Taylor Swift Beat Me To The "Stevie Knicks" Pun

We just saw the NBA and NHL championships handed out on consecutive nights. I don't have much to add to the Carolina Hurricanes win, beyond pointing out that they now join Colorado and Tampa Bay on the list of places that have now won a Stanley Cup, rebuilt, and won another cup with a different team, all since the last time a Canadian team won the cup.

Speaking of long championship droughts, congratulations to the Knicks on their first NBA championship in more than a half-century. That should give the Leafs some optimism. Maybe.

But that brings up one unsettling aspect of their win. We've now seen a few teams end long championship droughts in the twenty-first century, and the feelings around them are a bit different. Obviously, the Cubs spring to mind as a team that had a long and painful futility streak. When they won a World Series, there were generally good feelings from those who didn't have a connection to the team. We were glad to see their long-suffering fanbase have their moment of success. After all, they were the Loveable Losers, people who took their misfortune with good nature. You felt like they deserved a change in fortune.

Contrast that with the Red Sox a few years earlier. Their World Series drought was also measured in lifetimes, but there wasn't such an outpouring of joy to see them finally happy. I'm sure some of that was their rivalry with the Yankees, and thus taste-makers in the media capital weren't so happy to see them succeed. But there was also a feeling that the Bosox weren't such loveable losers; rather than being seen having a laid-back acceptance of their fate, they came across as a little too intense and taking it a little too seriously. Their continued failure gave the rest of the sports world a bit of schadenfreude, and watching them finally have their day didn't give us nearly as much joy. 

So when it comes to long-suffering fans, there's differing levels of sympathy. To bring this back to the Leafs, they'll definitely be the extreme counter to the Cubs. Yes, plenty of Leaf fans have a Cub-like humour to their futility, but for every one of them, there are twelve with dangerous levels of obsession. Even as a Leafs fan, I realize that if they ever win a cup, no non-fans will feel good for them.

So what about the Knicks? Well, I found that this was one of those Medium-is-the-Message situations. Watching them win - clinching on the road - it was easy to feel good for them. A hard-working team, coming from behind, it all seemed to parallel a fanbase that has remained passionate through thick and thin.

Contrast that to the previous game, where they won in an exciting, record-setting comeback. But that was at home. Normally it's great for a neutral observer to see a home team win, with a passionate crowd cheering them on. But a Knicks crowd is second only to a Lakers crowd in celebrity sightings, and the director of the TV coverage was intent on getting a reaction shot from every famous person in the lower bowl after every decisive play. You could just imagine him in the control room shouting out the names in succession to cut to the close-ups, "Sandler! Seinfeld! McEnroe! Stiller! Swift!" 

I have nothing against any of those celebrities, but it does make it harder to cheer for the team. If I'm envisioning the long-suffering Knicks fan as some janitor from Queens, then I feel really good to see their sports dreams come true. But if it's Jerry Seinfeld, then it's harder to imagine that this team's futility has left a gaping hole in his life. 

So I hope that future sports broadcasts will think about this. Aside from the fact that you should really have more cameras showing the game than the crowd, you should also think about how that shapes the view of the team.

It’s Okay, We Never Really Liked Hockey Anyway.

Well, it’s another year of The Great Canadian Stanley Cup Drought. Last year, I made a post about how long it’s gone on, but this year, I’m trying to be more positive. 

It was an oddity of watching Shai Gilgeous-Alexander lead the Thunder to an NBA title while Canadian hockey teams couldn’t make it to the summit yet again. That got me thinking: while the past thirty-two years haven’t been good for Canada’s NHL teams, it has been a great time for sports we aren’t traditionally good at. You know, non-winter sports. So here is my list of things that Canadians have (rather surprisingly) won since the last time a Canadian team won the Stanley Cup:

Athletics

• Men's 100 m Olympic gold (Donovan Bailey)
• Men's 4x100m Olympic gold (twice)
• Olympic Decathlon (Damian Warner)

Auto Racing

• Formula 1 world championship (Jacques Villeneuve)
• Indy 500 (Jacques Villeneuve)
• IndyCar championship (Jacques Villeneuve, Paul Tracy)
• DTM championship (Bruno Spengler)

Baseball

• MLB MVP (Larry Walker, Justin Morneau, Joey Votto)
• MLB Hall-of-Fame (Larry Walker)
• Batting title (three times for Larry Walker, one for Justin Morneau)

Basketball

• NBA MVP (Steve Nash twice, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander)
• NBA Finals MVP (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander)
• NBA scoring title (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander)
• NBA Hall-of-Fame (Steve Nash)
• NCAA Consensus Player of the Year (Zach Edey)

Football

• NCAA All-American selection (Chuba Hubbard)
• CFL Most Outstanding Player (John Cornish, Brady Oliveira)

Golf 

• Majors (Mike Weir, Brooke Henderson twice)
• Canadian Open (Brooke Henderson, Nick Taylor)

Mixed Martial Arts

• UFC welterweight championship (Carlos Newton, Georges St. Pierre)
• UFC middleweight championships (Georges St. Pierre)

Soccer

• Olympic gold (Women’s)
• Gold Cup (Men’s)
• FIFPRO Men's World 11 (For best player in the world at each position - Alphonso Davies)
• MLS MVP (Dwayne De Rosario)

Tennis

• U.S. Open (Bianca Andreescu)
• World Top Ten Rankings (Bianca Andreescu, Milos Raonic, Eugenie Bouchard)
• Davis Cup
• Billie Jean King Cup

So let’s concentrate on these positives. Nearly all of these achievements had never been done by a Canadian before that last Cup. Let’s not dwell on the fact that Steve Nash’s entire Hall-of-Fame career was during the drought, or that Bianca Andreescu, Brooke Henderson, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Alphonso Davies weren’t even born the last time Canada won the Cup. Instead, just accept that we’re becoming more well-rounded sports-wise, whether we like it or not.

Jersey Chore

We’ve had most of a season with the new PWHL team branding now. Personally, I didn’t really miss them in the opening season’s cities-only identities. And some of the new ones are still not feeling quite right. So here’s my reviews of them:

New York Sirens

The Name

Pretty clever: has the double meaning of the sound often heard in New York, and the Sirens of Greek mythology. 

The Logo

Kind of disappointing. I realize it’s difficult to make a symbol for a team named after a sound. What would you do, show a mythological siren holding an air horn? Though the extra bits of letters at the side, to look like an alarm light was very clever.

Colours and Uniform

The teal is borrowed from the WNBA’s New York Liberty, which in turn is borrowed from the Statue of Liberty. Combine it with the dark blue and amber and it looks like a blending of the 90’s and today. Nice.

The use of multiple colours in the uniform is refreshing when so many teams have fallen in love with an all-one-colour look. So now you can enjoy teal without O.D.ing on it like in San Jose. Too bad the word, “Sirens” on the logo is the same colour as the home uniform, so from a distance, you just see these two disjointed chunks of white above and below it.

Toronto Sceptres

The Name

If you’re going to make a bunch of team names, there’s bound to be a WTF entry, and here it is. I have to admit, when I heard the name, my mind went to an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where she fights the old shamen who created the slayers, and defeats one by breaking his staff, which turns out to be the source of his powers, and she says, “I knew it. It's always the staff,” as if to comment on the phallic nature of so many symbols of power. So does it really make sense to name a women’s team after such an item? 

But I’m also thinking they need to read the room. There are places for taking a chance on an off-the-wall name, but Canadian hockey fandom in general, and Toronto in particular, is not it.

