‘It’s Hockey Night in Laval’

The Chomedey Express de Laval Hockey Association’s Atome A Orients became instant TV stars last weekend when a segment they taped six days before aired at the start of the CBC’s Jan. 21 installment of Hockey Night in Canada.

The team won the honor of opening Canada’s national Saturday night hockey broadcast in a contest sponsored by Scotiabank. The players introduced the game between Montreal and Toronto which aired at 6:30 p.m. that night.

Contest winners
The Atome A Orients were one of several minor hockey teams chosen this winter in communities across the country to open Hockey Night in Canada. Lisa Chartier, who manages the Orients, said the team knew since December that they’d won the contest.
“The boys are very, very excited,” said Chartier, who is very active in Chomedey and who served a term as a parent commissioner on the Sir Wilfrid Laurier School Board. “They’re nine and ten 10 years old and they love hockey,” she said. “It’s really nice that the CBC and Scotiabank does this and the team is extremely grateful for it.”

Skilled cameraman
Greg Bruce, a senior cameraman with the CBC with 37 years experience, drove in from Toronto, where he’s normally based, for the Jan. 15 shoot at the Chomedey Arena. The taping took about an hour. Bruce videotapes about six of the pre-game segments each year in eastern Canada.

A crew from western Canada handles the work for games in locations like Edmonton and Vancouver. Right after his assignment in Laval, Bruce hit the road for a long drive to Gravenhurst north of Toronto, to tape another segment with a junior hockey team there. Watching Bruce work, it becomes clear that his job requires not only skating skill, but also the talents of a choreographer.

Marc Saulnier, a Scotiabank branch manager who was at the Chomedey Arena for the taping, said the bank takes a serious interest in junior hockey. According to Saulnier, about 65,000 children and youths are enrolled in a national hockey program that Scotiabank sponsors.

Bank sponsorship
“This program is very good because it gives them the opportunity just like the pros to be drafted and they get very excited,” he said. “It usually creates a lot of momentum for the kids and allows a lot of them to benefit because it provides them with financial support as well.”
On the night when the Orients’ segment was broadcast, Scotiabank hosted a pizza party for the team and their families, who all watched the pre-game show at a Scotiabank branch in Dollard-des-Ormeaux on Montreal’s West Island. Although their moment of stardom went by quickly, it’s not every day that 10-year-old hockey players get to shout clear across the country, “It’s Hockey Night in Canada.”