It’s Official: No One Ever Retires In Hockey

Slava Fetisov, yo. He’s 51.

As a bonus, the TSN quotes include the gem of a phrase “Personally I take off before him a hat….Sorry for my bad English”

Great Moments In Bad Interviews

“There were four refs on the ice and they didn’t call anything”- Georges Laraque, on an incident in which collided knee-on-knee with Niklas Kronwall

“It was a pure accident, that’s why they called it tripping”- Laraque, same interview, about the same incident.

HAHAHAHAHAHA….

Mike Komisarek is the worst defenseman in the league. That is all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjrtLe7uSiw&feature=player_embedded

Waaaaaat

Theo Fleury in training camp with Calgary. 41 years old, hasn’t played in the NHL in 6 years. I’d say it’s a courtesy invite, but is it really courteous to let him do this?

I Hate This League

The Coyotes suck, plan to continue doing so.

God I hate the NHL sometimes. Listen: Jim may be bald and silly, but he actually CARES ABOUT HOCKEY. He has a bizarre and strange plan to put a HOCKEY TEAM in a place where HOCKEY FANS like to spend money on watching PROFESSIONAL HOCKEY. I recognize this challenges the NHL’s traditional business plan and may force them to deal with the strange tribe of heathens known as “Canadians”, but it has the twin virtues of being a good idea and never having been tried before under the current commissioner. Maybe perchance it should be looked into. But no, wait, Jerry fuckin’ Reinsdorf, one of the most loathed owners on this continent, has made an offer of $64 million less to keep the team in a money losing location where ice is considered the work of the devil, so hold up! And the phone call goes out to Gary Bettman at his office inside of Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment headquarters- give us a quote, something we can use to deflate speculation that this choice was made to further your insane little megalomonomaniacal dream of placing hockey franchises in places where God did not intent hockey to be played.

“This had nothing whatsoever to do with the relocation issue,” Bettman said “All that was considered was the suitability of the applicants of the owners.”"

A message to Gary Bettman: listen, homunculus, no one on the planet earth is buying this horseshit. We know it’s personal between you and Balsillie. We know you hate Canada and everything about its culture and the way that culture continues to resist your insane attempts to turn the NHL into NBA Jr. We know you disappeared up the ass of the Maple Leafs over a decade ago and this is an attempt to protect their market, despite there being multiple teams in equal-sized or much smaller market regions for hockey (Islanders/Rangers/Devils, Ducks/Kings, etc.). We know your entire professional life is staked on breaking the union and trying to establish hockey in markets which have long since rendered an en masse “meh” as their response to the sport, because if that doesn’t work out your legacy will be idiotic overexpansion and the collapse of quality of play. We know you regret going through life looking and sounding like Peter Lorre’s disreputable uncle. We know what you did last summer. That’s why we boo your every public appearance, you creepy little gnome.

More than anything else, we know this: hockey has not and will not work in some locations, the same way the NFL means the square root of fuck-all in Europe, the NBA can’t get traction in Canada, America rarely if ever knows what’s happening in soccer, Mexico is only now learning about MMA, baseball is viewed as a weird American perversion outside of this hemisphere, etc. etc. and so on. That’s ok; no sport will appeal to all people and all cultures in all places and all times. But when a sport is like hockey and draws 90% of its talent either from Europe or from a country of only 33 million people and yet spends huge amounts of time either pissing off or pissing on those markets and fans in order to chase the dream of appealing to a region of another country which manifestly doesn’t give a honk about the game and never has, something has gone very wrong. It’s gone even wronger when the people in charge of that sport keep up the same plan for 18 FUCKING YEARS starting with the addition of San Jose in 1991, and fail mercilessly at it from the standpoint of everything except nominal franchise valuations. You could subtract 5 or more teams from the NHL tomorrow and do nothing but help the quality of play and the overall tenor of fan interest: Columbus, Nashville, Phoenix, Atlanta, Florida, and you can add to the list yourself. Instead what you’ve got now is a league where no one cares about half the teams, you need to buy the Center Ice package to have any idea what’s happening in the other conference, there’s half as many actual NHL-quality players as there should be or were 15 years ago per team, and the whole league is possessed by a sense of pointlessness and ennui as mediocre teams compile unreadable records in front of listless fanbases in half-empty buildings. Fuck.

I love this sport and I hate this fucking league and the smirking cretins who run it.

