You know it's a slow weekend in the NHL when the top story is Dick Tarnstrom's arbitration update.
It's even slower in Leafs country, but as the countdown to Labour Day begins and after that, some real news -- can't wait to see those line combinations -- we make do with ... hockey fights, and what one of the shills on the weekend's Hockey Enforcers broadcast called, "history in the making", which, come to think of it, was the same thing they said about Lingerie Bowl I.
Perhaps the only thing about this one that's more historic than the $200 top ticket was the $24.95 pay-per-view charge.
The Star's Chris Zelkovich was not amused, but I suspect that anyone fool enough to lay out that kind of money got exactly what they wanted. And I wonder if Zelko's reaching a bit by pinning the tail on the NHL donkey for this one -- no one gets after King Football for the aforementioned Lingerie Bowl, Super Bowl day's babes-in-skivvies PPV.
No, what Hockey Enforcers may well illustrate -- besides another illustration of the bar being set a little lower, that is -- is the increasing marginalization of hockey fighters under new rules brought in by the NHL to open up the game. This is niche programming.
As Scott Burnside puts it, NHL general managers in this new era are "asking themselves whether they can afford $450,000 on a player whose contributions are limited to five or six minutes a night, a large portion of which will be spent trying to batter an opponent senseless." And at least in Chicago, the Blackhawks are spending their money in different ways -- like hiring an Olympic gold medalist speed skater as a training camp instructor.
More skating. Less fighting. Is it as simple as that?
Even when I don't agree with what Zelkovich says, I do believe that he's articulating a credible viewpoint that a lot of people have -- especially people who have been blessed to work outside of sports media. With that being said, his conclusion that: "If the event proved anything, it's that the NHL has absolutely no shame" is really a kind of morals charge that I think he should have kept on his microsoft word clipboard for another article. The shamelessness of the NHL -- including having a comissioner architect a US west and US southeast expansion for the express (unwritten) purpose of ensuring that the NHL WASN'T profitable by anyone's standards so that a new CBA could reflect that -- is a more worthy host for Zelkovich's (and our) rage.
One of the most entertaining deceptions that the NHL has created, led by a very strategic (it must be acknowledged) comissioner is that. somehow, the 'new nhl' is post-goon or post-freakshow. It isn't. Bettman is a genius when it comes to co-opting; he's almost as good as Stern (that's who taught him how to do this). What should have been ultra-embarassing PR experiences over the last few years (McSorley, Domi, Bertuzzi, et al) -- experiences that would have revealed to Mr. and Mrs. 30-something 1 kid Middle Class American fan that hockey is, like football, a FUNDAMENTALLY violent sport both physically and psychologically and cannot be otherwise and still be called hockey -- these should have all reduced the NHL outside of the core to little more than roller derby; and it almost did. But then Bettman decided to turn this into a moral issue -- a clean NHL versus a dirty NHL, and (conveniently) Bettman was going to be the flag bearer for a new NHL that Pa Ingalls could have taken his kids to (unless there was a fire that week or someone caught the fever pox again). So you had Bettman wobbling that head of his in front of camera after camera talking in moral terms about the new game -- that it's going to be clean and wholesome, and "our skilled players will be allowed to be skilled".
blah. For the last 10 years, we've seen players that had no business being in the NHL, thanks to the expansion. If skill was important to Bettman, why did he turn 1/4th of the league into a bottom-feeder system?
Skill isn't important to Bettman; he's not a core hockey guy. What matters to Bettman is ratings, and being able to spit (for lack of a better word) further than Stern when it comes to who has the more glorious eulogy.
Make Bobby Orr the next commissioner.
Posted by: denial | August 29, 2005 at 11:55 AM