LCS Hockey - Musings on the imminent season

Musings on the imminent season
by Simon D. Lewis, Calgary Correspondent

Here we go. It's the last season of the twentieth century.

(Well, actually that's not the case; but since everyone's thinks the 21st century starts in 2000 and not in 2001, I'll just play along. Think about it. They didn't start counting with the year 0.)

Anyway, there's that pre-millennial season thing. The players are getting bigger. The ice surface remains small. The cranial capacity of some owners seems to be shrinking. Devolution? The crease is changing shape...again. Referees are proliferating. And salaries? Don't get me started. Oh, yeah...Canadians are wondering if they're going to be able to afford to watch their game any more.

The NHL will tell you, I am sure, that things never looked better. They've got teams in places you probably didn't even know existed. The league's "reach" has never been greater. There are some big stars, guys like Jagr, Sakic and Kariya, ready to light up the marquees from Nashville and Phoenix to somewhere in North Carolina. Revenues are good. There's lots of "NHL-abilia" flying off the shelves around the world. Those gangstas look way cool in their black Kings gear. Looks good on the league too.

I say that the NHL is in jeopardy of imploding. It's about to run smack dab into the same problem that slowed down expansion in the 70s. That is, Americans don't really care about hockey. The farther south you go, the less they care. Look at what passes for a hockey game now. The league is drawing people into the rinks with fireworks, flying octopus, vicious ducks, skyboxes, theme restaurants, cranked sound systems and laser light shows. Once the game starts, it's usually an anti-climax to the warm-up, especially of you are lucky enough to witness a fixture in which both teams are so untalented that the coaches are running the trap.

I guess what I am saying is that, once the smoke clears and the lights come up, the novelty wears off. Hell, last year in the playoffs in Dallas, Don Cherry took a cab to the game. The cabby asked him what was going on that night. He didn't know the Stars were in a return grudge series against the Edmonton Oilers and were going to win. When your cabbies don't know you, who does? And they're the Dallas Stars, one of the best teams in the league for the last couple of years.

Gretzky hits L.A. in 1988 and the city goes nuts. Now that he's been gone a few years and the team is not quite the thriller it once was, there are lots of empty seats. Turns out the previous owner wasn't such a straight arrow.

Super Mario quits. The next thing you hear is that the Penguins' franchise may not be as solid as everyone thought. How are they going to pay Mario all that money not to play? Can they afford to keep Jagr? How will they get bums in the seats?

Meanwhile, back in Canada there are only about 30 million of us and our dollar is on life support. We do, however, know our hockey. We would love to keep and support our teams. Looks like we can't. Even the mighty Montreal Canadiens have stated that they don't like the look of the financial picture. A consortium of 20-odd local investors now owns the Edmonton Oilers. The Calgary Flames are so strapped for cash that, Theo Fleury excepted, they're a no-name collection of raw kids and odd journeymen. Winnipeg and Quebec are just bad memories.

Where's it all going to end? I wish I could tell you. It just smells rotten to me. As the game moves south it loses its soul. A friend of mine who once taught in the States nailed it. He said that Americans collectively have the capacity to take anything with great intrinsic worth and suck the quality out of it, tart it up, and market it shamelessly. Witness hockey.