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And yet, all who enter and leave
St. Lawrence, inevitably, learn a little
something about hockey and acquire
some agreeable feeling for a beloved
college tradition, played by a varsity men’s
team on campus since the 1920s and
from the 1970s by women.
Why is St. Lawrence hockey
noteworthy? What is there to think about
when the community gathers in Appleton
Arena, or is the point not to think too
much? Is there anything to it other than
an easy vicarious brush with intense
physicality and the release of otherwise
tethered emotions? At St. Lawrence, we
live in a serious academic setting,
immersed daily in concepts, motifs,
analysis, discourse, and creative
expression. How do you “read” this game
if the story is new to you or how do you
rediscover it if it’s a familiar old book?
To start, I like seeing fresh, untouched,
and glimmering ice, immediately before
the competing teams appear from their
locker rooms. Maybe it’s like Emerson’s
preference for the sanctuary quiet before
the start of church. The St. Lawrence
“barn,” as hockey insiders often call
their home rink, preserves this quality of
contemplative stillness when people
arrive early, different from the feeling of
wired expectancy now commonplace in
the rock concert atmosphere of most
sports arenas.
The father of a hockey student, who is
himself a scholar of the game, once said
to me that he loved “the metaphysic” of
Appleton. It would be overreaching and,
therefore, contradictory to the
transcendent golden mean, for anyone
to claim Aristotle’s presence in this
corner of campus. And yet, before the
action begins, there is something
I
f there were a North Country
jazz tradition, equivalent to the
music evoked by the Mississippi
Valley, it would be expressed as
ice hockey. The pleasure of
syncopation and groove are
inside that distinctive game, played at
bebop speed. Even when the goalie slaps
and slaps that oversized stick on the ice to
signal the end of a penalty kill, a
percussive beaver-tail sound beating
upstream, you can hear the cadence of a
kick drum in a jazz set.
Hockey, like the term jazz itself, is an
odd word. There is no trace of linguistic
origin, not in English, French, Dutch, or
Algonquin. The game’s history, however,
has a more confident beginning on the
frozen St. Lawrence River around the
time of Canada’s national self-
determination as a dominion, rejecting
its status as a colony in 1867.
It seems that a convergence of early
athletic influences from Celtic, Northern
European, and Native American cultures
eventually produced a game played by
skaters, carrying bent sticks, chasing a
small petrified disk, while other emerging
sports incorporated a lively, pliant ball
with more predictable spin. There are still
forerunner remnants of hockey called
shinny and bandy preserved on frozen
outdoor patches.
The majority of Laurentians have never
played ice hockey, so for lots of people it
is an untried, purely second-hand
experience. Many have never seen hockey
until their first semester of college life,
sometimes beginning their spectator’s
career with one of the most legendary
college rivalries known in America,
usually played right before fall finals and
the first big snow—the Clarkson game.
Hockey Night in Canton
AWordFromthe
The majority of Laurentians have
never played ice hockey, so for lots
of people it is an untried, purely
second-hand experience. Many
have never seen hockey until their
first semester of college life,
sometimes beginning their
spectator’s career with one of the
most legendary college rivalries
known in America.