(I’m good for about one of these rants a year; may as well get it out of the way now before Gaborik and Captain Dickhead crush my spirit this season)

NHL Draft

I’m really not the guy to provide any analysis of this on the merits, so I won’t try- I will, however, say something about the TV presentation. And that something is, for however long these two leagues may exist, the NHL needs to never again hold their draft the day after the NBA holds theirs because the NHL looks like a total fucking clown show in comparison. Announcers who garble simple words or stumble over them, or else throw out inexplicable phrases (“I punched you in the pants a million times!!!”); ambling, rambling presentation which takes forever to get to the point; horrifically bad attempts from everyone involved to speak French; the commissioner coming out to an enormous chorus of boos from the most passionate hockey fans, a day after David Stern received cheers from the NBA’s most passionate; the apparent need for picks to be made from the stage by approximately 37 people from each franchise including in one case the owner’s child, each of whom must walk up in single file, and who must thank the host city for its hospitality and congratulate the Penguins; the terrible, terrible visual quality of the telecast and the ugly, half-decorated arena set-up; the tendency to focus on (sorry, it’s true) the ugliest fans they could find in the crowd. The whole experience makes the league look like a third rate organization, closer to arena football than any of the other big time sports in North America.

The worst part is, nearly all of these things are controllable and correctable. I mean, you can’t do much about the fact that your draftees all look like 12 year olds and are mostly visibly terrified by the process, and at this point Gary Bettman could cure cancer while juggling supermodels on stage and still get booed, but the basic telecast issues are easily fixable. The NBA and NFL have figured this out (the MLB draft is different for various reasons) and thus managed to build their draft into a television spectacle which creates media interest, builds stars out of the draftees, and generally is an easy positive PR bonus for the league and many of its teams every year- it’s even specially targeted to do so for the teams which suck the most and thus need the most help. The NHL draft still feels like it’s stuck in the 80’s somewhere, like an off-camera event targeted to whatever city they happen to hold it in and which someone accidentally pointed a camera at. There’s no urgency to move through the process, no strong focus on who the players are and what they bring to the table, the fans don’t give a shit unless they’re cheering the home team or booing Toronto or Bettman, and the quality of the announcers- probably the key part of one of these shows- is just abysmal. I’m actually sitting here missing Mark Jackson and (I’m serious) finding an all-new appreciation for how good Stuart Scott is in his role on the NBA’s show. Watching the TSN guys is like watching an NBA draft broadcast by nothing but Andy Katzes and Dick Vitales, all useless or commonplace observations pitched a half-tone beneath hysteria. They honestly come off as unlikeable and annoying human beings, which in all likelihood they’re really not. But on this show….

Oh and incidentally, Chris Pronger to the Flyers? Has any trade in the history of this league been more inevitable?

And since I’m mean, here’s a running list of terrible turns of phrase from tonight’s show. No clue who said what, they may as well all be the same guy. Quotes are approximate, and anything that’s not a word is due to one of the announce crew having incredible difficulties with language all night.

“Drah-ah-ah-ah-muh”

“I punched you in the pants a million times!!!”

“Not that it wouldn’t have meant more to the other two, but it meant more to John Tavares”

“Do we have a trade to talk about? I don’t believe so.”

“Here’s Brian Burke and Bob Gainey discussing the Vincent Lecavelier Rumors….”
(Burke) “The rumor is he’s going to you or the Islanders”
(Gainey) “Yup.”

“Colorado, I’m not trying to crush your party but this kid’s good.”

“Get your skates sharpened at Snarklseysparmpsing”

“You wanna talk about character?” (highlight of the player boarding someone head-first)

(An inane, rambling bilingual wharrgarble of a tribute to Luc Robitaille from the stage, which had nothing to do with the draft)

“Drumitalbullfinzhers”

About a Swedish draftee:
(Announcer 1) “He’s an elite, elite athlete”
(Announcer 2) “He didn’t play in the Swedish Elite League”

“Ekman-Larsson is the first European to go in the draft, we should make that point” (He was pick #5, another Swede went #2)

All of these were from the first five picks. No Buys.

Question

Did he tell them to keep their heads up on the ice?

Dare to Be Better Than You Are

This will hopefully be the only time we do this.

I’m writing a quick rebuttal to Sean’s response to my post, as I feel what I actually wrote was severely misrepresented.

