What is the best NHL logo--response

http://zorgreport.blogspot.ca/search/label/Sports%20-%20Hockey  (you have to scroll down)

( Well, I had meant to put this simply as a response to my own post.  However, googleminds does not allow more than a few phrases, so I have to go this way, and create a separate post.)

Man, did this post go viral, or what.   I got a lot of hits, but.  Only a few weeks after I posted it, I heard the guys on my “sports” radio station going over the same topic exactly.  Then lo,’ today I’m waiting in line at the supermarket, and I see the *cover story* is my topic—greatest uniforms—for the still relatively new Rogers Sportsnet magazine.  You’re welcome, mainstream media.  I think I even heard some bit of piped-in American media on this topic, too, but I can’t remember now.  Back in the day, a “magazine” would have some new idea to break, but the best Rogers Sportsnet could come up with was recycling mine.

Oh, it’s not an original idea, and it’ll come back again soon, but it’s nice to know I gave the mainstream media some ideas they’d otherwise be without and searching for like car keys under a brass rail. 

You could say, if you don’t like the blog, “No, dude, it’s just this unusually major coincidence,” but then you’d be faced with names and dates and this huge logic mountain to have to climb and get up over, and you’d need Lance on steroidal steroids to do that.

Anyway, whatever your perspective, it is an interesting object lesson in how the mainstream media, which always complains that the web and the blogosphere and so on have no credibility, are now beholden entirely to the very media they revile.  Mainstream “journalists” will often bemoan that webkids just repeat and retweet and don’t really have to ‘work’ like them.  I’m quite sympathetic to this mainstream media argument, really.  I do think that there’s such a thing as a journalist, but it’s becoming increasingly vestigial.  Take Mags Wente--holds a dinner party and writes about it and calls it work. Gets a hip replacement and it's "news." Take Christie Blatchford--Obie won't sleep with her and it's news.  Friend's in tough with a hockey rink and it's "news."  In fact, it could be that these so-called "mainstream" journalists were just the canaries in the coalmines.  By refusing actually to do any journalism, but rather have dinner parties and talk about dog parks, they inspired people to say, well, if that's what it is, I can do that, too, and better.

  These gals could get a job, but they don't have to--all they have to do is *just be right-wing enough.*  Brains checked at the door.  What a sad retroversion for women everywhere.

 

Anyway.

 

First of all, media and journalism is disappearing into partisan entertainment.  Second of all, there is no spectrum, owing to corporate mainstream media concentration, so if you want to work, you have not only to have Stalinist sensibilities, but to anticipate them.  And thirdly, media organizations and journalists themselves believe that they just don’t have the money or the time any more (in reality, they do) to actually do journalism, so they just end up like the boys at Rogers sportsnet, sitting at their computers reading my blog and riffing on it.  Back in the day, a Rogers sportsnet employee would get up and get out there and go find something to talk about.  Nowadays, s/he gets up in his/her underwear and has a coffee and scans the web for ideas to recycle—and his/her employers would probably fire him/her if she/he didn’t do exactly that--and come up with recycled pablum, pronto.  The very fact that Rogers Sportsnet would be recycling my ideas proves my point exactly.  Rogers could hire journalists, to do a job, but instead Rogers hires talking faces to. . .be talking faces reading me.

I know where I got the idea for the topic, but one sort of subliminal reason I must have come up with it for is precisely because, in relentless marketing pushes, so many once-proud franchises have introduced more or less a new jersey for every game—fans of the Oregon Ducks could be fans of. . . .?  In other words, the reason I came up with the topic imitated by Rogers Sportsnet and its affiliates was because I might have been tapping into something fans longed for—a time when a crest had an ineffable, as opposed to merchandisable, feel.

In the grocery-store lineup, I saw that Rogers Sportsnet magazine placed the Habs first.  Well, this is Canada.  But I stick to my rankings above, and it isn’t just because I spent a long time rooting against the Habs.  The crest is too small, the bands too wide.  The Habs look slow and stumpy—their uniforms look more like prison uniforms or nineteenth-century bathing dress of a country I associate with being colourful, like, say, Spain, or Venezuela.  Iconic uniforms like those of the Red Wings emphasize dynamism and fluidity—the Habs look like pylons.  Or take the Bruins, often the Habs’s (when the Habs contended now and then) greatest rivals.  The simple spoked B wasn’t made to make the team look fast, but those spokes somehow broadened the effect of the upper body of every Bruin, making them look a formidable force.  It’s just a farce to say that Habs have a great uniform.

 But I guess there’s the rub.  Sportsnet Magazine, or whatever it’s called, then added the Yankees, the Celtics, the NZ All-Blacks, Real Madrid, the Packers, etc.  In other words, the “greatest uniform” issue wasn’t really about that at all; rather, it was about: “what is the most successful franchise so that we can say they have the best uniforms?”  Sad.  Even their also-rans (Flyers, Cardinals) are teams that had more success than most teams.  So, if the point of your exercise, unlike mine, is simply to say “which franchise made the most money”. . . well, ok, it’s Rogers, Rogers Sportsnet.  Put a picture of Ted Rogers and his kids on the Blue Jays uniform and it’s #1, uniformly.  The Toronto Teds’ kids—that’s the best one of all.  Yes.

