NHL Stanley Cup finals: how come fewer Americans are watching?

Yes, it's that time of year again! We know it's spring because the Leafs are out... of the Stanley Cup playoffs. But the defending champions, the Florda Panthers, will face off in about nine hours against the Edmonton Oilers, last year's runner-ups... runners-up?... the team the Panthers beat last year. The competition will be fierce, yet fewer and fewer Americans will be watching. Our National Sports (as long as it's hockey) Editor, Poor Len Canayen, thinks he knows why.  

Tank youse, Hed! Even though la Sainte Flannelle didn't make it to the finals, Habs fans were pleased that they got through to the first round, and it was certainly no disgrace to lose to the Panthers. So I'm following the final series with interest, and am pleased to report that the quality of the games (as evidenced in Game 1) is excellent. 

The bad news is that statistics reported recently in Sports Business Journal, NHL viewership in the US of A was down 12% in the regular season, 25% in the first two rounds of the Stanley Cup playoffs and a whopping 31% in the Conference Finals. Wha hoppen?!

IMHO it's not the quality of the hockey being played, let alone the sport itself, that's to blame. The NHL is suffering from a flawed business proposition, advocated for decades now by (((Gary Bettmann))), the American lawyer who never laced on a pair of skates, yet has tenure as Commissioner (read: boss) of the National Hockey League.

From Day One, Mr Bitchman argued that the only way to grow the sport was to put teams in locales other than the US northeast. He encouraged the establishment of teams in such sun-drenched climes as Raleigh NC, Atlanta and Nowheresville AZ. 

The Atlanta franchise failed twice and was moved to Calgary. The Arizona team, which had neither a permanent home nor more than two die-hard fans (Sid and Doris Bonkers), was moved this year to Utah... Utah!... because Gary wouldn't cave to pressure to restore the Québec team which he'd moved to Colorado.

The Carolina Hurricanes, based in Raleigh, got into the playoffs and played to SRO crowds. The Florida Panthers generally attract good crowds, because their home base is in Sunrise, part of Fort Lauderdale, where the majority of residents are Canadians. 

But does anyone watch the southern teams on TV? Nah. If you lived in North Carolina or Florida or Dallas, would you want to be sitting indoors of a warm May or June evening watching hockey? Fuggedabahtit.

That NHL viewership is in decline has to do with the business of TV sports rather than the location of the teams or the quality of the games. Today's hockey telecasts are carefully produced to fill three hours of air time, even though actual playing time is just one hour!

To pad out the allotted time, each 20-minute period is interrupted by three -- count `em, 3 -- "TV timeouts", which are filled with commercials. Then there are the two 15- or 20-minute intermissions, in which a panel of progessional gabbers tell us what we've just seen. The same thing happens before we get to watch the singing of the national anthems the puck drops, and afterwards, if the game finishes early.

Whoever's responsible for these incredibly boring TV shows obviously doesn't understand the audience. Today's young people -- the millennials and gen-whatevers -- have the attention spans of mosquitoes. They won't, they can't sit still for a quarter-hour of dreck. When I saw "Virtual PK" Subban on ABC/ESPN, I nearly broke my wrist changing the channel. More about ESPN's  "colour(ed) commentator" later today.

Yes, there are still die-hard traditionalists in Canada and the northeastern states who still watch hockey on TV. But was aren't as tech savvy as the kids, and less likely to subscribe to streaming services and specialty channels like Amazon's Monday night hockey or the Bank of Nova Scotia's Wednesday night version. And we resent being asked to pay extra... or anything... for what used to be free!

Putting business and the almighty dollar -- the almighty US dollar, that is -- ahead of sport has just about killed hockey, at least on TV. Maybe that's not so bad. Hockey is best viewed (as well as played) outdoors, in sub-zero temperatures (the ice is faster, then) or at least in an old, unheated barn designated as the Soandso Memorial Arena. Hockey isn't just another "entertainment product". It's a sport!

Poor Len Canayen: the year the flu cancelled the Stanley Cup

Ed. here. With the National Hockey League forced to "pause" its season -- in the words of (((Gary Bettman))) -- and probably the playoffs too, we didn't expect our National Sports Editor, Poor Len Canayen, to contribute anything until whenever play resumes, probably in the fall. But here he is, with a timely story about the year the Stanley Cup was not awarded.

Today, April 5th, A.D. 2020, is the 101st anniversary of the death of Joe Hall. [Who he? Ed.] Tanks, Hed., for asking. Joe Hall played for the 1918-19 edition of Canada's team, the Montréal Canadiens. That season, only the second for the NHL (founded in 1917), the Habs had finished at the top of the standings, and in March of 1919 went to Seattle to play the Seattle Metropolitans, of the Pacific Coast Hockey Association, for the Stanley Cup.

The bleu-blanc-et-rouge were looking for revenge. They had won Lord Stanley's silverware, emblematic of North American (and therefore world) hockey supremacy, in 1916, defeating the Portland OR Rosebuds. (Seriously. That was the team's name.) But the Metropolitans thrashed the Canadiens the following year, bringing the trophy back to the west coast.