- I have not said All Arsenal Supporters Are…anything. Doing so would be precisely opposed to the point I was trying to make, and in fact I went out of my way to name several blogs and their readers who I feel have acted well in this instance. The trouble is that they represent either lesser read blogs, or minority trends in the general current of fandom. Some, such as ANR, are more often brought up to be mocked and dismissed than for any other reason.

- My point about the mobbishness of Arsenal supporters draws on two facts.

1) The major Arsenal blogs are, with the exception of Le Grove, mostly interlinked; they are also in direct contact on and off with people who work for the club, as is clear in their writing. Thus, in some respect (especially when they begin to be quoted in the press as representative Arsenal fans) they represent the club and are held up by the club as an, possibly the, important aspect of the way in which the club and the fans meet. They garner this attention because they represent the largest organized factions of fans, and to a degree they represent those fans because of the attention they receive from the media and the club itself. It’s fair to say on that basis that, as noted above, while ALL fans cannot be grouped together in any way, the LARGEST ORGANIZED FACTIONS of fans are clearly identifiable. And yes, those people are the ones I’m largely speaking about- that, combined with things like the wildly variable crowd reactions in the stadium. Vox vulgaris, vox fanbase.

2) All of this is new with Arsenal fans. As I specifically stated in my post, it is NOT new for football fans; as I said, it’s more or less what I’d expect out of Madrid fans. What makes it new is the unhinged, violently emotional quality of it, plus the fact that it’s being lead by specific people who have great influence on the fanbase, and who derive that influence partly by being tacitly endorsed by the club itself. Those two factors were not in place, say, five years ago. Thus in my estimation there’s been a major swing just this year as fans have grown frustrated with the team and look to take out that anger on whatever target is handy, preferably an external one. Compare, for example, the treatment of Alexander Hleb and Jose Reyes (or Julio Baptista) when each of them left the club; neither did much of anything at Arsenal and left under a cloud in dubious circumstances, but only the former gets called a cunt, constantly, and abused in the most vicious and personal terms. That doesn’t mean these fans are about to be Roman ultras (a charge I never made); it does mean that I don’t know where they’re going to be this time next season- and neither, really, does anyone else. The mood of Arsenal fans, and probably how low some are willing to sink, ultimately will depend on results. The mindset, however, is increasingly coming to resemble the worst of football fans, and it’s very telling how both evaluation of and basic decency towards a player can now alter so radically based on which shirt he’s in. I’m hardly the only one to notice this: any blog you choose will have one or two people complaining about “the new fans” on it in the comments section; and whether the change is due to new fans or not, the recognition of a change having taken place is widespread.

- And the larger point about tribalism: it’s disrespectful and wrong to wholly identify tribalism with passion. It demeans someone who strives to achieve without the goad of hatred for another, who can give their best and care whole-heartedly without needing to see an enemy brought low in the process. Tribalism endorses the worst in human nature, the pathetic sad and disgraceful leftovers of evolution which fill us with hate and fear at things which are new or different. Playing with it and indulging it just a little is like having just a little heroin, except that the person you so endanger may not just be yourself. Worse than that, it doesn’t even work to diffuse anger or hatred safely; if anything it encourages those feelings, which is of no little moment to understanding the importance of this. If you hate someone today just a little because he’s got the wrong shirt on, just for a few hours…what will you be ready to hate tomorrow? What are you allowing yourself to become? Pitch invasions and riots aren’t the alternative- they’re where this road is leading, where it’s ended up so many times in the past. Better to encourage people to use the more honorable parts of their nature, to demonstrate the passion without hate of which humans are equally capable. For my part, I would be better than the most base of my instincts.

I have a personal stake in this. Sean and I will never see eye to eye on this issue and there’s many reasons for that, but one of the really key ones is that I’m not straight. I consider it a minor detail about myself, personally, but this is one of those situations where, along with having been raised in and around a political activist environment, it makes all the difference. This is not a theoretical discussion for me; the fear and the danger of being part of the wrong tribe in someone’s opinion is part of my life, and so the understanding of that part of human nature is a necessity. It took me probably 12 years from when I first realized I was at all attracted to men to admit it to anyone other than myself, and when I did it was because I’d simply hit a point of misery so profound that I didn’t care what anyone thought or what the consequences were anymore. I’ve only written the words down twice in public, of which this is the second occasion. In 4 years of college I mentioned it exactly once, which was coincidentally the same number of times I was insulted for my lack of religious beliefs by a professor whose class I was taking- different tribe, I suppose. Since then, only my family and a few close friends know of it; because of course, when I go out socially and hear the word “fag” thrown around 15 times in half an hour, it’s just easier to pretend and pass as part of someone else’s tribe. That does make me a coward, but it also makes me wise enough now to know what tribalism means in practice for those without custom or numbers to shield them.

