Playoff hockey helping some newcomer Canadians connect with their new culture

Rianna Lim · The Canadian Press

· Posted: May 14, 2025 4:38 PM EDT | Last Updated: 10 minutes ago

Mykhailo Ivanov ne'er thought he'd go a diehard hockey fan.

The 42-year-old had immigrated to Winnipeg a small implicit 2 years agone to flight the warfare successful Ukraine. He didn't cognize overmuch astir hockey, helium said, but aft helium was fixed tickets to a Jets crippled helium fell successful emotion with the athletics — and the assemblage that comes with it.

"I similar that benignant of emotion and enactment from different fans, from the radical adjacent you," helium said successful a telephone interview. "It's an important portion of my beingness now."

"It decreases oregon adjacent erases those boundaries, those limits newcomers usually face."

As 3 Canadian teams combat their mode done the NHL playoffs, fans crossed the state are cheering from the sidelines, including those who recently telephone Canada home.

Some immigrants accidental that conscionable arsenic hockey is simply a portion of Canadian identity, celebrating the athletics during playoff play helps them go portion of it, too.

Christine Munsch said erstwhile she and her hubby archetypal moved to Toronto from France astir 18 months ago, they tried watching shot and hoops to assistance them set to Canadian life. But it was hockey that had them hooked, she said.

"We knew it was a large portion of Canadian culture," she said successful a telephone interview. "I was truly amazed by the prime of skating and this equilibrium betwixt well-done choreography and a sometimes convulsive game."

Munsch added that she was amazed by the hockey fans' sportsmanship. In Europe, rival shot fans are strictly separated successful the stands, she said, but astatine hockey games the fans each beryllium unneurotic successful bully spirits, adjacent amid playoff tensions. There's relationship successful the sport, she said.

"When radical learned that we were hockey fans, they truly paid much attraction to us, and we got integrated a batch easier," said Munsch, adding that she and her hubby often ticker playoff hockey games with friends and neighbours.

Now, Munsch said they ne'er miss a lucifer and they intimately travel each the teams. They truly similar the Edmonton Oilers, she said, but the Toronto Maple Leafs are their favourite.

She adjacent has her ain small Carlton bear, the Leafs' mascot.

"Sometimes erstwhile I ticker a game, I instrumentality him with me," she said.

Meanwhile, arsenic the Jets marque their ain bid for the Stanley Cup, the ambiance successful Winnipeg feels "like a imperishable holiday," Ivanov said, arsenic fans cheer connected the streets and Jets flags question each implicit the city.

Ivanov present has a postulation of respective Jets jerseys, and helium besides has friends from a instrumentality nine to speech each things hockey. They adjacent marque posters earlier playoff games that say, "Go Jets go!"

The athletics has helped him go portion of Winnipeg's community, helium said, and it "completely changed" his life.

"You consciousness much integrated into Canadian society, you consciousness astatine home. You don't consciousness similar an immigrant," said Ivanov. "You consciousness much Canadian, much local. It helps a lot."

For Munsch, arsenic soon arsenic the Leafs clinched location advantage, she and her hubby rapidly bought tickets for the archetypal circular showdown against the Ottawa Senators. They sat successful the precocious level of Scotiabank Arena, she said, due to the fact that "that's wherever I was told the existent fans are."

But Munsch isn't conscionable a fan. On crippled days, erstwhile she tells radical she has to unreserved location to drawback the puck driblet connected TV, they archer her the aforesaid happening each time.

"They say, 'You're a existent Canadian."'