O O Ø O O O O
Apathetic Situation
I have a secret. It’s scandalous. I’m going to share it with you. I don’t think the NHL is worth watching anymore. And yes, I am Canadian.
The NHL is nothing like it used to be, and that’s not exactly good news.
I used to eat, drink, and sleep the game of hockey. I’ve played the game in some kind of organized fashion for the better part of 27 years. I was a huge Montreal fan in the seventies, switching my allegiance to the Leafs when Serge Savard took the helm of the Canadiens and started to drive them into the ground. I watched HNIC religiously, and when the Leafs were on Global, nothing would keep me from the tube that night. When I was just starting out in the working world and making next to nothing, I blew most of my disposable income on a pair of quarter season tickets for the Senators-and oh-my-god did they suck. I loved the game.
The NHL is successful. The NHL has a couple of decent TV contracts (still nothing full-season long with a major network, unless you count ESPN and TSN as major networks). The NHL can now say people in the States know who they are. The NHL is making tidy sums of money for most of its owners, agents, and players while making the game generally inaccessible to its most loyal fan base. The NHL is nothing like it used to be, and that’s not exactly good news.
Something happened between the end of the eighties and now. The owners took a lesson from baseball. The players got greedy (and rich). “The Trade” happened. The league expanded. The talent pool diluted. The concept of playing with one team for your life disappeared. Many of (what I consider to be) the greats retired. The trap, stickwork, clutch-and-grab tactics, and ridiculously over-sized goalie equipment turned the wide-open offense and goal scoring of the eighties into a quagmire that rivals the 101 at rush hour.
The players got greedy (and rich)
The game has been turned from one of skating, shooting, and playmaking to one of dump-and-chase, gooning it up, and special teams. The stickwork is unbelievable, and so is the inconsistency of the refereeing, even with the new and improved officiating policies. How many sports do you know where all rules are ignored in the final three minutes? Why isn’t a goaltender playing the puck outside his crease fair game? He wants to play, let him play, but make him understand there are risks. It sucks. But I digress.
There’s been a lot of talk of late here in Ottawa as to why the Senators are doing so poorly. Despite making the playoffs the most out of any Canadian team in the last few years, they have the worst season ticket base (8,259 according to the big sign out front of the Palladium) in the country, and possibly the league (I didn’t research that bit, sue me). There’s a multi-part story running in the local rag by a very fine writer which tries to put a reason to this. He attributes things like the high cost of the games, the high-tech meltdown, government not being able to buy the tickets (for those of you who don’t know, high-tech and the federal gov’t are the two big employers in town), the plentiful number of things to do here for free, and other things.
Why should I care if hockey dies here...It’s simple, I won’t.
I think it’s much simpler than that. I think most folks just can’t bring themselves to care as much as they used to. We loved the game more than anything. The people running it and playing it now don’t, or at least they don’t show that they do through their actions. Why would I want to support anything like that? Why should I care if hockey dies here if, for me to see a game on anything other than TV, I have to shell out $400 for two people to see 60 minutes of a bunch of folks getting paid in US bucks (who would leave at the drop of a hat for a better salary) skate around? It’s simple, I won’t.
Hockey meant a lot to me. Actually, it still does, but my love for the game is me playing it, or watching junior games where the passion is still there. NHL hockey meant a lot to me in the past, now it’s just a bunch of numbers that helps me win in my pool. I don’t care who wins the Stanley Cup, so long as the players in my pool perform and let me beat up on Stevo.
How sad that it’s been reduced to that.
Tuesday, October 29, 2002
PD DLXXI