Is it because it's "our game"? Well, no it isn't, not really. You can see people playing something awfully similar in Dutch engravings from the 17th century. Is it, then, because "we're number 1"? But there's nothing new in that. Since the original summit series in 1972, there have been eight international competitions in which each of the top hockey countries was indisputably represented by its best players: the six Canada Cup (later World Cup) tournaments between 1976 and 1996, plus the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics. Of these, Canada has won five, and finished second in two. No other country is even close to such a record.

What's the big deal, then? Why do we invest so much of ourselves in this sport? Why does it mean so much to us? Maybe it's this: Hockey is the one national symbol that has not been ruined or corrupted in some way. It is the one aspect of our national life that has not been made over in someone else's image. Amid so much desperate rearranging of the nation's mental furniture -- the Queen, the anthem, the flag -- hockey is the one constant, the only thing that's real, the unique expression of our authentic selves.

It is, indeed, a refutation in one lesson of every nationalist stereotype of the polite, diffident Canadian. It is rude, loud, violent, creative, reckless, anarchic: all the things Canadians are not supposed to be. The rules are openly flouted, the referees ignored, in favour of vigilante-style "enforcers" -- the Wild West on ice, a ruthless Darwinian struggle.

There is no "tradition of peacekeeping" in our game. There are no separate leagues for aboriginals, no Canadian-content quotas, no equalization or affirmative action. It is neither a federal nor a provincial responsibility. No one is subsidized to play it, nor is it protected from foreign competition. Quite the contrary: Having invented or at least perfected it, we soon exported it to the United States -- the NHL is an early example of free trade -- and colonized much of the country with it. To this day, thousands of Americans pay good money each night to watch a Canadian game played mostly by Canadians. Talk about cultural imperialism.

Its very popularity, universal and absolute, is a rebuke to much sociology. It is played on rural ponds and city streets; in the remotest reserve and the leafiest suburb; by French and English, immigrants and native-born, adults and children, men and (now) women. It is even capable, at moments like these, of reconnecting Toronto, so detached in its worldly self-regard, with heartland Canada -- and with its Hogtown self.

Hockey takes us back. Careening around at breakneck speed with sharpened sticks in our hands, we catch a glimpse of our real selves: we fur-traders and farmboys, lumberjacks and sodbusters, patriotes and rebels, a nation which, for all its pretensions to urbanity, is still but one step in from the woods.

Maybe the real Canada is not the "peaceable kingdom" of myth, but the country that burned down its own Parliament buildings, whose history was shaped by not one, not two, but four rebellions, whose soldiers were notorious for their savagery in two world wars; a country built by adventurers, con men, rebels, madmen and drunks -- by Radisson and Groseilliers, Mackenzie and Papineau, Riel, Sir John A. and Amor de Cosmos. And Rocket Richard.

Hockey is real. They haven't ruined it. Like that other great Canadian export, humour, you can't fake it. You either get the laugh or you don't. You either put the puck in the net or you don't. No half measures; no personal bests or panel of judges; no bureaucratic puffery: A game so great they couldn't kill it.

Oh, they've tried. The safety neurotics have done their best. Consider that until just a few years ago, the pros used to play the game without helmets -- the goalies without facemasks! Now weekend players in non-contact leagues wear full-equipment, and everyone, not just the goalies, wears masks.

But still the game survives. The joy it gives us is not just related to the intrinsic greatness of the game. It is not just pride in accomplishment, the knowledge that our players are the best in the world. It is the desire for something real. Having been spoonfed so much earnest, improving gloop in the name of national identity and learned to distrust the lot, we turn to hockey for relief, an oasis of unselfconsciousness.

And there's something more. Part of what makes hockey real to us is that it comes so authentically from us, from here, a big frozen stretch of land tucked up in the continent's northern shelf. It's cold, and there's not much to do. As the country doctor from Quebec says in that wonderful PetroCan commercial, "might as well skate." There's not nearly enough things that we're good at in this country, and the things we are good at are too often virtual, placeless, things that could be done anywhere, and so they are -- in the States. We never developed the craftsmanship that turns local materials into locally made artifacts, the way the Germans have, or the French, or the Americans for that matter. But you can only get as good as Canadians get at hockey if you live in this place.

Other nations have produced superlatively skilled players, as skills are conventionally defined: fast skaters, slick passers, sharp shooters. But there is a category of ability that transcends skill, that is mostly magic, plays that just make you shake your head. Gretzky had it, Lemieux has it, as did Orr and Richard and a few others. No one taught them these things. No one could. Indeed, it wouldn't occur to them to try. These are plays you hit upon, outside of regular games, away from structured practices, in ball hockey and keepaway and shinny, little moves you make your own and file away to use in a real game. And you can only learn these by playing endless hours, every day, because that is all you can think about doing.

This is our craftsmanship, the artifacts of our passion, hewn from ice and wood.