On Frozen Blog

Quality human beings comprise the vast majority of the enrollment for the great game of hockey, and so when the giants within it are called upon to offer reflections on their journeys within the game, we shouldn’t be surprised at the quality they offer in that endeavor. It’s impossible to watch the NHL’s Hall of Fame Induction ceremony and not be persuaded that the humility, character, and most particularly the connection to family that hockey players demonstrate and articulate is unrivaled in the landscape of professional sports. Baseball’s induction ceremony this past summer, by virtue of the character of its principal inductees Gwynn and Ripken, seemed to take a step back in time and grace and generate a renewal of honor for a sport badly in need of it. But the NHL, with its highest honor event every November, has it every year.

The billing for Monday night’s ceremony in Toronto was a legends’ list of inductees, the best class ever, but listening to their tales of rising within dedicated families and their unwavering support structures — ones that are extended and amplified within the larger hockey family itself — one felt that this event, seemingly a spectacle for the rare-talent individual, was actually every bit as much an exhibition for the family unit that serves as the perpetual wellspring of greatness in this game.

The cameras last night delivered to us footage of the excellence of the inductees on the ice; their poise and emotion while reflecting on their honor on stage; but also regular glimpses of their families seated nearby and poetic testimonials from their sons as to their invaluable influence. All seemed interrelated and intertwined.

And in point of fact it is. The Hockey Hall of Fame has among its exhibits a simple home’s family room circa 1950 within which family members are gathered around a broadcast of Hockey Night in Canada. It also has a station wagon honoring the pre-dawn pilgrimages to the rink, played out over years through the hardships of Canadian winter, conducted as devoted ritual.

A hockey player’s developmental journey requires nothing short of an all-out commitment of time and resources from families. They arise on weekdays with newspaper delivery trucks to make pre-school practices in frigid blackness. They become road warriors of the winter weekend to travel to games and tournaments, and in 90 percent of Canada and the upper Midwest, that’s often desolate and dangerous travel.

Becoming a hockey player is rarely a fleeting, half-hearted venture. Perhaps that’s why this sport is played with so much heart.

Al MacInnis was the first honoree last night to acknowledge the role of family in his greatness, and as the first-ever Nova Scotian to be enshrined (incredible, that), he made sure that his extended family members in Port Hood knew of their role in his career. They had a place in the Hall of Fame, too, he said.

It was heartening to hear Scott Stevens testify to the impact he felt from his eight years in the Washington Capitals’ family. He thanked David Poile and Bryan Murray from management, and his defensive partner Brian Engblom. He characterized his tenure in town as “a period of growth” and alluded to being a part of the first Capitals’ team to qualify for the postseason — the first of seven straight such in D.C. he was a part of. And he thanked Capitals’ fans for their support.

The tear machine that is Mark Messier of course had ample reflections on the role of family in his career. He had ample reflections period, obliterating the prescribed four minutes for remarks with rambling incoherence that nearly outlasted his career. What if he’d been wearing a tuxedo system designed by Reebok amid all that sobbing?

Messier’s frequent pregnancy-long pauses allowed me to rememeber that at one time his family was reputed to have included Madonna. I rather delight in hockey’s figures of towering talent, their origins in towns of hundreds, their modesty unmatched in or out of professional sports, dalliance-ing with American starlet strumpets. That of course is the exception to the more mundane extension of family in this sport. Hockey players never forget their roots, or lose their attachment to them.