In 1918 the Toronto Arenas (or Blueshirts, depending on whose history you read) defeated the Vancouver Millionaires, [Where did they get these names? Ed.] in a series held in Toronto. This was back in the daze when transcontinental travel was a big deal, so the series alternated between the east and west, which meant that Seattle would be the venue for the 1919 rematch between the Metropolitans (no-one had dubbed them them "Mets") and the Canadiens.

Unfortunately, the "Spanish flu" got to Seattle before the Habs did. The epidemic is thought to have started at Camp Funston, in Kansas, in March 1918. From there it went with American doughboys to Europe, where it mutated in the trenches of the Great War, and spread around the world. The name "Spanish influenza" resulted from Spain's neutrality during WWI, which meant that Spanish newspapers, unlike those of the belligerent nations, did not censor news of the devastation caused by the disease.

The Spanish flu came back to North America wih wounded soldiers in the summer of 1918, and spread quickly and with deadly effect across the major cities of the USA and Canada. About 8500 Chicagoans died in September and October. In New York City, 851 people died in a single day. In Toronto, more than 1600 people died in the last three weeks of October. Montréal reported over 16,000 cases in that same month. In the East, the disease seemed to disappear by December of 2018, but in the West, Seattle suffered through its worst month of the epidemic.

The Canadiens arrived in Seattle on 18 March 1919. That spring's series had all the makings of a classic, but turned into a tragedy. Five games were hotly contested, with Seattle thrashing the Habs in games 1 and 3. Montréal prevailed in game 2. Game 4 was an epic, ending, after two 10-minute overtime periods, in a scoreless tie! Game 5 also went into overtime, with la Sainte Flannelle coming out on top.

So as April Fool's Day of 2019 dawned, the two te4ams were even, with two wins apiece and the 0-0 tie. A victory for either team in Game 6 would mean the Stanley Cup. Both teams appeared to be tiring, but it wasn't fatigue. It was the Spanish flu. On the morning of April 1st, George Kennedy, the Canadiens' owner/manager, and three players were confined to their hotel. Joe Hall and a teammate had fevers of 104 degrees and were taken to Providence Hospital.

The game that night was cancelled. There was some talk that Game 6 might be played later, perhaps in Vancouver BC, which had not been so hard hit, once the players recovered. But it was not to be. Joe Hall died in Sattle's Columbus Sanitarium on April 5th. Two teammates and the owner died later. No winner for 1919 was ever declared.

Footnote: More than half a century after the NHL started expanding in 1967, Seattle will finally get a team in the Big League, starting in the 2021-22 season, if such event ever eventuates. The name of the new franchise is as yet unknown, but it probably won't be the Metropolitans... or the Rosebuds.

Another footnote: For a long time it looked as if there couldn't possibly be another season in which there would be no Stanley Cup champion. Then along came Mr Bitchman, on whose watch the NHL saw the entire 2004-5 season cancelled. If the Cup is not awarded this year, as seems likely, it won't be his fault... this time... just the flu... again. But take heart, hockey fans. Hockey survived, the NHL survived, the Montréal Canadiens not only survived, but came back stronger than ever!

Mueller, (((Cohen)))... impeachment? So what?!

Agent 17 and others have asked me how I can still support President Trump in light (shade?) of all the dirt that's being dug up and passed around for examination -- much as one might inspect one's stool, looking for cancerous cells -- these days. Why (he says) have I not written about the latest rumours, suggestions and innuendos? Well frankly... MEGO -- My Eyes Glaze Over. All these hearings and investigations have been going on since the day Mr Trump was sworn in -- make that since 9 November 2016 -- and so far they have result in nothing. Nada. Bupkis. I saw: so what?

Take yesterday's appearance before the House Oversight Committee of convicted felon and admitted liar (((Michael Cohen))). Mr Cohen used to be Mr Trump's attorney. Everybody knows that if you want to succeed in business and/or politics, you have to have a smart Jewish lawyer -- like NHL Pres. (((Gary Bettman))) -- fighting your corner. His job was to do whatever it took to advance Mr Trump's projects, like building hotels or winning the presidensity. So what?

Mr Cohen called POTUS a liar (Takes one to know one!), a conman, a cheat and a racist. So what? Has there ever been a president who wasn't some or all of the above? Jefferson and Lincoln were racists! And then there was Slick Willy Clinton. So what?

Mr Cohen presented to the Committee what he characterized as damning evidence that President Trump had paid him some money -- two checks totalling $70,000, one signed by Junior and one by The Donald hisself. So what? It's not illegal, or even unusual, for someone to pay money to his lawyer. The sums in question might have been for legal fees... services rendered... for all we know. But Mr Cohen insists he was being reimbursed for "hush money" he had paid to Stormy Daniels, pictured. [See anything ya like, boyz? Ed.] Again, so what?

