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This is a steel guitar version of Hockey Jam for all you Old Style Country Music fans who also love hockey based on the original version of Hockey Jam written in the late 1990s . The song is a protest song written as a criticism of the game and of Don Cherry and his negative impact on the game. Don played a few shifts in a single NHL game but did not have the talent to win a full time job in the NHL and he spent his entire career in the minor leagues. It can reasonably be assumed that if the Refs had put away their whistles and lets the boys play (as Don is know to say) he may have been able to stay in the NHL. But they called it by the rules in the old days. After retiring from hockey Don kicked around for a few years before landing a job with Hockey Night In Canada as a "Colorful" Commentator. Don found his calling and became a popular household name right acorss Canada. Unfortunately Don's weekly sermons on everything hockey from how the game is played to the rules and in particular his constant preaching that the Refs should "put away their whistles and let the boys play" saw the game evolve from a game of skills to a game of hook and hold and clutch and grab. Size became the key ingredient that coaches looked for at all levels of the game from Pee Wee to the Pros. During the 1980s sizing charts appeared in the dressing rooms of Minor Hockey teams across the country as coaches come to realize that you can teach skills but you can't teach size and in hook and hold clutch and grab hockey size could wear down the smaller guys, size was the key to success. Coaches fixation on size resulted in the disappearance of all but the exceptional smaller player at the Pro level and at all levels of the game. This was all but confimed by the callers to Sports Radio The FAN590 one afternoon. One caller after another, all young guys, called in to complain that they weren't given a fair chance to make a team they had wanted to play for and that it was because they were small. It is doubtful that Don Cherry had this intent in mind when he preached his "put away the whistle" hockey philosophy from his grand pulpit on HNIC but it can be argued he had this very negative effect on the game and on the lives of tens of thousands of Canadian boys all of whom grew up thinking it was their birth right to get a fair shot of living the dream of making it to the NHL only to be told they couldn't even try out for the team because they were "too small". If Bobby Orr had been born in 1978 rather than 1948 he wouldn't even had been given the chance to try out because he was the smallest kid on the ice when he was a Pee Wee. Imagine that. More recently the NHL came to its senses and realized that hook and hold hockey was killing interest in the game and have gone back to calling it by the rules. All attempts have been made to take all manner of obstruction right out of the game and in the last few years we have seen again a new emphasis on speed and skills and a re-emergence of the small and medium sized player in the NHL and at all levels of minor hockey. Don's still preaching but his era has come to an end. Thank God and Gary Bettman!