What the Puck!?

At the end of the 2003-04 hockey season, my fiancée and I were given tickets to a single-A minor league game. It was the first time that either of us had been to a hockey game, and we were both pretty hooked (more me, than her, probably). Alas, the very next season, 2004-05, was the infamous NHL lockout and player strike that resulted in the entire season being lost.

You would think the NHL and NHLPA would have learned their lesson from that debacle. But apparently not. As of September 26, the league has once again locked out the players due to a lack of a Collective Bargaining Agreement. The pre-season was completely cancelled, and as of October 19, the first few weeks of the regular season have also been cancelled through at least November 1 (the season was supposed to have started around October 12).

What’s more, the CBA that was negotiated after the 2004-05 season was a total wash, apparently expired in mid-September. Here’s my question - why the fuck wasn’t a new CBA already being negotiated during the summer in order to avoid the loss of the pre-season and (so far) the first four weeks of the regular season? Ok, maybe it was, but from the press releases on NHL.com, it almost appears as though they waited until the last possible minute to start talking about it.

Do the parties involved in this not realize that without the fans, there is no league? Cancelling games and risking losing yet another season is not exactly a great way to endear your selves to the people who buy the tickets to the games and all the swag and merchandise that generate revenue, now is it?

Player strikes and league lockouts in professional sports never make sense to me. According to Yahoo! Sports, the average NHL salary is $2.4 million per year. Figuring a season of 82 games (not counting the playoffs), that comes to just over $29k per game. According to Social Security Online, the the national average wage index in 2010 was just over $41.5k. In other words, these guys make more money in two games than the average person makes in a year, but yet they whine for more? WTF?

I know some will disagree with me on this and go into arguments about the pinnacles of their profession should be paid well, and I don’t completely disagree. But this business of millionaires complaining about needing more money to play a freakin’ game starts to get a bit ridiculous in my opinion.  So, dear NHL and NHLPA - get your shit together and let’s drop the damn puck already!

~JC

Yee Haw, eh? part 2

A couple of weeks ago I shared a bit about a book I had recently read called Hockey Night in Dixie and on being a southern hockey fan. I wrote that blog in kind of a hurry and didn't really share much, IMHO and frankly don't have any stellar ideas for this week's post so I figured I'd throw a few more thoughts on being a hockey fan in the south and maybe help clarify a couple of things about the game. Granted, I'm no expert; I've only been a hockey fan since around 2005 but I have taken the time to try to understand the game and not just go to see the fights like so many other redneck hockey fans.

“Did you hit somebody yet?!” I hear that one at almost every FireAntz game I go to; it drives me nuts! Yes, there is hitting in hockey. In fact, it's amazing how these guys can take a hit while on ice skates and still manage to not fall and bust their ass. But the game isn't about going out and hitting someone. It's not football you dumb redneck! You don't go after the guy with the puck and try to tackle him. As violent as hockey seems to some people, it really is a game of great skill and finesse. Think about it; if you've ever seen Wayne Gretzky, he's not that big (especially compared to other hockey players). Yet, he holds the all time records for goals, assists and total points. Why? Because he had skill, not because he went out and “hit somebody.” Plowing your opponents into the boards doesn't win games, people; it gets you put in the penalty box and leaves you short handed. Get a clue!

Throughout the book, Hockey Night in Dixie, players that were interviewed spoke about how the southern fans seemed to be more interested in the fights than in the hockey game itself. It's sad, but very true. Now, I love a good hockey fight as much as the next redneck... er, I mean southerner... but that's not what hockey is about. I'm sure everyone's heard the old joke, “I went to see a fight, but a hockey game broke out.” While it's true that hockey (at least on the professional level) accepts and allows fighting (for the most part) there's a reason for it. It's not like in baseball, football, basketball, etc., where a fight is the result of a couple of guys losing their tempers. In hockey, it's usually the result of some goon laying an illegal hit on a key player that went unnoticed by the referee and so an enforcer then challenges said goon to a fight as if to say, “Hey! Asshole! You can't do that to my teammate and get away with it.” It's allowed because hockey officials know that they can't see everything, and allowing fights allows the players, in a sense, to police themselves a bit. You almost never see a hockey fight simply start; there's usually some exchange of words and an agreement between the two combatants that they are, in fact, going to drop the gloves and go toe-to-toe. Sure, they both get five minutes in the penalty box, but it's usually over after that. Fights in hockey can also be used to help spark some energy. Truth is, though, I'd rather see a well skated, tight scoring game with no fights at all, than waste my time watching a match that's gotten out of hand with multiple fights (although, that can be entertaining at times too, especially when it's a FireAnt beating the shit out of a Renegade... I hate those bastards!)