The Logo

That was well done; it looks classic without being dated, thus winning back some of the Canadian Hockey cachet that the name lost

Colours and Uniform

You had to go with blue, which was Toronto’s civic colour before the Raptors started dragging it towards the red end of the spectrum. Light blue was bold. But yellow? It’s a little St. Louis Bluesy to me. I normally hate it when sports teams describe their yellow as “gold,” but in this case, it might have been a good idea to darken and dull the yellow a bit and tell everyone it’s gold. After all, what else would you make a sceptre out of?

Boston Fleet

The Name

It’s pretty nice; sounds tough while also sounding modernly singular. Though it loses some marks for being recycled from the Alliance of American Football

The Logo

A "B" shaped like an anchor: The letter-that-looks-like-something is a classic sports logo strategy. And it gets a big bonus for looking like a sideways version of that greatest-of-all-hockey-logos, the Hartford Whalers. Of course, that means that I keep looking for something hidden in the negative space, and being disappointed that I can’t find it. At least it has the surreal quality in that it's an anchor — something you put in water — though it appears to be full of water, like a sporting tesseract.

Colours and Uniforms

Going green was a good choice. You’re copying a Boston classic, without just piggybacking on the local hockey team. And the light green accent is a bold twist on it.

But watching them on the ice, I keep thinking there must have been a mistake at the cleaners. Whose blue pants are these? Okay, there are tiny blue accents elsewhere in the uniform, but the pants still look out of place.

Ottawa Charge

The Name

Kind of generic, I mean, for a modern sports team name. All the possibilities offered by a national capital, and the name sounds like a USFL reject.

The Logo

It’s an O. No, it’s a C. No, it’s a wheel. It looks like you asked an AI to make a sports logo for a team with the initials, “OC.” Though you have to remember that it’s pretty hard to build a logo around the letter O, As some of the Senators’ alternate jerseys have shown.

Colours and Uniform

They’re not bad looking, but well… There aren’t many cities that have coordinated sports team colours. Really just Pittsburgh (Black and Yellow) and Ottawa (Red and Black.) But in Ottawa’s case, they even have a team named after their civic colours. The Charge tried to nod towards that colour scheme with various greys, and they look more like red and black on the ice, but I feel like yelling, “You had one job!”

Montreal Victoire

The Name

I saw some people comment that Montreal “won” the PWHL identities, and I think they’re right. “Victoire” is new, but sounds classic. It’s distinctly French, but doesn’t need explanation in English, like Nordiques did.

The Logo

Again, they won here. Looks good, looks timeless, looks like a bird, has a hidden “M” in it, looks sort of like the board for Atari’s Tempest. What more could you want?

Colours and Uniform

Did a better job than Toronto of paying tribute to the local NHL institution while carving out a new identity. The colours of dark red, dark blue, and really-old-newspaper looks great without tying it to an era. My only change would be to make the logo on the home uniforms reverse colour. Having it on a light-backgrounded shield so it shows up is a little busy.

Minnesota Frost

The Name

They won the first championship, and now they've got a great name too. It’s got the WNBA abstract-concept name style, but without sounding contrived. For most of the PWHL names, we can argue whether they’re better than the city’s NHL counterpart, but this is the only one where the PWHL team wins in a knockout.

The Logo

A nice simple letter in a distinctive style, that’s a classic approach. More for baseball, I guess; but it works here too.

Colours and Uniform

Purple is the colour of two of Minnesota’s most beloved institutions: The Vikings, and Prince. It's a nice color, though it doesn't make one think of frost so much as frostbite. It’s also nice that they included a contrasting lightish red, or magenta, or light purple. I guess it’s lilac. They put lilac in there and just dared you to complain. That's pretty bold.

Somebody To Shove

I've been watching the new Professional Women's Hockey League, and it's been pretty fun. Fans have really embraced it, and given games a lot of energy. and atmosphere that comes through even on TV.

One thing that's changed since previous women's hockey is an increase in physicality. Women's hockey has generally avoided it in the past; most women's hockey bans bodychecking, and the marquee events have been international tournaments that are more likely to crack down on physical confrontations outside of the game itself.

But the PWHL has been far more permissive of things, both during and after the play. This has generally been welcomed by announcers and journalists.

I'm less enthusiastic about it: granted, I'm not a fan of hockey fights, but I can understand what people see in it. After all, fighting has been made into a number of other sports, from boxing to mixed-martial arts. So — putting aside any moral considerations for the moment — there's clearly an appetite for it. And hockey's lax rule enforcement is just asking for vigilante justice. Having said that, I've noticed that many fights come down to one of three motivations, each of which makes the fight seem irrelevant: 

• Enforcers fighting each other, not because of any beef between them or their teams, but just to justify their employment. 
• Interminable fights at the end of a blowout, as the losing team tries to "send a message," not realizing the message is, "look everyone, we just got out ass kicked."
• Revenge for a hard play that was totally legal, but pissed the team off.

Of course, the classic provocation for fighting is revenge for a cheap shot. Personally, I'd rather have a sport where the rules were enforced, but if that's not going to happen, then I can certainly understand why players often take the law into their own gloveless hands.

But hockey's anarchic nature has created one offshoot that I truly don't get: the pushing and shoving that follows so many stoppages in play. It really slows the game down, while providing little entertainment value. 

For one thing, watching people push each other is not very exciting. Fighting may have been turned into several sports, but you notice how there is no sport of pushing and shoving? Well, there's a reason for that: there isn't much pay-per-view money in the Ultimate Shoving Challenge.

But the other, even worse aspect is that the shoving is so artificial; fighting as revenge for a dirty play is at least connected of the game. But the shoving is meaningless playground-level tactics: players hit after the whistle to provoke the opposition, or accidentally-on-purpose bump into each other to start something. It's as believable as a Three Stooges routine, but treated with deadly seriousness. I got more than my fill of that on the playground back in the day.

Yet I seem to be in the minority on this one. Lots of people in the hockey world can't get enough of those post-whistle scrums. I think they see them as a substitute for the fighting which has become a rarer part of the game. But you’d think that given how important fighting is to hockey culture, and that these shoving matches are a pale imitation of fights, that they’d be seen as a wimpy, half-hearted substitute. But no, hockey culture embraces the shoving and the elementary school posturing that comes with it.

Which brings us back to the PWHL. We haven’t seen actual fights there, as the full-face masks will strongly discourage that sort of thing. But there's a great amount of the post-play shoving. Commentators tend to like this and get really excited. I can’t always tell if this is genuine enthusiasm for the scrum itself, or just the superficial assumption that this makes it more like the men's game, so it must be a good thing.

But to me, it’s a worst-of-both-worlds situation. Of all the physical aspects of the men’s game, they’ve imported the least entertaining.

Cuphead Deals With The Devils (Among Others)

With the All-Star break in hockey, I thought it would be a good time to look at a concept I'd wondered about. The history of hockey is kind of weird because there were so few teams for so long: We're told that certain teams are really great because of all the Stanley Cups they won, but many of those were in the original-six era, when you just had to beat five other teams. You would actually have better odds of winning a cup then, than you do of winning a division now.

So I devised a game to test the accumulated achievement of each franchise. Instead of counting how many cups each team has won, I counted how many teams they defeated to win their cups. In other words, each cup is worth points; specifically, one point for every other team in the league at the time. So a cup win in the original-six era is worth 5 points, while last year's win for Vegas was worth 31 points.

