McKenzie on the CBA

TSN's Bob McKenzie considers the CBA negotiations.  Although I disagree with his conclusions, it is a pretty good detailed survey of the situation today as we head into the lockout.  I agree with his assessments of both the league's and the PA's relative offers: they both totally miss the point.

Unrelated: The last time we had a strike, poker made its big splash into our collective attentions.  While poker has definitely had its last gasp as a "mainstream" "sport", I wonder if something else interesting will make its appearance in the gap that hockey will leave.

Colloquialisms

I hate to go all grammar nazi on you, but dammit:

Perhaps most importantly, he's been nominated five times and won once, giving him the history that voters sometimes expect from winners. He's "paid his due," so to speak.

No, it isn't so to speak. You would speak: "paid his dues".

Cue the oxford dictionary: Phrases: pay one's dues

• fulfill one’s obligations: he had paid his dues to society for his previous convictions
• experience difficulties before achieving success: this drummer has paid his dues with the best

You'd say you'd paid him his due if you wanted to use the singular; but that means a payment to him, not from.

I know, it is hilarious that this bugs me, of all people, but it does.

How To Tell It Is Summer

Slow days make for silly hockey article titles:

Now while they both might be true, their juxtaposition is rather amusing to me.

A Meditation On Famdom

Backhand Shelf meditates on hockey fandom in Why We Do The Things We Do:

The most common answer is to speak of one’s fanaticism with metaphors of obsession, addiction, or disease, as though one has been tragically afflicted with this loyalty against one’s will. We disingenuously pretend as though we just can’t quit.

We can. We just don’t want to.

Brilliant.

An American Explains Hockey (pretty well)

Apropos of nothing, and because it is summer and there's almost nothing better to post, here is Micheal Lopp explaining why hockey is a sport:

Hockey is a sport on the clock and that clock is relentless. Look away and you might miss the second that changes the course of the entire game.

Preaching to the choir here, but a brilliant defense.

Fear of numbers

Watching the game last night, and in the first intermission Dave Hodge gets on about how the salary cap is bad for hockey. He had a litany of complaints, including "trades don't happen", "for hockey news all you hear about is cap impact", "millionare players getting sent down to the AHL", amongst others.

My favorite? In his gripes about how the salary cap is supposed to save money, he says that the cap "just ends up requiring capologists, who cost money..."

Yeah seriously, when we are talking about owners who want to sign stars to obscene contracts for millions of dollars per year, complaining about having to pay some guy on staff what, $80K to $120K per year is going to be a franchise-breaker?

I think Mr. Hodge is an old-school hockey guy, probably one who resents the fact that modern hockey management includes math that is more complicated than "one goal plus one goal equals... uhm... oh look, the scoreboard has been updated for me. Two goals!"

The bottom line is that the cap is good for the NHL. The last lockout was triggered by the owners who had made commitments for all these high-value contracts and now wanted out of them because the money to pay them just wasn't there. The owners can't be trusted with the health of their franchises. By putting a cap in place that is at least reachable by most of the league's revenues it ensures that the franchise ownership picture is going to be a lot more stable.

Yes there are always going to be teams that can't generate the revenues to reach these levels, but does anyone seriously think that the financial or ownership situations in Nashville or Phoenix would be helped in ANY way by letting the New Jersey Devils pay Kovalchuck $15 million per year? Like... ANY way.

Removing the brakes on player spending will just let stupid owners dig their own holes again. And the complexity in the rules is there to balance flexibility for the real world while simultaneously preventing stupid owners from digging their own holes while circumventing the intent of the cap.

Reducing the trading activity certainly makes the media dig harder for something to talk about, but really, why is having a mostly-static roster bad for the local fans? Besides, Brian Burke's dumping of a third of his roster last year shows that if you are a motivated seller you can still get deals done.

Whether or not the cap is good for hockey is another issue, although without a healthy NHL, this hypothetical hockey would remain nothing more than a fantasy.

Personally I think the cap is good for hockey, in that it prevents teams which have (or think they have) deep financial pockets from assembling high-cost superstar dream teams and dominating the league. Here, everyone has the same starting field and over time this will lead to different teams being good at different times.