Sportscaster Al Michaels, during the 1980 Winter Olympics, made the statement that most of the people who tuned in to watch the historic game between the United States Hockey Team and the Soviet Team probably didn't “know the difference between a blue line and a clothesline.” That's a fair statement about a lot of folks that attend hockey games in the south too, I'd wager. Where I live (Fayetteville, NC) we've had a hockey team long enough that most of the season ticket holders and regular fans are up to speed on that, but I still meet people who say they love to go to FireAntz games even though they have no clue what's going on especially when the whistle blows for a stoppage of play. Now, here I could go into a long explanation of rules about offside, hooking, boarding, tripping, etc. But I won't. Instead, I'll give you some links at the end of this blog to other websites that can explain it better than I can. Keep in mind that there are some minor differences between, say the National Hockey League (NHL), some of the minor professional leagues, international amateur hockey, collegiate hockey and junior hockey. These differences are generally obvious though, such as things like touch-up icing on the professional levels versus automatic icing in amateur and international leagues. Also, fighting in international and amateur leagues results in being ejected from the game rather than just five minutes in the penalty box.

If you've never been to a hockey game, go! If you go regularly just to see fights, grow up. And if your a southerner (or a traditional market hockey fan who somehow got transplanted to the south) who loves hockey like me, help spread the word and educate.

Peace,
~ Carlisle

(No, that's not a picture of me, in case you're wondering)

Links to educate yourself with:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_hockey_rules (just to give you a general idea of the different governing bodies within professional and amateur hockey)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hockey_rink (a Wikipedia article on the Hockey rink itself)

ESPN's NHL Rules Glossary of Terms and Rules (http://espn.go.com/nhl/rules/index.html) – includes a Video Rulebook with examples.

Next week's blog: “Home of the Free, Because of the Brave”

Yee Haw, eh?

During the 2004-05 hockey season, when the NHL had it's infamous lock out, Jon C. Stott was visiting his daughter in New Mexico. Being from Canada, he was really missing hockey, so his daughter told him he should check out the local minor league team¹. It was there that he discovered how popular the Canadian game of hockey had become in the American south. His book, Hockey Night in Dixie: Minor Pro Hockey in the American South² is his journey into the world of minor pro hockey, particularly in the American South; it's ups, downs, financial woes, and toothless grins. During the 2005-06 season, Mr. Stott traveled the southwestern and southeastern United States, visiting four teams in four different leagues in order to get an idea of what minor pro hockey was actually like in these very non-traditional markets. I'll admit, I bought the book because one of those teams was my own hometown Fayetteville FireAntz of the Southern Professional Hockey League. I'll also admit that I started to read just their chapter, but being a bibliophile and a hockey fan, I ended up reading the entire book.

I don't read a lot of non-fiction (although I should do so more often) and, as I said before, I picked this book up because it featured my hometown hockey team. I'll admit, it mostly read like a journal and I found myself wondering if Mr. Stott was a sports writer based on his writing style (there's no biography of the author anywhere in the book). It's pretty well written and gives a very good depiction of what life in minor league hockey is like and just how tough it is to keep teams going for any stable amount of time. I think my only real issue with the book is that, while it's title indicates that it is solely about southeastern hockey, it's not. In fact, in the introduction he mentions the Albuquerque Scorpions which are in New Mexico, and the second chapter is about the Odessa Jackalopes in west Texas; that's southwestern, not southeastern. It is the southern part of the U.S. geographically speaking and considering that the author is from Canada, I'll let it slide but Texas (arguably) and New Mexico are not part of what is colloquially known as “Dixie.”

