When I was a kid, I thought Don Cherry knew everything about hockey. My family didn鈥檛 have cable, so my hockey fandom was reliant on three sources: hockey cards, Hockey Night in Canada, and Don Cherry鈥檚 Rock 鈥楨m Sock 鈥楨m.
Hockey Night in Canada was the only time I was able to watch NHL hockey and Don Cherry was a central figure. The refrains of the Coach鈥檚 Corner theme song during the intermissions let me know that the titular coach was about to dispense some wisdom. He would always take the time to talk to 鈥測ou kids out there鈥� and I felt like he was talking directly to me.
Then there were the , my primary source for hockey highlights. Watching those videos, I grew an appreciation for fantastic goals, incredible saves, huge hits, and, of course, hockey fights. All of it was narrated by Cherry, in his own bombastic way: 鈥淲atch this here...Wang-o! What a beauty.鈥�
I鈥檓 sure I鈥檓 not alone among many of my generation: Cherry played a significant role in how we became hockey fans, how we watched the game, the types of players that we loved to watch. With time, however, I, along with many other millennials, started to grow increasingly uncomfortable with the comments Cherry made.
Cherry has complained about hockey growing softer, but it鈥檚 happened because of a growing understanding of concussions and other dangers. When a few of Cherry鈥檚 beloved enforcers 鈥� Stu Grimson, Chris Nilan and Jim Thomson 鈥� spoke out fighters struggling with substance abuse, Cherry turned on them, calling them 鈥減ukes,鈥� 鈥渢urncoats,鈥� and 鈥渉ypocrites.鈥�
The hits that Cherry celebrated in his Rock 鈥楨m Sock 鈥楨m videos no longer looked like harmless entertainment, but an irresponsible promotion of a style of hockey that ends careers and causes real, lasting trauma.
It鈥檚 easy to dismiss them as a product of their time, just as it鈥檚 easy to forgive Cherry for being a product of his time, but Cherry was still there on Hockey Night in Canada, week after week. Just one week ago, getting stretchered off the ice: 鈥淗e got knocked out, that鈥檚 all.鈥�
But beyond the old-school hockey takes that felt outdated and uncomfortable, there was everything else.
The xenophobia was impossible to miss, even if it was always guised in a defence of Canadian hockey. He constantly criticized European and Russian hockey players, but would go further than that: French Canadians were a regular target as well. Anyone that wasn鈥檛 an English-Canadian was insulted and derided, unless they happened to conform to his vision of how hockey should be played 鈥� then they were one of the good ones.
Then there was the , the , and calling people who eat seal meat . He railed against 鈥渓eft-wing pinkos鈥� 鈥� . Yet, for some reason, those that want politics out of sports rarely took issue with Cherry.
For the millennial audience that grew up with Don Cherry on TV every Saturday, it鈥檚 been tough to reconcile the man that helped us become hockey fans with the man that continued to sit next to Ron MacLean every single year. As we grew older, our understanding of hockey and the world around us changed, but Cherry didn鈥檛 change. He stayed the same.
When Cherry on Saturday 鈥� 鈥� it was just a continuation of who he鈥檚 been for decades. The only difference is that he didn鈥檛 couch his xenophobia in hockey terms and the backlash was severe.
Much of that backlash came from the millennials that grew up watching Cherry and the resulting pressure forced an apology from Sportsnet and Ron MacLean, along with lukewarm and vague statements from the NHL and Hockey Canada, as wonderfully parodied from Russian Machine Never Breaks.
Statement from RMNB:
鈥� RMNB (@russianmachine)
So many people complained to the Canadian Broadcasting Standards Council that it . The pressure was on: Cherry鈥檚 comments were the proverbial straw that broke the camel鈥檚 back. Cherry should have been let go years earlier, whether for one of his other controversial statements or because the audience of Hockey Night in Canada had passed him by, but this time Sportsnet and CBC couldn鈥檛 just wait a week for the story to die down; this one wasn鈥檛 going away.
So, Sportsnet fired him. Cherry refused to apologize for his comments or offer any clarification 鈥� 鈥淚 have had my say,鈥� he told Joe Warmington at the Toronto Sun 鈥� so his comments were exactly what they sounded like: bigoted and xenophobic.
According to Sportsnet, Cherry鈥檚 remarks 鈥渄o not represent our values or what we stand for鈥� but they were right in line with remarks he鈥檚 made throughout his career. I guess, until Saturday, Cherry did represent Sportsnet's values.
Paragraph One: We had to fire this guy for constantly being an unapologetic bigot.
鈥� Adam Herman (@AdamZHerman)
Paragraph Two: This guy is synonymous with hockey.
That's quite the accidental implication.
What really happened, it seems, is that Sportsnet recognized that Cherry鈥檚 remarks don鈥檛 represent the values of a large chunk of their audience. Millennials and the generation younger than them, Gen Z, simply don鈥檛 agree with Cherry on a wide number of topics, both in regards to hockey and social issues. If they want to hang onto that audience, there was only one choice they could make.
A lot of millennials have to deal with family members with antiquated views on race, gender, and sexuality. It鈥檚 tough to reconcile the genuine love and affection you feel for family with the distaste you might feel towards their views. It鈥檚 similar with Don Cherry.
Without Cherry, I might not have become a hockey fan and I still have a lot of genuine affection for his enthusiasm for the game of hockey, as well as a lot of fond memories of watching him on my TV when I was a kid. But it was long past time for him to stop being on TV.
Our family members with offensive views don鈥檛 get a national spotlight every Saturday while we watch our national (winter) sport. Neither should Don Cherry.
听
