Category Archives: Sports

The hockey interview is a farce that should be discontinued

02 Wednesday Nov 2011

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Probing. Profound.  Purposeful. These are the last words anybody would use to describe what passes for an interview in the NHL.  It’s totally beyond parody. If the team is losing, the solution is keep plugging away at the fundamentals. If the team is winning, they need to keep plugging away at the fundamentals. If there’s a noteworthy individual accomplishment, it’s because of the team.  If the team is doing well, all the individuals are clicking. It all happens one game at a time.  “What’s the key to your success?” “Our coach designed this secret play, here’s how it works…” What do we expect to be told? As a result, players are asked questions that aren’t really questions with the understanding that after saying something banal, obvious, and wonderfully cliché they’ll be given permission to walk away.  In a Canadian hockey culture that is wary of personality, that celebrates blandness, predictable conformity in media talk is all there is. Except for last week.

After the ridiculous 9-8 game between Philly and Winnipeg, Philly’s goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov could have said he’ll bounce back or it was a weird night for both goalies. But shockingly, he spoke outside the script: “I have zero confidence in myself right now. I’m terrible…I feel like I’m lost in the woods. I am totally lost. I don’t know what’s going on.  I can’t stop the puck.  It’s simple. It’s me.”  That a goalie has no confidence after allowing 9 goals isn’t surprising when you think about it, but the hockey world was stunned to hear an actual candid response.  It was sad, and singularly unique: have you ever felt so bad for a $51 million man?  There are countries looking for that kinda bailout.  I wanted to write on pointless hockey interviews prior to this game, but Bryzgalov’s response made me doubt the premise. Maybe there was a point to the hockey interview? Not if the Flyers have their way.

Bruce Arthur reported in today’s National Post that after Bryzgalov mercifully won a game and joked he had gotten out of the woods thanks to the “iPhone Compass,” the Flyers announced their goalie would only be available after games he started.  Heaven forbid an interview contain honesty or humour.  But this violated the league’s rules regarding media access, so now Philly wants to limit Bryzgalov to three questions, which, as Arthur points out, is the same policy our Prime Minister follows.  Whether this curtailing of interview time is a violation of policy is under investigation. For Harper it’s fine, but it’s important that the goalie is held publicly accountable for his performance.

Before he faces the media again, Bryzgalov will undoubtedly be told not to cause any needless distraction by saying anything worth repeating.  Shut up Ilya!  This doesn’t only make total sense from a hockey perspective, the one that should matter most, but it’s what rightly ensures that player interviews are totally vacuous.  As a fan, I don’t want to put any burden on my team. Radical idea: if the media wants something to write about, write about the hockey.  If a player wants to call out or praise his players in public, there’ll be a hungry audience ready to hear something of substance that’s more meaningful for being spoken voluntarily.  He can even Tweet on his own time and allow sports reporters, who will be following, to report on it then.  For fan appreciation, players can do autograph signings, visit hospitals, deliver presents at Christmas.  But the hockey interview is an illusion that tells the fans absolutely nothing. It’s not a window into the game or into the players’ personalities, and in the rare, rare time it is, hockey culture does all it can to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Confession: My Experience As a Racist (a hockey story)

29 Saturday Oct 2011

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From a young age, Canadians are conditioned to revile racists.  We look back on American slavery and wonder how life was really like that.  We bemoan contemporary racism and wonder if the world will ever become truly egalitarian. I’m a pretty decent guy, but I know from personal experience that one aspect of my Canadian upbringing instilled in me a burning hatred for an identifiable group of people and wished nothing for them but the wrath of hell. I’m talking about the Ottawa Senators and their fans.

Ten years ago, if you had asked me if all Sens fans had horns and hoofed feet, I’d have said “no”, but I’d have given them no other benefit of the doubt.  I couldn’t be sure Sens fans even existed: I had never seen one in real life, and even on TV their arena was filled with Leaf fans loudly booing whenever alfredsson (that gutless puke) touched the puck. I had no reason on earth to believe somebody actually liked that team, yet I hated that theoretical person all the same. When the Senators signed a player, I hated him overnight.  This went on unchecked for years, as my friends were just as racist.

