By Perry Lefko, Sportsnet.ca
So, you want to be a rock star?
Well, if you’re a Canadian rock ‘n roller chances are you’re probably a big hockey fan, too – maybe even dreamed about being a hockey star – and are looking forward to this year’s Stanley Cup Final.
Sportsnet.ca spoke with a few of Canada’s prominent musicians for their thoughts on the game and this year’s matchup between Detroit and Pittsburgh.
JIM CUDDY, Blue Rodeo
Cuddy says hockey has always been a big part of his life.
“I don’t ever remember not being involved in hockey,” he says. “By the time I could skate I was living in Brantford or Ottawa or Montreal and joined the local hockey leagues. I’ve always loved it.
“I was born in Toronto, but didn’t live there,” he adds. “My parents lived in St. Louis and my mother didn’t know anybody. I had this incredible feeling about the Leafs because they represented this city I had never known. So when I was a kid and watching the Leafs, it meant a lot to me. All those guys, the Dave Keons, George Armstrongs, they were my heroes. So I never remember not being in love with hockey. After I finished university and was in a band, I didn’t even think about hockey for 10 years. I missed all the Gretzky years. That’s when we were in New York. When I came back to Toronto we got Blue Rodeo together, I started thinking about it and I realized all these musicians were playing and it’s been an unbroken run since then.”
Cuddy along with Maple Leaf great Doug Gilmour have co-hosted a bowling tournament for charity, now going into its fifth year, and has become close friends with many pro players for whom he has a deep appreciation.
“The difference between a real hockey player and even a really good men’s league player is like a different species, it’s not even similar, it’s close,” he says. “Aspiring musicians feel that, too. Amateur musicians are amateur musicians. Everybody says ‘I’ve got a friend, they’re so good, you’ve got to hear it.’ No, they’re not. The difference between a pro and an amateur is just as great as it is in hockey.”
Cuddy performed a moving song prior to Mark Messier’s speech induction speech at November’s Hockey Hall of Fame ceremony.
“I was very happy when they asked me to play the song (Pull Me Through),” he says. “My song is a very unusual song to be playing. It’s about losing somebody and feeling the emptiness of them not being there anymore. Maybe there’s some relation to somebody giving up a hockey career after spending so much of their lives doing it. It was an emotional song that certainly fit for that evening, but the rest of the night was just being backstage and really talking to Dick Irvin and how great that was. You just want to keep him talking because the voice is so familiar. I lived in Montreal, so that voice is really familiar to me.”
THOUGHTS ON THIS YEAR’S FINAL: “It’s kind of like the Oilers’ first run against the Islanders – when a really young, talented team was playing a really experienced, winning team. I’ve loved watching Pittsburgh play and it’s where my heart is, but watching Detroit play this year to me has been like watching almost a perfect team. I think they’re just a magnificent team to watch. They have everything that is good about hockey: they move the puck beautifully; they’re really a tough, beautiful defence.”
CUDDY’S CUP PICK: Detroit.
GORD SINCLAIR, Tragically Hip
Sinclair says musicians and hockey players often develop friendships based on mutual respect for each other’s profession.
“I think that’s valid and it’s something we’ve experienced a bit over the years,” Sinclair says. “My group has done pretty good in terms of recording and we travel around a lot touring in the States and we definitely run into a lot of guys playing in the NHL who know our music and are into it and they’ll come out and see us play, and we’re very much the same way …You start to make connections, whether it be on the road or golf tournaments, and you keep hooking up with each other.
“I know a lot of guys that play professional hockey and travel on the road and have a lot of down time. I know a lot of (hockey players) from around (Kingston) pick up guitars and try to learn songs to kill time. We’re very much the same way. We used to take our skates and our sticks and rollerblades and we’d play pickup hockey during the day because really that’s what life on the road is all about.
“Talk to Mike Smith, a goalie with the (Tampa Bay) Lightning, about what he’d rather be (other) than a goalie and it would be a professional musician. If I wasn’t (a musician), it would be great (to play pro hockey), unfortunately I’m 40 pounds too light and six inches too short.”
Sinclair says similar to many Canadians he started playing hockey regularly until reaching his early teens when “some boys grow big and other guys don’t and the game gets harder to play and more physical.”
Among the Hip’s many classics is 50 Mission Cap, based on the triumph/tragedy of Toronto Maple Leaf Bill Barilko, who scored the winning goal in overtime in the ’51 Cup, then disappeared four months later in a plane accident. His body wasn’t discovered until 1962, the next time the Leafs won the Cup.
“The Barilko story is an amazing bit of Canadian history,” Sinclair says. “When you travel for a living it gives you great perspective about what your country has and doesn’t have. Back in 1991, ’92 when we wrote that song, we became aware of the story of Bill Barilko and kind of realized that the image and the symmetry of that song and his life, if it had happened in America, for example – a guy who had pitched a no-hitter and won the World Series and then disappeared – he’d be a household name and there would be a Disney movie about him and Robert Redford would have played him. But Canadians being what they are, we’re not that great at championing our champions and not that protective of our history,
“When they retired his jersey (in 1992) at the Air Canada Centre, we were invited out to participate in the ceremony and got to meet Bill’s sister, who was very emotional and thanked us for help spreading the story about him. It’s just something cool to be a part of.”