 Oh all right, I also justified some of my own choices that way.  Oh all right.  It’s just how they had to copy _everything_!!

Like me, the magazine also referred to jerseys of days gone by, but people, honestly, I only had really a couple of minutes before my groceries just advanced too far down that black rubber conveyor belt and there were other people behind me.  If I see a left copy of the magazine at the gym, I’ll look at it. 

If you want to find out which teams in history have made the most money and won the most championships (but you don’t really care one way or the other about uniforms)—then go check out Rogers Sportsnet magazine after you’ve found your way to my blog that came out months earlier.

-zr

CHLPA  Self-Interested Rogers Sportsnet Media Goes All Out to Mock Potential Canadian Hockey League Players Association (but it’s probably an idea whose time has come, and eventually will come)

TV and radio media have lately been heaping scorn on the notion of a CHLPA, which bubbled up briefly but then appeared to burst, and this post addresses why the media may be doing it and why a CHLPA should not necessarily be dismissed just because of self-interested media concerns.

(Disclosure: Dan Zorg is not a member of a union, or a lawyer.)

Various sources suggest that CHL players make about $50/week.  Of course, they are billeted and no doubt have living and meal allowances and equipment covered and so on.  But they work very hard for an uncertain future and they aren’t paid anything even approaching minimum wage, which is what at least one would-be CHLPA lawyer or another was saying they should get.  Minimum wage?  What is wrong with that?  What’s in it for the media, the Rogers representatives from Peter Maher to Bob McCown, who lampoon people who think that, hey, maybe players should get paid minimum wage?  Well, keeping their jobs and making sure they make money while players don’t.

After all, it’s not like there isn’t a lot of money in CHL hockey.  The proportion of CHL franchises doing better than NHL franchises is obviously higher.  Why else would the CHL keep expanding?  Why else would a Western CHL team play 72 games a year, or 88% of an NHL schedule, and every bit as gruelling and inane a playoff schedule with seven-game series’?  Why else would teams like the NHL Flames also want to own teams like the CHL Hitmen?  Why else would Rogers Sportsnet enter into partnership with the CHL to broadcast dozens of games per year? 

But CHL players can’t make minimum wage?  And people like Peter Maher and Eric Francis and Bob McCown, who make infinite amounts more than junior players, the vast majority of whom will never make the NHL, think it’s really neat to make fun of a potential CHLPA?  What is in it for them?  Have they been instructed by their employers to mock the idea of a CHLPA?

Have a look at that schedule again.  The CHL is at minimum one, and more normally two or three rungs below the NHL.  But CHL players still play 68-72 games and the huge playoff schedule.  The schedules look wonky, with intense concentrations of games followed by several days off, and bus travel schedules seemingly designed by aliens.  It is not uncommon for teams to play, say, 5 nights in 7, or 3 in 4, with long bus trips in between.  Take just any old example—near the beginning of February 2013, the Prince Albert Raiders will play 4 games in 5 nights.  The first is at home, then they visit Saskatoon, Lethbridge, and Swift Current before returning home, having travelled 1400k in that time.  By WHL scheduling standards, that looks very geographically reasonable.  Still, hockey isn’t like baseball, where you stand around in a field.  Hockey is an intense, physical, aggressive game, and if you’re going to get to the pros, you better be on your game.  Anyone reading this play hockey, or just exercise?  What if I said to you that you’d play four games in 5 nights and ride the buses in between and get to hotels/motels at 2, 3, 4 a.m., etc.?  Is that how an athlete practises, refines, and perfects his/her abilities?  Is that healthy?  Is that how athletes, seeking optimal performance, would actually train?  No, it’s idiotic, and invites injuries, but someone makes a lot of money off of this, and it obviously isn’t the players who provide the entertainment in the first place for $50 a week.

Much has been made of the CHL’s education program—basically, if a player plays a year in the CHL, that player gets a year of tuition at a university.  Good.  But most degrees take four years or more.  How many players actually play four full years in the CHL?  (Anybody ever get injured?)  Would the CHL release those stats, instead of just bragging about how much it “invests” in players (how noble!—not like the league gets anything out of those players), or offering bland aggregates saying the CHL has awarded x 1000 “scholarships”?  And besides, the CHL education program is use it or lose it—don’t go to school within 18 months, and you don’t get those vaunted “scholarships.”  Say you actually did play 3-4 years in the CHL.  Odds are, you’d like to keep the dream of a pro career alive.  After all, hockey is all you’ve known, and it’s unlikely that your schedule and those bus trips have prepared you very well for academics, anyway.  So you might try the ECHL, AHL, Europe, whatever.  But spend barely more than a full season doing it, and poof, that “education program” is gone.  So yes, the CHL’s education program is a good thing—it didn’t used to exist, and it’s a good start.  But only a CHL flack could call it generous, and when one looks at the strings attached to it, it’s hard not to think that the program is designed for PR purposes, if not explicitly to minimize the CHL’s actual educational commitment.  