My first encounter with an actual flesh-and-blood Senator fan happened in 2003, while my hate was at a late stage of maturation.  Though I didn’t expect a Sens fan to behave with civility or dignity (these concepts utterly foreign to the organization) I behaved well and the meeting didn’t end in carnage, though it started off rocky.  I moved into my dorm during first year university, and immediately put up my Leafs’ flag when in walked my neighbour.

“Nice to meet you. Hey, why are you putting up that piece of shit?”

“Where are you from…neighbour?”

“Ottawa.”

Just like that. He didn’t seem to be suffering any certifiable mental condition detectable at first glance, so I looked again. Still nothing.  Maybe something was wrong in his frontal lobes, but he looked like a normal human being.

Over the year, I developed a friendship with this curious species fuelled by intense rivalry and beer.  To be sure, however amiable, a part of me hated a part of him.  We shared laughs and violent shouting matches in equal measure.  But like mushrooms after a rainstorm, more Sens fans appeared. It took a year among their kind to realise that, in actual fact, Senator fans are people.  For years, I dehumanized their fans and their players (sometimes fairly), but the sample of fans I met turned out to be good Canadian boys who simply had the severe misfortune of growing up in Ottawa.  I had to admit: my neighbour, and others of his race, were decent.

The roster still comprised soulless guttersnipes, but I was racially more sensitive and newly convinced my hatred wasn’t blinding. I had reversed my all encompassing hate and learned to give a fair appraisal of the team. “Volchenkov can block a shot.”  Wholly unbiased now, my opinion was fair, balanced and commendable.  I had reformed and was tremendously capable of praise when it was warranted…it just wasn’t.  That year, following another epic post season Senator collapse, the Leafs eliminated the hated rival for the fourth time. 4/4. Those who remember the game see Lalime clearly in their mind’s eye. Ahh, glory days!

Meeting Senator fans has enabled me to gain perspective on a disturbing time in my personal history, but my racism was of a variety that I suspect all Canadian hockey fans have to some degree.  Still, I look back on these years of unbridled hate with regret. I am grateful for the contact I had with good people who gave me a chance to reform.  Now I can view them as dignified human beings, and they have made me a better person for it.  That said, I do have some final observations:

Chris Neil is a cheapshot artist who seriously looks inbred.

On five occasions, Jason Spezza has contaminated out heroic National team by failing to win gold even once.

Despite just yesterday writing a lengthy argument for unequivocal free speech, I’m afraid of what I’ll put into print if I candidly write about daniella alfredsson [sic]. I have not cooled one bit after his vicious hit from behind on Tucker from game 5, 2002. He should still be suspended without pay.

Prediction: the Toronto Maple Leafs Will Win All 82 Regular Season Games

16 Sunday Oct 2011

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Is any NHL team capable of beating the Toronto Maple Leafs? After last night’s game, the answer is a resounding “no,” as the Leafs have proven that they can win in every way situation: shutout domination; annihilating their opponent, then barely hanging on; the come from behind victory.  This edition of the Leafs is literally unstoppable.

The defence has been poised and fearless, readily entering into the offensive attack while managing to scare the daylights out of opposing forwards, particularly those from France.  Woody Allen said 90% of life was just showing up: thanks to Phil Kessel, this is true for our other forwards.  I could describe Kessel’s domination by comparing his speed to Mogilny or his exploits to Achilles, but the damage he’s wrought to opponents is recorded authoritatively by the league statisticians: Phil leads the NHL in goals, points, and plus minus (a distinction shared with Phaneuf, that ransacking enthusiast).  Doubly impressive, Kessel’s managing to do all this with only one testicle.