Here are the results (not counting non-NHL teams that won in the early years):

Rank	Team	Total Teams Defeated
1	Montreal Canadiens	231
2	Detroit Red Wings	147
3	Pittsburgh Penguins	128
4	Chicago Blackhawks	107
5	Edmonton Oilers	100
6	Tampa Bay Lightning	89
7	Colorado Avalanche	85
8	New Jersey Devils	81
9	New York Islanders	80
10	Boston Bruins	74
11	Toronto Maple Leafs	63
12	Los Angeles Kings	58
13	New York Rangers	48
14	Philadelphia Flyers	32
15	Vegas Golden Knights	31
16	St. Louis Blues	30
16	Washington Capitals	30
18	Anaheim Ducks	29
18	Carolina Hurricanes	29
20	Dallas Stars	26
21	Calgary Flames	20
23	Ottawa Senators (original)	14
24	Montreal Maroons	13

So what does this prove?

• The Habs still come out on top. While many of their wins were for just five, the sheer number of them, combined with their many cups in the seventies, gave them an easy win.
• The big beneficiaries were teams that won multiple cups post-1980 for twenty-odd points each. Pittsburgh and Edmonton were vaulted past most of the original-six teams, while Chicago has esteem they never used to have. That fits with how someone my age sees the league: the prestige of those franchises outweighs the prestige given to original-six teams merely for being old.
• Unsurprisingly, the big losers were the Maple Leafs. Only two of their cups scored more than five points, and they were from before the original-six era. Thus, they fell behind Tampa, Colorado, and New Jersey. Having said that, a single win now would push them past all those teams.
• The Rangers did better than you might expect. Yes, they've only won once in the past eighty years, but their three cups in the early years were before original-six, when there were more teams.

My Cup Runneth Away From Me

People make a big deal about the Maple Leafs’ half-century-plus since their last Stanley Cup win. While that’s bad, I have to point out that in a league that had 20+ teams for most of that time, not winning the championship in 56 years isn’t that embarrassing. You know what is embarrassing? It’s now been thirty years since a Canadian team has won the cup. 

That’s quite unlikely statistically, given that the Canadian teams have made up between a fifth and a third of teams during that time. We have a tendency to focus on the Leafs’ drought because we love piling on the misery for Leaf fans. But consider this: the last Canadian cup win (Montreal, 1993) is now closer in time to the Leafs' last Cup win than the present. And since the last Leaf cup win was also the last season of the Original Six, the 1993 cup win is now also closer in time to the Original Six era than the present. For that matter, the Canadian cup drought (30 years) is now longer than the Original Six era itself (25 years.)

But wait, I’ve got lots of these: How long is the Canadian Cup Drought?

• It's more than one quarter of the NHL's existence.
• When Montreal won that cup, they had to beat the Quebec Nordiques in the first round.
• Long-time coach Randy Carlyle was in the league in 1993 — as a player.
• He was one of five players without helmets.
• That season, there were a bunch of neutral-site games. They included games in Dallas, Phoenix and Miami.
• Gary Bettman had been on the job four months.
• Martin St. Louis, Paul Kariya, Chris Pronger, Marian Hossa, Daniel Alfredsson, Roberto Luongo, and Daniel and Henrik Sedin had not played in the NHL in 1993, and Jayna Hefford, Angela Ruggiero, Hayley Wickenheiser, and Kim St-Pierre had not played for their national teams yet. They're all in the Hall of Fame now.
• Speaking of the Women’s national teams, the Women’s World Championship had only been held twice. The Americans still hadn’t come close to winning it.
• Only two NHL arenas from that season are still in use.
• Fourteen American teams have won the cup since 1993. That includes four cities that didn't have teams in 1993. Regardless of who wins this year, Las Vegas or Miami will become the fifteenth and fifth such city, respectively.
• Worse, during the drought, both Colorado and Tampa Bay won a cup, rebuilt, and then won another cup with a totally different team.
• Since 1993, Canadian teams have won championships in the NBA and MLS, despite the fact that in 1993 there were no Canadian teams in the NBA, and the MLS did not exist.

For the first ten years of the drought, you could explain it through economics. Between a low Canadian dollar and the lack of a salary cap, most of the Canadian teams could barely stay in business, nevermind create or keep a winner. And two of the teams that had the money to compete — Montreal and Toronto — seemed content to shuffle along with mediocre teams and hope for the best. 

After the 2004-05 Lockout, the salary cap was installed, and the Canadian dollar recovered, putting teams on an even footing. And somehow that still didn't help. The salary cap is now 18 years old, the economics will even support a competitive team in Winnipeg, and we still can’t win a cup.

For a while I thought Canadian teams' lack of success was due to their tendency to tweak a mediocre team rather than go into rebuild mode. Canadians have a belief that hockey is all about heart so you just need to squeak into one of the last playoff positions then rely on the players' character to win the day. So there's always pressure to trade a draft pick for that one gritty winger. The result was that Canadian teams stayed in the good-but-not-great level. 

I'd also heard the explanation that the lack of media oversight of American teams was an advantage here. The General Manager of a Canadian team is constantly being asked about how they're going to make the team better right now. Whereas an American GM has to answer maybe three media questions a year, so if they want to undergo a thorough rebuild, there won't be much complaining. Once again, Americans have just the right amount of enthusiasm for hockey. 

But no, that's not it either. Toronto went through a complete rebuild, and to some extent most of the other teams have rebuilt, and the new highly-skilled teams have been no more successful than any hastily-thrown-together team of gritty veterans.

Another explanation you often hear is the difficulty of getting free agents to come to, or stay in, Canada. The reason being: your choice of weather, taxes, or the media fishbowl. But I don't buy that. For the most part, Canadian teams have been able to keep their stars together for several cup runs. Yes, there are nightmare examples like Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk leaving Calgary, but that probably had more to do with Coach Darryl Sutter's toxic culture. As for signing big-name free agents from elsewhere, that's not usually a route to success in the NHL. Even successful American teams are mostly home-grown and traded-for players. 

So I'm running out of ideas. One explanation I've heard is that even when a team like Toronto commits to skill, they still hedge their bets by complimenting the skilled core with traditional big old slow guys who hold the team back. So, let’s go with that for now.

It may well be that we're just cursed. That sounds reasonable - we've surely disrespected the game as much or more than the Red Sox selling Babe Ruth. And whoever the gods of hockey are, I suspect they are truly vengeful. 

Hold This Thread As I Walk Away

Scotiabank has been promoting a new book they're sponsoring, called The Hockey Jersey. The commercials make the point that it's to promote inclusion and tolerance. That's something everyone in hockey agrees is important,  but isn't too good at actually doing. And although Scotiabank are selling physical copies of the book, you can also download a digital copy for free from their website, which is the nicest thing a bank has done since, well, ever. 

It's about a bunch of young girls who come together as a team after they get their own hockey jerseys, which somehow look better than at least half of NHL uniforms. Of course, that title is similar to The Hockey Sweater, the classic story by Roch Carrier, about a boy in Quebec who is mistakenly given a sweater of the hated rival Toronto Maple Leafs, not the Montreal Canadiens sweater he wanted. There is also an animated version from the National Film Board available for streaming.

(As an aside, I love that in the middle of the Wikipedia synopsis of the story, they point out the plot hole: the fateful sweater was ordered from Eaton’s, and Eaton’s pioneered the money-back guarantee, so the mother could easily have returned or exchanged the sweater. Don’t ever change, Wikipedia.)

