20th anniversary of "first contact"

Today is the 20th anniversary of my "first contact" with hockey. I must thank comedian John Candy, civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and former Chicago Blackhawks centerman Troy Murray for my first real exposure to the sport. Perhaps I also owe thanks to my sometimes short attention span.

The day was January 12, 1989. I was 13 years old and we recently got cable television. I was flipping channels back and forth between an old episode of the sketch-comedy show SCTV and a biopic about MLK Jr. Both were interesting, and we had no VCR to record one of them, so I would change the channel from one program to another during commercial, or during a lull in either program.

Then a funny thing happened. I accidentally changed to the wrong channel--SportsChannel, actually-- and some guy named Troy Murray was being penalized for tripping...or maybe it was interference; the infraction I do not remember, but that's besides the point.

"This must be the Blackhawks," I thought to myself. "That team that I've heard about, but never saw on TV before." I watched the last two minutes of the game, as the Blackhawks lost to the Buffalo Sabres 6 to 5.

And that is how I discovered for myself the sport of ice hockey. All because I did not have the attention span to watch one show at a time, and because I mis-keyed on the remote control. Was it an accident...or the intervention of a higher power?

Only Slapshoticus, lord of the Hockey Gods, knows for sure.

I tuned in two nights later to watch the Chicago Blackhawks beat the New York Islanders 5 to 3. At that point, I was hooked.

Now, this wasn't the first time I ever saw a hockey game. I vaguely remember watching 1988 Olympic Hockey. I remember Mike Richter standing on his head during the few games I saw here and there. But that really did not impress upon me. It was not until I watched an NHL game that I knew that this was the sport for me.

Well, as it turned out, both my Mother and my Aunt were Blackhawks fans in the 1960s and 1970s. My Mom gave me her old hockey scrapbooks and 70s 'Hawks memorabilia. A few weeks later in February, my Aunt took me to a Blackhawks game for my 14th birthday.

Up until this point, I watched baseball because my friends watched baseball. I watched football because the Chicago Bears were a pretty cool team back in the 1980s. But I did not watch either of those sports because I actually liked them. As a kid, you're prone to either watch what other people watch, or you just put on the TV watch whatever is on. But this was the first time that I watched a particular sport because I wanted to--and I really wanted to.

Hockey is an awesome sport, for reasons that most of you already know, and it is a shame that while Wayne Gretzky was breaking records and while the Islanders and Oilers were establishing dynasties, the NHL was "buried" on cable TV here in America.

Sad, really. My neighborhood in Chicago did not have access to cable TV until 1988; I guess I wasn't "meant" to see hockey until after then. Mind you, the Blackhawks were also only on cable TV--and just the road games.

Nevertheless, I had found my sport, and there would be no looking back. Twenty years later, and hockey still holds my attention.