It’s that time of year again: the season in which I inevitably find myself in a foreign country, asking around to see if there’s any chance I can catch the hockey game on TV.

The tradition started in my undergraduate years. At the end of the winter semester, in early or mid April, I’d rush off on my annual travels – usually a visit to my dad in Malaysia, combined with a solo side trip in Asia or the South Pacific. The idea was to squeeze the travel in early, then come home sometime in May and still be in time to find a decent summer job for June, July and August.

Of course, this also meant that each and every year, I was in foreign climes for the all-important Stanley Cup playoffs.

Still, a true fan won’t be deterred, and every year I’ve found some way to keep up with the action.

In 2002, I passed myself off as 21 in an LAX bar, risking an encounter with Homeland Security to sip an OJ (no point pushing my luck even further) and glue myself to the screen. Once I’d arrived in Oz I poured money into a Sydney internet terminal from 7am on, hitting “refresh” every few minutes to watch the Yahoo! scoreboard change as a game between Toronto and Ottawa progressed.

Later that same trip, I (along with a guy from Boston) commandeered the hostel’s TV set for a random mid-day re-broadcast of a game between two teams I didn’t care about, whose outcome I already knew. Colorado and someone? I don’t remember. What mattered was there was an opportunity to catch a few minutes of a game, any game.

In 2004, I found my way to London’s designated Canadian-themed bar, The Maple Leaf, to drink imported Sleeman’s, soak up the kitschy Moose-and-Mounties décor, and watch Game 4 of Calgary’s doomed drive for the Cup. (At The Maple Leaf, incidentally, I ran into several people I knew from back home – proof that it is a small world after all, and that Canada is an especially small part of it.)

At grad school in England two years later, I was delighted to learn that Channel 5 was showing all seven games of the final – from 1am to 4am each morning. I suppose it wasn’t a high-demand timeslot. It worked out perfectly, though: I’d stumble home from the bar, make myself a sandwich, pour a glass of water, and switch on the game.

And last year, I found myself going door-to-door (or bar-to-bar) in Manhattan, searching for someone willing to flick to the Senators-Sabres game on NBC. Next week, I’ll be back in New York doing the same.

Unhealthy? Maybe.

I know, I know – when I’m traveling I should be out experiencing things, right? I should be letting go of the things that are important to me at home, and fully immersing myself in the culture of my host country.

But sometimes – and particularly as travel takes up more and more of my days and weeks – I don’t want to do things “right”. I want some home comforts, some semblance of routine or tradition. I don’t want to turn my back on everything that makes me who I am, just to be able to claim that I am an “authentic” traveler rather than a dreaded tourist.

Maybe a hockey game seems like a frivolous thing to take a stand on. But hey – you would never ask someone to give up their religion while they’re traveling, right? And it’s been said – more than once, too – that hockey is Canada’s national religion. To wildly distort John Lennon: sometimes, up here, Wayne Gretzky just might be bigger than Jesus.

If anyone knows of a hockey-friendly bar in NYC, drop me a line… ;)