the decline of winter shaking our national self-identity the most.

Wayne Gretzky could skate to where he knew the puck would go because not only did he know what the other players were going to do, he knew how the puck played off the boards differently in every NHL arena.

"We really want to see what everyone wants to say.… When you have a lot of people passionate about hockey, and not about religion, it's interesting to see people's reactions to the question," she said. "If they can make connections between religion and sport,

Maurice Richard­-le Rocket, Montreal’s homegrown French-Canadian star from the city’s blue-collar Nouveau-Bordeaux neighborhood, the world’s greatest hockey player to that time — carries the puck in the Boston zone. Hal Laycoe steps in his way. The 12,023 fans brace themselves.

Since then, larger thinkers on the Quebec scene have argued whether this was the beginning of Quebec's Quiet Revolution — officially pegged for 1960 with the election of Jean Lesage as Premier — or perhaps just the end of a time when hockey was more important than politics, as the latter began to take hold among French Canadian youth.

If you have never seen an ice-hockey stick (or experienced ice hockey) this shape is why we call these figures ‘hockey-stick curves’.