Archive for the ‘Editorial’ Category

How can the NHL thank its fans? Improve its GameCenter Live service

Posted by Cam Charron under Editorial on Jan 07, 2013

#flow #sauce #sickcellies #geno

If you briefly run a Twitter search of fans mentioning the NHL’s account, you’ll come across one of two things. The first is groups of fans who seem excited that the league will be up and running soon, the second is groups of fans who feel like the NHL should give them something for free.

Well, they’re probably right to a certain extent.

The NHL doesn’t necessarily owe the fan much except the game. The reason why lots of fans were angry is that they generally want to consume hockey content: lots of hockey content. The simple daily routine of checking the standings at night or watching TV highlights of games are just so familiar and ingrained. I’m mostly pleased that the lockout being over later this week will mean the top story on the nightly sports shows won’t include a feature of Doug MacLean talking about the problems of the previous collective agreement, the one he wouldn’t have gotten fired over had he understood it.

But it’s content that matters, and for most fans, it’s watching a game or discussing the league or following the statistics that keeps us enthralled. The percentage of hockey fans that actually go to games is probably pretty slim, particularly in places like Toronto and Vancouver where an NHL ticket will generally cost you your first born.

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Thoughts on Canada’s roster; Nail Yakupov

Posted by Cam Charron under 2013 World Juniors, Editorial on Jan 04, 2013

Nathan MacKinnon and Jonathan Drouin, arguably the top offensive duo in the country, was notoriously separated for this tournament.

For the fourth consecutive year, Canada will fail to win gold at the World Junior Hockey Championships. That’s not too concerning in itself, since Canada went without a gold in longer stretches between 1977-1981 and 1998-2004. The team lost by a goal in 2010 and thanks to an uncanny collapse in 2011. It’s not as though there’s a long stretch where the team has significantly under-performed.

Even less than ten years ago, Canada could have no problem icing a roster that wasn’t their best simply because there was no guarantee the top rivals in the tournament would be able to put together a team of 23 junior players who were all going to have professional careers at some level. Recently, that aspect has changed. USA Hockey’s National Team Development Program is well established at this point, and Sweden made changes to its coaching and recruitment techniques back in the early part of the last decade, which appear to be paying off for them.

Canada hasn’t particularly lagged. Canada has enough interest and facilities nationwide that a centralized development program isn’t needed. There’s no doubt it my mind that there is a team to be made up of Canadian hockey players under the age of 20 that could have been a surer bet to win the world championship this year.

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Hockey’s got a good thing going with the Spengler Cup

Posted by Cam Charron under Editorial on Dec 28, 2012

The Spengler Cup used to be played outdoors, apparently.

While the bulk of the Canadian hockey media has its attention turned to Ufa, Russia and the World Juniors, I have to admit I find the pro-calibre hockey out of Davos, Switzerland a little more compelling. Daniel Wagner has already posted about the story lines of the Spengler Cup tournament, which features a team made up entirely of Canadians playing in Europe, but I like the idea of a holiday tournament season more than the tournament itself.

For those not in the know, ever since 1923, HC Davos, one of the the Swiss League’s oldest and most prominent clubs, has hosted an invitational tournament open traditionally to European clubs, although North American participants are welcome. Team Canada sends over a group every year made up of players in the European league or given clearance to bolt by their AHL squads. It’s not an All-Star roster by any means, but this time around, Canada was able to secure John Tavares, Tyler Seguin, Patrice Bergeron, Ryan Smyth among others.

However, they’re playing alongside Byron Ritchie, Josh Holden and Jacob Micflikier, not players who had a whole lot of NHL success, but make their living full-time in the Swiss league. It seems like an awesome place to make a living and play hockey, and this week I’ve been inspired to go to Davos over the Christmas holidays and take in the Spengler Cup, because it’s unique in the hockey world as an annual, meaningful tournament among international club teams.

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Waxing on football, strategic trends, and the NHL’s failed business plan

Posted by Cam Charron under Editorial, Rant on Dec 24, 2012

So… what are we doing here?