The fuss being made about Mr Trump's relationship, whatever it was, with Ms Daniels, amazes me. Suppose he boinked her? So what? I can't think of any country except the puritanical, holier-than-thou Excited States of America in which a politician's amorous adventures would draw such sanctimonious tut-tutting, let alone a Congressional investigation. If it had been Macron, the French would have given him a fucking medal! Why is this a big deal just because The Donald does it? What about Slick Willy (again)? And even the sainted JFK had his moment(s) with unsainted Marilyn Monroe.

But (the Democrats and lamestream media say) that's not the issue. The issue (they say) is that Mr Trump's signature on a check [using the American spelling here becausae it's an American check. Ed.] would appear to support the allegation that he was involved in an illegal campaign contribution. The unreported payment to Daniels far exceeded the $2700 maximum for an individual in a general election. So buying Ms Daniel's silence is a possible campaign finance violation... dontcha see?!

Sorry but no, I don't see. The checks are dated 2017. Didn't the campaign end on 8 November 2016? Or are they saying that the funds came from the war chest that the Committee to Re-elect Donald Trump is building for 2020? How do we even know the money came from campaign funds and not from some other funds, of which Mr Trump has considerable?

Suspending disbelief for another two minutes, let me ask where all this is going? (((Brian Klaas))), a political scientist at the University College London and dedicated anti-trumper -- author of The Despot's Apprentice: Donald Trump's Attack on Democracy -- tole the meeja yesterday that Mr Cohen's testimony will intensify calls for Trump's impeachment, and pressure Democrats still hesitant about that idea to get on with it. Mr Klaas's wish is surely father to his thought, but it's not as if we haven't heard all this before.

The key phrase there is "Democrats still hesitant about that idea". Mr Klaas and the usual gang of liberals, JWBs, NPCs and meeja stars seem to be equating a vote to impeach the President of the United States with "justice"... or punishmen, or revenge, whatever. Give Trump his just desserts, they cry. But they fail to understand that impeachment is not a verdict and/or sentence. It is a process by which the House brings charges against the President for "high crimes and misdemeanors" alleged to have been committed. The impeached official remains in office until a trial is held.

Next, the Senate tries the accused. The Chief Justice of the United States presides over the proceedings. To convict the accused, "the concurrence of two thirds of the members present" is required. With Republicans holding a slim majority in the Senate, it would be a cold day in hell before two-thirds of the solons would vote to convict a Republican president. But then, and only then, would Mr Trump be removed from office.

Then and only then could Mr Trump be indicted for whatever crimes the Department of Justice or Robert Mueller think he may have committed. DoJ guidelines provide that a sitting president cannot be indicted. And the statute of limitations on most federal offences, including campaign finance violations, is five (5) years. Without an indictment within that timeframe, the alleged crimes are no longer prosecutable.

That means that all President Trump has to do to avoid prosescution is win the 2020 election! He may be impeached before then, but my guess is that impeachment, which has every appearance of being a Democrat vendetta against a man they still can't believe won, will only rally the troops and strengthen Mr Trumps support not just in the Senate but amongst the voters across the land. Impeachment would, IMHO, make POTUS's re-election in 2020 a certainty. (Lifetime pct .992.) And that, dear readers, iw why the Democrats are "hesitant about that idea".

VIDEO: Poor Len Canayen: Hockey at its best

So far it's been kind of a slow news day, so I'm giving more space to our old friend, Poor Len Canayen, who has another video which he says every hockey fan has to see. Ed.

Hello! Poor Len here again, with another video which every hockey fan has to see! In my earlier post (see below) I said that, thanks in part to people like (((Gary Bettman))), professional hockey today ain't what it used to be. A younger fan has asked me, "Gee Poor Len, what was it like, back then?" I have found another National Film Board of Canada video which answers the question.

"Blades and Brass" is a mashup of video clips shot at the old Montréal Forum in 1967 (notice the Expo 67 logo at centre ice), with musical accompaniment in the style of the Tijuana Brass. (What Mexican music has to do with hockey is beyond me, but it's a minor quibble.) Slowing the action down a bit to match the tempo of the music allows us to see the grace and beauty underlying what appears to be a fast and rough sport. Who calls soccer "the beautiful game"? It's got nothing on hockey!

1967 was the last year when the NHL comprised the so-called Original Six teams. That's something of a misnomer as only the Canadiens were there at the beginning, in 1917, and a number of teams (Montreal Maroons, New York Americans, and Philadelphia Quakers -- you can look it up) came and went in those first 50 years.

Here you get to see two of the players featured on the new Canadian stamps -- Gordie Howe and Jean Béliveau -- and two of my all-time favourite goalies: Montréal's Lorne "Gump" Worsley and Maple Leafs' Terry Sawchuk. Notice that most of the players, even the goalies, still didn't wear helmets or masks. Those "improvements" came later. To my mind -- and I remember it clearly -- this is hockey as it was meant to be played, by some of the greatest players of all time. It's not the same now... but what is....

VIDEO: Poor Len Canayen: The Ultimate Six hockey stars

Fans of professional hockey will be aware that the National Hockey League was founded 100 years ago, in the fall of 1917. It is 8 years younger than the Montréal Canadiens, founded in 1909, but a 100th anniversary is still something to be celebrated, and when the organization has a promoter like (((Gary Bettman))) (no hockey man, he) at its head, you can be sure the PR machine will be in top gear. Which it is.