The Maple Leafs are undefeated both at home (3-0-0) and on the road (0-0-0). At this rate, statistically speaking, we are heading for a perfect 82 win season. This would definitely be a triumph for a team that has failed to make the playoffs since the lockout. But in my opinion there will be doubters: “Reimer will suffer the sophomore jinx” (nah, he prays successfully to Jesus all the time); “Kessel is streaky and he’ll have another fourteen game slump” (no he won’t, how dare you!); “Bozak is a third line centre on your first line” (he’s been improving his faceoffs all summer…); “wait, you’ve only played three games” (hardly the leafs’ fault).  Be assured, these critics, depraved Senator fans, know nothing about hockey: they’re fans of a team who passed on a young Chris Pronger (prototypical defensive bully), Paul Kariya (989 pts), Jason Arnott (907 pts), preferring Daigle instead (umm…ya).  We’ve beat them four times in four playoffs. Currently sitting 1-4, the Sens have no shot at a perfect season like us.  Leaf doubters of this variety and others can all be thoroughly ignored.

But it must be said, we’re not out of the woods just yet. A bigger question remains to be seen: can the momentum from mission 82W carry over to Mission 16W?

As ever, we have no reason for doubt.

In Defence of Don Cherry

13 Thursday Oct 2011

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So much simplistic reductionism has been used to support or malign Don Cherry during his latest brouhaha. Ardent supporters of old-school tough guy hockey are behind opposing trenches against modern day ‘we juuuuust learned about concussions,’ firing generalizations at one another without really addressing Cherry’s actual stance.  To be clear, Cherry blamed three ex-fighters for denouncing fighting, calling them (in classic parlance) “pukes,” “turncoats,” and “hypocrites.”  This was factually wrong of him, because only one of the three actually wanted to ban fighting.  He should have apologized for making a mistake.  The players are considering legal action and have hinted they want his Coach’s Corner segment to end, saying it’s behind the times.  The subtext is, it’s not only this incident but his approach to the game that enables vicious, dangerous hockey, and it’s time for him to go.  But the truth is, despite his reputation is as a supporter of hockey as a primitive blood-sport, hardly anyone has done more to advance safety in the game as Don Cherry.  Paradoxically, this tendency has existed alongside his brazen endorsement of fighting, but only a certain kind of fighting, as we’ll see.

In the mid 90s, Cherry took up many causes to keep NHL players safe that are only now coming into vogue: smaller elbow pads that can’t be used as weapons; starting a campaign designed to end hitting from behind doling out stop sign stickers on the backs of kids helmets, and denouncing it in the NHL; demanding no-touch icing after showing dozens of disturbing hits causing serious injuries as a result of a more-or-less useless aspect of the game.  As a kid, on his TV segment and movies, Cherry taught me how to absorb a body-check and how not to get hit from behind. People condemn the Rock Em Sock Em videos without acknowledging all the safety tips for kids that come afterwards. People are distracted (understandably) by his loud suits, and by the force of his on screen persona, but this doesn’t eliminate all the concern Cherry has shown for player’s safety. And finally, there’s a huge aspect of fighting he denounced that nobody gives him credit for.

There is a brand of fighter, a goon, that sits on the bench until he has to fight–the kind of guy with 3000 penalty minutes, 2 goals.  Cherry has unequivocally denounced this practice, citing his own experience as a bench-warmer as humiliating.  He said the fighters on his team when he coached were four twenty goal scorers.  In other words, fighting should be an organic part of the game, occurring when tensions run high because a code of the game is broken.  It shouldn’t be the routine farce it has become, where no-talent Goliaths schedule fights in advance to remain in the league and make a better salary than they otherwise would in a freak show.  Fighting should happen the way it does in other sports and in life: when people are actually mad.