THOUGHTS ON THIS YEAR’S FINAL: “It’s going to be a fantastic series, for sure. I love Detroit. I love what Detroit does for professional hockey, the whole Hockeytown idea. I’ll be glued to the TV set because I think it’s an amazing series. These are two great American hockey teams and it will be great.”
SINCLAIR’S CUP PICK: Pittsburgh (some close friends of the band are longtime Pens’ season-ticket subscribers).
STEPHEN STANLEY, Lowest of the Low
“It just seems to me that musicians wanted to be a hockey player more than they wanted to be musicians and I’ve heard it’s kind of the same on the either side of the fence,” says Stanley, formerly of the now-defunct Toronto-based group The Lowest of the Low, and an avid hockey fan and recreational player in a league of artists, musicians and entertainers.
“We had a great run as a band from ’91 to ’95 and then we split for almost six years (and later reunited for a few years),” Stanley says. “When the band stopped (the first time) I all of a sudden had tons of time on my hand and a friend of mine lent me his gear and said, ‘Come on, start playing,’ so I started going to these Thursday night games and was eventually playing four days a week.”
Like many Canadians, Stanley had started playing hockey as a young boy and he remembers how it developed into a serious passion.
“It’s one of those games that with limited skills you can never be as good as someone who’s a great skilled player, but you can get a lot better fast if you sort of apply yourself to it.”
His interest in the game was fed by his father’s love for his hometown Maple Leafs. Stanley remembers watching games with his father from the nose-bleed greys in the old Maple Leaf Gardens.
“You just can’t compare it to what the experience is now going to the (Air Canada Centre),” he says. “The only thing I’ve come close to seeing is going to games at Madison Square Garden in New York, where the fans there are really hockey fans.”
THOUGHTS ON THIS YEAR’S FINAL: “I think it’s going to be awesome. The story that’s going to be fantastic is the veteran team versus the kid team. There was a game in the New York series where (Sidney) Crosby and (Evgeni) Malkin came undone. They lost their cool and they’ve kept it together since then, and the skill level there is insane, but there’s probably ways to get to them and Detroit’s got some guys that can do it. That will be interesting to watch that all play out and see how much veteran experience means against guys who have only been in the league for (a few) years really.
STANLEY’S CUP PICK: Pittsburgh
DAVE BIDINI, Rheostatics
Bidini, who aside from being one of the founding members of Rheostatics (who disbanded this year after a 20-year run) is a highly-respected hockey author/film, also played hockey in his youth.
“Loved it, then fell out of love, then in the 1984 Canada Cup, I fell in love again,” says, Bidini, whose latest documentary is The Return of the Hockey Nomad: Into Russia.
“My most memorable moment (doing the documentary) with the ’72 Soviet team? I started on the blue line in the third period versus Motor, a team in Siberia. Another time I deked around (Viktor) Kuzkin, who was the captain of that (’72) team, and scored a goal in the Red Army rink with the (Anatoli) Tarasov (architect of the Soviet Union’s hockey power) banner waving overhead.”
Bidini says he’s a Toronto Maple Leafs fans and his favourite player is the now-retired Wendel Clark. These days he likes watching the Staal brothers.
THOUGHTS ON THIS YEAR’S FINAL: “We met (Detroit’s) Pavel Datsyuk in Moscow and he was a really good guy – funny, smart, easy to cheer. And Darren McCarty, Kris Draper and Aaron Downey – they’re the real thing as far as I can tell.”
BIDINI’S CUP PICK: Detroit
MIKE LEVINE, Triumph
Levine is the long-haired bassist for the Canadian icons, who are reuniting after 20 years for a mini-tour beginning next month in Sweden. He is known for wearing the jerseys of NHL teams while doing concerts in their respective cities. At this year’s Juno Awards at the Calgary Saddledome, where Triumph was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, Levine dazzled the crowd by wearing Flames captain Jarome Iginla’s No. 12.
Levine said the jersey tradition started in the late ’70s in Triumph’s first appearance at Maple Leaf Gardens. A jersey with Leafs defenceman Borje Salming’s No. 21 happened to be in the band’s dressing room, which Levine figures was not by chance. He thought it was the idea of then Leafs’ owner, the late Harold Ballard, who was known for doing anything to promote his team. Levine wore the sweater because the band didn’t have a dress code. The crowd went nuts.
“But they were always going crazy when we came onstage,” says, who played some hockey as a boy.
Every time the band happened to be playing in the city of an NHL team, a sweater was lying in wait for Levine to wear. It would become his signature stage apparel.
Levine said his favourite team was the ’67 Leafs.
“Gotta love Allan Stanley,” he says.
THOUGHTS ON THIS YEAR’S FINAL: “I will only watch it when the series is on the line, like the last game.”
LEVINE’S CUP PICK: Pittsburgh.