This being hockey, a lot of people will surely resent something new piggybacking on something old. But I think it gives us an opportunity. Can we finally give The Hockey Sweater a rest? When I was a kid it was really over-used in school. The story was drilled into us so much, one time in junior high, when the teacher announced that we’d be reading a wonderful new story called The Hockey Sweater, the whole class groaned. She was honestly surprised we had not only heard of it but were already sick of it. Now, I find out it was only written in 1979, and thus was a little less than a decade old at the time, so I can understand her not realizing how fast it had saturated the school system.

But it's easy to get why teachers were eager to use it: it's a perfect storm of sports, Canadiana, and situations relatable to kids. Also, looking back, I can appreciate how much of mid-twentieth-century Quebec life he squeezed in: People forced to do business in English, the towering authority of the church, the place of Maurice Richard as a hero. In the eternal quest to find things that will engage students, it sounds like quite a find. 

But there's a problem with The Hockey Sweater that really bugged me - I mean besides it being overused. I've been carrying this around with me ever since, so get comfortable.

It's not really a kids' story. Yes, I know, it's about children, but that doesn't mean they're the target audience. A story can be about children or through the eyes of children without being intended for them. To Kill a Mockingbird, Angela’s Ashes, Lord of the Flies, etc.

Like those books, The Hockey Sweater is pretty dark, when you look at it. The main character doesn't do anything wrong, but ends up a social pariah. His mother doesn't care about his situation. His religion blames him for his problems. And then there's the subtext that his people are trapped in a system rigged against them. Add a murder and it would be hailed as a classic of existentialism. 

An adult can appreciate a story of frustration and futility, but at the time, I found it really depressing. At a young age, children are still expecting stories to have a moral, or at least, to not be a nihilistic commentary of on the futility of life. 

That recounting of unfair situations is also the kind of thing that is best appreciated with a buffer of a few decades to protect you from the raw reality. Sure, now I can read a story about a kid ostracized for wearing the wrong clothes. That’s a common trope of stories about young people. But back then, it was your average weekday. Seeing that happen in a story, with no comeuppance for the bullies or actions by the adults in charge was, well, again: your average weekday. When his only hope for justice is divine-intervention moths, and that’s presented as the punchline, it just seemed hopeless.

So let's retire the Hockey Sweater. Print it on a Syl Apps jersey and lift it into the Bell Centre rafters beside Richard's number 9. That girl in the Scotiabank book can annoy future generations.

This Team Is A Pinto With 50,000 Miles On It

The big news in hockey this week has been the slow-motion firing of Vancouver Canucks' coach Bruce Boudreau. It's been rumoured that he was on the way out for a while now, and then it was leaked that the team was interviewing replacements, all the while with Boudreau trying to go about his job. It was a surreal, and - most observers agree, cruel - situation.

Although the team's behaviour was roundly criticized, I can't help but think that Canadian hockey journalists are still missing the bigger picture. For one thing, few people have mentioned that this is the second straight season with a mid-season coach-firing for the Canucks, something rarely seen in even the worst-run franchises. 

Then there's the question of the replacement. The coach that management really really wanted is Rick Tocchet. He has six years of experience, but his only playoff appearance was the Covid season where the playoffs were expanded so that three-quarters of the league qualified. Boudreau, on the other hand, has made the playoffs in all but one of his ten complete seasons. Yes, I know, it's become a standard of business that new management wants "their guy," but this stretches the concept to new depths.

My point is that if an NFL team were acting like this, then right about now I'd be writing a post about how I'm sick of the term, "dumpster fire," and we should really come up with some more metaphors for deep organizational incompetence. I don't know, "moldy basement," maybe? But in hockey journalism - in Canada, anyway - people aren't willing to call it what it is.

I see a parallel with how the media talks about players. I've noticed that even if they talk about a play being "dirty," they're unwilling to label the player who does the deed as a "dirty player." And this continues even when it's not his first offence. He's still a Good Hockey guy with lots of Character, just one who happens to make dirty plays on a regular basis. And now the same attitude applies to franchises. The Canucks are a First-Class Organization, that just keeps making stupid or immoral decisions. 

Boards Of Canada

There’s been a big change in hockey broadcasting this season: virtual board ads. That is, TV broadcasters can now superimpose fake ads over the real-life ads on the boards. This gives them a chance to do many previously impossible things, like animated ads, or changing ads during play.

Fans are pretty angry. I know, it’s something new in hockey, of course they don’t like it. But in this case, they’re crying wolf with justification. It is pretty annoying. Yes, the advertisers are on their best behaviour, keeping movement to a minimum, but we’ll see how long that lasts. We’ve seen some of the distracting sideline advertising in soccer, and that can’t be far away.

Though I have a couple more complaints: first, this suffers from the same problem as the virtual ads behind home plate in baseball; no concern for insulting our intelligence with geographically-unlikely ads. Like yes, I’m sure Tim Hortons really did pay for a stadium ad at this game in San Diego.

Also, the tech is apparently expensive enough that they can only apply it to the one camera. Switch to a close up, and we have to suffer the old analog boards. I don’t know about anyone else, but I find it disorienting when I see a player pasted against the Hyundai sign, but then from the other angle, he gets a face full of Dunkin’ Donuts.

Having said all this, I have to admire how well it works: 

• They stay in place very accurately, unlike the on-field ads in the CFL, which — hate to say it — look pretty amateurish, sliding and spinning  around the field.
• They rarely bleed over top of player uniforms, even white ones, unlike the on-court ads I’ve seen in basketball.
• Unlike virtual ads in baseball, they don’t suffer from looking crystal-clear, on a field that we’re viewing through 400 feet of rain. Although they sometimes look unnaturally bright, almost like they’re lit up. 

It’s also strange how technology doesn’t work out the way we expect. Soccer and the CFL have had electronic ad boards on the sidelines for years, and I assumed it was only a matter of time until someone made a version of those screens that was durable and flexible enough to be used as hockey boards. But no, virtual technology swoops in for the win. Somewhere out there is an engineer with a half-finished flexible LED panel and a broken heart.

Seattle Slew

As a hipster who places a great value on morality, I don't have many guilty pleasures. If I believe something is morally wrong, I can't take pleasure in it. But if I enjoy something, I believe you should assert your individuality by enjoying it without guilt.

But one guilty pleasure I do have is the pageantry around sports. As a kid, I practiced drawing by recreating the logos of sports teams. Today I still love that. I have strong opinions on which teams need to adjust their colour schemes. Can the Canucks build around Elias Pettersson, or is he not tough enough to withstand the rigours of an NHL season? Beats me, but I can tell you they should use a darker shade of blue.

So the news that Seattle could be getting a team is pretty exciting, since it will require a new name, logo, uniforms, etc. Yes, I know, everyone wants Quebec to get a replacement for the Nordiques so we can have a return to the Battle of Quebec and really stick it to Gary Bettman. But a whole new team in a new place opens up so many possibilities. As soon as the franchise became official, everyone started brainstorming possible team names. Here are some of the top suggestions I've seen so far:

Seattle Metropolitans

Hockey historians will know that back before the NHL was formed, when the Stanley Cup was awarded to the winner of a series between the champions of top leagues of the time, a team called the Seattle Metropolitans became the first American team to win the Cup. So some people will automatically go with that historical name. It might be too much like the New York Mets, though you could also shorten it to "Metros." Also, people are reminding us that there is a Metropolitan division - silly me, I keep calling it the Patrick division - so I guess this name isn't going to fly.

Seattle Steelheads

That's a type of Rainbow Trout, which has a nice ring to it. And if there's one thing the world needs, it's more fish-based sports teams.

