I don’t think I’m moving the goalposts. I made a blanket statement that “ice hockey” is non-existent in Canada, then allowed that OK, there might be some exceptionally rare circumstances where it’s needed for clarity – even though I’m having a hard time thinking of any that aren’t thoroughly contrived, and can’t remember the last time I heard a native Canadian English speaker utter that term. (I’ve certainly heard it from the mouths of Canadians born and raised elsewhere, who are of course true Canadians, so I was definitely sloppy with my terms in that sense.)
A more realistic version of your hypothetical situation – someone who plays or watches more than one type of hockey – would have the person adding a qualifier to the non-default form. Because when a Canadian says hockey, the first and usually correct assumption is that they mean ice hockey. So in those relatively rare cases when that’s not what they mean, they’re going to clear things up by saying field hockey or whatever.
Now, about those drunk canoeists… are they off the hook if they exit the lake and go down the river, so that their vessel is now propelled partly by gravity, and no longer exclusively by muscle power?
