Starting on defence, Sun Tzu

The NHL is at it again – repackaging the game for American eyes and dollars.

As someone who remembers the first coming of Peter Puck – and King of Hockey, at least when HNIC decided to put it on between periods – I roll my eyes, as any Canadian hockeyist does. Selling hockey to (most) Yanks is like trying to explain Sanskrit to a garter snake.

So the violence becomes the entry point, even if it turns off many more people than it attracts. Tonight the NHL rolls out part one of its new ad campaign in the U.S., and as explained here, it doesn’t break any new ground. According to Richard Sandomir in the New York Times, the five 30-second spots made for the league “are filled with dramatic music, tight close-ups, flashbacks, low angles of ice action, special effects and quotations from the book ‘The Art of War’ by the Chinese military philosopher Sun Tzu.”  I can handle most of this – it’s pretty standard stuff, even the hockey ‘warrior’ angle that is carried through, sort of the antithesis of ol’ Peter P. But can we just give The Art of War a rest? The poor Sun Tzu’s been been dead for 2400 years. His book has been turned into a standard self-help tome for get-rich-quicker artists. Now he’s being used to sell hockey?

Comments

[denial]

didn't see this one yesterday. i'm with you on this, i don't like the idea of selling hockey to anyone. hockey is hockey. why sell it? if someone thinks it's boring or too violent, okey dokey, they can go 'buy' another sport.

i've never appreciated bettman's oft-repeated phrase that 'canada is important to the NHL'. actually, canada IS the nhl; the grassroots of this league are Canadian, even if a growing number of end result players are American and European (i don't know if this is the case anymore, however).

i may be completely out of line -- and perhaps the only place left in the unfree world to do this is in a blog -- but i would like to know what people here think of the concept and the basic idea of a CNHL (or something like that). obviously, this country can support 10 NHL teams if it had them. Salaries would be lower, maybe a $20 million hard cap instead of a $40 million one, but the TV audience would be out of this world, and can you imagine a playoff game between, say, Regina and Halifax? Or Hamilton and Quebec? Would it be SO bad to put hockey in a place where people actually love it?

i don't understand why people immediately dismiss this idea as a "loss"; as if it would be taking a step back. like if we are admitting that something has failed and we're trying to salvage it. It would simply be tweaking a model, just innovating it to match current and future needs. just like making smaller cars and smaller homes and smaller computers are considered an advancement and a step forward, why does a league have to get bigger and bigger?

not sure if this is something people want to talk about, but i would like to hear what people think -- and feel -- about something like this possibly happening in our lifetime.

Am I the only one who is just TIRED, and somewhat offended, of trying to 'sell' this game to people who don't like it? if they don't, then that's fine -- live and let live. There are dozens of sports, and people should be free to choose. overtime shootouts, teams in weird places, 3-3 hockey, goalies wearing canadian tire hockey gloves that can't catch anything...when is it enough? when do we just say that, in 2005, america just doesn't like hockey?

and when do we stop being offended by this, and in the tiresome canadian style, when do we stop apologizing for this and just say: okay. no problem. you go watch the NFL if you want (where there are no canadian teams), and we'll watch hockey. if you change your mind, then hell, come watch with us. If not, then we'll still be friends.

dammit.

[cy]

denial, i have no problem with the nhl for selling itself. that keeps people gainfully employed, and i'm all for that. no, what bothers me is using Sun Tzu to do that. Using Sunny's The Art of War is on a level with all those The Tao of (fill in the blank) books that appeared a little while ago. Or those Chicken Soup books (ever notice how you never read Chicken Soup for the Adolescent Chicken? And they sure could use it). Sun Tzu's done. He jumped the shark -- now there's a phrase that has jumped the shark -- in my mind when i walked into Darrell Walker's office before a Raptors game, and there was the Art of War, sitting on his desk.

[denial]

do you know that 'the art of war' has been branded as a business book? yup -- look on the spine, on some editions, it says "war/business".

Sonny's Art of War....

"Then put your little hand in mine, there ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb...unless the enemy is attacking from both flanks, in which case, scatter and flee to the areas with the deepest angles and focus on striking supplies and undermining morale"

and yes, using this to sell hockey is tacky. but hey, apple used gandhi to sell macs, and tough acting tenactin is exploiting that poor john madden. and for what? athlete's foot?

BOOM