Seattle Sockeyes

A different fish direction, it makes a veiled reference to hockey's fight culture just as it's disappearing. And this logo idea looks great and puts Vancouver's to shame, even if it is epic cultural appropriation.

Seattle Kraken

The Kraken was made famous in Clash of the Titans movies, but it's from an old Norse myth, so there's no copyright concerns here. Of course, being a Norse myth, that means the Kraken lives in the Atlantic, far from Seattle. And the Kraken is usually depicted as an octopus or squid-like creature, and the Red Wings have an octopus as an unofficial symbol. Still, some people put a lot of thought into this particular nickname, and I kind of want to see it.

Seattle Sasquatches

I had no idea Americans even knew what a Sasquatch is. You can't say Seattle Sasquatches five times quickly. And what would the short version be, "the Squatches?" But this team could have a great logo.

Seattle Totems

They used to have a minor league team called the Totems, so this is one of the leading possibilities. You’d think they'll steer clear of indigenous names, but whenever the issue comes up, we're assured that this is a tribute to native peoples, and naming a sports team after one of their religious artifacts couldn't possibly be take the wrong way. I figure that if this name is selected, Seattlites can resign themselves to this team being a Browns-style disaster, since it takes a special kind of incompetence to voluntarily take on that problem.

Fun fact: the Totems minor league team was awarded an NHL expansion team in the 70's, but their financing fell apart before they could get the team started.

Seattle Emeralds

Apparently Seattle is the Emerald City. Fans could do lots of fun things with Wizard of Oz references.

Seattle Seals

Some people are seriously suggesting this. They might want to acquaint themselves with some hockey history.

Seattle Eagles

It's a bit more obscure part of hockey history, but that also has a precedent.

Seattle Firebirds

I don't know what the connection to Seattle is, but I'd love to see jerseys with the Trans Am flaming chicken on them.

Seattle Whales

I like whales, but like most hockey fans, I still have a hope for resurrecting the Hartford Whalers.

Seattle Nor'Westers

Speaking of the Whalers, I came across this idea (scroll down,) which comes with a logo that pays homage to them.

Seattle Grunge

I and many others my age, have reasoned that since there's already a precedent for naming a team after a style of music (the St. Louis Blues) we might as well try that again. You could base the jerseys on Kurt Cobain's shirt from the "Smells Like Teen Spirit video." This Totems concept uni seems to have hinted at that.

But more likely, you'd want to work some plaid into it. Part of me wants to see plaid become part of the sports uniform landscape. Some people have already tried that out in their fantasy leagues. But then I saw this mockup which makes a "Team Spirit" pun. I realized that opens up a new possibility. "Spirit" has been used as a team name in the minors, as with the OHL's Saginaw Spirit. So that would seem like a generic team name, but those of us of a certain age would take it as a double meaning, so now I'm cheering for Seattle Spirit as the darkhorse candidate.

All About That Bass, No Pressure

At a recent hockey game, a commentator was discussing the scoring slump of Max Pacioretty, the winger for Las Vegas who was acquired in an off-season trade. The commentator said that he had asked a local reporter if he was under any pressure because of the lack of scoring. That reporter just said, of course not, it's Vegas. After all, hockey teams don't get nearly the media exposure in the US, even in markets where the sport is popular. The subtext is that Pacioretty had previously played his whole career in Montreal, where players are constantly in the spotlight. Had he started the season this slowly there, it would have been the only thing the city was talking about for a week.

And that's a concern that comes up a lot in Canada. Our hockey teams have never been great at attracting free-agents. Sure, the Leafs signed John Tavares this summer, but generally we haven’t made big splashy signings, and we'd like a better idea of why. Some say it's higher taxes, some say it's the cold winters. But if that were true, northern blue states would have the same problem, but it doesn’t work out that way. So many wonder if it's the media fishbowl that we put our hockey players in.

It’s great if you’re a successful hockey player in Canada; you’ll be treated like a god. But there will be a lot of pressure too. The unfortunate aspect of this is that it’s a negative with little upside. In most sports, being under the media microscope comes with more money or a better chance or winning. That’s why people love to sign with Barcelona or the Yankees. But the NHL’s salary cap means that you get the same money wherever you sign. And with that, the chance of winning is no different for Canada’s hockey teams, and the evidence is that they have even less chance. It seems that all things being equal, players would rather not have the pressure than risk it to get extra fame.

I've heard a lot of people over the years discuss this price of fame outside the context of sports. Is it worth the fame and fortune if you can't go about your life in peace and privacy? I remember a DJ once hypothesizing that bassists have the best life of any musicians. They get the same share of the money, as well as the cheers and whatever happens backstage and in the hotel. But once that’s over, they can go about their lives in peace with no one recognizing them.

But being a hockey star in the US is a similar perfect balance. Mostly, you go about your life unbothered. But then every few days you get to spend a few hours surrounded by adoring fans cheering you on. Within the arena, people know who you are and care about you, but once the game is over you go back to anonymity.

I know it's sacrilege to say, but the Americans have it right, in their own way. They care just enough about hockey, but not too much. Indeed, that’s how the whole world should work: We have this big event where everyone is really excited and has a good time, but when it’s over, we put it aside and stop worrying about it, and treat the participants like normal people. Yes, we should all learn from American hockey fans. When they show up.

No Hitter

I was surprised to see this article on concussions in hockey. In it, Hall-of-Fame players Eric Lindros and Ken Dryden argue for radical action on concussions, including a seemingly unthinkable ban on hitting. You might expect that from the intellectual goalie Dryden, but it’s a shock coming from Lindros, who made his living as a physical player. But after a career derailed by concussions, he plays non-contact hockey for recreation, and has been surprised that he still enjoys it.

That brings up Thing I Don’t Get About Hockey, #973: much of the hockey that actually gets played is non-contact. Women’s hockey doesn’t have body checking, children at an early age don’t either. And a lot of the recreational leagues don’t. And yet, whenever anyone discusses violence in hockey, experts talk about the physical nature of the game as being integral. Take it away and it’s not the same sport anymore. So by implication, women, children, and part-time players are playing some other sport. Those ads we keep seeing during commercial breaks pleading with parents to let their kids play hockey, are in fact, encouraging them to play some weird de-fanged facsimile of the sport. It’s a hypocrisy where the sport’s gatekeepers want us to keep the sport violent, but also want to maintain the idea that the sport is a wholesome part of Canadian society.

To be clear, I don’t for a second believe that removing the physical contact from the game is going to happen any time soon, but having respected players talk seriously about it is going to shift what is acceptable in discussion. The sport’s going to need major changes to make the sport safe, but so far, they haven’t been willing to make changes that will change how the sport is played, unlike the NFL. But if respected folks are going around talking about a massive overhaul, then those play-changing alterations will seem more palatable.

I’m also glad that Dryden brings up another point that I wish someone would acknowledge: just how much the game has changed over the years. He notes that if you look back at games from the 50’s - 60’s, there’s actually less hitting than now. That’s something I’ve noticed whenever the CBC shows old games late at night. Even as late as the 1980’s, you can see a distinct reduction in the physicality of the game. Specifically, there seems to be a different philosophy, with players often passing up the opportunity to hit another player. Today, in the same position, anyone would hit an opposing player at any opportunity; there’s no question of tactics or choosing when to hit, you just hit anyone you can any time you can, that’s how it’s done.