When it comes to making observations about hockey (not politics, or life in general), nobody is more observant than Don Cherry.  He explains aspects of the sport that totally escape other so-called pundits, normally ex-players finally allowed to show personality.  Cherry enriches the game by making you appreciate little things.  Last week, he showed fighters carefully moving away from a puck before a fight, knowing they were liable to step on it and injure themselves. I watched the same play live but didn’t notice.  I thought the only threat of injury was an opponents fist.  He recently showed Max Pacioretty pushing/taunting Chara after scoring a goal (typical), whereas most people focused on Chara annihilating Pacioretty’s head into a scansion. He condoned the hit as a hockey play, rightly, but but he ripped into the Montreal arena for being dangerous, offered a simple, effective solution, and showed a string of identical hits that went without suspensions. His solution was comprehensive, taking the game and player’s safety into account.  The hit was shown hundreds of times, even on the national news, but nobody else shed light on what could have been one aspect of its real motivation.  Cherry sees a bird’s eye view, the total game, that comes from watching an incalculable amount of hockey (NHL, all junior levels and even below).

Those who make it sound like Cherry is opposed to player’s safety, that he’d deny the oncoming wave of science backing up the dangers of concussions because he’s essentially a caveman, are disingenuous at best, and I suspect most of them haven’t really watched him for years and see him as a one dimensional caricature.  When he gets his facts wrong, he should admit it, and I was surprised his apology was only half-hearted.  But his opinions on hockey still enrich the game as ever, and offer a refreshing, insightful perspective that never conforms to the newest, modish opinions on the game, some of which, his detractors never admit, he predicted years ago.

If he is effectively thrown out of his position over this quarrel,he’ll leave behind a gaping hole and hockey won’t be any safer.

Sidney Crosby, Head Shots, and HBO

07 Wednesday Sep 2011

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Crosby’s announcement today that he will not start the 2012 season is seriously worrying for hockey fans all over.  Nobody’s sure exactly what to do about these injuries, but there’s never been so much pressure to address violence in the sport.  Fans, NHL execs/players/managers, nor media know where to draw the line between abhorrent and traditional violence in hockey.  How much savagery is too much?  Years ago, a young female fan was struck by a puck and killed before mesh was implemented above the glass behind the nets.  Last year, head hits were all the rage, dispensing and condemning them, even before Crosby was struck down.  But it was especially ominous that the NHL’s marquee player was victimized during the climax of HBO’s all access documentary of the “Winter Classic,” the outdoor game.  To be sure, he played again but was reinjured four days later and hasn’t played since.  Allowing HBO this kind of access to two of the most exciting teams was terrific entertainment value, and more importantly it recorded for posterity an unfettered slice of life in the NHL, on and off the ice.  Fans would kill to get this kind of footage of the immortals like Wayne, Orr, Lemieux, or Sundin.  The irony is the NHL’s wise decision to document their two star players in their prime actually preserved and highlighted the league’s embarrassing inability to protect their players.

It would have been hard for the NHL to live it down if Crosby’s career was never the same after this point, but that the tragedy was filmed in an attempt to showcase, with unprecedented access and budget, the humanity behind the league’s best players is a cruel irony.  Crosby’s success before the injury was hard to describe.  Gretzky, Lemiuex, Bossy, Orr, Crosby.  That may seem like high company, but that is the current order of all-time points per game, only Crosby was twenty three and seemed to be just finding his stride. After winning absolutely everything, he was on pace for his best season.  To put the gap between he and Ovechkin in perspective, Crosby missed half the season and Ovie missed only three yet they tied for goals.  If this unabashed goonery continues and it turns out Crosby’s career was ruined during the filming of the NHL’s most industrious marketing effort, Bettman and Co. might as well declare their tolerance for barbarity from a loudspeaker to the American market he’s so eager to woo.  At that point, it’ll be apparent that a little girl needs to die before this league is sufficiently shamed into doing something.

At least Crosby is no longer getting hell for whining to the refs.

Post Script: I wrote this a while ago but published today because of Crosby’s announcement.  I certainly did not mean to give disproportionate attention to a concussed player, however good at hockey, the day a plane crashed killed 43 KHL players and coaches.  The shocking tragedy is unfolding yet and there’ll be commentary to come. In the meantime, RIP.