Salming started crying in the stands and we cried with him
There is a statue of Purée Salming in Toronto, he has been inducted into every community Hall of Fame that deserves the name and will have a street named after him in Kiruna.
his shirt?
It hangs high on the ceiling – in the heart of every Swede.
In the left or right atrium, possibly one in each.
One of my first strong ice hockey memories is the amazing applause goal against the Soviet Union in 1987.
You know, Albelin in blue, the Loob from afar, the pass from behind the back and Sandström’s open goal and sculpted ice hockey gloves.
At the time, ice hockey at the World Cup was the international ice hockey I knew, but then my dad once told me about the standing ovation at the Canada Cup in 1976.
How he and his friends would sit at night and watch ice hockey, and if they ever saw a rebroadcast they’d pull the phone plugs, turn off the radio on the AM band and ground themselves in terms of information.
The quiet corner of the house turned into a kind of fence, an impregnable bulwark for any results or events, and in his story circa 1976 there was evident pride that he had only existed as a TV viewer interested in Swedish ice hockey when Salming was celebrating in this way.
As I hadn’t even imagined in 1976, it wasn’t the moment itself that had long since intrigued me with ice hockey.
Enough of the story.
Don’t remember anything between the standing ovations
After the Toronto scenes this past weekend, I chose to watch The Hockey Times with great hesitation, and it didn’t take me several seconds before I understood how it would turn out.
Mark Livinggood got a lot of crap for stopping Porgy’s applause at the start that could have lasted into Tuesday, but I don’t want to blame him for that.
The show’s producers and creators should have known they could have thought differently, and started differently if the driving schedule was the big thing this evening.
If anything important at all.
Porgy started crying in the stands and we cried with him.
I hoped very much that the blood on his face was the result of a corner encounter with Dave Schultz, or that he had been run over by a sled, as usual, and not some cunning, diabolical disease.
Everything from that point until the next standing ovation I can hardly remember.
The backs, the strikers and the teams have been lauded, one becoming the goalkeeper of all time, but I wouldn’t understand exactly how to compare ‘Klimpen’ Hagroth to Henrik Lundqvist fairly and equally.
So it went on until the NHL stepped onto the scene with something framed.
I didn’t hear a word my neighbor boy Batman had to say, but even if I had listened, that would be stale food in the cupboard.
Salming puree He could have won any prize, he took every prize for anything.
We were sitting in the middle of the moment
He could have gotten a new statue or the entire Kiirunavaara statue as a gift, now it’s something everyone has already forgotten about because this night wasn’t about scratches or accolades at all.
It was about love, respect and time.
About the family, impulsive and inexplicably cruel.
Although at Time’s Hockey Gala later the Times moment was voted on, those of us who were watching sat down…in the middle of it.
In front of millions of Swedish television viewers and the entire Swedish hockey aristocracy, one of our ice hockey’s greatest heroes and national symbols was thanked by those still alive.
For his caps and assists, for all his covered shots, for his bravery, and for his fighting spirit, as he was.
For everything, for life.
It was so heartbreaking but also so tender and warm.
I have children myself, they are small and I will not have more, he made it very clear to me.
They don’t relate to ice hockey the same way I did 35 years ago, and everyone was asleep when Swedish ice hockey said thank you and goodbye to Børe Salming.
They don’t know who Börje is, but of course I’m going to talk about his amazing life, his career, and this very special moment.
It will suffice, as it did for me, with the story.