But Dryden points out that it’s not hard to understand why there was less hitting: in the original-six era, shifts were much longer than they are now. Players didn’t have the energy to hit everything that moved, and even if they did, no one had the energy to get up the speed to hit particularly hard.

Oh, and this leads to Thing I Don’t Get About Hockey, #1,562: Hockey is an extremely traditional sport, yet no one seems to care that it keeps changing. I always thought that the fundamental difference between hockey and baseball is embodied by the implements of the sports: the bat and the stick. Both baseball bats and hockey sticks are traditionally made of wood. But as soon as someone considered making the bats out of something else, they immediately banned the concept and assured everyone that bats would be forever made out of wood. In hockey, they started making the sticks out of carbon fibre, and no one said a word. The players quietly made the revolutionary change without much pushback from the sport’s traditionalists who howl at any rule change. Now wood sticks are as rare as players with perfect teeth.

Similarly, if you ask anyone, they’ll say they never want the game to change, even though it’s now totally different from what it once was. Hopefully, more people will recognize how much and how frequently the sport changes on its own, and realize that we can improve it when necessary.

In Between Jays

This coming baseball season is shaping up to be strange in at least one way: how few teams are trying to win. I saw one article that pointed out that fewer than half of teams will actually be putting in an effort to compete, with the rest in mid-rebuild, and going through the motions while building up a collection of prospects.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, since their list of rebuilding teams counted teams like the Blue Jays that are half-heartedly competing, neither trying to improve the roster nor rebuilding. But then, you know that if they aren't fast out of the gate, the clearance sale will begin.

It's not hard to see why this is happening. The last three World Series winners (Royals, Cubs, Astros) have shown us the optimum strategy: grooming a generation of prospects to peak at the same time. Teams that do this have a clear enough advantage that there isn't much point shuffling along with a mediocre line-up and hoping for the best.

On the one hand, that's refreshing: we went through twenty years of feeling it was futile to compete with big spending teams, so a change is welcome. Now it's futile to compete with great farm systems. The problem is that while this trend has produced some impressive teams - and allowed some smaller markets a better chance to compete - it's not very entertaining if half the teams are just biding time while they wait for tomorrow's stars to mature. And people are starting to notice.

To understand this, we have to go back to the question of why we watch sports. We may want to see our favourite teams win, and we may enjoy it when they win championships, but the truth is that most of the enjoyment of sports comes from seasons where your team is somewhere in the middle. They aren't world-beaters, but they aren't terrible either. You feel like you might compete if things line-up right for you. And it's good that you can enjoy those mediocre seasons, because that's where teams usually spend most of their time.

But if you're in a cycle of compete-selloff-rebuild-compete, then you never have those seasons. You have meaningless seasons of waiting punctuated by a few seasons of greatness. Those winning periods are nice, but the point is that you never go into any seasons with any intrigue. And if the whole league is using that same strategy, then there's not much to talk about, other than asking which of the four teams peaking this year are going to win.

It's similar in basketball, though not for the same reasons. Here in Raptorland, it's pretty strange. The team is first in their conference, in a season where the big obstacle, the Cavaliers, are looking beatable. You'd think that any team in our situation would be dreaming about winning it all. And yet, no one is talking about that. The most you hear is discussion of how we have a realistic chance of winning the Eastern Conference. No one is planning a championship parade; no one is even acknowledging the possibility.

The NBA may not be locked into baseball's extreme-makeover pattern, but in the same way that it's remarkable how few baseball teams are trying to compete, it's amazing how few basketball teams are true contenders.

But the other two big-four sports are at the opposite ebb. The NFL has had a great deal of parity for a while now. But this year we saw breakthroughs by the Eagles, Jaguars, Bills, Saints, and my Rams. That underlined the fact that coaching changes and under-the-radar personnel choices can have a big effect on a team's fortunes. For an NFL fan - as long as your team doesn't rhyme with "frowns" - You know that competitiveness could be right around the corner.

Meanwhile, hockey has so much parity that an expansion team is contending for first overall. That's got to have fans everywhere thinking that getting a competitive team is easier than they suspected.

For the last decade plus, the formula for success in the NHL has been to draft and develop a few superstars, keep them for the long-term while cycling through a succession of supporting players, holding on to them for as long as you can afford them. It was a nice system, since it rewarded planning by a well-run team, but unlike baseball, you could keep the core of a successful team together for a while, instead of selling-off the entire team and starting over after just a few years of contention.

But now, some teams with stars are failing. The aforementioned expansion Golden Knights are essentially a team that's nothing but a supporting cast, and it is succeeding. It could just be a fluke, or maybe they've stumbled across a whole new way of building a team. Who knows where that's going to go, but it certainly sounds more interesting than the baseball situation.

Das Boo

It's an occasional custom in hockey for fans to boo a hated player whenever he touches the puck. There are numerous reasons why this can happen. Usually it's because the target has committed some sort of dirty play against a member of the home team.

But often, the booing has a mob-mentality to it that waters down its meaning. Years ago, Toronto Maple Leafs captain Mats Sundin was suspended for throwing a stick into the stands. Later, Ottawa captain Daniel Alfredsson broke his stick mid-play, and jokingly mimed throwing it into the stands. Leaf fans took offense, and gave Alfredsson the booing treatment for years to come. For one thing, the original act wasn't really offensive. But also, hockey is a sport where grave injustices are often left to stand, and booing is the only recourse for fans. It's depressing to think that the punishment given to an unstable cheap-shot artist is the same one given to a guy who did a mildly insulting joke.

Even more unfair is when the crowd turns on a member of the home team. One of the most embarrassing experiences I've had as a sports fan was when the Leafs "fans" decided veteran defenceman Larry Murphy was so personally responsible for the team's woes that they began booing him every time he touched the puck. It was one of the great justices of the game that he was traded to Detroit just in time to win a couple of Stanley Cups.

And this week, the Leaf faithful extended the booing treatment to Nashville's star defenceman PK Subban. Of course, that was a little awkward, booing a guy who's not known for dirty play, and happens to be the only black guy on the ice. To be fair, there's never been a clear, irrefutable explanation for why many people don't like Subban. He may be a different race than most hockey players, but he also differs in other ways: he's a very outgoing individual in a sport that usually values people who fit in. In the past, I've argued that is actually an interaction between the two causes: people cast an especially critical eye towards him because he's of a different race.

So was there an element of racism in the fans' booing? We can't say definitively, so instead, I'd like to look at a different question, which may also say some disturbing things about the sport's culture. I may think there is a racial component to the hockey culture's treatment of Subban, but for the sake of argument, let's say I'm wrong. Let's say this is nothing to do with race. That still leaves the question: why do so many people in hockey hate PK Subban?

Like I said, he's not known for dirty play. He also seems quite friendly in interviews, and is famous for being very charitable. So the only way left to explain it is his personality. Or more specifically, we're talking about the way he expresses it. The hockey world is okay with players like Brent Burns, who are eccentric in ways that fit the hockey culture better, with beards and good-natured oafishness. But charismatic fashionistas are not welcome.

This could be a problem for the sport in the future. For all its dominance in Canada, you can see that the powers that be in hockey are worried, given how many ad campaigns are trying to encourage kids and their patents to get into the sport.

If Subban's treatment is racist, that's bad news for these recruitment drives. We're talking about a sport that's hugely white, in a country that's becoming less so. It's clear that hockey's long-term health requires getting more diverse. But if Subban's treatment is not racist, that may be less bad morally, but it would actually be worse for the sport. If kids don't perceive the rejection as being about colour, they'll see it as being about personality. The lesson will be that if you want to be your own person, then you're not welcome here. To generations that will grow up with more and more avenues of self expression, we'll be selling a sport where your individuality may only be expressed through degrees of aggression.

