Oh Canadians

5/08/2009 01:57:00 pm / The truth was spoken by Rich /

The man who sings the national anthem before Blackhawks and Bulls games is a chap called Jim Cornelison. We all know how hysterically jingoistic Americans are and how crazy they get when their anthem is sung, but I've never seen such furious patriotism than when this guy is doing his bit at the United Centre. It's really quite unnerving when you witness it live.

When he's finished, half the crowd leave to join the army, that's how effective he is. God help a muslim who happens to be in the area when Cornelison is doing his thing. I noticed last night though that his rendition of the "Star Spangled Banner" didn't seem to have quite the inspirational effect on the players as it does on the crowd. If you watch the video below from last night, right at the end the players seem to skate off before he's finished as if to say thank fuck that's over. Then it occured to me why. The Chicago Blackhawks player roster is 90% Canadian.

Can this explain why the Blackhawks seem to do so well at the star of games when they play in Canada and struggle in their home rink? When they go back to Vancouver for game 5 on Saturday it will be interesting to watch how the players begin the game after listening to a stirring rendition of "O' Canada." How can it not have a more positive affect?

Imagine being one of 9 English players in a football team playing in Scotland and having to listen to "the flower of Scotland" every game. I'm going to email in about this, see if they can't teach this guy the words to the Canadian anthem too.


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