For the third time in the last 18 years, not a single National Hockey League has been played at the Christmas break. If Gary Bettman keeps signing collective bargaining agreements that aren’t sustainable to the future health of the league, I hope the next guy is a little more forward thinking…

Anyway, there’s been enough wrapping our hands around Bettman’s non-existent neck. He’s been great for the corporate side of hockey, the business owners and the season seat holders, none of which are going to up and leave the NHL as long as it’s a trendy way to entertain clients. Nobody’s given up on tickets, even though it’s just as embarrassing to be a fan of hockey these days as it is for Shane Doan to be a player. I’d include writers in there, somewhere, but we don’t matter as much as players and fans in the way the game is played or presented.

It’s December 24th and there’s no labour agreement. I think a number of outside observers believed that the National Hockey League could not be so stupid to withhold a few million dollars to guarantee the league would not play the Winter Classic, or at least the first week of January, but that was months ago we made that projection, and we’re talking about business owners who decided to put teams in Glendale, Sunrise and Atlanta.

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Gary Bettman is very predictable, and usually lying

Posted by Cam Charron under Editorial, Gary Bettman on Dec 07, 2012

The failure in communication I can see is not between the NHL and NHLPA. Both seem to have a reasonable idea of where they are and where they want to end up. Donald Fehr’s assertion last night that the sides are close is consistent with some good analysis of the collective bargaining process.

Nah, the failure in communication is internal, with what the NHL says, and what the NHL does.

Gary Bettman’s press conference last night was definitely something to watch. I’d never seen him that animated before, and anecdotes of him getting angry and stomping out of the room during negotiations seem a little more plausible. The problem is that when he speaks, he’s just been totally disingenuous, and his later actions tend to be inconsistent with his words.

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Hockey Night In Conflict

Posted by Dustin Parkes under Editorial, Lockout Thoughts, NHL, NHLPA on Nov 29, 2012

Despite the attempts of sports talk radio call-in programming, spouting poorly formed opinions on the current National Hockey League labor presumably reached its zenith of stupidity back in September when Canada’s Donald Trump suggested that NHL owners should simply fire all the players, sign replacements with incentive-laden contracts and be done with the matter entirely. Not to be advised by what is rational, hyperbolic commentary on the lockout – with outlooks ranging from the implementation of indentured servitude for players to guillotine sprees for the aristocratic owners – has continued to emerge, much to the detriment of the impressionable.

Thinking beyond sports, it seems that the more severe the conflict, the less likely a true victor is to emerge. In hockey, we have come to expect identifiable winners and losers. In fact, since the introduction of the shoot-out, each contest in the NHL can only result in win and lose outcomes. And so, as hockey fans turn desperate for the thrill of competition, we find ourselves taking sides in a dispute about dollars rather than goals, and aligning ourselves with negotiators in a similarly vicarious sense to how we once followed the sport.

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Coach’s Theatre

Posted by Dustin Parkes under Editorial on Nov 22, 2012

The role of the fool is an ancient one. While in more recent years the title has come to mean someone acting unwisely or in a silly manner, it used to refer to the court jester or a member of an aristocratic house charged with both amusing and criticizing their master or mistress. Perhaps this function of the past is best described by a single anecdote (or likely more accurately, legend): At a time when speaking out of turn was punishable by all manners of awfulness, Queen Elizabeth is said to have once chastised a fool for not being harsh enough in his denigrations of her.

Yes, one imagines that Jeffrey Ross would have done especially well in the Elizabethan era. However, the fool was more than merely an insult comic. While it may be exaggerated in modern retellings, the fool was able to speak the harsh truth at a time when no one else could. While their speech was protected by decree, they still had to tread carefully between critical amusement and snide comments that would result in whippings.

In the Sixteenth Century, distinctions were made between “natural” fools – those who were quite literally insane – and “licensed” fools – those who played the part for the sake of privileged employment. I am not sure which would better describe Canadian hockey icon Don Cherry, but I am certain that, in the most classical sense of the word, he is a fool.

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