Kneel Before Sod

The situation in North Korea is still tense. And Puerto Rico's infrastructure was devestated by hurricane Maria. But here we are talking about football players kneeling. Well, that's what Donald Trump wants to talk about, and everyone else is following along. I'm guessing that's because unlike North Korea, Puerto Rico, and the Obamacare repeal, this is something where there's a chance to fight back.

Some have suggested that Trump made the condemnation of NFL players kneeling for the anthem as a distraction, so we won't notice the health care disaster, or because he knows that there's incriminating Russia evidence about to drop. But the world just doesn't seem to work that way any more. We're used to new megastories coming at us every few hours; we can easily drop one story for another whenever we need to. Honestly, I'm not sure why I'm writing this article late at night; there will probably be a new outrage by morning.

The real reason for Trump's attack is that it's a great issue for him to score points with his base. It's got everything he likes: nationalism, condemning dissent, and a racist subtext. The whole thing is not very surprising really. What is interesting, though, is that the way each sport has responded has illustrated the sport's personality.

Football

I was pleasantly surprised by the reaction. A lot of players protested, there didn't seem to be much anger. There was even some official sanctioning, including the anthem singer himself kneeling in Detroit. No one seems to have been fired over this, or even much anger expressed by the owners (though give them a few days.) And there was thankfully little of the feel-good avoidance I complained about previously.

Having said that, the guy who started it all, Colin Kaepernick, is still without a job. So teams and owners' tentative support of their players comes with a big dose of hypocracy. Which is typical NFL too.

Basketball

The NBA and Basketball's culture clearly won the weekend. Trump looked desperate when he revoked Steph Curry's unaccepted invitation to the White House. And the Warriors' decision to "celebrate equality, diversity and inclusion" in Washington in place of a White House visit was a bold response. And Lebron James's Twitter burn of Trump was something Kim Jong Un could only dream of. Come on, NBA stars, I'm trying to hate you. Stop acting like the only adults in the room.

Hockey

The NHL isn't really involved, but somehow managed to turn the incident into a public relations loss by choosing now to announce that the Stanley Cup Champion Pittsburgh Penguins will still be visiting the White House. It's just like them to find a way to lose a controversy they weren't involved in.

Having said that, I will forgive the NHL and become a Penguins fan if Yevgeny Malkin spends the entire visit acting like he's only there to pass on Putin's latest instructions to Trump.

But this is also typical of the paradox that hockey culture hates to rock the boat. It's a sport that takes bravery to play, yet never seems to generate bravery away from the rink among its players.

Baseball

It seemed kind of separated from the rest of the sports world. After all, it is the most conservative, traditional, and increasingly the whitest sport. So it seemed almost like an afterthought when news came out that A's catcher Bruce Maxwell knelt for the anthem. We were like, oh, right, baseball players might be doing that too.

But going back to the hurricane: given Trump's lackluster reaction, you have to wonder how many Puerto Rican players don't feel like standing for the anthem right about now.

Nascar

In sharp constrast with the other sports, Nascar was totally on board with Trump. Legendary car owners Richard Petty and Richard Childress both said they would fire any employees who didn't stand for the anthem - to my knowledge, the only owners in any sport to follow Trump's advice.

Of course, this is just the latest example of how Nascar is fine with being exactly what everyone expects it to be. It's like they want to make it really clear whether you are welcome in the sport or not. Certainly I'm feeling happier with my decision to walk away from it.

World Of Tanks

Apparently, the NBA is going to do something about tanking. That's the practice of intentionally losing so as to get a better draft pick next year. They're talking about not giving the last-place team the best chance of getting the first pick, and instead just giving the last three teams the same chances. That way, bad teams get a chance at rebuilding, but there's no incentive to be last.

Personally, I don't understand why anyone cares about this "problem." Well, I figure it's because the idea of losing intentionally is so abhorrent to sports culture. And also because North American Pro sports has had some historic problems with intentional losing. But I couldn't care less. If we were talking about teams intentionally missing playoff spots to go for a better draft pick, then I could understand fans being angry. But what actually happens is that a team that might at best finish 25th out of 30th will instead finish dead last. That isn't great behaviour, but I don't think it even cracks the top hundred Things Wrong With Professional Sports.

And part of the problem is that it isn’t even possible to define tanking. If you want to tank, you trade your best players, and let the youngsters and journeymen sink to the bottom. But if you’re not tanking, just rebuilding in earnest, you trade your current assets for draft picks and prospects, which causes your team to drop to the bottom of the league.

That’s the point that was put forward by the Buffalo Sabres recently, after a bad season that netted them a second-overall pick. They’ve been accused of tanking, which is frustrating because their geographic rivals in Toronto finished last the next year and got the number one pick. The Sabres have been painted as tankers, while the Leafs were portrayed as wise rebuilders, even though they essentially did the same thing.

Some of that double standard is surely due to the bias of a largely-Canadian pool of journalists. And a lot can be chalked up to that infamous night that the Sabres’ own fans started cheering against them in the hopes of a better draft pick. But it’s hardly fair blaming a team for having insightful fans. I think the real problem is that for some odd reason, people only get angry at tanking when it’s unsuccessful. Going back to the NBA, the most obvious tank jobs actually resulted in teams getting game-changing talents, yet people look back at those incidents with a smirk, while current tankers who are yet to see any benefit get all the ire.

And that gets back to another reason I can't get angry at tankers - and why I doubt this measure will actually work. It's really hard to get a winner in the NBA without a superstar. Yes, you can point to counterexamples, including my own Toronto Raptors, not to mention superstars drafted way down the table like Kobe Bryant. But for the most part, a high pick is needed to join the league's elite, and neither lowered odds nor journalists' scorn with change that.

Big Hands, I Know You're The One

For non-obvious reasons, baseball has seen an epidemic of blister problems for its pitchers. Having not spent much of my life throwing baseballs around, I could never wrap my head around the idea that you could throw them enough to cause blisters, but it's been an occupational hazard through the history of the sport. But this year, it's suddenly worse, and affecting pitchers who hadn't previously had such problems. You may not realize it if you're just following one team, but it's been widespread.

Why would this be? Is not clear, but people are putting it together with the other thing we've seen an explosion of this year: home runs. The increase in home runs is sudden and widespread, so a drug-based explanation seems unlikely. So if the players aren't juiced, the assumption is that the balls are. Officially, there has been no change to the design and manufacture of balls, but that would explain both phenomena.

Well, I hope someone figures out what is going on and fixes it. Partly, that is of course because the Blue Jays are particularly hurt by blisters, with young ace Aaron Sanchez just placed on the Disabled List for an incredible fourth time this season, all for blisters. But even worse than nuking my team's pitching rotation, I don't think I can take another description of blisters.

I'm used to hearing commentators and journalists giving dry, medical descriptions of injuries, using vague, bland terms. But now I'm hearing talk about skin and blood. Yes, I realize that most sports injuries are far more painful than a blister. But most viewers have never torn a ligament, so we can listen all day to talk of anterior this and medial-collateral that. But get into nails and pus and we're squirming.

So I guess we all owe hockey an apology. Many have ridiculed how hockey teams try to protect their players from exploitation by reporting injuries as vaguely as possible. Usually you get no more that "upper body injury" or "lower body injury." Now, I guess that's no so bad. I'd hate to imagine detailed reports of hockey injuries.

