Nobody Likes a Puck Hog

You can learn a lot about politics from hockey.

For example, what's the worst thing to be -- just listen to the parents in the stands at any minor hockey game -- no matter whether you're in peewee or the NHL? A puck hog.

Nobody likes a puck hog! Why? Because hockey, like life, is a team sport.

Teamwork is the key to the game. Five puck hogs with great skills will be defeated again and again by five team players with slightly lesser skills but a knack for sharing the puck.

Wayne Gretzky never was the fastest skater or had the hardest shot, but he was the greatest player of his era because he was the ultimate teammate. He always knew where the puck was going and where his teammates were and as a result he made everyone around him better.

Shouldn't that be the goal of politics as well? To make everyone around you better. To be the best teammate you can be.

Just as in hockey, that doesn't mean you sacrifice individual skills in favour of some bland collective. No, a great teammate has great individual skills, but also knows how to play together with his linemates.

Blame Don Cherry?

Great teams and great societies are built on individual skills that work together to become greater than the sum of the individual parts. Great teams and great societies promote both competition and teamwork. Great teams and great societies focus on both individual and group skills. Great teams and great societies are built by understanding the duality of being both an individual and a teammate. And above all great teams and great societies are built on a foundation of caring for each other.

In other words, the lesson from hockey is that great societies are built by socialism, or what anarchists call mutual aid, or what religions call the Golden Rule.

Yet more and more the Ayn Randers and the neo-liberal-conservatives, who put puck hogs on a pedestal by claiming only the individual exists, are running our country. Canada has become infected with puck-hog-promoting think tanks and politicians. The team-building Tommy Douglas has been replaced by the team-denying Maxime Bernier.

Why have we lost touch with the socialist truth of our game?

We could blame Don Cherry, who too often interprets hockey from a pro-U.S. militaristic football point of view. Listening to Coach's Corner, one would think that Support Our Troops was the nickname of one of hockey's top lines. Would someone please tell the man that a real hockey tough guy protects his teammates but is a gentle soul off the ice and does not invade foreign countries?

Or some of us may accuse Toronto, where the Maple Leafs have been dreadful for so long that a quarter of Canada's population has forgotten how the game is supposed to be played.

Or we could point the finger at greedy NHL owners, who have Americanized our national sport by making it all about money and temporary brand loyalty. In the world of hyper U.S. capitalism everything is phony, a means to the end of ever-expanding profit for a few. And this especially includes the idea of team. Down south and increasingly up here, "team" is nothing more than a motivational tool to squeeze out more work for less pay so that the rich can grow even richer.

Whatever the reason for us losing touch with the political lessons of hockey, those of us who care about the game, care about Canada and care about the world must find a way to stop the puck hogs and once again proclaim the importance of teamwork.