Elsewhere on this blog, one can find a post I made about the Graham James re-arrest/re-trial.  I certainly didn’t expect to gain anything but flamers out of that one, but I was trying to get at systemic queries, and what one tries to do with things/situations like that of James.  Suppose there had been a CHLPA when James was coaching in the Western CHL? Now, am I saying that the presence of a CHLPA might have stopped a Graham James?  No, I’m not saying something that simplistic.  But think about it.  If a vulnerable young player who knows he can’t go to an abusive, pedophilic, corrupt, immoral etc. coach, or team brass, or who doesn’t have or doesn’t feel he can talk to an agent or recruiter—who in any case want him to get, or to get him to the pros and make money and NOT hear anything bad--or who may have a bit of a messed-up background, etc.—IF that young player knows that at least there’s something like a union representative who can be approached in confidence and can assist in legal matters and so forth, then maybe that young player can get some help.  And what if a would-be predator knows there’s yet that one more level of social/professional/legal observance he’s going to have to get around?  What happened to all the media people who wanted to be tough on crime? It is fairly amazing to me that those who easily revile Graham James (at least when they’re no longer able to vote him coach of the year anymore) are also those most eager to ensure that junior players get zero workplace assistance or representation (such as many even in the private media enjoy).  That is a toughie, that one.  Just what makes the media such anti-union cheerleaders, eager to heap scorn on an idea that could work to players’ benefits in many ways?  Well, look no further than the team owners and networks that drive the media’s every utterance.  What a sad, sad state of affairs.

Media badgerers like Bob McCown made a big deal out of how the nascent CHLPA couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say how many it had signed up and where.  He and his cohorts sympathized deeply with poor David Branch, CHL Commissioner, who really did cast himself as just about the most befuddled and put upon man in the land.  Undeniably, it does look like the CHLPA effort was mishandled and poorly organized, but then again, trying to organize and certify a union of any kind, against media and management pressure, is incredibly difficult.  Trying to organize a union of teenaged kids competing amongst themselves and dreaming of the big time and lottery money is doubly improbable, no matter how much money they’re making for others (and how much, much more ~relatively~ speaking, any potential union executives or lawyers could make out of the deal).  Where’s the media to speak on behalf of the union, or rather, players?  It doesn’t exist, because if such media appeared, that media would be fired by the league and owners and the media broadcasters who pay the owners and the league.  Talk about a closed loop.  According to the Windsor Star, Branch “said that just because there is not a union does not mean the players' concerns will be ignored. ‘We don't think a third party can do it better than us.’”

[Read more: http://www.windsorstar.com/Branch+breathes+easier+union+move+collapses/7493382/story.html#ixzz2BEPm5dvF]

Nope, no conflict of interest there.  Only the league that sells and profits from the players, trades them, releases them, etc.—only the league can really look after them.  What if a member of the Calgary Hitmen wanted to join a potential union—the Calgary Flames, broadcast regionally by Rogers Sportsnet, also own the Heat, the Hitmen, the Roughnecks, and the Stampeders.  Talk about a company store.  Can you imagine how fast you’d end up in Siberia if you indicated a willingness to be represented by anyone but the cartel that owns you?

*IF* the CHL was doing such a wonderful job helping its players “voluntarily” (well, that’s big of them, to help their players “voluntarily”—one only wonders what “involuntary” looks like-- http://www.chl.ca/article/statement-from-the-canadian-hockey-league), then why hasn’t the league splattered all over its websites and affiliates’ websites 100s of success stories about the game and what all the amazing scholarship winners they’ve anointed have gone on to do? 

Who could really provide employment assistance, training, legal advice, abuse counsel, etc.?  A players association could.

Eric Francis of Hockey Night in Canada was another who scoffed at the union idea.  He thought it was a big joke, and chipped in on the FAN590 that he didn’t think Georges Laraque was “very smart.”  Based on what I’ve seen of Eric Francis, I can’t imagine what his qualifications are for assessing the intelligence of others.  Based on what I’ve seen of Georges Laraque, he strikes me as a thoughtful guy, willing to step up and support good causes and his community, willing to get involved in public or political situations, and generally use his minor celebrity both to advance progressive things and, I imagine, also himself (though given the money he made in the NHL, more than many of us will make in a lifetime, it seems to me to be a cheap shot to say that he’s in it for the money or fame when he could just be golfing like many other retired players, instead of hanging out in Haiti doing relief work, say).  (And it is also a fact well-known to any hockey fan that, just as there’s a disproportionate number of catchers who go on to be managers, there’s an unusual amount of tough guys like Laraque who end up being the most articulate and philosophical and reflective about the game they took a small but highly visible part in—the Sheehys, the Grimsons, the Cherrys and Kypreoses—it’s striking how often it is the tough guys who end up being agents and lawyers and coaches and pitchmen and commentators and so on.)  For what it’s worth, Eric Francis is also a big backer of Lance Armstrong, who he still supports because Armstrong has done so much to raise money in the fight against cancer.  So Armstrong, who, like many other athlete/steroid-chemical users who experience long-term or premature life-ending consequences as a result of their drug habits, may well have even gotten cancer partly as a result of the huge amount of cheating and doping he did, he gets a free pass from Francis.  It’s true that cycling’s a dirty sport, but as the voluminous USADA report shows, Armstrong was amongst the dirtiest and most vicious in that sport; he was not only fairly casual (such a prima donna was he) about letting those close to him see him dope, but also a ruthless ringleader (don’t use juice to support Team Lance?  You don’t have a job with Team Lance).  When those who had evidence against him accused him, he sued them, all the while knowing he was cheating, and that other people knew it and had seen it. That, in view of all the counter-lawsuits he’s going to get now, that was smart?  So lessee, we’ve got Laraque, an athlete who maintains a public profile and does good works, and we’ve got Armstrong, a cheating athlete who maintains a public profile and does good works and sues those who know he’s cheating.  In Eric Francis’s view, Armstrong’s still a fine exemplar, but Laraque “isn’t very smart.”  Well, you draw your own conclusions about what makes Eric Francis draw the conclusions he does, whoever’s paying him.