Also, medical science needs to get to work on better treatments for blisters. It's kind of weird that elbow problems can be fixed by now-routine Tommy John Surgery. Perhaps they can develop a procedure that makes you blister-proof. Just think, years from know you'll hear about pitchers needing Aaron Sanchez Surgery.

Two Ours Traffic

I mentioned on Facebook once about how European hockey tournaments always have cars - specifically Skodas - on display. That is, just beyond the boards in the corners, on stands that I presume are over top of seats. That's a sad commentary on the popularity of the sport: Presumably Skoda pays more for this space than tourney organizers could get selling the seats. There's no way that would make financial sense here.

This week, while watching the World Hockey Championships, I noticed that the message board under one of these cars was displaying the hashtag #itsourgame. I had that experience of not being sure where the words begin and end - surely there's a word for that, it happens with hashtags, e-mail addresses, URLs and so many things in our world. So I misread it as, "it sour game." Okay, sure, Slovenia-Norway isn't one of the more important games of the tourney, but there's no call for ridicule from the main sponsor.

Quickly, I realized it was supposed to be "it's our game." Is it too much to ask that you capitalize the words so it's easier to read? (#ItsOurGame) That does have a name: CamelCase.

Anyway, I've mentioned before about how Canadians have a neurotic need to tell everyone who will listen that hockey is our game, even if "everyone who will listen" is usually just us. And we love being reassured that it's our game so much, that we'll even hear it from foreign brands.

But wait a minute - Skoda doesn't sell on this side of the Atlantic. They were sending out that claim on the sport's ownership to their fellow Europeans. It's not often you see that. Whenever Canadians have proclaimed that "this is our game," I always wondered who was arguing against us, and now I finally know.

I wondered what form this argument might take, so I went on Twitter and looked up the #itsourgame hashtag. I wasn't sure what I'd find. Boorish Swedes that mirrored our Canadian hockey blowhards? Maybe a huge flame war as Canadians took umbrage with the claim?

Actually, it was mostly Skoda promoting the tournament and various games within it. A few Europeans of different nationalities had picked it up and were using the hashtag to check-in that they were watching it too. There were indeed a few Canadians using the tag, but they mostly seemed oblivious to its use with the World Championship. (Interestingly, one of the Canadians was referring not to hockey, but to the CFL.)

While reading one tweet from a French fan that used the hashtag, it hit me: the tag is in English. I know, what did I expect, Esperanto? Of course, they have to choose one language and go with it, and English is the most universal alternative. (Although from what I’ve seen of the European Union, I’m surprised there isn’t some regulation that hashtags have to be translated into all members’ official languages.) English is a widely spoken second language in Nordic countries, which probably account for a lot of the tournament’s audience, so I get it. But the situation still demonstrates just how complete the domination of English is: To reach European hockey fans, they’re using a language whose only European speakers are fond of neither Europe nor hockey.

Two Minutes For Inconsistency

The big issue in the NHL playoffs right now is the injury to Sidney Crosby. It had looked like Pittsburgh was headed straight to the final, carried by their star forward and another Washington collapse. But now Crosby has suffered another concussion, the fourth of his career. So even if Wayne Gretzky's scoring records are out of reach, at least he has a chance at Eric Lindros's concussion record.

The reaction to the injury has gone in two different directions. Some people regret seeing the game's top player sidelined during the most important games of the year. Others are telling anyone who'll listen that it was just an unpreventable accident, nothing could be done, that's hockey, you know. Of course, the latter reaction is the normal way of these things. At least half of a Canadian hockey analyst's job is trying to justify violence in the game and reassure everyone that today's controversial act was not deserving of a penalty/suspension/criminal charges/whatever.

But this incident seems different. Lots of the national hockey media has been genuinely shocked and troubled by this, and they're starting to break from the usual script. They aren't quite at the let's-do-something stage, but they're getting close to the I-don't-like-the-way-things-are stage.

But I'm not really on board with them. I'd love to see the skilled players show their talent as much as anyone, but I'm way past hoping that they'll be protected, and I'm just refreshed that some people in hockey nation are showing logical consistency. I don't agree with the talking heads brushing this off as "just a hockey play," but at least they have a world view that can actually exist. On some level they understand that if the game is going to be as violent as they want it, they're going to have to put up with star players getting knocked out of the game on a regular basis. Or possibly they even like the idea that injuring an opponent is a legitimate tactic. Whatever; at least they're not confusedly stammering questions about how this could happen, forgetting that a month earlier, the victim slashed a guy's finger off and everyone shrugged it off.

Essentially, this is another case where you have two opposing points of view which no one seems to notice are opposing. Of course, you just have to listen to people complain about politics for a while and you'll hear complaints that contradict themselves. The government should give to the poor and lower taxes. We should protect the environment and there should be less regulation. And now you can add, we should have a violent sport where no one gets injured. Looking at it this way, we should have new respect for American politics. It may seem terrible how two sides can be so antagonistic. But at least they've figured out that they disagree with each other; lots of disagreements don't even get that far.

Sunday Afternoon's Alright For Fighting

TSN and CTV news had an interesting report this week on the decline of fighting in hockey. Statistically, there has been a steady decline in the amount of fighting, particularly over the last ten years. Since the 2005 strike, the game has been changed by the crackdown on obstruction and the salary cap. Those two factors have conspired to reduce fighting: higher speeds and tight budgets have meant that teams can't spare a roster spot for someone who can't contribute with skill.

I always thought that was the biggest argument against fighting in hockey; even if you accept the belief that fights are a good way to rally the team, you're essentially talking about having a mascot who is actually a team member. Give the Phillie Phanatic a spot on the bench and a multi-million dollar contract and suddenly he doesn't seem so fun.

But what was also interesting in the report was how fighting increased in the first place. Back in the Original Six days, fighting was much less common, with about a fight every four games. In the expansion era, it skyrocketed, peaking in the 80's at more than one fight a game. Although there are fewer fights now, we're still above what it was in the sixties.

Of course, this goes against the Cherryist orthodoxy, which states that: (1) you can't have hockey without fighting, and (2) the Original Six was a golden era when everything was perfect, until it was contaminated by the Swedes and Gary Bettman.

So it's amusing that fighting may cure itself. But if you really want to see a sport where fighting is tolerated, have no fear, NASCAR is here. Fighting isn't new there; many say the sport was launched into the public consciousness with the Allison-Yarborough tilt at the end of the 1979 Daytona 500.

But in recent years there have been plenty of fights following races. And NASCAR seems to be okay with it, doling out surprisingly little punishment, while also relaxing punishment for the misbehaviour on the track that leads to post-race fights. Indeed, Jalopnik.com notes that in the most recent fight, no one was fined, but several mechanics paid the price for - wait for it - illegal lug nuts.

It can't be a coincidence that NASCAR has become more tolerant of fights during the time that their attendance is down, and their TV ratings are in free-fall. You can understand their thinking, since one of the many explanations for the sport's decline in popularity is that it's hard to care about this generation of drivers. You'll learn something about them after seeing them in post-race confrontations, even if it's just fighting style.

But I have always had my doubts about fighting as a way to popularity for a sport. The problem is that there's a difference between what people enjoy, and what they choose. Yes, the audience usually enjoys themselves during a hockey fight, but that doesn't necessarily translate into a large part of the public wanting to watch the sport. People are in a different frame of mind when they’re choosing how to spend their time and money, and a sport that gets a reputation as an uncivilized guilty pleasure will lose out.