There was one exception to my silence about sexuality: I had a good friend many years ago who I’d known forever, and to whom I mentioned it in passing once. I’ve not spoken to him in at least 8 years now. Perhaps I wasn’t part of his tribe anymore.

What is the alternative, then? When I tune in to watch a sporting event or go to an arena, I go to see skill, professionalism, technique, athleticism; people pulling together as a team and striving to achieve a goal as a unit, or else the greatness of the truly superior individual athlete who describes in the arc of a career the heights to which humanity may aspire. I want to find out what works in a sport, why, and what that tells us about human nature and the world beyond the arena walls and the roar of the crowd. I do not go in order to hate, say, New Jersey Devils fans and revel in the injury to Martin Brodeur, even though he and they are among the bitterest and most long-standing of local rivals. Personally I consider it a tragedy when arguably the greatest goaltender ever is out- both because greatness impaired is always a small tragedy, and because those occasions when the Rangers have beaten him when he was at his best are among my favorite sports memories (“Matteau! Matteau! Matteau!”) precisely because they beat the absolute best. I can’t hate the Devils (or Manchester United, or the Celtics, etc.)- I respect and admire them. If I didn’t, why would beating them mean anything? Compare this to the reaction to Phil Brown from some Arsenal fans: if they truly believe he’s as much of a rotten, low-account son of a bitch as they say he is, a liar and a cheat, why be so incensed about anything he says? What value could it have? But then the value to them is solipsistic, and lies in what it can be used for- it can be hated, and he can be a figure to focus all that rage on. A good two minutes’ worth you might say, if the mood struck you.

When I root for my team, I root because they represent the city of my birth, or my father’s birth in the case of Frankfurt, or because they’re my national team (or the German national team who I’ve adopted; and yes, your joke about the guy who likes men rooting for Mannschaft goes here), and because I want to see them do well and achieve. There may be opposing teams or groups of fans which I find distasteful (say, internet MMA fans), but it’s not because they’re different, or they have the wrong shirts on; it’s because, in my estimation, they merit it through ill conduct or general foolishness. If the quality of posts on Sherdog increased 100% tomorrow, I’d be happy to praise them- it’d be more good writing to read and an asset to the sport, and I derive no emotional satisfaction out of thinking they’re wrong and misguided. For the same reason, you’ll see me more than once have little good to say about a player for a team I support- Sean “Captain Dickhead” Avery’s a good example- if I feel they merit it for conduct, but also show little interest in obsessing about and reveling in the misfortunes of such players when they’ve moved on. I can’t recall having written anything in months about Zach Randolph, Jason Kidd, Stephon Marbury’s .304 FG%, etc. all of whom left teams I support under testy circumstances. Intellectual honesty, sportsmanship and respect for the self and others demand no less. Hate and schadenfreude leave me unmoved, not because I’m any better than average, but because I make a conscious effort to rise above the tribal instinct. What I do, so too may you, and be a better man for it.

In the end I’m not accusing Arsenal fans of being violent, or evil, or totalitarian, or anything on that line. I am saying that they’re coming to increasingly embrace tribalism, which is probably the most destructive of human instincts, and that to understand why it is so requires you to walk for a while in the shoes of those targeted by it. The whims and attitudes of a football fanbase may be the most petty of instances of this, but it still matters; and all the more so when there are other and better ways of being a fan- ways that, in some small measure, may ennoble the spirit instead of dragging it down into the muck. Football is the world’s game, touching the lives of billions of people on every continent. Better, then, that those with some influence and standing in the game try to make it an influence for good, rather than a license to be squalid. Imagine if that were the Arsenal Way.

Gary Bettman, Ladies and Gentlemen

Shorter Bettman: my players are work-shy liars who must be forced by edict to show up for the all-star game.

That’s advertising, baby.

Separated at Birth

Mats Sundin

~~~~~~~~~~~

Mats Sundin?