Canada Post has been quick to jump on the hypewagon. They've been issuing stamps featuring hockey and hockey players since 1955 -- top that! NFL --
and this year have published a set of six stamps commemorating the Ultimate Six Canadian Hockey Legends. Here they are.

These are the six Canucks (meaning their nationality, not their team!) whose names, numbers and achievements recall legendary moments in the history of the game. This being a project of the Canadian government, it will be noted that there are three French-Canadians (Maurice Richard, Jean Béliveau, and Mario Lemieux) and three Anglo-Canadians (Gordie Howe, Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky). Which is as it should be. (OK, Gretzky is a Polish name, but No. 99 was born in beautiful Brantford ON.)

It will also be noted that two of the Ultimate Six played for the Bleu-Blanc-et-Rouge. Not one Toronto Maple Leaf is included in the group. Why the picture of Rocket Richard is in black-and-white and the rest in colour is a mystery, but hey, that's Canada -- a land of mystery. Walt approves of the choices, and recommends that you buy some of these stamps, not to put on letters -- who does that, in 2017? -- but just to look at them when you feel sad that hockey ain't what it used to be. Where else can you get a picture of Jean Béliveau (my personal favourite) for just 85 Canadian cents (plus tax, of course)?

BONUS VIDEO: I am shocked, shocked that Walt [and Ed.! Ed.] have never shared with you the excellent story of "The Hockey Sweater", written and narrated for the National Film Board video by Roch Carrier. Here it is. No subtitles. If you gonna come on top da country `ere you better learn to talk like we do!



Cliquez ici pour voir la version française.

Habs honour greats Elmer Lach and Dollard St. Laurent, RIP

Poor Len here. Dave Stubbs, of the Montreal Gazette, thinks I am racist, because I have no time for P.K. Subban, who Mr. Stubbs maintains is "transcendant". He is wrong about Subban, and wrong about me. I am not a racist, just a realist.

However, Mr. Stubbs is quite correct when he writes, today, that "No one does history better than the Canadiens, in part because theirs is so rich; no one does these farewells more elegantly, in part because the Habs sadly have too much experience recognizing their lost heroes."

He was referring to memorial moments planned by Canada's team for former players Elmer Lach and Dollard St. Laurent, both of whom passed away earlier this week. Sadly, the pre-game tributes planned for Thursday night were nixed by the National Hockey League (New York lawyer G. Bettman, Prop.) because they would take up too much time, in a game of great importance to at least one of the competing teams.

The magnanimous Mr. Bettman allowed the Habs two (2) minutes before the national anthems in which to say a few words. Very few, since it works out to one minute for each of the departed. But the Canadiens' management didn't let their lovingly prepared video tribute to Elmer Lach go to waste. It was screened during the first intermission, and posted on the team's website. Ed. was unable to get to the embed code to work [Désolé. Ed.] so click here to see it.

Elmer Lach played for les Glorieux from 1940 to 1954. At the time of his death, he was the oldest living member of the NHL as well as the Hockey Hall of Fame. When Mr. Lach's was born, the NHL itself had been in existence for a mere 57 days, and the Montréal Canadiens for some eight years.

Mr. Stubbs calls Dollard St. Laurent "a template for the blue-line pillars of his Original Six era, part of the bedrock of the Canadiens’ glorious clubs of the 1950s and a beloved member of the hockey community long after he’d hung up his skates." He was all of that, for sure, and also a model stay-at-home defenceman, the kind who (unlike certain present-day players who shall remain nameless) could be counted on to play his position and put the team ahead of himself.

CONGRATULATORY FOOTNOTES: A tip of Len's toque to:
Carey Price, the best goalie in the world, who won his 43rd game last night, breaking the old club record shared by Jacques Plante and Ken Dryden, and
Habs coach Michel Thérrien, inducted this week into the Québec Major Junior Hockey League Hall of Fame, and
Carey Price (again) for winning, for the fifth time in a row, the Molson Cup, awarded to the player most often selected as one of the three stars of the game, and
Dale Weise, winner of the Jacques Beauchamp Trophy as the team's "fourth star" -- the unsung hero.
Ils ont gagné leurs épaulettes!

"Hockey Night in Canada" -- errr, not so much any more

Poor Len Canayen here. [What? Still?! Ed.] The sun is setting. Night is falling. Soon it will be Saturday night -- Hockey Night in Canada.

Notice from Rogers, Bell TV and the Canadian Broadcorping Castration. Some restrictions apply!

Due to a sweetheart deal between Rogers and the National Hockey League (G. Bettman, prop.), Hockey Night in Canada will no longer be offering games featuring Canada's team -- the Montréal Canadiens -- every Saturday as it did for the last century. Instead, the Canadian content will be provided by the Toronto Maple Laffs. Viewers who wish to see a real team are welcome to subscribe to NHL Centre Ice, at a modest extra charge. Call Rogers or Bell for details, and have your platinum credit card ready.

