Franchise

The 2005-06 NHL season has seen quite a run of jersey retirements: Paul Coffey’s #77 in Edmonton, Mark Messier’s #11 in New York, and this week Scott Stevens’s #4 in New Jersey. But for Carolina Hurricanes fans, none surpassed Saturday night’s celebration of Ron Francis Night at the RBC Center in Raleigh. His #10 was raised to the rafters, the franchise’s first official jersey retirement in Carolina, and it was fitting that this milestone honor a man three cities called “Ronnie Franchise.”

Videos in the ceremony showed highlights from his whole career, but most of the program focused on his time with Carolina from 1998 through March 2004. Francis thanked Canes owner Peter Karmanos and general manager Jim Rutherford for offering him a multiyear contract at age 35 to return to his home franchise, spoke of old teammates, coaches and team staff that helped him on his journey, then addressed the fans. He talked about realizing the passion local residents brought to their sports, the wonder of seeing Duke, Carolina and State fans uniting behind one team, and the new heights of tailgating the Caniacs brought to the NHL during the 2002 Stanley Cup Finals run. The common thread through Francis’s entire speech, though, was deflected glory. People talk about how hockey players often seem more humble, more human, than other professional athletes; Francis epitomized that throughout his speech, a player never completely comfortable with the spotlight instead passing the accolades on to everyone around him.

Camera pans through the crowd showed several groups of Whaler- and Penguin-jerseyed fans there for the tribute. As a Caniac who still has a battered white 1995-96 Whaler jersey in his closet, I’m glad the Hartford folks in particular came down, but as a hockey fan, I felt bad for them having to endure the accolades for Carolina in general and Karmanos in particular. I don’t believe the fans of North Carolina deserve the enmity they receive from disaffected ex-Hartford followers (especially much of the old hockey staff at ESPN), but I can understand the Whaler fans’ anger, and their hatred of Karmanos is certainly fair.

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More Randomness!

The Fill BTN With Random Stuff ‘06 campaign continues this week, as we again wander North America through the text of a blog.

Up in the True North, Canadians elected a Conservative government for the first time since 1993 on Monday. Prime Minister-designate Stephen Harper immediately provoked a minor spat with the USA by announcing plans to outfit three new naval icebreakers for Arctic duty; Canada claims sovereignty between the lines of longitude of its northernmost points of land all the way up to the North Pole, a claim generally ignored by everyone else on the planet; the Arctic was a submariners’ playground throughout the Cold War, and various countries have continued to sail below the icepack since. For my money, this is, as usual for Canada, a domestic political play thinly disguised as a foreign-policy dispute. Firing off a few small-caliber shots at America never hurt a Canadian pol, and Harper is in a tenuous position as the leader of a minority right-wing government that will have to work point-by-point coalitions with three opposing left-wing parties: the traditional rival Liberals who they forced out of power, the wacky near-socialist New Democrats, and the separatist Bloc Québécois. The Liberals in particular knocked Harper off in 2004 by trying to paint him as “George W. Bush-lite”, and cut into a once-big Tory lead this year the same way; being mildly irritating to us before he even gets into office is probably sound strategy. It’s vaguely disappointing, but Harper merits withholding judgement for now; if he can stay away from the spite that characterized Canadian Liberal governments’ transborder relations, he’ll be a major upgrade for both countries.

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Shootaround

Crossing my mind as I watch Canes-Isles:

• Marcus is gone, thankfully. May we never speak his name again.
• Nobody saw it but Center Ice subscribers, but the Flyers-Hurricanes game on Tuesday was a spectacular show, and a good example of how physicality is still part of hockey under the new rules, no matter what Steve Yzerman says. Philadelphia’s Michal Handzus was physically dominant at both ends of the ice for much of the game, the game wasn’t overburdened with penalty calls, and yet the clear violations were whistled where they weren’t before this season. By the way, I was thinking this even before the Canes lit the lamp twice in the third to tie it, then eked out the shootout win for their eighth straight victory. Sorry, Eric, but we’re definitely keeping Coach Laviolette.
• Jody points today to a very solid article out of City Journal discussing the “marriage gap”: the vast gap in out-of-wedlock birth rates between college-educated women and women who did not finish post-high-school education.
The piece defies short excerpting, so read the whole thing.