Bottom line: The CHL is big, big money—for owners, for the league, for media rights holders.  Sooner or later, the CHL is not going to be able to get away with paying its employees/junior players on the order of $50/wk (despite magnanimous gestures like feeding them).  Media talking heads, especially those who are themselves owned by private networks, will fight the players they feast off as much as they can, but one day the players will have to get a sop.  What if the World Junior Team asked for a 1% cut of TSN’s revenues?  Can you imagine the storm over that one?  Even if lawyers take .99% of that 1%, the players, and the game and society, would be better for it.  Some of the players who don’t make the NHL might even become lawyers.

--zr

 

 

 

 

Graham James coaches the Canadian Hypocrites – who win the Immoral Cup

Let me see if I get this.  Graham James was a junior hockey coach, trainer, etc., who worked for years in the Canadian hockey system.  He had remarkable success, and was hailed by members of the hockey establishment repeatedly.  He was one of their guys. 

His wins led to honours and accolades.

But it turns out that, like innumerable adults, he was *also* absorbed with engaging in sexual relationships with the teens he worked with.  You always wonder, with these guys (for it is almost always guys), how they do it.   Well, he was successful, so people liked him.  It’s not like he was a banker losing millions and getting millions as a consequence, for example.  Russell Williams flew Peter McKay around half the world wearing panties of women he’d murdered, but he just kept on getting kicked higher and higher and higher.  Ask ‘em today, not one Tory would not kick Russell Williams, pervert and murderer, higher and higher and higher.

So Sheldon Kennedy came out, and James was arrested and charged and tried and sentenced and jailed and then paroled.  Was he paroled too early?  I don’t know.  I’m not the parole board.  He did the crime, he did the time.

Then intrepid CBC reporter Bob McKeown (who also brought us the incredible investigative Fifth Estate report—“oh gee, American guns are showing up in Canada—oh gee, oh gee”) found Graham James under the cover of a. . .baseball hat (no budgets blown on that one) doing his laundry in Mexico.  Caught, in the act. 

So James gets tried again, after multi-millionaire Theoren Fleury removes the coke spoon from his nose long enough, for the same crime.  I thought there was something like double indemnity for crime.  I mean, say I rip off a 7-11 with a knife tomorrow, and I get 6 months for it, and then I finish my law degree 6 years later, and somebody sees me walking down the street and says, “yeah, I remember you, you said you’d wash my windows for $50—I gave you $60 and you ran away”—does that mean I go to jail again?

What was Graham James doing in Mexico?  Well, who knows.  The media sure isn’t interested in telling us.  Apparently he was working with computers or something.  It is doubtful that he was coaching hockey.  Maybe he was diddling soccer kids.  Who knows?  It’s unlikely he could apply for a job and do anything useful in Canada.

Theoren Fleury didn’t come out when Kennedy did because Fleury still had massive amounts of cash to make—which he made—while being in the NHL.  So he waited, until he was really, really rich, and his hockey career was over, so he could write a book about how, gee, he was hurt, too, and now he wanted to see some millions flow from the book.  If you check into Fleury’s life, you might think Graham James was not the only thing that could have led to him being traumatized by his millions. Holocaust survivors should be so lucky.  Anyone who has been abused should be so lucky.  To pick up millions while not saying a crime was done, so that later millions could be made for saying a crime was done.  There’s Theoren setting a great example—“never say a crime was done if you can make millions before you say it.”  What a role model.

Greg Gilhooley is now being pitched as the intellectual post-abusee.  He went along with James for some time, reached sexual maturity at a time older than a whole hell of a lot of people, went to Princeton, had a successful law career, house and family in the most desirable of neighborhoods, and now, he’s, “gee, it’s tough,”  Tough being a millionaire, sure it is.

