"Hockey Night in Canada" Loses Musical Identity

By Hal Maas

"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."

Six musical notes that since 1968 have quickened the heartbeat of any hockey fan who's ever heard Don Cherry ranting about the too-sweet Swedes and making fist-clenching, vein-popping arguments for no-touch icing because there have been way too many too-hard icing "touches" -- so hard that players' ankles have snapped and careers have been zapped (think Pat Peake).

"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."

Oh, I started watching and appreciating hockey years earlier, when the tinny-sounding "Hello Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland..." from the maestro
of the mic at Maple Leaf Gardens Foster Hewitt would open a Saturday night telecast -- an 8pm game always joined in progress at 9pm ET because, ..well, uh,....gee, you know, as a ten-year-old I didn't really KNOW why I only got to see 90 minutes of the game, nor did I know why the Toronto Maple Leafs were always on. I thought it was another weekly game show like "Truth or Consequences", where the winner came back to play a different opponent the next week. The Leafs always won -- and next Saturday night, dammit, there they were again against another team. And the only round thing Tim Horton was selling then was his able stickhandling of a hockey puck -- not a jelly-filled doughnut washed down with a steaming cup of coffee.

But then a few years went by, I learned how the NHL schedule actually worked (duh!), and suddenly for me the sun started rising at night --- whenever I heard those six musical notes:

"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."

Boom, ba boom, ba boom, BOOM --- goes the heart. It's time for " Night in Canada"!

A whole generation learned through the '60s and '70s that it's really not the National Anthem that officially begins a Saturday night National Hockey League game. Naw, it's ----

"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT..."

And then in the '80s and '90s still another generation learned the same lesson.

But there won't be another generation. This latest one is getting screwed because the Canadian Broadcasting Company decided not to renew the rights to the song. There'll be a different
song opening this season's NHL telecasts on CBC, the result of a contest between 15,000 entries. I'm sure many are fine songs -- as SONGS, not as an automatic connection to a significant facet of one's life. A "second national anthem", if you will.

I am American and I'm super-ticked about this -- I can only imagine how Canadians felt about the song that's become a part of their fabric. I understand that other Canadian networks are planningto keep the song alive in their presentations but, again, it's not about just the song, per se -- it's about how certain music is inexorably tied to certain elements of life. You mess with the psyche when you break 'em apart.

The nine people that still watch the Miss America Pageant still expect to hear somebody singing "There she iiiis, Miss A-merrrr-i-caaa...." when she's crowned. And I'll bet that, even though it never made the "Hot 100" at either Billboard or Blender magazine, you still can clearly hear in your head Doc Severinson's orchestra belting out that theme music whenever Johnny Carson crosses your mind. Certain music triggers certain events. How in the hell do you get through a hockey season without ---

"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."

So go ahead. Shoot me now.

Sorry, but I'm already feeling like I'm Jack Nicholson wanting to break down and peek through that door in "The Shining". Hey, -- let's open the telecasts THAT way. Use the new theme while you make play-by-play guy Jim Hughson the guy peeking at you through the hole in the door.

Imagine him on your big screen TV sneering, "Heeeerrree's HOCKEY!!!!!"