Thoughts? What’s on your mind?

Reputation

The Daily Press’s David Teel continued his strong work on the Gator Bowl and Marcus Vick stomping incident Wednesday by tracking down the Gator Bowl’s head referee, Steve Usecheck of the Big 12 Conference, and getting his comments on Tech’s behavior. His words confirmed a couple of thoughts I had already. From the CBS Sportsline version of the article (which wasn’t edited for length like the DP’s own copy):

“We missed [Vick’s stomp], and I’m sorry we did,” Usecheck told the Newport News Daily Press from his Colorado home. “The TV, everybody saw it but us. I wish we had the opportunity to talk to (Vick) because that was complete (expletive). You bet I would have thrown his ass out.”

Usecheck said he has not seen a replay of the Vick incident but that purposely stomping a defenseless opponent warrants ejection. […]

“I was really disappointed,” Usecheck said. “We don’t see football like that (in the Big 12). Those kids were just completely out of control. Louisville wasn’t as bad. Virginia Tech was brutal.”

Usecheck ejected Hokies All-America cornerback Jimmy Williams in the first quarter for swinging his arm at head linesman Al Green. Williams was jawing with Louisville’s Amobi Okoye, and Green grabbed Williams to separate the two.

“He never hit the official but he swung at him twice,” Usecheck said of Williams, a senior from Bethel High.

First off, Usecheck can be as disgusted as he wants at Vick’s behavior. Lord knows I am. But for him to use two expletives in the same sentence describing the play, to a newspaper reporter, is grossly unprofessional — especially if he still hasn’t seen a replay. For that matter, I can’t recall the last time I saw an official quoted in news media after a game at all — but he wouldn’t care about any rules of that sort, as he’s retiring. Either way, if you’re going to preach about staying under control, displaying your own temper is a curious way to do it. Worth noting: back in the Big 12, Nebraska fans have quite the low opinion of Usecheck.

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Won, and Lost

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?
     (Mark 8:36, KJV)

JACKSONVILLE — I’m tired of this. I’m tired of walking out of a stadium, or turning off the television, and trying to figure out how to defend the indefensible rather than celebrating a hard-won team victory. I’m tired of the adulation, the array of jerseys in Dick’s, and the kid gloves from the coaching staff. Most of all, I’m tired of being embarrassed by someone wearing our colors and our logo.

We should be talking about yesterday’s Virginia Tech win over a tough Louisville team. We should be praising Cedric Humes’s 113 yards and a touchdown and the Hokie offense’s zero-turnover performance. We should be congratulating junior offensive lineman Brandon Frye, who replaced injured senior Jimmy Martin and stood his ground against Louisville’s national defensive player of the year Elvis Dumervil, and freshman corner Brandon Flowers, who stood in for Jimmy Williams after a completely meritless ejection and made it seamless for the Hokie defense. They earned the ink.

Instead, we’re talking about Marcus again. In the second quarter, he got up from a Dumervil tackle after a nine-yard gain, took a quick look around to see if any officials were watching, then stomped on the back of Dumervil’s leg. It was a completely classless act, easily akin to UVa’s Brad Butler’s October cheap shot on BC’s Matthias Kiwanuka. Vick compounded his error postgame by lying that it was accidental and about apologizing to Dumervil: Frank Beamer sent him over to the Louisville locker room to do so; Vick then told reporters Dumervil “definitely” accepted his apology, but Dumervil and Louisville coach Bobby Petrino both said they never saw him.

Two Virginia-based writers, the (Newport News) Daily Press’s David Teel and the Roanoke Times’s Aaron McFarling, had good columns out early ripping Vick and pretty much everyone on the coaching staff but Vick’s position coach Kevin Rogers, who had the guts to call the play what it was:

“There’s no place for it in the game. It hurts him. It hurts our program, and it’s frankly just embarrassing.”

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