It must be January, ’cause there’s a ton of hockey to argue about.
First off, for a hockey fan, the World Juniors are almost always a treat to watch. The Americans and Canadians delivered a game-for-the-ages on New Year’s Eve. Many were anticipating a rematch in the Championship Game.
Not gonna happen, thanks to Slovakia and their red-hot goaltender. But that’s hockey, particularly in a one-game elimination situation. Here in North America, we have generally been schooled to approach a playoff series as a best-of-seven cage match. The refreshing beauty of the World Juniors is that on any given day, any dog can rise up and bite the postman.
Why then, are most of the hockey intelligentsia on television calling for the U.S. Hockey program to take a long look at itself and right its ship? Did I miss something (very possible)? Is this one loss a telling snapshot of the greater picture? Or is everyone over-reacting to a hockey loss, which I was sure was a knee-jerk reaction patented by Canadians?
Secondly, the very thought of actually giving a hoot about an All-Star Game runs counter to every logical thought in my head. Still, that’s what couch musings are about, so allow me to briefly wade into this Montreal-made morass.
The starting lineups for the NHL All-Star Game, as decided by “The Fans”, were officially released on Saturday afternoon. As expected, as feared, members of the Montreal Canadiens dominated the Eastern All-Stars. The party-minded Habs swiped four of the six spots, with arguably only one of those players (Andrei Markov) deserving of that honour. Lord knows Alexei Kovalev has played so poorly, he shouldn’t even be allowed to watch the game on TV.
Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby managed to crack the All-Habs All-Star Team, so someone somewhere successfully stuffed the ballot box to counter the previous ballot box stuffing that went on throughout Canada, particularly in the province of Quebec. Rumour has it that two Habs were also voted on to the starting lineup for the Western Conference, but the league quickly covered it up.
Really though, WHO CARES? It’s the frickin’ All-Star Game. A lackadaisical, snooze-fest of subpar shinny that best serves as a placebo for sleeping pills. If you really want to work yourself into a lather because more deserving stars didn’t place on the starting line-up (you know, the five guys who line up for the opening faceoff and all the flashbulbs, and then usually beat a hasty retreat to the bench), then that’s the beauty, and idiocy, of democracy. Go ahead. But remember…in space, no-one can hear you scream.
Third point, why does anyone bother to ever make predictions? They rarely turn out to be true, and even then, most prognosticators beat the drum about the one prediction they correctly stumbled upon, not the other nineteen they missed. Something about a blind squirrel comes to mind.
Reminds me of a snowy Tuesday night in Ottawa back during the 83-84 OHL season. A friend and I sat behind the net at the 67’s game, and spend most of the night trying to outpredict each other. Who would score next, how a two-on-one would turn out, etc.
Most of the times, we were wrong, but we had a good time smiling through our own B.S. I can still see Don McLaren on a clear-cut breakaway late in the game, Ottawa comfortably up on the opposition. My buddy yells out that McLaren would not score, so, by default, I vigorously maintained that The Don would indeed bulge the twine…which he did.
Did that suddenly make me a genius? Of course not, but that’s part of the game of publicly predicting sports. One can go with the tried-and-true (the Red Wings will win the Cup), or one can go against the grain and pick an underdog (Nashville will upset the Wings in the first round). The beauty of being the contrarian is that you are basically hedging your bets; if your pick actually wins, you puff up your chest and arrogantly proclaim that any fool could have seen the patterns. If your teams doesn’t win - which it most likely won’t - then your exit strategy goes something like this… hey, no-one REALLY expected them to win, but I liked the matchups, blah, blah, blah. A noble failure.
And, for the record, I did pick the Predators to upset the Red Wings in the first round last season, mainly because I had no faith in Dominik Hasek. And I wasn’t alone, certainly not after the Preds roared back to tie the series at two games apiece, and Detroit inserted Chris Osgood between-the-pipes. Game Five went to overtime, with Detroit winning, so I wasn’t that far off, even when the Wings won in six. A noble failure. But I had had enough of that ride; I backed the Wings for the rest of the playoffs, and, of course, they won the Cup. And I won the unofficial NHL Home Ice playoff pool here at XM.
Am I a genius? You know the answer to that question.
Which brings me to poor old Shane Malloy, who declared here on NHL Home Ice, on Friday, January 2nd, to Boomer and Rob Higgins, that there was no way that the Slovakians could beat the Americans in their showdown at the World Juniors that afternoon. No way. No chance. 100% chance of rain. Bet the rent. No net needed.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong and wrong. The Slovaks upset the U.S. 5-3, mainly because of the stellar play of goaltender Jaroslav Janus, but as Terry Mercury pointed out later that evening, hey, that’s hockey. It happens, particularly in a one-game winner-moves-on scenario. Mercury makes the point that if the famous 1980 Winter Olympics U.S. upset of the Russians was only game one of a three game set, most likely the Soviets take the next two.