It is impossible not to get the feeling that it would be an excellent recuperative if any of these people—Kennedy, Fleury, Gilhooley—all massive millionaires—could take a minute to meet a holocaust survivor or two, those that still exist, and learn something about the complete liquidation of entire families and physical, emotional, sexual, and mortal abuse they couldn’t even begin to imagine.  More than that—they could learn about how it wasn’t just a question of figuring out how to deal with millions, but, rather, surviving and then struggling to find a place and find a community and find a way to do something useful and thrive within it.  Sheldon Kennedy set up a ranch so kids could ride on horseback.  Theoren Fleury wrote a book.  Greg Gilhoolhey went to the _Globe and Mail_.  None tried to do anything that would make tangible change.  Not one sat on a committee, joined a community organization, decided to enter politics—not one.  Plenty of charity golf tournaments, though.  Golf always helps.

You simply can’t expect anyone to act in any way but their own self-interests when it comes to cases such as this, and this is sad.  Take Elliotte Friedman, whose life and wife and kids depend upon his never saying anything critical about hockey:  he noted that, well, if he’d been one of those affected, he’d have been disappointed that James didn’t get more time.  At once covering and spreading his ample hind, Friedman took a time-out on morality so he, like Theoren, could get rich.

Most people in the sports media simply won’t touch this issue, like the aforesaid Friedman (Duhatschek, anyone?—they simply have so much to lose, and nothing to gain).  You won’t find it on HNIC.  Don Cherry won’t talk about it—even Bruce the plagiarizer Dowbiggin won’t speak of it.  Gerbil-mouthed Bob McCown thinks a hockey puck is something he cooked on the bbq. Mealy-mouthed Stephen Brunt can be expected to say nothing, of course.  All of these “men” have a lot of money to make by saying nothing, nothing at all.  Lots of money by saying nothing at all.  They contribute to the problem by refusing to speak so that they can keep their cash.

Pretty well anyone who has lived on earth for a few decades has some experience of, say, cancer.  And pretty well anyone who has lived on earth has some experience of difficult sexual experiences.  Some people have their entire families killed and mutilated and still find a way to fight and struggle their way to having productive families and lives of their own that don’t include millions like the plaintiffs against Graham James.  How do they do it?  Where is the media uproar about them? 

Everyone is falling all over themselves to say that “Graham James is not rehabilitated,” but there is no way to say that this is anything but bitterness.  They all insist that he is not, and that his sentence is a joke.  In other words, rehabilitation is impossible, so lock him up and throw away and the key and gas him while you’re doing it.  I’m right in there with that, but is there not something uncomfortable with people who say, “hey, I’m recovering from abuse, and I’m trying to get better,” also saying “hey, an abuser cannot be rehabilitated, so kill him?”  I mean, what’s the point?  If Theoren Fleury or people making huge money out of Graham James now, like Glori Meldrum, could see James killed off, would they be happy?  Would they keep making money off James?  They need to keep James alive to keep themselves out there and raking in millions.  There’s a lot of money to be made off the perpetual incrimination of Graham James, and people like Glori Meldrum know it; they’d go broke otherwise.  How come Theoren Fleury can make millions over millions by saying “I’m not a crack addict now”, but he can say, to add to his millions, “Graham James is not rehabilitated.”  How come Theoren Fleury, who was undeniably helped to make millions by James, can admit to his own faults and say he’s conquered them, but say someone else never can?   How does this, morally, work?  Say I say I’ve got a problem, but I’ve overcome it, but I look at another person, and I say “no, she hasn’t overcome it.”  How does that work?

It is impossible that one could ever “stop” people like Graham James—priests, scout leaders, etc.  No amount of background checks or whatever will ever stop that.  What we need to stop is our adulation of success at any cost, of wins, of the richest, most faithful, most successful, and so on, as being our moral guides.  We could look, instead, to those who just offered a helping hand, did a good service, took an interest, tried to help, noticed a problem and tried to fix it.  But we can’t do that.  Like our NHL stars, we’re fixated on the star system.  We don’t believe, like Glori Meldrum, that people can get better.  We don’t accept that; we all want to be stars, like Glori Meldrum.  Like Theoren Fleury, after making countless millions, coming out to say “oh, yeah, by the way, I was abused and it hurt me.”  Tough, tough.

We love the abusers, we hail them and love them.  Those who can take over a company, lose millions or billions and get millions in return for losing millions—we hail them.  We love them, lionize them—Glori Meldrum goes to them and says: “help us” and those massive losers throw her a bone and she goes to her website and she says “oh, those people who destroyed so many others, we love them, because they destroyed so many.”

We see someone who makes millions to destroy shareholder wealth—careers, lives, families—as a hero.  Glori does—she takes their cash, eagerly, setting up the cycle of abuse she says (before she gets really rich herself) she’d like to stop.  To see her stunningly sick, slick attempt to profit by the pain of others, go here: http://glorimeldrum.com/  Here you can learn about how she can talk to you, how you can feed money to her, how you can book her, etc.  The sheer disgustingness of how she is profiting off of abuse is amazing.

It’s impossible to stop people like Graham James.  We have to stop the culture that promotes Graham James.  Glori and her acolytes don’t ever want to see Graham James stopped—that way, she’d never get paid, and her profit from abuse would stop.  She needs the money from the abusers to keep her going, keep her rich, keep her in Jaguars.

