It is a well known fact that I'm a fan of Canada. I like to convince people that I'm from there...it's fun. I like hockey, that's enough to convince em. But my favorite part of Canada is their National Anthem. It's really a GREAT song. And there's no place better to witness it than a hockey game. Just...not necessarily in Atlanta. Whenever a Canadian team comes to Atlanta, they play O' Canada. I really don't understand why they don't play it every game. I'm not sure what the league percentages are, but 42% of the players on the Thrashers (9 of 21) are from Canada. (For fun - 5 are from the US, 2 each from Sweden, Finland, Russia and one 6'7" dude from Czech). Actually, I just found a study from the 2005-6 season, 53.6% are Canadian, 18.5% from the US. So to me, they should play the US & Canadian anthems every game. And mix in the Finland, Sweden, Russian, Czech anthems on a rotating basis.
None of that was the reason for this blog though. Yesterday, I was at the Calgary Flames-Atlanta Thrashers game. Got to my seat just before the anthems started. First up...the Canadian Anthem. I took my hat off (ok, so I wasn't actually wearing a hat) and started singing. Not sure who the girl was who was out there singing but it was bad. Actually her singing was pretty good...one slight problem...she DIDN'T KNOW THE WORDS!!!!! Several times she managed to keep up with the song while looking at a piece of paper with the words. But one time she paused for probably about 10 seconds. I am NOT ok with that. It's almost as bad as Thrasher fans yelling "KNIGHT" during the US anthem (only because Atlanta used to have a MINOR LEAGUE team called the Knights. USED TO!). In Canada, it's so much easier. The anthem singer can just sing the first verse and then hold the mic up and the crowd sings it. It really is pretty awesome to listen to! I just don't understand why someone would accept the honor of singing the two anthems if you don't even know the WORDS!!!!!