But never fear. HNIC is committed, as always, to viewer choice...as long as the viewer makes the same choice as Mr. Bitchman. There is a second game available on Rogers/Bell's basic service. Tonight, if you don't want to watch Toronto lose, you can watch Team Crosby (aka the Pittsburgh Penguins) play the Brooklyn Islanders. [That happens next year! Ed.] Some choice.

It makes my bleu-blanc-et-rouge blood boil. I have a good mind to write to someone, but I don't know who. Obviously G. Bettman doesn't give two shits for what the fans want, only for whatever brings in the most revenue. How could a New York Jewish lawyer think like that?!

Open letter to Rogers, Bell TV, TVA, RDS and the NHL (attn G. Bettman)

Chers espèces de crotte!

I, Poor Len Canayen, am a fan of the Montréal Canadiens. If I can't go to their games in person, I would watch them on TV...if only I could!

But I live in western Canada -- "western" meaning anywhere west of Québec and the easternmost corner of Ontario. Until this season, that didn't matter. I was able to watch all the Habs games on RDS, and enjoy the superior commentary of their play-by-play team and analysts.

During this summer, though, you, Rogers, made a deal with the so-called National Hockey League (G. Bettman, prop. -- a man who knows nothing about hockey but everything about sharp business deals) by which you, Rogers, got the exclusive rights to broadcast the NHL in Canada.

So you, Rogers, greedy bastards that you are, figured out a way to make little people, like me, pay more to see our favourite team. You reduced drastically the number of Habs games telecast in English on Hockey Night in Canada on Saturdays or Hometown Hockey on Sundays. And you divided up the French telecasts between RDS and TVA.

No problem... or so I thought, as I signed up for Bell TV's "Le monde en français" satellite package. But whoooaaaa... You, Rogers and Bell, have colluded to block the RDS and TVA Sports channels in western Canada (see definition above) only and always when the Montréal games are on!

The object, obviously, is to force me to sign up for your premium "NHL Centre Ice" package, a snip at only C$209 for "the year". (What does that mean? My prediction is that it means "until the end of the regular season", when subscribers will be asked to pay still more if they want to see the playoffs.)

Guess what, greedheads?! I won't do it! I cancelled my subscription to "Le monde en français" and I'll be double damned if I'll sign up for anything else. In fact, I have a good mind to switch to cable TV -- not Rogers! -- and be done forever with Bell's intermittent satellite signals.

To Rogers, Bell and the NHL -- I'm not including RDS and TVA because it's not their fault -- PUCK YOU! Puck you very much!

c.c. Government of Canada Competition Bureau, Canadian Human Rights Commission

If you only had one bullet...

Poor Len Canayen here! Just saw this picture in Canada's Notional Pest, and it makes me wonder...

If you're a Canadian, a lover of your country and its national winter sport, and you only have one bullet... which of these orifices would you shoot first?

Replay from Walt: I'd make the tiny perfect Bettman stand in front of Lyin' Brian and shoot `em both at once!

Bizarre Olympic sport intrigues Americans

Poor Len here. Walt was too busy to write this morning. He was watching Team USA play Team Canada in one of the preliminary games of the Olympic women's hockey tournament.

The Canuck ladies [Eh? Ed.] squeaked by the Americans 3-2 on the strength of a disputed goal. The Americans claimed the referee had blown her whistle before the puck entered their net, but the referee ruled the play hadn't yet Finnished.

Regular readers of WWW will know that Walt and yr. obdt. svt. are huge hockey fans. [As opposed to minute hockey fans? Ed.] We have to remind ourselves that many of our readers may not see the attraction of a game that seemingly revolves around whacking the opposition with sticks or crunchng them into the boards.

A dim view of the game is taken in Americans states like Arizona, where insane people like NHL Commissioner Bitchman seems to think interest is keen. We see this reflected in "Nation Intrigued By Bizarre Olympic Sport Of Hockey", seen today in "America's finest news source", The Onion. We cannot but chuckle and trust that hockey fans everywhere will do the same.

Teemu Selanne decides to keep playing hockey

It's about a month until the opening of the NHL hockey season, unless Gary Bitchman finds an excuse to shut `er down again. I know the time is near because Agent 4, who hibernates during the summer, has sent us a video. Watch it to learn what made Teemu Selanne (who sometimes hibernates during the games) decide to reup for another year with the Mighty Ducks.

To understand hockey is to understand Canada

The Bettman-induced shortened National Hockey League season is a little more than half-way over. In another few weeks playoffs will begin. Hockey fans are happy, especially north of the World's Longest Undefended Border™ where "local" teams are doing surprisingly well.

To their fans' surprise -- and likely their own -- the Toronto Maple Laffs, although in a tailspin at the moment, are still playoff contenders, as has not been the case for years. And Walt's dear Montréal Canadiens -- Canada's team [Florida's too! Ed.] -- are leading their division. All is well with the world.