What we need to do is start aligning our views of morality not with money and success, but, rather, with what kind of social and communal good our morals create.  Again, someone like Glori Meldrum could never imagine such a thing, because she is driven above all by a money motive—whatever gives her money, is good.  And most of us are like that—whatever, and whoever, has money, is good.  And as long as we base our views on money, or wins or success, then we’ll get more abuse.

It’s hard to imagine what would stop another Graham James, but the saddest comment of all is that the *last* person in the world who could ever contribute to stopping another Graham James is Glori Meldrum, the person most fixated on cash and its motive.

Her biggest contributors now—the most successful, the most hailed—like Graham James, are probably the greatest abusers, and she loves it, because she’s getting rich.

The culture of abuse is the one we adore.  We’ve got to stop adoring the abusers, and start teaching ourselves to admire the people who just do good, without, like Glori and Graham and their corporate supporters and friends who shower them with awards, making money from the misery of others.

zr

What is the best NHL logo? What is the best NHL jersey?

What is the best NHL hockey jersey?

What is the best NHL hockey logo?

I’m glad you accidentally clicked here and found me writing this, for I will tune you in.

Who has not whiled away a few seconds, amongst voluble acquaintances or alone after an icing call, musing on who really has the best jersey?  I was recently seated, doing one of my favourite things, reading my friend Jeff Stanford’s _The Gondola_, which emanates from Toronto.  So far as I know, he and his Leafs journal were most recently written up here: http://scribemag.ca/2011/10/blue-and-white/

In the latest issue (10.5: Feb., 2011), Jeff, referring to the 2013 Winter Classic, to be played at Michigan Stadium, writes of the teams to be involved (Toronto and Detroit):

They have been rivals since the 1920s.  The sweaters they wear can truly be described as ‘iconic,’ an appellation that has yet to be applied to any of the togs worn by the expansion teams.  Toronto and Detroit taking the ice is one of the most resplendent sights known to fans.

Well put.  Just to see those iconic jerseys burst onto the ice does put one in mind of Davey Keon and Ted Lindsay, and the thought of those immortal apparitions surely thrills any hockey fan.  And how could a hockey player not be inspired to wear such a garment, trailing glorious victories behind him as he seeks the next great triumph?  

Don’t think it doesn’t mean something.  Jim Bouton, briefly a World Series-winning Yankees fireballer before his arm blew out, famously detailed his efforts to stay in the game in his 1970 book, Ball Four.  On more than one occasion, he noted the simple majesty of his former team’s pinstripes, versus the baby-blue pyjamas (Blue Jays, anyone?) he had to wear with the expansion Seattle Pilots.  For instance, opening day, 1968, in Anaheim, he noted: 

There was a lot of grousing about the uniforms.  [. . .]  I guess because we’re the Pilots we have to have captain’s uniforms.  They have stripes on the sleeves, scrambled eggs on the peak of the cap and blue socks with yellow stripes.  Also there are blue and yellow stripes down the sides of the pants.  We look like goddamn clowns. (103)

Mm.  Well then, let me rank for you the best NHL jerseys, after a few caveats.

1. I am referring to jerseys that came at or after the late 1960s/1970s expansion period. 

2. I realize that many jerseys, even with classic teams, have undergone many changes.  I realize that there are many NHL teams that are now gone, and while I may refer to them, I won’t include them in the rankings of _the teams currently extant at the time of this writing_.  Also, I more or less will not refer to any so-called “3^rd” (or “4^th or 5^th or 6^th) jerseys.

3. My rankings are obviously a fan’s subjective rankings, duh.  I will probably make               some mistakes in what I am talking about, and I admit these errors in advance.  If any of my numerous readers from pornhackingsite.ru wish charitably to nudge me towards a greater truth, why, I welcome such insight, Sergeis.

4. My enthusiasm for this endeavour was dampened utterly when I really did have a look at the logos now on offer.  Good xst.  I should put us all out of our misery and offer the top 6 and give 24 7^th places.

5. I *tried* to go as fast as I could, but in Gary Bettman’s crazee carnival of yee-haw hockey, I just got bogged down.  This is tough.

Anywhere, here we go.

#1 – Red Wings.  Captures the speed and power of the game, roots itself in the city (or shell of it before it was moved to Mexico).  Simple, unsurpassed.

#2 – Blackhawks. Such a complicated jersey.  Racist I guess. I’m relatively new to the racist game, though I’ve taught it for nearly 20 years. You would think, with the thin stripes, that it couldn’t make it in today’s game.  But put it on Denis Savard, Tony Esposito, Jonathan Toews, Stan Mikita, or Bobby Hull, and it’s just a jersey that compels and can terrify like Cliff Koroll as your father-in-law.

#3 – Blues.  Classic colours, pre-70s Atari/Coleco.  It may be that St. Louis has not a lot more to do with the blues than Los Angeles does with lakes, or Utah with jazz, but it’s still a good uniform that is of its moment (a bit clunkily) but with staying power.