We’ll never know, nor does that in any way dimish that era-defining win by the young Americans. They won that game, and advanced and captured the Gold Medal. One of the greatest moments in all of sports.
This time, the young Yanks lost. Probably didn’t even make page 54 of USA Today, but imagine the headlines in Slovakia.
Fourth and final point, and with all due sensitivity, not much bothers me more than the insipid lip-service that we the media pay to those who die. For some reason, whenever an athlete passes away, TV producers feel the need to finish the story with a picture of the person, accompanied by lilting, piano tinkling.
Why? I understand the photo, and the graphic that shows the years that the person lived. It would be more effective, and more respectful, if there was NO music of any sort underneath that graphic. Sure, probably once upon a time, that cheesy mall organ music was a nice touch, but like most things in sports, the sheep that work in the industry have copied it to the point of it having become a bloodless cliche. A cliche they feel they must follow, which reduces the person’s death to a momentary footnote in the highlight package that night. Which, if we’re being brutally honest, is exactly what it is.
During the winter of 1998-99, I worked part-time as a sound technician at one of the Toronto-based national television sports networks. My job was to handle all the audio elements for the top-of-the-hour sports updates. On one particular evening, an ex-athlete passed away, and the staff scrambled to find a suitable image of the gentlemen to end the first segment with.
The producer that night, a well-known hothead to begin with, was in a particuarly ornery mood. As we came up to the piece, Mr. Producer spoke into his mic that connected to my isolated sound booth, and barked at me to be ready with the obituary music.
It was that same damned tinkly piano music, which always makes me feel like I’m watching The Masters. But orders are orders, and on my cue, I played the music, but very, very low. You’d have had to have been a dog in order to have heard it.
This understandably did not go over well with Mr. Hothead. He sharply instructed me to pump up the volume when the obituary piece came around again next update. And I did, raise the volume. How much is open for interpretation. Suffice-to-say, Hothead didn’t appreciate it.
In hindsight, it was rather juvenile of me to act this way. It wasn’t my decision to make, but then again, as small an issue as this was, I had long complained about the canned, scripted false-sensitivity of such cloying music, and when faced with my chance to do something about it, I did. The world didn’t change, and sports television still embraces the same cliche, but I guess I was hoping that someone somewhere was thinking the same thing I was.
The passing this week of Don Sanderson, the young member of the Whitby Dunlaps, brought this odious practise up again. It may seem that I’m off-kilter for stressing the music bed of an athlete’s obituary, but I believe it speaks to a larger disconnect in sports, in how we cover death.
Sanderson’s tragic death, the direct result of a hockey fight, quickly becomes a footnote in the evening sports parade. The very same simpleton’s who will cry a river of crocodile tears for this young man and his family, will temper such comments by advising us not to jump to conclusions about fighting-in-hockey, and that accidents happen.
Yup, they sure do; sometimes with fatal consequences. When that happens in real life, any responsible society will go out-of-its-way to investigate the root causes, and will do their best to mitigate these factors to prevent tragedies in future incidents. Life can never be 100% safety-proofed, but the odds of disaster can be cut down significantly.
The very same TV broadcasts that will follow the tired-old sports TV playbook on how to handle an athelete’s death (dust off the obituary music) will turn around the next day and play the latest knuckle-dragging hit song by Nickleback under a montage of hockey fights from earlier that week.
Most people don’t want fighting in hockey to go away, they enjoy it. Oh, nobody except the sickest individual wants to see anybody die or be seriously injured from fighting, but somewhere, mostly unspoken, there is the steadfast belief that fighting is an integral part of hockey, and since the number of fatalities are very low, they are viewed effectively as collatoral damage, a price that is paid.
Maybe statistically speaking, that is true, as brutal as it is. I personally don’t subscribe to that line-of-reasoning, but if you do, then spare me your emotional theatrics when you metaphorically play the tinkling piano music under your own mumbled comments about thoughts and prayers for the players’ family.
It is B.S. As is the saying, “our thoughts are with the family”.
Are they? Are they really, or is that just another term in the sports media playbook, the same way that the tinkling piano music is? Devoid of any true emotion, it is a robotic reaction to what we all expect has to be said. Unless you know the family, or have experienced a similar situation in your life, the vast majority of people give such tragedies nary a thought.
It’s all public posturing, much the same way wearing a poppy on Rememberance Day often is. And, as such, it is an insult to the very real tragedy that has just occurred.
Next time, have the guts to say what you REALLY think when someone dies from fighting; that it’s unfortunate, but in the greater picture, the death is an anomaly. The fighting must continue. The fallen player probably would have said the same thing. Get over it.
Let’s see some old-school hockey guy say that.
The majority of us would gasp at such insensitivity, and tsk-tsk at such un-Canadian thoughts..and then turn and sing the praises of some Good Ole’ Canadian boy after he gets into a scrap Saturday night.
It’s all such crap. And, sadly, it’ll probably happen again.
- Mick Kern