Why is that Canadians -- or a large proportion of them, at least -- get so passionate about hockey? Canuck sports writer Bruce Dowbiggin claims it's because hockey is a metaphor for Canada itself, a physical expression of the Canadian soul. So he writes in The Meaning of Puck: How hockey explains modern Canada (Key Porter, 2008). Here's an excerpt.

With their vast horizons and often passive nature, Canadians (English more so than French) are not necessarily a contemplative people and hockey is not a contemplative game. The Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Ford called it "an uninteresting sport played by Canadians." For many Americans -- used to the pauses and ellipses of baseball or football -- it is a busy, baffling spectacle. "Hockey on radio sounds like one long mistake," said former NBA coach Gene Shue.

Like dental surgery, hockey is a business best gotten on with briskly and without too much contemplation. Even when the pauses arrive in the sport -- be they intermissions or the contrived TV breaks -- there is little self-examination involved in hockey. Players have just enough time to catch their breaths, spit multiple times and then go at it once more. Fans seize a beer, put the kids to bed and then resume their appointed rounds. That matter-of-fact approach appeals to Canadians, its brisk rhythms warming them against the snow.

There's more in that vein, plus Mr. Dowbiggin's traditional diatribes against fighting in hockey and Don Cherry. Mr. D. succeeds in proving only that, in spite of having relocated to Calgary, he remains one of the latte-swilling, gentrified urban elite who, while they may understand TROC (The Rest Of Canada -- the Tim Hortons drinkers), are not a part of it.

Memo to Bruce Dowbiggin from Ed.: Next time, go with a publisher who's willing to spend a few Beaverbucks on editing and proofreading. "Steve Santos"? C'mon! And the index is a joke -- apparently compiled by someone who never read the book.

Note from Walt to Floridians: If you don't believe what I said about les Canadiens being Florida's team, go to a Tampa Bay Lightning or Florida Panthers "home" game and count the number of sweaters bearing the CH versus those with the logo of the "local" team.

Pop quiz: When was the last time five "Canadian" teams got through to NHL post-season play? You'll find the answer in "It looks like most of Canada will finally get to enjoy the NHL playoffs", in today's National Post.

NHL hockey to resume... to sound of crickets chirping?

And so it ends. The battle of the greedheads was settled in the Big Apple minutes ago. The National Hockey League will have a much-shortened season of 48 or 50 games, starting in a few days. Neither the greedhead owners nor the lesser greedhead players are thrilled, so the new agreement must be what lawyers call a good compromise.

Speaking of lawyers, Jack Todd, writing in the Montreal Gazette, has some good comments about the role of the Jewish lawyer who precipitated the whole schemozzle. That would be Gary Bettman, the diminutive New Yorker who rises from the gutter looking even smaller than before. Here's  part of Todd's take.

One moment, it’s “take-it-or-leave-it, we’re outraged, this is unacceptable.” Then, after three or four weeks go by while Gary Bettman sulks like a spoiled child, the league comes back with, “well, what about if we try it this way?”

Begging the question: Why didn’t they simply stay at the negotiating table, 18 hours a day if necessary, until a deal was worked out? The answer, undoubtedly, lies in what has been a spectacularly erratic, Alice in Blunderland performance on Bettman’s part.

If his public appearances during this toxic lockout are anything to go by, Bettman is about as sane and grounded as Randy Quaid. [I love that line! Walt] While Donald Fehr [the American lawyer heading the players union] has remained cool, calm and collected throughout, Bettman often has been overheated, hysterical and scattered.

Perhaps even Bettman knows he has torched much of the league’s goodwill and momentum, and flushed at least $1.5 billion in revenue down the toilet for no reason at all. Bettman gambled that Fehr couldn’t keep the players behind him, and he lost. Big-time.

Bitchman is doomed. You read it here first, in Walt's "Prognostications for 2013". Lifetime pct .989.

And what of the fans? There will be great rejoicing on the frozen side of the 49th parallel today. But on the US side, Walt questions whether anyone has even noticed the absence of the best sport in the world. In most American markets (except maybe Boston) no-one cares about hockey until the end of the football season, which is only now coming into view. When the players return to the arenas of the sunbelt -- thank you, Mr. Bettman -- the reaction is likely to be, "Oh... Were you away?"

Further predictions: The NHL's players and owners will stagger through the abbreviated 2013 season, and come June (or possibly July) Lord Stanley's silverware will move to someplace other than Los Angeles. But... by the time the 2013-14 season opens in the fall, the NHL will have at least two fewer teams, with one of the remaining teams moved to Canada, where hockey matters. Lifetime pct still .989.

Prognostications for 2013

Making predictions about what will happen in the future is a mug's game. Rather than put my sterling track record (lifetime pct .988) on the line, let me tell you (mostly) what's not going to happen in 2013.

America will not fall over the fiscal cliff, at least not all the way. Absent an agreement in the Senate, taxes will (effectively) be increased and spending will be cut, as planned. Most Americans will still be able to get by. No-one will be selling apples of Wall Street or Main Street USA.

Haiti will not be repaired, rebuilt or reconstructed. Billions of dollars in aid money will continue to be poured down the rathole with no apparent effect. Michaëlle Jean will continue to be invisible, at least in her native land.