#4 – Leafs.  Very hard even to know what a Leafs uniform looks like, so often have they adulterated it.  A Cup winner in the west, Cliff Fletcher, attempted to restore sanity and dignity in the early 90s, and almost brought Toronto a Cup again.  The generic Atari/Coleco 70s logo is, alas, the one I remember best.  Some years ago, the Leafs went to a stripeless nightie that made Captain Mats Sundin look like Casper the silly ghost.  No other original six team would tamper so ceaselessly, stupidly, and shamefully with a classic jersey as Toronto.  Would Montreal?  Sadly, that says a lot.

# 5 - Jets. – Despite the obvious military pandering and ill-advised colour scheme, I find this jersey wise and half-way (not .75) to a classic.  It has a hint of the old Falcons in it, and it wisely stays away from the “stick and puck” motif of the old Jets jersey or most other new ones.  Close to a good job.  It isn’t classic, but it’s so close you have to take it over so many other non-classics.  I could rank it lower, but not more than 1-2 places lower.

# 6 - Sabres. – Hard to know what it has to do with the city (a bison, not a buffalo, is pictured, and I think of wings and miserable weather, not swords, when I think of Buffalo).

#7 - Rangers. – Probably the best pants in the league.  After that, it’s Eddie Giacomin and a prayer.

#8 - Bruins. – That’s inventive.  Only Bronco Horvath and Cam Neely make me put it here.  Only.

#9 - Canucks. – Original expansion, Dennis Ververgaert. Let’s just say Babe Pratt’s 3-yr-old niece was asked to draw this logo.  Unsurprisingly, she could not imagine a “Canuck,” but she did have a sense of what a “stick” her uncle showed her looked like.  Great colours, logo so bombastically rudimentary it makes it look as if Vancouverites played hockey, and rioted, in the 1790s.  For out-nostalgia-izing even people who saw Newsy Lalonde score six, I hand it to this logo.  Forget Holland canals and Millionaires; this jersey makes it plain Chaucer’s pilgrims played hockey during downtimes when carriage wheels were getting fixed.  As for the endless succession of egregiously awful logos following that one, well.  I guess I’d want to smash something up, too.

#10 - Kings. – Only ranking the royal yellow/purple here.  Old-time hockey, with a poet who knew it, Sheldon Kannegiesser (http://warriorsofwinter.com/).  Ask yourself, hockey fan, can _you_ remember a Kings jersey other than the purple/gold Kings?  Dionne, Vachon, Taylor, Robitaille.  That’s the only true pride.  They did some crazy things out there, the Golden Seals, etc.  But who says a man can’t wear bright colours? 

#11 - Canadiens. – Have spent such a lifetime hating this team that I can’t observe it objectively.  I recognize that the colours are ok, the logo is meaningful, etc.  But still I find the away (used to be home) logo faint and weak.  Top 3 original six are Wings, Hawks, Leafs; bottom three are Bruins/Rangers, Habs.  If it were based on heart, this team would probably rank 30^th; as it is, I only rank it where I rank it on, basically, speculative terms.  I can’t even accept my own decision.  I’m like a judge who says “get me outta here, I’m a heroin addict.”

#12 - Flames. – Kudos to the Flames for sensibly going with Atlanta colours and even a name that, curiously, made sense.  Regrettable Atari/Coleco 70s “C,” but, as with the Flyers and 3 cup trips of their own, you don’t buy or sell tradition, you earn it.

#13 - Capitals. – Original jerseys almost laughable, given how laughable they were.  But over time, the idiotic New York Americans-style jerseys have grated less.

#14 - Islanders. – A mittful of Cups will win your suit some credibility, and after the atrocious other jerseys introduced, going back to the original is just merciful.  I don’t even know if the Trottier-Bossy-Gillies-Potvin-Resch one was bad, but I do know that, whatever happened in the interim, I am glad like hell to see it back.

#15 - Flyers. – One of the most Atari/Coleco logos of all time.  Looks less like something flying than something landing, with a splat.  Or Kate Smith on her wedding day in the park. A hapless imitation of the Red Wings’ logo, but that bright orange just seems made for people like Terry Crisp and Reggie Leach.  No wonder they tried to go all black.  No wonder Paul Holmgren’s molars are stumps.  But they stuck with it.

#16 - Penguins. – They’re silly, but they’re loveable. Syl Apps wore those baby blues.  Mario Lemieux wore a black one with a white cigarette hanging out of his mouth.  It’s a perplexing image, but they’re still there.

#17 - Oilers. – Unsubtle copy of the Islanders.  Disproportionate 70s bubble logo, too busy with the piping; they think they are playing a game other than hockey.  Almost classic look, but with almost the first last-place team in history to field a team of all first over-all draft choices, the logo is losing its look, and taking on more of this one:

http://mitch5150.deviantart.com/art/Edmonton-Losers-153822305

#18 - Stars.  – Dallas can’t match Minnie.  Surprised that Dallas didn’t put more of its own stamp on things, but, hey, they did like the Flames and they won a Cup with a foot.  They kept it simple.  The black is unfortunate, but understandable.  They ought to have amped up the gold.  The green makes no sense in Texas.

