Wearing The Pants In The Family

Well, I've just got to put the finishing touches on this post about the decline of Canadian print media and... wait, what's that? The Kamloops Blazers are wearing Cooperalls? Stop the presses!

If you're not familiar with the concept: in the early eighties, the Cooper sports equipment company experimented with long pants for hockey players, rather than the shorts-and-socks of tradition. They were briefly used by a few NHL teams, as well as in many minor leagues, but they fell out of favour and disappeared. (And to be clear, I now find that "Cooperall" was just one brand, and it was Kleenexed into being the name for all of the pants. It turns out the pants used in the NHL were not actually Cooperalls™.)

Cooperalls had become something of a punchline in recent years, so it was quite a shock when I was chanel-surfing and came across the Sportsnet Junior Hockey game of the week, with one of the teams in pants. I assumed that they just had weird socks that look like part of the shorts, but no, they were pants. Needing to convince myself I wasn't going crazy, I searched Twitter for "Kamloops Blazers" and found that nearly all the current tweets were commenting on the pants, with no mention of the game itself.

It turns out that this was a promotion, an eighties throwback night. You have to have respect for that kind of throwback. No cheap third jerseys or asking the audience to turn up in pastels, they went for truely retro uniforms. But what was really surprising is that people seemed supportive of it. Most of the aforementioned tweets were positive, appreciating the quirkiness and irony of it.

I found that surprising because hockey tends to be a sport that really takes itself seriously, and I would argue too serious. A sport that has some - let's face it - strange aspects could really benefit from learning to laugh at itself. It was refreshing to see people applaud instead of shouting-down a deviation from the traditional orthodoxy.

Maybe it was because this was Junior hockey. Maybe it was because it's the first time, and there'll be a different reaction if lots of teams break out the pants every season. Or it could be that Cooperalls have just receeded far enough into the rear-view mirror that they can be regarded as part of hockey tradition. Either way, I'm not expecting fans to welcome back the Fox Trax puck any time soon.