Hellery Clinton will not announce her candidacy for the presidensity. The campaign will move ahead anyway, with the support of the lamestream media and Democrats living overseas who don't actually have to cope with the Obama maladministration.

Zimbabwe's dictator, Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, will not lose an election to Zuma wannabe Morgan Tsvangirai or anyone else. Indeed, it's quite possible no election will be held. The zimkwacha (Zimbabwe dollar) will not be reintroduced, as remaining supplies are used up as toilet paper.

Pope Benedict XVI will do nothing to lead the Roman Catholic Church back to the traditional Faith of our fathers. But nor will he abdicate, for fear of the fight that would ensue between Cardinal Bertone -- the man who would be pope -- and the thousands of good Catholic clergy and laypeople who think Bertone is the Antichrist whose arrival is imminent.

Bumbling, horse-faced Peter Mackay will not be Canada's Minister of Defence a year from now. The stench of mismanagement and opacity enveloping the proposed purchase of F-35 fighters for the Royal Canadian Air Force won't go away. At least one head must roll, and Machackey's contains nothing but air, so off it comes!

Gary Bettman, the Jewish American lawyer responsible for the Americanization (hence destruction) of hockey, will not be head honcho of the National Hockey League at this time next year. He has the outward support of a majority of NHL owners, but look for someone to check him into the boards shortly after he presents the Stanley Cup.

Christians (in name, at least) will continue to be persecuted, imprisoned and murdered by Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Nigeria, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia [We're running out of space! Ed.], and by Communists in China, North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam, [Enough martyrs! Ed.] The Church and Western leaders will continue to say we must show tolerance to our poor misunderstood enemies, learn to accommodate them and celebrate diversity!

Note from Ed.: Walt has scribbled a note at the bottom of his manuscript: "That's all I can stands. I can't stands no more!" Hmmm. Well, in spite of his less-than-rosy forecast, Walt and I wish you a New Year filled with peace and prosperity.

What the hell happened to hockey?! (Reprise)

Walt gets angrier by the day at the elfin Gary Bettman, American head of the "National" Hockey League, the one who has presided over -- and been largely responsible for -- the decline and near demise of the world's greatest sport.

Attention was first called to Bettman's follies in The Death of Hockey, by Jeff Z. Klein and Karl-Eric Reif (Macmillan Canada 1998). [It should be noted that in spite of the Canadian publishing imprint, Messrs Klein and Reif are Buffalonians or Buffaloites or whatever denizens of Buffalo are called. Ed.]

Their book followed on the NHL lockout of 1994-5, which resulted in a shortened season. But it preceded the lockout of 2004-5, which caused the loss of an entire season. 2005 marked the first time the Stanley Cup was not competed for since the great flu epidemic of 1919. Here's Canuck comedian Rick Mercer's analysis.



But that's history, eh. Why bring it up now? Because with Bitchman, as in all of life, history repeats itself. Apparently not satisfied with having failed to destroy the NHL in two attempts, (to the benefit of the NBA from whence he came), the mighty midget has caused yet another lockout this year -- the third on his watch. The comments of Messrs Klein, Reif and Mercer are as trenchant today as they were when first published.

Want another opionion? Try this one: NHL Lockout: Work Stoppage Makes Gary Bettman Worst Commissioner in US [sic] Sports

And don't forget Walt's post of a few days ago: Hockey lovers should throw pucks at Bettman until he goes to hell or the NBA. So it has been written. Now let it be done!

Hockey lovers should throw pucks at Bettman until he goes to hell or the NBA

Yes, there's no paucity of subject material today, what with Mitt and Al and Sandy all vying for our attention. But let us speak of something truly important: the ongoing, contemptible and suicidal lockout of the National Hockey League players by the rapacious, contemptible and incredibly stupid NHL owners and their front man, Gary "Wanna" Bettman.

Readers of WWW know that Walt is a hockey fan. Perhaps the proper tense is "was", not "is". And not because of the absence of hockey from North America's arenas and TV channels. Rather, I am (present tense) a fan of hockey as it was (past tense) in its glory days. I refer to the era from, say, 1945 through 1967, although a Montréal Canadiens fan (which I'm) would doubtless extend the period of glory to the end of the `78-`79 season.

Since then, the fastest, most manly, most exciting team sport in the world -- a sport of speed, grace and power -- has been "modernized" and "improved" to suit the tastes of the denizens of regions more suitable for beach volleyball -- the good ole boys who like NASCAR, arena football and roller derby. Hockey has been transmogrified into a cartoon-like spectacle that combines the sporting qualities of "professional" wrestling with the excitement of test cricket.

