Hockey Night in Can#$%

"Fucking rights!"

"Fucking A!"

These were the eternal words uttered aloud as several of the Pittsburgh Penguins lifted grand old Lord Stanley above their heads in celebration of their championship season. After winning a Game 7 match against a team that has been heralded as the dynasty of our generation, these young men were more than pleased with themselves. They were fucking overjoyed, damn it.

The words were broadcast live, unedited, on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada. There were no apologies, there were no words of condemnation from the broadcasters - there was no public outcry in the morning papers the following day. I was immediately interested to see what NBC was doing in the face of this obstacle - foul language coming from a team named after a popular, stuffed children's toy. But the US station was not filming each player as they took up the 'greatest championship trophy in all of sports'. They were running interviews, one on one, with each player after each player had handed it to their next colleague.

But try as they might, the US stations could not capture the same pure emotion and joy from the players as the old CBC did by just showing each player take the trophy for the first (or but second, or but third) time in their lives. It was like if NBC had cut away from Michael Phelps the very moment he touched the wall for another gold medal, or from the baseball diamond the second the final pitch had been thrown out during the final game of the World Series. In other sports, the celebration occurs immediately following the victory itself, while in the NHL, the real celebration does not begin until the player can place his fingerprints on the luster of the Cup.

In hockey, there is no censorship. In hockey, people curse. In hockey, people fight. In hockey, no one cares who's listening. In a time where the Super Bowl can end with more people talking about a momentary 'wardrobe malfunction' than the actual score of the game, or who won the darn thing, it is refreshing to see something real. It is nice to be able to love the moment without having to deal with the word police.

It has been a week in sports that may outshine any other week this decade. Federer finally won at Roland Garros, to complete his career grand slam. Tiger Woods finally racked up a significant win this season at Jack Nicklaus' Memorial Tournament. Kobe Bryant is having a career series against the Magic. And the Penguins, with their roster of young guns and the sage Lemieux watching from high up in the owner's box, were able to fill the Stanley Cup with the dozens of bottles of Veuve Clicquot awaiting them in the locker room.

Sport is both a virtue and a vice. Children learn team skills and how to make friends, how to win and how to lose, playing sports. Then, some of those children grow up to destroy their lives betting on the same games they loved so much as a kid. Sports can make a grown man weep. They can also induce thousands of people to riot. This twin nature of sport, is an essential part of why we love our games so much. The words of our heroes, however crude, are still the words of our heroes.

The majority of television played on TV sets in Canada, is American television. Most sports broadcast in Canada are merely rebroadcasting a US network feed. Most of our television shows, are made and broadcast in America, only then rebroadcast to the rest of the world. Yet the American stations can rarely capture something the same way the CBC did last night, because censorship reigns in America.

It makes me wonder how much we are missing, when the nation that controls much of the news, sports and programming beamed into our homes is one that cuts away from impassioned moments out of fear that someone may become offended. A nation that will publicize the trash website of James von Brunn for days, but cannot bring itself to capture the true reactions of heroic men doing heroic things.

George Carlin once said that without street language, the emphatic nature of any situation will be lost - making things less compelling. And who the fuck wants to live in a less compelling world? Champange and curse words belong together sometimes. Just as much as television, and real life, often don't. There is a bit of a lie in every space a curseword is removed. Not that TV would ever lie to us... just saying.