“You’re a perfectionist in your Zamboni. It’s like you’re a painter. You’re trying to paint a perfect picture out here. No ruts. Some guys will come in for the first part of the day and say, ‘Is there a perfect sheet out there for us?’ I’ll say, ‘It’s as good as I could get it today, boys.’ I call it a perfect sheet. There’s no scratches, no grooves. It looks like a mirror. That’s a perfect sheet. We take pride in having a perfect sheet here. That’s probably what put us on the map here is pride in a perfect sheet.” — Ducky
If “The Perfect Sheet,” a mini Viceland documentary exploring the tradition of the third-oldest trophy in hockey, only included the monologue from Dee Stadium rink manager Ducky, it would still be worth 24 minutes of your life.
“They call me the rink boss,” explains Ducky, the poet/blue-collar everyman who floods championship ice at one of the world’s oldest rinks, in a forgotten town.
“The ‘Ice Nazi’ they used to call me. I told them, ‘I’m not German.'”
Airing Wednesday at 11 p.m. on the newly launched storytelling vehicle Vice World of Sports, the mini doc takes us to copper country: Calumet, Michigan (pop. 700), birthplace of professional hockey and home of the Gibson Cup — “the most historic rivalry you’ve never heard of.”
Every year, the Calumet Wolverines and nearby Portage Lake Pioneers — rival hockey clubs for more than a century running — face off in a best-of-three series. Winner takes the Gibson Cup, named after Ontario-born puck pioneer Jack Gibson.
Only the Stanley Cup (1893) and McNaughton Cup (1913) are older than this chalice, originally awarded to the champion of the Michigan-Ontario Pro Hockey League.
“We had a concept of looking for interesting rivalries that are lesser known,” executive producer Evan Rosenfeld (Cocaine Cowboys, Broke) told Sportsnet Tuesday. “You have one of the oldest rivalries in American sports here.”
Now the Cup defines a fading mining town. Fathers raise sons to compete for a trophy only one other town can win.
“Hockey is the only thing they have to latch onto for meaning,” Rosenfeld says. Not in a sad way; in a simple, beautiful, perfect way. “They weren’t searching for something else. They were loving it.”
Rosenfeld and a compact crew of six travelled the globe to produce nine episodes for the debut season of Vice World of Sports, which kicked off in a Ghanese slum village and the boxing “Boys of Bukom.“
Each episode (free online after airing on TV) unfolds a tale too local and quiet for a showtime machine like ESPN’s 30 for 30 — a series for which Rosenfeld has worked — but the stories will appeal to that same audience.
“Sport is just as meaningful in small towns,” argues Rosenfeld, who spent eight days in Calumet winning over the locals. “They’re the nicest people there is. They didn’t want to make a big deal about it.”
Watch a couple World of Sports episodes and you’ll discover big deals in small places.
In each show, a unique community stars as a lead character. A sense of place is as critical as any other element in “The Perfect Sheet” and the rest. Themes of tradition and pride, commitment and family, abound in these slices of life, all presented free of an overbearing editorial voice.
Vice asks one question before green-lighting Rosenfeld’s ideas: “Is it a good story?”
Yes.
