by Peter Bailey
“In life, nothing is so delicious as anticipating that next hockey game,” wrote Bill Gaston. Sure, but what about anticipating that next beer?
Beer and hockey are great teammates. As Gaston explains in Midnight Hockey, his book about oldtimers hockey, there’s a reason they call it beer league hockey. Every stinky, sweaty dressing room is full of players there as much for the beer as for the glory of assisting on an empty netter.
My first beer memory is overlaid with watching Hockey Night in Canada on a Saturday night in the early seventies in the family rec room. My dad wasn’t much of a hockey fan but it was either the hapless Leafs on CBC or The Littlest Hobo on CTV. My dad wasn’t much of a beer drinker either, but he did give me good advice, noting that his Molson Export beer was an ale, not insipid lager. I didn’t like the sip I tried of his stubby of Export, but an aledrinker was born that night.
As to hockey, I only played a couple years as a kid before giving it up for skiing. But I grew up in small-town Ontario where long winters meant town life revolved around the arena. Hockey for the boys, figure skating for the girls, curling for the old people. Not playing hockey sometimes left me on the outs socially but in my teen years I became a beer hero. The Beer Store was the only place to buy beer in town. All the men who worked at the Beer Store were hockey coaches so knew almost every teenage boy in town – except me.
Thanks to this anonymity and my early facial stubble, I was the hero walking out of the store with a two-four of Blue or Canadian.
I moved to Edmonton in 1981, and watching Wayne Gretzky and the Oilers during their Stanley Cup prime was a revelation. I came to understand hockey’s beauty. But from Northlands Coliseum then to Rexall Place today, hockey beer is terrible. Hockey is a conservative sport, slow to change, even with beer. As Bill Gaston wrote, “no fancy-assed designer beer belongs in a dressing room. It’s just wrong. Hockey bags should be checked for microbrew contraband.”
I asked Edmonton Oilers Captain Andrew Ference if things are different at the NHL level. “No,” he said, “the majority of the guys drink Coors Light or whatever. There are maybe a couple of guys on the team who are into craft beer.” Ference is one of those guys. A foodie and a craft beer fan, he looks for small, indie, organic restaurants when he’s on the road with the Oilers. Ference isn’t a big drinker but he enjoys trying new beers, rarely having the same one twice. When he played for Boston, Ference had a grocery store near his place that was one-third beer. Boston’s Harpoon Brewery brewed a beer in honour of Ference, with him on the label, and when the Bruins won the Stanley Cup in 2011, he was able to drink his own beer from the Cup.
Ference knows his beer, thanks in part to playing in the Czech Elite League during NHL lockouts. In 2012 he played for the team in České Budějovic, the home of Budvar, the original Budweiser. Here in Edmonton, Ference and I hope that the new downtown arena will serve craft beer, like other NHL arenas do.
How about it, Mr. Katz?
All-Star NHL Beer Starting Lineup
Six all-star craft beer from the Canadian NHL cities (except Ottawa, which has yet to send its craft beer west). These beer are unrestricted free agents and can be drafted at good local beer stores such as Andrew Ference’s favourite, Sherbrooke Liquor.
 On left wing, an aggressive American IPA. Like the Jets, Half Pints is a hard-working, underappreciated outfit toiling in semiobscurity on the great plains. But you don’t need analytics to understand that Little Scrapper is a fine IPA, bitter and punchy but approachable. |
 At centre, a solid power forward. Like the Oilers, this classic has undergone a rebuild recently with Alley Kat going bigger, beefing up its flagship pale ale into an IPA (from 5 to 5.5 per cent alcohol and from 31 to 45 IBUs bitterness). This rebuild is a victory, maintaining Full Moon’s deliciousness but bumping its power up a notch. |
 At right wing, a forceful American IPA, one of the first new-style IPAs in Canada back in the 1990s. But like the Flames, you can’t coast on past success. With beer drinkers’ palates now used to big, hoppy IPAs, Wild Rose re-tooled their IPA in 2013, bumping up the bitterness to 69 IBUs. A nice tweak to an Alberta classic. |
 On defence, a Czech-style pilsner brewed a stone’s throw from the Air Canada Centre, home of the venerable Maple Leafs. Like the Leafs, Steam Whistle harkens back to a simpler time when beer meant lager and Toronto won Stanley Cups. A crisp, tasty pilsner for a postgame thirst. |
 On defence, a brawny Czech-style pilsner from a hip new Vancouver brewery. The Bomber brewers are “friends with a passion for playing hockey and savouring good beer,” starting the brewery from the bench of the Bombers Hockey Club. A quaffable lager perfect for the dressing room. |
 Backstopping this all-star brew crew in goal is a classic from Chambly, across the river from Montreal. While the Canadiens were owned for years by Molson Brewing and now by members of the Molson family, the class of the NHL deserves a classy beer like this big Trappist-style tripel. |
Peter Bailey plays left wing (badly) for the mighty Division D Pylons, currently 13-1. He tweets as @Libarbarian.