The cap even promotes younger talent, as the "middle class" hockey player is the one who is going to get squeezed out. Teams will keep a few high-priced stars, and balance the books with younger, cheaper players. Players who are "better" than the younger ones, but not superstars, will have to be careful when negotiating their contracts as they could price themselves out of a job, especially with hot youngsters with potential development upside waiting to take their place for a fraction of the cost.

But I don't feel sorry even for those players squeezed out or sent down to the AHL. More guys getting a briefer chance means sharing the wealth around. It is a net gain.

So I think that those old guys, the hockey purists, are just going to have to live with the cap. Just like they live with 4-on-4 overtime, the shoot-out, the trapezoid, and all those other non-purist rules that the NHL has.

Keep the cap.

Nightmare Scenario

Good news, everyone! The Ottawa Senators are the butt of a joke that Time Magazine made!

Of course, an unsexy World Series (think San Diego Padres-Texas Rangers) or hockey Finals matchup (Edmonton Oilers-Ottawa Senators!) could quickly halt some of this momentum.

Now traditionally I've said the league's nightmare scenario is an Ottawa-Vancouver final, but hey, thanks for the mention.

Mendez On Spezza

Sportsnet's Ian Mendez takes the Ottawa Media to the woodshed for their treatment of Jason Spezza.

The Blind Leading The Blank

SenShot talkes about Bruce Garrioch. This moved me to write this comment in reply:

I think you give Boo Boo too much credit. History has shown that there's no place in the news, sports news especially, for fair, reasoned, balanced discussion. It is all about shock value and scooping the opposition. The mere fact that you pay attention to him means that at some level his crazy antics are working. Me? I read about what he's up to when you or other 'bloggers write about him.

Admit it, if Boo Boo had been right about the Kings, it wouldn't have mattered that he'd pulled it out of his ass, he'd have looked fucking brilliant.

I think the fundamental problem is that Ottawa sports fans in general are bandwagonists -- they are there when the times are good, and absent when the times are not so good (see also the CFL and the Ottawa Lynx). The problem is that bandwagonists are also lazy fans, they look for the easy answer (Hey! That centerman keeps doing those no-look drop-giveaways!) and not the hard ones (Hey!... um.)

This is why goalies get run out of town. Everyone blames the guy in the crease, but the five guys on the ice (and/or in the penalty box as the case may be) gets a free pass for some reason. I don't think Gerber, Emery, or LeClaire were as bad as the guys in front of them made them look. (Yeah, LeClaire isn't gone yet, but if Spezza goes or July 1 passes... well I think he's next on the hit list, miracle in game 5 not withstanding.)

For a bandwagonist, sports are supposed to be about fun. And for a professional sport that you pay money to go to, "fun" means "winning", and since the home team is the one there most of the time, the home team is the one you want to win. And let's face it, if you are a casual fan who's shelling out $100 to $200 a pop for a night out (plus the required 45 minutes in the parking lot), you want some FUN for your money.

Personally I have my doubts about this team. They were streaky, and only rarely showed the depth and discipline that are needed in the playoffs. There's something fundamental missing, and I'm starting to doubt that something can be found while the current core of the team (Alfredsson, Spezza... um?) are still going to be productive. And given that, wouldn't it be better to trade them now while they have value, in exchange for longer term assets that can be built up?

I don't want to say yes, but it's Murray's job to look at hard questions like this to see if there is an answer either way, no matter who in the media is banging whatever drum.

The media's job is the same as the politician, to figure out where their audience is going and to get out in front of them. And that's all Boo Boo and his ilk are doing.

Drive-by curb-stomping

Bitter Leaf Fan Page notes that before the media puts down blogger's records, they should examine their own a bit more closely.

Calling Out The Media

Down Goes Brown says:

Beyond that, both Berger and Garrioch are guilty of one of the most frustrating sins in modern journalism: thinking your audience is actually interested in journalism. We're not. We're interested in what you're covering, not the act of you covering it. And journalists everywhere, whether they cover sports or politics or entertainment, seem to forget this.

(emphasis mine)

Yeah.