If you're a fan of real hockey, think of what you've had to endure to watch today's shoddy facsimile of the game you love:

• outlandishly exorbitant ticket prices
• months and months of virtually meaningless regular-season games
• the destruction of intimate, tradition-rich rinks
• their replacement with mall-like vanilla structures whose main function is to generate luxury-box revenue and put your seats a mile up in the rafters
• the proliferation of "sales points" and "food courts" to fleece you by peddling overpriced junk
• the high-decibel aural assault you must suffer with every visit to the rink
• the diminishment of the quality of every team via runaway expansion
• the cavalier tossing-off of the traditions you love via the "bringing up to date" of uniforms and the annual procession of pointless rule changes
• the creation of a legion of new teams in cities you don't care about
• the disappearance of teams from the cities you do care about
• the liquidation of age-old rivalries to accommodate the gigantism of a league grown too unmanageably huge
• hockey in June, and
• the dumbing down of the game as a whole to teach it to yet another new generation of potential fans in distant hot-weather climes.

Ah yes, the rantings of a Canadian pissed off that Americans control Canada's national winter sport. Walt hears you saying that. But those words were written by Americans, Jeff Z. Klein and Karl-Eric Reif, sometime residents of the great hockey town of Buffalo, who have written about the game they love for the New York Times, the Village Voice and the Hockey News. 

And get this! Messrs Klein and Reif wrote The Death of Hockey, from which that excerpt is taken, in 1998 -- 14 years before Bettman's latest lockout!

I call it "Bettman's" lockout because he ordered and orchestrated it, in a third attempt to get the NHL players to give up some of the share of revenue they wrung out of the owners after Bettman's previous attempts to break the National Hockey League Players Association (the players' union).

Bettman is not a hockey man, never was. He is a New York Jew labour lawyer, whose previous experience was in the management [obviously not playing! Ed.] of the NBA.  Of Bettman it was said, "Someone handed him a hockey puck once, and he spent two hours trying to figure out how to open it."

Klein and Reif quote an op-ed piece by Stu Hackel, a former NHL director of communications, written during the 1998 Stanley Cup final:

When the present regime [Bettman and his minions] came to power in 1993, they moved to "fix" the game and the business with an army of executives from other sports and fields. Their unspoken theme was that hockey people had made a mess of things and they were going to show how it was done.

Their modernization has included a damaging lockout [the first of three], an on-ice officials' strike, four franchise relocations, two realignments, a flattening of licensing growth, a merry-go-round of rule changes, an ill-conceived venture into the Winter Olympics [Klein and Reif -- and Walt -- disagree on this point], unmanageably soaring salaries, escalating ticket prices, too many empty seats, the specter of four more diluting expansion franchises, lots of red ink, and now a drop in television viewership on both sides of the border.

One trusts that these are all temporary conditions or problems of growth, but if this were politics, an incumbent with that record might have trouble getting reelected.

That was in 1998. But hockey is evidently not politics -- not by a long shot -- and things just got worse and worse and worse. And now the National Hockey League is out of business. Is this a temporary condition? The removal of Mr. Bettman -- not just from the negotiating table but from any position whatsoever in organized hockey anywhere in the world -- would be a good way to begin the resuscitation of the best of all sports.

This Saturday night won't be the same

We've considered events in the Middle East and the Far East. Now it's time to turn our attention to something of greater import to folks in the Great White North and the satellite to the south.

I refer to the failure of the National Hockey League to get its 2012-13 season under way on time. It now appears possible that there may be no season at all. The owners of the 30 NHL clubs have locked out their most valuable employees, the players, with the result that the pre-season games which should start this weekend Saturday will not so do. No national anthems will be sung, no pucks will be dropped, and 1000s of hockey fans on both sides of the world's longest undefended border will have to find something else to watch on TV.

The owners and the players are at an impasse, the cause of which is pure and simple greed. ["Pure"? Ed.] The two sides cannot agree on how to share a 3-billion-dollar pie. Following the lockout which wrote off the 2004-5 season, the owners gave the players a generous helping -- 57% of the revenue, larger than the chunk given to the players of any other professional team sport. Now the owners want to take it back. And they're not even Indians!

No indeed. What the majority of the owners (and a minority of the players) are is Americans, and they are in hockey for the money. It's purely a business proposition, not a part of the national ethos, as the game is in Canada.

To make matters worse, the NHL is allegedly run by an American, a dwarf named Bettman who has never been seen to lace on a pair of skates, let alone play the game. This is the third labour dispute, on his watch, to result in cancellation of all or part of a season. He is also responsible for keeping hockey in Phoenix, the introduction of the shootout and other acts of lunacy which no hockey man could ever countenance. But Bitchman is secure in his position because he's the bitch of the owners, a majority of whom... go back to previous paragraph.

What is to be done? A more cogent question would be, is the NHL broken beyond repair? Perhaps it's time to put the "national" back in "National Hockey League", and return it (and Lord Stanley's silverware) to Canadian control.

The Lord of all the Canucks, "Call me Steve" Harpoon, is reputed to be a hockey fan. Let him introduce legislation to nationalize (geddit?) all seven Canadian teams, and maybe add an eighth in Québec City, for good measure. That would be one dandy league. As for the Americans, they can go play basketball, or maybe soccer.

Note from Ed.: I regret having to cut Walt's rant short, but the men are here to wrap him in a wet sheet. As a filler, here's a very relevant musical selection.