Three Things from Edmonton podcast -- Episode 120: teamwork, statue, the wind



Three Things from Edmonton podcast, episode 120, is here for the listening. It is composed of three things I noticed I noticed made me feel happy and grateful.

Give it a listen:


Or give it a read, starting with:

1. Teamwork

There was a play late in the Oilers series-winning game against the Los Angeles Kings that didn’t get enough attention from the professional sports pundits. It wasn’t a goal or pass or a hit or a forecheck or a fight. It wasn’t even a hockey-specific play. This is what happened. In front of his own net, Oilers goaltender Stuart Skinner gave the puck away to the Kings’ Phillip Danault in a jaw-dropping piece of live, televised misfortune. Skinner’s stick had snapped. Danault scored. It was, as Harnarayan Singh on Hockey Night in Canada said:

“Unbelievable!”


The arena in Los Angeles was bonkers. Hockey fans knew that momentum had switched. Skinner, on one knee in his crease, looked as broken as his composite stick. What the cameras caught next was remarkable. Oilers captain Connor McDavid skated by and tapped him on the head, reassuringly. It was as if to say, don’t worry, we got you, we’re in this together. As it happened, the Oilers scored the next goal (the popularly assailed Kailer Yamamoto, no less), won the game and overthrew the Kings.


Talk turned to their next opponent, the Vegas Golden Knights. But let’s not forget about McDavid’s show of support for his goaltender at the only time it mattered. For anyone who has had a tough break at work, for anyone who might have felt abandoned by leaders when the going got tough and the crowd got loud, for anyone who tried together and was left to fail alone, McDavid’s gesture was a reminder of what a team is. It’s a group whose strength is determined in the crucible of the unforeseen. Under pressure, does the group liquify or solidify? Do they snap because they’re hollow or do they hold because they are comrades?
All together: Soy capitán, soy capitán!
McDavid finished the series with three goals and six assists, but let’s give him a seventh helper for that inspiring piece of teamwork. And, while we’re at it, a point to the TV director who took the shot.

(Videos above courtesy of Janet Saunders Bumbarger.)


2. Statue
A couple of weeks ago I was walking past the Gretzky statue out front of Rogers Place on 104 Avenue when I saw a mother across the street point and explain to her trailing daughter that he was the greatest hockey player of all time. Me, I mimed? In a quiet voice, the young girl said something I couldn’t pick up. At the scramble crosswalk lights, I asked the mom about it. She said her daughter had said, but, mama, I thought Connor McDavid is the greatest. The encounter was a nice, unresolved piece of Edmontonia, here and gone on the wind, experienced by me only because I happened to be close enough for the scene to register. The opposite of the relative fixity and permanence of the Gretzky bronze itself.


When I learned on text from my buddies Spell and Fitz that Gordon Lightfoot had died, an image, a kind of statued image, appeared in my mind. It’s no real statue, of course. There is just empty space there where I imagine it stands. “There” is outside the stage door at the Jubilee Auditorium. The statue I have in mind took shape 36 years ago last month. It’s a chilly night, close to freezing. The concert is over. The spell isn’t. A knot of us are standing outside the stage door, wondering if the great musician will show. We don’t have to wait for long. The door opens and he steps out. Someone has brought an LP. He signs it. I offer my ticket stub. In black felt he signs it. One word: Lightfoot. The lower-case g reaches down to the ledger notes below the staff of the signature and the h up to the ledger notes above.


I went back to the space behind the Jube after hearing he had died. To pay my respects at the statue.



3. The wind
Last week, it was Wednesday, I pedalled into a 16 kilometre-per-hour wind on the long 142 Street shared use path out by Leon’s, and happily renewed my membership in the Pragmatist’s Bicycle Club. No, there’s no such club. And, yes, happily might be too strong a word. It was work, working with the wind against us, us being me on my Miyata One Thousand and the two bicycle riders ahead I slowly reeled in and passed while we shared thoughts in passing about the headwind. I cannot repeat what he said. Note to bike shops, though. His blue streak ended with a vow to buy an e-bike as soon as possible.

The wind is a fickle companion. It picks sides. It changes sides. When it’s with you, you flow like music. When it’s against you, your only real option is to talk back with the teeth of your front and rear sprockets. I was fluent in lots of teeth on that low-geared ride south. As far as I understand it, pragmatism has it that knowledge is provisional. There is a humility at its core. The answers we possess might not be for all times and for all environments. And, so, there is no absolutely correct way to ride a bicycle. It’s more read and reaction, as the hockey players say.
Thanks for being out there friends.

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