A brief taste of life after hockey.

last updated 8 January 2015

Canada

Ian Robinson

Not everyone in Canada will be celebrating the return of professional hockey, said Ian Robinson in The Calgary Sun. The “hockey widows” are surely displeased. These are the women who effectively lose their husbands for the duration of the season. Canadian men, you see, take their roles as fans extremely seriously. Work and family are petty distractions to their real purpose: “sitting on the couch, wearing the home-team jersey, and making their way through a six-pack while yelling at the big, flat-screen TV.” Until recently, Canadian women have accepted this as normal. “Through the winter, they enroll in gourmet cooking classes, or take up oil painting, or get a part-time job.” But last year, when the National Hockey League canceled the season because of salary disputes, the hockey widows learned what it was like to have companionship in the winter. Husbands went out to dinner and movies. In Calgary last winter, “attendance at, of all things, the opera went up.” Men could even be persuaded to shovel walkways and do other chores around the house. “And now the league and the players expect these women to give their men back? Good luck, guys.”