There are a lot of people out there who write about hockey. Unfortunately, many of these people are awful at their jobs. Channeling the spirit of Fire Joe Morgan (but with a lot less snarkiness), here's our response to a recent article that was particularly loathsome.
A new season is dawning and life for the NHL can't get any worse ... or could it?
Yes, it could get worse. MUCH worse. Remember five years ago, when there WASN'T a new season dawning?
I'm talking about a league that in three months went from showcasing one of the greatest exhibitions of playoff hockey in decades -- the seven-game Stanley Cup Final between the Red Wings and Penguins -- to dismissing Wayne Gretzky as collateral damage in a bankruptcy case that even with a judicial decision remains unresolved. There was also the dispute between DirecTV and Versus that threatened to black out opening night games, rumors of fiscal distress in South Florida, Atlanta, Long Island and elsewhere, yet another owner (Boots Del Biaggio) doing the perp-walk for investor fraud, fallout from Dany Heatley's ugly forced trade, a hijacked players association, and a young star in handcuffs for allegedly pummeling a 62-year-old cab driver over 20 cents change.
OK, let's compare this to the NFL. This year, the NFL reinstated the recently jailed Michael Vick after a whopping two-game suspension. They have a top-10 draft pick who intends to sit out the season because he wants more money. An insane amount of retired players are either dead broke, horribly brain damaged, or both. One of their star players is in jail for shooting himself in a night club. NFL players are suspended on a weekly basis for drug abuse or off-field discipline problems. And the NHL is the league with a problem? Please.
BTW, that "great exhibition in playoff hockey" aired on a Friday night and wasn't even shown in New York bars because most New Yorkers thought a regular season game between the Mets and Yankees was more important. Great game (Wings-Pens, that is), but let's not pretend it was some seminal moment in sports history.
You want to say it can't possibly sink any lower. Not even the NHL can slide so far so fast, but there is cause to wonder: If all that was what the summer brought, what's on the horizon for fall, winter and spring? Thankfully, there is some good news:
The games are back.
Whew. I was really beginning to wonder what was on the horizon for fall, winter and spring. I forgot hockey players actually play games. Thanks for the reminder.
Joining Ovechkin at the top are the twin stars of Pittsburgh: Sidney Crosby (the Penguins' second coming of Lemieux, albeit in a much smaller package) and Evgeni Malkin, last season's scoring champ and playoff MVP. In Boston, Vezina Trophy-winning goalie Tim Thomas and Norris Trophy defenseman Zdeno Chara are the inspirational forces for a surging team. They are supported by the vastly underrated Marc Savard, who feeds slick passes to a player many Bruins fans consider the Next Cam Neely: winger Milan Lucic.
There is strength of size and number in Philadelphia where the complete game of Jeff Carter and heady play of Mike Richards have fans speaking in tones reserved for the days when Bobby Clarke and Bill Barber carried the Broad Street Bullies to glory. It doesn't hurt (unless you're the competition) that the Flyers brought over the much-feared Chris Pronger to anchor their improved defense. If Ray Emery competes to the level of his ability in goal, the Flyers should contend for a spot in the Cup final this spring and could well win it all.
In the West, the still-potent Red Wings will try to blend the usual mix of veteran stars and emerging talent and reach the Cup final for the third time in as many seasons. Pavel Datsyuk, Henrik Zetterberg and Nicklas Lidstrom anchor the group, but the supporting cast is hungry for a chance at redemption. That will happen only if the multi-talented Sharks can't find their game again in the postseason, or if the swift, determined Blackhawks of andJonathan Toews continue to grow.
This thing reads like a NBC press release. A whole paragraph about the Flyers, who lost in the first round last year. Half a paragraph about the defending Stanley Cup champions. Half a paragraph about the Bruins, who have had exactly one good season since the lockout. Meanwhile, the Red Wings get two sentences and the Sharks and Blackhawks get to share one whopping sentence. Sounds about right.
After building on a startling jump in momentum coming out of the 2004-05 lockout and largely delivering on its promise for a better, faster, more exciting game, the league's momentum, at least regarding public perception, appears to have stalled. One might argue that it has actually crashed.
Public perception has "crashed", even though the league has better TV ratings than it did before the lockout. That the NHL has done this with ESPN going out of its way to avoid covering hockey, if not sabotage the league altogether, is huge. Furthermore, good luck finding even one hockey fan who gives a rat's ass about the "public perception" of the NHL.
A rising tide of anger doesn't bode well, especially when the league, which might have laid claim to the higher ground after the costly lockout brought the owners' much-wanted salary cap, is grieving almost every issue that comes before it, costing the players time and money and building an overriding sense of ill will. As a fan, you might argue that all this shouldn't matter, that these are professionals who are (highly) paid to play. But hockey players are people, too, and the issues that are rocking their usually secure world are taking a toll.
I have no idea what this paragraph means. That's especially true of the 80-word introductory sentence.
Most aren't likely to go away, not without another fight or three, but at least there is hockey on the ice now, hope in the hearts of fans, and a very good chance the game will produce a season every bit as memorable as the last. For those who truly love hockey, pretty much all we can do is hope...that we can see the games.
OOH! A shot at the NHL's TV contract! How original!
In what has become an eternal quest to find a TV provider other than ESPN, the league's current U.S. cable provider, Versus, is in a snit fight with satellite distributor DirecTV. The dispute has scuttled some 14 million viewers. It's a problem that may yet be resolved, but it smacks of the kind the league had with Madison Square Garden over internet rights, and it seems to open the door for MSG or some other regional network to cut a deal separate of league partners and concentrate on serving places where hockey draws an audience without trying to air games in areas where people simply refuse to watch.
These run-on sentences are making me nauseous.
Oh, and MSG can barely service New York and New Jersey. I'm sure the other 48 states will be no problem.
Of course, those people will be missing some good stuff on the ice. So, yes, let us hope for the best -- especially that things don't get worse.
YES. Things are SO awful now. Patrick Kane punching a cab driver is far, far worse than a lost season and the legitimate fear that the league would fold. Godspeed, NHL.
Good job on this!
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