For years, as her family would crowd around the television to catch Saturday night Leaf games, family matriarch Balprabha Kumar would head upstairs, alone, to find something else to watch or to putter around the kitchen.

She arrived in Canada from India in the mid-1970s, and speaks good English, but still found the rapid-fire hockey commentary and jargon hard to understand, so she retreated away. But all that changed recently when she discovered Hockey Night in Canada broadcast in Punjabi.

“Now we all sit together and watch the game on TV,” Kumar says. “Hockey was always No. 1 in our family, but now it is even more on top because I am interested.”

Stories like Kumar’s are common, says Harnarayan Singh, the host of Hockey Night’s Punjabi edition. Now, the Canadian pastime — with a South Asian twist — is a staple for tens of thousands, he says, who have been tuning into the broadcasts since they began as an experiment during the 2008 playoffs.

Many wouldn’t have even watched or understood hockey had it not been for the Punjabi broadcasts, he says, recalling a grandmother, clad in a Leafs jersey, who met him at a promotional event in Brampton.

Singh remembers the woman, who made her way over using her walker, to tell him “for the first time in all the years I have been here, my grandkids are talking to me and it’s all because of your show. They thought I was ancient and we didn’t talk and we didn’t have a bond, but now because of the show, I understand hockey and they love that.”

Other fans, particularly those who are new to Canada, share tales with Singh of feeling left out while hearing colleagues discuss the weekend’s big game at work on Mondays. But the Punjabi broadcasts, they have told him, make them a part of those water-cooler conversations — and even hockey betting pools.

“Hockey is an icebreaker for them,” Singh says. “It builds camaraderie for them and their co-workers.”

The televised Punjabi games, which air every Saturday, are just like English-language games, except Singh says the commentating is louder and features elements such as segments explaining concepts like icing.

Then there are the cultural references.

“If a team comes back from intermission and are totally different from the previous period and they have more jump, we might say, ‘they must have had a good cup of chai tea in the intermission,’ since chai tea is such a big part of the Punjabi community,” Singh says.

The tea references are 56-year-old Kumar’s favourite part of watching the game, aside from having her son, two daughters and three grandchildren to her Oakville home every weekend.

As diehard Leaf fans, it takes no convincing to get them over, but she sweetens the invitation by cooking them dinner or ordering takeout. Pizza, she says, usually does the trick.

After the meal, they gather in the living room to watch Dion Phaneuf — Kumar’s favourite player — captain the Buds. Even with Phaneuf and the Leafs inching away from playoff contention, Kumar never loses hope.

“When the Leafs are losing, my husband gets upset and he says, ‘oh no’ and walks away from the TV, but I say ‘you can go, but I am still going to watch it,’ ” she told the Star. “I don’t like to miss a game unless I go out.”

That devotion extends to the time her hockey-playing 7-year-old and 11-year-old grandsons spend on the ice. Kumar hates not being in the bleachers to watch their games and is upset she missed one of their pee wee championship matches in London for work.

She credits her extra interest in their sporting endeavours and the family’s closeness to the Punjabi broadcast.

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“That’s why it has been so great,” Kumar’s son Amit says, calling his mom’s dedication to watching his nephew’s weekend games “religious.”

“Part of that is the kids,” he says, “but a lot of it is because the broadcast has helped her understand. It’s a team thing now. It’s part of the family.”

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