A Punjabi Show draws new hockey fans

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A Punjabi Broadcast Draws In New Hockey Fans

‘Hockey Night in Canada,’ in Punjabi: Bhola Chauhan and Harnarayan Singh, co-hosts of “Hockey Night in Canada,” discuss the significance of the Montreal Canadiens’ making it to the playoffs.

By DAVID SAX Published: April 26, 2013

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CALGARY, Alberta — Harnarayan Singh and Bhola Chauhan sat at a desk in the CBC’s studio here last month, watching the first period of a game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Winnipeg Jets on two televisions.

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Singh plays ball hockey weekly with friends from the Sikh community in Conrich, Alberta, just east of Calgary.

Wearing a pinstriped suit with gold cuff links, a blue and white tie and a matching turban, Singh, a play-by-play announcer, called the end-to-end action in an animated stream of Punjabi, punctuated with English words like “linesman,” “icing” and “face-off.”

Singh spoke at great volume as Toronto scored its first goal, crediting wing Joffrey Lupul for what translates to “picking up the wood,” a traditional Punjabi battle cry akin to bringing the house down.

“Chak de phatte goooaaalll Joffrey Lupul! Torrronto Maple Putayyy!”

A few minutes later, Winnipeg’s Chris Thorburn and Toronto’s Colton Orr dropped their gloves and began pounding on each other, and Singh rose in his chair to animate each blow. As the players were led to the penalty box, Chauhan, an Indian-born draftsman, writer and taxi driver, read a fighting poem he had written based on a Punjabi style of verse.

The guy who is winning has a punch like a lion, and takes over the fight.

He hits like a sledgehammer.

They’re rivals, and he’s hung the other out to dry, not letting him go.

The weekly Punjabi broadcast of “Hockey Night in Canada,” as venerated an institution for Canadians as “Monday Night Football” is for Americans, is thought to be the only N.H.L. game called in a language other than English or French.

The broadcast marries Canada’s national pastime with the sounds of the Indian subcontinent, providing a glimpse of the changing face of ice hockey.

Singh, 28, has developed a signature style tailored for his audience. A puck can be described as an “aloo tikki,” a potato pancake his mother makes especially well. When a team comes back in the second period with renewed energy, Singh might say what translates to “someone must have made them a good cup of chai in the intermission.” A player who celebrates after a big goal will “dance bhangra moves.”

Hockey players are overwhelmingly white in both Canada and the United States, and the diversity of the sport’s fans pales in comparison with those of baseball, basketball and football. The N.H.L. has one player of South Asian heritage, the Vancouver Canucks’ Manny Malhotra.

The number of children playing ice hockey in Canada has remained stagnant, said Paul Carson, the vice president for hockey development with Hockey Canada.

“Growth in this country is coming from immigration from a lot of non-hockey-playing countries,” he said. “They’re coming from the Mideast, Africa, East and South Asia.”

The members of Singh’s family, like most of Canada’s 1.1 million Punjabi speakers (almost twice as many as in the United States), are Sikhs. The religion is centered in the Punjab region, which straddles northwestern India and Pakistan. Sikhs have been in Canada since the late 19th century.

Singh’s parents, Santokh and Surjit, were born in India and moved to Canada in the late 1960s, to work as teachers in Brooks, a small town in Alberta. Singh, the youngest of their four children, was born in 1984, months after Wayne Gretzky and the Edmonton Oilers won their first Stanley Cup.

“These were the prime Gretzky years,” Singh said. “I would set up a podium in the basement and do whole hockey awards shows. I’d sit in front of the TV and call games until everyone told me to shut up.”

Inderpreet Cumo, a distant cousin who then lived in British Columbia, would sometimes visit, and they would narrate games together. Today, Cumo, 31, is a teacher in Calgary and shares the analyst role with Chauhan, 46.

By the time Singh was 4, “all he was doing was remembering hockey,” his father said.

He added: “I told him: ‘You just have a hockey encyclopedia in your head. Nothing else!’ ”

Singh said his obsession stemmed from a desire to have something in common with other children at school, where he was the only minority student.

“I wore hockey shirts,” Singh said, “because then I didn’t have to answer, ‘What is that thing on your head?’ ”

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This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: April 26, 2013

A earlier version of this article erroneously stated that only one Muslim plays in the N.H.L. It has two Muslim players.