Vanilla Ice

There is not a surplus of nightlife in Ottawa, whose name derives from the Algonquin otta ("open") and wa ("till 6 p.m."). Or so I'd heard. Ottawa was the only major league city in North America that I'd never actually visited. But it has a reputation -- even by Canadian standards -- as subdued. Last spring the mayor of Toronto used the common description of Ottawa as "the Town That Fun Forgot," a clear instance of the pot calling the kettle beige.

More insulting still, the New Jersey Devils declined to stay in Ottawa between Games 1 and 2 of their Stanley Cup semifinal series against the Senators last week, flying home to spend 48 hours in the relative Babylon of East Rutherford. "If you look around," New Jersey goalie Martin Brodeur told reporters in Ottawa on the eve of Game 1, "there's not much to do around here."

In spite of this -- or rather because of it -- I have long indulged a strange fascination with Ottawa, rekindled by each new Senators highlight on SportsCenter. Its sobriety is intoxicating, its obscurity intriguing, and so I was seized last week by a sudden impulse to be at the center of this somnambulant city. And yet, while flying inexorably toward Ottawa, to the terra incognita of my sports world, a deep disquiet stole over me: I felt like Marlow cruising up the Congo, to a hockey-addled Heart of Darkness.

A river does run through Ottawa, but it's the fetching Rideau Canal, a 125-mile waterway renowned in winter as the World's Largest Skating Rink. Everywhere, Senators car flags snapped in the breeze. "The whole city is behind us," Sens general manager John Muckler said in my cabbie's copy of The Ottawa Sun. "I don't think people in the States realize how important this all is to Canadian people."

No? On the back of the Canadian five-dollar bill are four children playing hockey, on what could well be the Rideau Canal. Imagine replacing, on the U.S. twenty, Andrew Jackson with Reggie Jackson, and you only begin to fathom the depth of feeling that Canadians have for their national pastime.

In fact, for four hours on Friday night, the Stanley Cup, on display at the Sears store in downtown Ottawa, was venerated by several hundred pilgrims who snaked past menswear and spilled into junior miss. Ottawa resident Magnus Janda, in a red Senators road jersey, waited an eternity to touch the Holy Grail. Upon doing so, he abruptly burst into tears.

He then abandoned the Stanley Cup and wailed for his sippy cup. "Magnus," as his father pointed out, "is 18 months old."

But adults, too, were wetting their pants. Or very nearly so, for their Senators had gone from insolvent to invincible in four months. Indeed, this very morning a Canadian billionaire named Eugene Melnyk had bought the team, whose previous owner, Rod Bryden, had declared bankruptcy in January. Included in the deal was the Senators' arena, improbably located on a vast empty plain 20 miles from downtown. In this exceedingly strange location the Corel Centre appears to have fallen, Skylab-style, from outer space, which only adds to the odd allure of greater Ottawa.

For hockey players Ottawa appears to be the anti-New York: a great place to live, but you wouldn't want to visit. City fathers forgot to green-light a red-light district. And so, says Senators right wing Daniel Alfredsson, "Ottawa is a great family city."

"I don't think there's a much better city from a family perspective," concurs defenseman Curtis Leschyshyn, a dead ringer for the Brawny paper towel man, while combing sparrows from his breathtaking beard.

On Saturday afternoon families festooned in Senators jerseys ate lunch in convivial pubs, petted llamas on the city's pedestrian mall and strolled the becoming banks of the Rideau. Ottawa looked nothing like the Town That Fun Forgot, but rather like the Town Where Fun Settled When It Finally Had a Family.

As for Saturday night, when the Senators played the Devils in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference finals, Fun was far less important than Victory. If this series -- between two strong defensive teams -- should see the bland leading the bland, so be it. But that was not the case in Game 1, when two buttoned-down clubs produced, instead, a Thrilla in Vanilla.

Anaheim and Minnesota did the same earlier in the day, as the Ducks beat the Wild 1-0 in two overtimes. Thus television executives face the prospect of this ratings catastrophe: a Stanley Cup final between teams from Ottawa and St. Paul. Or, even more perverse, between East Rutherford and Anaheim: Not-Quite-New York versus Not-Exactly-L.A.

Of course, most of us live in such places, the cities Sinatra never sang about. Senators center Shaun Van Allen scored the game-winning goal in overtime on Saturday night and said afterward, "As a kid growing up playing road hockey in Saskatchewan, you dream of scoring the game-winning goal in overtime. This is one of the best feelings I've ever had in my life."

It was also his daughter Hayley's seventh birthday. In that moment, in that arena, the feeling was unmistakable: Ottawa, Ontario, was the center of the universe.

Issue date: May 19, 2003

Sports Illustrated senior writer Steve Rushin pens the weekly Air and Space column in the magazine.

 

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