotta choose.

I don’t like that hockey in Canada has a stature so prominent that it gets called “our game” or is portrayed as a great unifying force. I don’t know why I feel that way. Perhaps it puts a pressure on the game I don’t want, for fear mixing in this real-world stuff will somehow create a Paradise Lost for me here on earth. Perhaps it is my reticence with all things containing conflict. Perhaps it is having decades of experience playing hockey, a physical game, weighing only 140 pounds. Bigger stronger opponents can hurt you big time. Mike Tyson summed it up best when he said “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth”. If you are the smaller, weaker opponent, you better be smarter, or quicker, or change the calculus in some other way.

Back in the day when the Blackberries were cool, I remember Mike Lazaridis giving an interview, around the time of Gretz’s aforementioned “they all hate us” speech, and he lamented that hockey was the shiny thing used to galvanize we Canadians to greatness. I don’t recall his exact words but it was something to the effect of “why can’t we aspire to be the wisest country instead of the one with the best hockey players?” This sentiment has always stuck with me. (I’d like to think we can do both, and that they are complementary, but that is a thought for a different post).

I am restless today, this weekend, this year. There are things worth fighting for. Not many, but some. It’s a mug’s game to fight over the wrong thing though. And worse to fight on the mug’s terms. But sometimes you gotta choose and that choice may have to be to fight.

I hope that we Canadians are able to seize this moment in our national life to figure out how to live more graciously with each other within our national, provincial and community borders, to aspire to do great things together worthy of a great place, and to lead our troubled neighbours and indeed the world by our example. We can choose this.

But I also hope Team Canada beats the Finns, makes it to the final and then fights with everything in them. If we win, that would be sweet. If not, perhaps knowing that we laid it all there will be enough to fuel us for whatever comes tomorrow.