Skip to content

Second Opinion: Global warming a 'threat' to hockey advantage

One wonders why other sports don’t adopt the NHL’s concern over environmental issues, says Jim Holtz.

The NHL has announced that they are supporting the idea of climate change because warmer winters are beginning to severely shorten the amount of time that outdoor hockey rinks can be used.

The league issued a letter from Commissioner Gary Bettman which said in part: “Our sport can trace its roots to frozen freshwater ponds, to cold climates,” said Bettman. “Major environmental challenges, such as climate change and freshwater scarcity, affect opportunities for hockey players of all ages to learn and play the game outdoors.”

And professor Danny Harvey of the University of Toronto geography faculty said, “Global warming threatens Canada’s advantage over other countries in hockey. We know that Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux and the Staal brothers— a lot of elite Canadian hockey players —got good because of the hours and hours of unstructured time they could spend playing on natural outdoor rinks in their backyards. As the climate warms, we’re going to lose that.”

NHL teams are now encouraged to do what they can to reduce their carbon footprint, and of course, improve their image with the public.

One wonders why other sports don’t adopt the NHL’s concern over environmental issues. Olympic athletes are always bemoaning the fact that they can barely support themselves during training because their sporting associations have so little money. What if the swimmers, rowers, kayakers could band together to promote clean, unpolluted water?

Think of the images that could be generated for TV: swimmers or oarsmen struggling to propel themselves or their craft through an estuary littered with floating plastic bags. The public would be quick to support clean water initiatives and, naturally, the Olympic funds that benefit the courageous athletes.

And baseball players could win more loyal fans, higher TV ratings— and therefore profits—by supporting animal rights groups and banning horsehide covered baseballs and making them instead from biodegradable synthetic materials.

Professional golfers? They could refuse to play on courses that use massive amounts of water, fertilizer and pesticides to keep those greens and fairways in shape and instead play on brown grass and dirt to please all their environmentally concerned fans.

The terrific PR gained by having the nightly news interview Tiger alongside picketers in front of the lush green grass of the Augusta National Golf Club would double the amount of prize money they could win.

And what about that courageous group of Greco-Roman wrestlers in Iran and Turkey that would like to see their sport return to its roots by wrestling in the nude in front of male only crowds just as they did in ancient times?

At the moment, no one seems interested, but if they aligned themselves with one or more of the big hotel chains that always want clients to help them “be green” by reusing all their towels, everything might change. Especially if they dropped the demand to wrestle only in front of males.

Ads that tastefully show them wrestling accompanied by a voiceover promoting the value of not having to wash again and again a bunch of sweaty wrestling uniforms would certainly alter the image of their sport, not to mention the hotel chain.