Of course, after the Jets left, Winnipeg built a brand-new arena 3,000 seats short of NHL standard. And the biggest obstacles to Hamilton getting a team are the Toronto Maple Leafs and Buffalo Sabres (who draw a portion of their support from across the Niagara River). But let’s not let that stop us!
Surprisingly, I’m actually a little bit excited about the NHL All-Star Game this year (6 PM Sunday, Versus; SuperSkills competition 7 PM Saturday). Maybe it’s because, for once, the league is actually promoting a Carolina Hurricane — Eric Staal is growing into not just the face of the team that the Canes have expected him to be since Ron Francis left, but a recognizable star.
Or maybe it’s just because I bought an HDTV and Comcast finally gave us Versus and CSN in HD. Because hockey in HD is so awesome that I’ve voluntarily watched the Washington Capitals on several occasions in the past month, because they were available in HD and the Center Ice games were not. And that’s a big step.
Yet another chapter in the long dramatic history of the French-language Montreal sporting press neatly wrote itself this morning, when La Presse’s Stéphane Laporte posted a blog entry entitled “Daniel Brière a refusé d’être un héros”: in English, “Daniel Briere refused to be a hero.”
You see, Briere, French-speaking native of Gatineau, Quebec, and former co-captain of the Buffalo Sabres, had the audacity to sign a free-agent contract with a team that wasn’t the hallowed Club de hockey Canadien. For this sin against the pur laine, Laporte proceeded to all but insult Briere’s manhood in a screed bemoaning the recent lack of Quebecois stars on the Habs’ roster.
But why, Daniel, why?
“At the end of the line, I asked myself where I’d be the happiest, where I could best develop myself…”
You could have been happy in Montreal, Daniel. You could have developed yourself. Maurice Richard developed himself in Montreal. Jean Beliveau, Guy Lafleur and Patrick Roy too. They also became heroes of a people, something you can never be in the United States. […]
The pride of playing for your gang, for the people that speak your language, didn’t play into it. Nor the challenge. Nor the great hopes. Is there a great Quebecois player left who wants to raise these passions, not just to live a quiet life in the Philadelphia suburbs?
What Laporte doesn’t seem to understand is that it’s precisely this attitude, and those like it, that keep smart French-speaking stars like Briere from signing in Montreal.
This doesn’t need to be nearly as long as many analysts have made it.
The TSN.ca editorial sums up the situation nicely. Remember that the NHL owners’ group is possibly the most hidebound, self-destructive old-boy network in North America short of the current U.S. administration. They just elected Boston Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs chairman of the league’s Board of Governors, either the most- or second most-powerful position in the league depending on how much freedom you believe Gary Bettman has. This despite Jacobs’s systematic competitive destruction of his own franchise, ruining a franchise that should be the league’s flagship U.S. team. (Hockey’s natural homeland in the U.S. is the “Three M’s”: Massachussetts, Michigan, and Minnesota. Detroit as a city is dying, and the Twin Cities have no national cachet — sorry, Lileks. But Boston has the name, the climate, and the history. The Bruins should be a marquee franchise, and Jacobs certainly has the money to make them a winner. He just doesn’t care, and in a city with an outsized sense of pride, that’s a surefire route to irrelevance.)
And yet he’s the leader of the NHL ownership group. Why? Because he’s been in the league forever, and he’s completely non-threatening to his peers. His team makes money without exerting the slightest amount of effort. Sure, the serious local fans hate him, but hockey is secure enough in the city that the team can survive on corporate tickets and two-game-a-year casual spectators.
For the first time since 1995-96, the reigning Stanley Cup champion won’t make the playoffs, as the Carolina Hurricanes officially sealed their fate Tuesday night by losing at Tampa Bay. Cason gave a good roundup of the regular Cane-bloggers’ reactions Wednesday; over on TSB, the Canes board mods are doing their best to hold the recriminations to a single furious thread. In the back of everyone’s mind is casual fan reaction; after the Canes’ last Finals appearance in 2002, attendance picked up, but in the wake of a dead-last finish in 2002-03, ticket sales fell off drastically for the following year. The Canes’ landing isn’t as low this year, but comes from a much greater height.
Particularly redlining the Outrage-O-Meter was Toronto columnist Damien Cox’s ESPN.com article calling the Canes’ Cup run a fluke. The Acid Queen tears it down in her usual style, and hits dead-on in speculating that the reason for the fluke tag is the usual cultural/geographic chauvinism.It’s tough to reasonably call a six-month season plus two-month playoff stretch a fluke in any context shorter than seven to ten years, and certainly not on less than a year’s perspective. The accusation does, though, merit discussion of how both this year and last came about.
A dominant theme of last year’s analysis was how well the Canes geared themselves for the “new NHL.” Jim Rutherford earned Executive of the Year
honors in multiple polls for key acquisitions like Matt Cullen, Frantisek Kaberle and Ray Whitney that set the club on a more offensive path; Peter Laviolette’s emphasis on speed and firepower played perfectly into the new rules and enforcement regimen. In a change-filled season, the Canes got smarter faster than any other team in the league, then showed superior endurance and adaptability during their playoff run. Sports is a (mostly) open-source environment, though; successful methods become obvious quickly. Ineptitude doesn’t last unless ownership has no interest in winning, and Bill Wirtz aside, that’s mostly absent from the NHL. Even the Flyers canned Bobby Clarke earlier this year, despite that organization’s noted pride in and loyalty to its past (probably the greatest of any team outside the Original Six). The Canes had an advantage last year; once it was demonstrated, other teams cut the gap significantly during the 2006 off-season.
UVa graduation this weekend. What that means for me: I can get Jimmy Johns for lunch easily for the next 3 months.
21 minutes ago
Boss taking half-day off. Wish I could do the same. On the upside: I have drugs now.
39 minutes ago
3 out of 4 over the Mets? These orange slices taste GREAT!
about 20 hours ago
@tspn The article said the Rouse Co. sold it to a private group, and it's now shared between the combined UMC/Pres and Catholic churches.
11:30 AM May 15, 2008