The GG weighs in
An All-Star game for the Cup? Just two women's teams playing, what - a best out of 7? That's a joke.Ms. Clarkson and her policy advisers examined the archives for material that might relate to the Cup and found, to their surprise, that the first trustee, Ottawa Journal publisher Philip Ross, was concerned as early as 1909 that the public was in "a revolt against" professional hockey , a feeling echoed in recent polling about the NHL lockout and its aftermath.
The Governor-General and her advisers considered a number of possibilities, including an all-star game featuring NHL players in which the profits might go to charities or hockey scholarships. Consideration was also given to other leagues, but senior hockey already has the Allan Cup and junior hockey the Memorial Cup.
"I don't want to interfere with other Cups," she says.
The solution, then, was to give consideration to women's hockey.
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Ms. Clarkson has already made tentative contact with the cabinet of Prime Minister Paul Martin, though it is hoped that good will, rather than political will, would be the determining point for the trustees agreeing to have the Stanley Cup competed for outside the realm of the NHL.
Had the NHL and its players settled, she says, she would never have pursued the thinking, as she maintains her sole interest is in seeing the tradition of her predecessor's Cup upheld. She simply feels that there is something so Canadian in seeing the Stanley Cup played for and awarded each spring that Canadians would be "hugely disappointed" if such an opportunity were allowed to slip by.
As for her recommendation that this one special time it be competed for by women, she says this would merely be reflective of the times.
"I follow Wayne Gretzky's dictum," she says.
" 'Skate to where the puck's going to be, not to where it's been.' "
You are no Wayne Gretzky.
