You won't believe this new Calgary 'sport'
Alright, so I'm sippin' my coffee, scrolling through the local news, and I swear, I almost spit out my Bridgeland latte when I saw this. Someone, somewhere, is trying to make "Ice Wars" a thing. You heard that right. Not ice *hockey*, but "Ice Wars." And from the sounds of it, we're talking bare-knuckle hockey fights. For real though, what in the name of the '89 Flames is going on? My immediate thought was, are we just trying to fill the Saddledome during the off-season with… glorified brawling? This isn't the kind of rough-and-tumble spirit Calgary usually champions. We appreciate a good scrap in hockey, sure, but this feels like it's capping that conversation and drilling a new, much sketchier well.
### Is This Really a 'Sport'?
Look, I've seen some intense Stampede chuckwagon races, and those can get wild, but there's a tradition there, a skill. This "Ice Wars" thing, according to the letters to the editor, is just brutal spectacle.
* It's being described as "Bare Knuckle Hockey Fights." * Folks are questioning if it's even a sport. * The concern is whether people would actually spend money to watch it.
For a city that prides itself on its sporting heritage, from the Calgary Flames to our beloved Stampeders (who, let's be honest, should get more national respect), this feels like a weird turn. We're a city that loves to see our athletes push limits, not just... push each other's faces in.
This is Calgary — we've seen the boom, we've seen the bust, and we showed up anyway. But "Ice Wars"? That's a new kind of bust I'm not sure we need to boom. It just makes you wonder what people are thinking. Are we really that desperate for entertainment down on 17th Ave, or are we just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks? I'm hoping this story hits a dry well pretty quick.
Cassidy Redcloud, MiTL Sports Desk, Calgary.
You know Keith and the crew are gonna have a field day with this on the Morning Wire. Tune in live at mornings.live!