Reading Hockey Night in Dixie has prompted me to blog a bit about being a hockey fan in North Carolina. Growing up I had heard of hockey, but that was about it. I had spotted a few games on television, but never really got interested because I didn't know what the hell was going on. It wasn't until March 2004, when the, at that time, manager of our local Books-A-Million gave my fiancée and I tickets to a FireAntz game that I had ever watched an entire hockey game. I became immediately hooked; I loved the action, the fast pace and the sheer skill it took for the players to pass, shoot and take hits without busting their ass on the ice. Alas, the game we went to was the final one of that season. During that summer, I did a little research on hockey rules so I'd be able to follow along better the next time I went to a game. We started going to as many home games as our schedule and finances would allow. I became engrossed in both the FireAntz and the Carolina Hurricanes, buying hats and jerseys for both teams. On my birthday in November 2006, Roxanne and I made a pilgrimage to the RBC Center in Raleigh, NC, to watch the Hurricanes play the Buffalo Sabres. Yeah, my friends get tired of me talking about it sometimes; I'm usually boring them with either golf or hockey. I can't help it, I love watching hockey even if one of my teams isn't' playing.

In regards to the so called southern hockey fan, I will admit many are ignorant and obviously don't understand the game. I don't pretend to fully understand it; I've only been a fan for a few seasons, but even I, a southerner, get irritated with fans shouting “hit somebody!” and evidently thinking the game sucked if there wasn't at least one fight, even if our team won by a zillion goals. It's still new to us down here, but most of us are catching on to the subtler nuances of the game and starting to figure out that it's still possible to have a successful power-play even if you didn't score and that slamming someone to the boards isn't always called for.

I realize that i”m writing about hockey in the middle of June, but that's how much I want the season to start again. I can't wait for October!

~ Carlisle

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1. “Introduction: Return to the Minors” (pp.xi-xx)

2. The title Hockey Night in Dixie: Playing Canada's Game in the American South appears on Amazon.com. I have no idea why they have it listed that way, as the cover and title page both clearly say Minor Pro Hockey in the American South and is listed as such on both Books-A-Million's and Barnes and Nobles' websites. The main title is also obviously a play on “Hockey Night in Canada,” the popular weekly broadcast of National Hockey League games across Canada.

Next week's topic “VAY-CAY-SHUN!”

Best Birthday Ever!

This past Monday, November 13, I celebrated my 35th birthday. To be honest, I was a bit despondent about reaching my mid-30s. My fiance bought me tickets to see the Carolina Hurricanes play the Buffalo Sabres at the RBC Center in Raleigh, NC. Even though the 'Canes lost 7-4, and I got lost five times trying to navigate the I-440 beltline, it was still the best birthday ever. As much as I love going to watch the Fayetteville FireAntz play, getting to go see a live NHL game was so awesome!

You can view pictures of my trip at my Picasa Photo Album.

It's Hockey Season, BABY!!!

The NHL 2006-07 season is well under way with opening night having been about a week and a half ago. My beloved Carolina Hurricanes, the defending Stanley Cup Champions, are off to a slow start losing their first four, but winning their last two, including a very decisive victory over the Pittsburg Penguins by a score of 6-1. The 'Canes are now 2-3-1 with 7 points in the standings.

Speaking of hockey, I'm quite perplexed over the cable station "Versus" (formerly known as "The Outdoor Life Network" [OLN]). They are supposedly the "official network of the NHL" and yet they never seems to telecast any games. Their broadcast schedule suggests that they should have a game on just about every night of the week, but when I tune in, all I see is fishing and bull-riding. Guys! If you're going to call yourself the "offical network" of a league, then show some friggin' games!

In other hockey news, my other favorite team, the Fayetteville FireAntz of the Southern Professional Hockey League, are about to begin training camp and will begin their 2006-07 campaign on October 27. With a new head coach and several core players already re-signed, it's looking very exciting.

Until next time,
~ JC