#19 - Wild. – Wonderful colours and scheme.  Shame about the hacked-off head of some beast.  But what would you do with a name as inane as “Wild”?  They sound like they play in the ECHL—the East Coast Hokey League.

#20 - Sharks. – Cheesy newstyle that has no reference to the city, but I like the teal.  Unfortunate for a hockey team, but gets silly points.

#21 - Devils. – Meant something when they won.  Mock-up of the old Hartford Whalers (who also adored the Canucks’ original).  Meant something when Daneyko or Madden wore it; on Kovalchuk, Gretzky’s Mickey Mouse looms more and more into view.  A very sullied Jersey lately.

#22 - Coyotes. – Doing this odyssey, I did it without looking at any sites or anything to remind me.  When I got to the end, exhausted, I had to check what teams I’d missed.  Penguins (who used to be blue) and Coyotes (who used to wear a shirt that looked like barf).  Frankly, I like those new ‘yotes uniforms.  I like the colour, and I like how the dog is not 45X his original size.  And it’s symbolic of death in the desert.  He ought to be a lean, hungry, hopeless, baying hound, having found not even a cheese-rind in a McDonald’s wrapper in a wind-flapping dumpster in an empty parking lot outside a windswept Glendale mall, with only 15 gun-totin’ security-mall men to scare ‘im off.

#23 - Hurricanes. – Like the colours; had momentary significance when Ron Francis was there. Hard to make a hurricane look so unexciting, but they hired the ad agency, they paid the money, and they put on the jersey.  It’s exciting, right?

#24 - Ducks. – It’s a personal thing.  I rank the new black one that is empty of any notability. I loved the evil Duck goalie mask.  I would walk down the street with that on like I’d walk down the street with “one fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish.”  Have some balls!  The new logo sucks.  If you’re willing to walk down the street with a Ducks goalie-mask jersey on, you’re ready to do anything.  Believe me, next to a homeless person, you do NOT want to get into a fight with someone who is willing to walk down the street with a Ducks goalie-mask jersey on.  For you know that that person has nothing to lose.  You might think “oh, yeah, I can take this Duck person on,” but trust me, as sure as I am sitting here, you will lose an eye, ear, nose, or throat to someone who is willing to wear a Duck goalie-mask jersey.  Or balls.  Do not f**k with Ducks.

#25 - Lightning. – Maybe it’s supposed to be like superman, but it’s really almost like the anti-logo.  I think it kind of looks like what happens if you have one of those clip-on cleaner-disinfectant things on your toilet bowl that releases a bluish streak when you flush.

#26 - Bluejackets. – I’m flaggin’ out here.  Give me the bug with a stick. Caps ripoff now, they look more and more like the Washington Generals they are.  That Bluejackets thing must go down like banana pudding in Carolina.  If they had have chosen their new logo as their original, I might have bumped them up a notch; but you can’t rip off someone else (Washington) and get credit for it, unless you work in Washington.  Their logo says what they are: AHL.

#27 – Predators. – A beast that could only gnaw at its own throat.  Barry Trotz must know something about this.  And if you hang out around Nashville, you’ll find most beasts just can’t get off their hinds long enough to threaten you much.

#28 - Senators. – A logo that has virtually nothing to do with the city or the sport, bad colours, etc.  I thought I saw once upon a time a logo notion that incorporated the parliament (no, not the silly, busy one with the flag).  Something simple and declarative, using the red/white/black, could have been really effective.  But in the ultimate expression of Canada, the capital of Canada, Ottawa, chose utterly nonsensical reference to, ah, Rome?  This is so bizarre and incomprehensible that it beggars analysis.  This would be like Sierra Leone choosing an ice-cream cone for its national flag.  Can you imagine a soccer team in Rome choosing the Rideau Canal as its emblem?  Well, that’s what Ottawa did.  You wouldn’t believe it if you didn’t see it.

#29 - Panthers. – A cat with .01 cm balls and 1m paws.  Garish, idiotic colours.  Someone like Walt Disney drew this one, addled, febrile, not within his own mind, and disturbingly obsessed, at 4 a.m., with some kind of _cat_.

#30 - Avalanche. – Groovy, like Uwe, never lasts more than a couple years.

Aftermath:

What have I learned about this exercise that I tried to conduct quickly?  Well, of course, original 6 teams were favoured; that’s not surprising.  Also, that it takes time, longer than I’d have liked. Teams more or less corresponding to my shelf-life also seemed somewhat though not always to be favoured. I frankly don’t believe that my listing is all that debatable.  Oh, yes, sure, there will be the odd fan from somewhere who will want to put their teams up there, above all reason.  But I think most fans won’t argue that much with me; they will quibble up or down 1 or 2 teams, but I doubt, really, that most hockey fans will want to jump up one team over the other more than a few places.  I’m probably about the 450 000^th person to do this so far, so as time goes by, I’ll have a look at what they’ve done, too, and see if I want to make any adjustments. 

Especially in the middle ranges, I might be open to change, but towards the bottom, and especially the top, I doubt that there’s a great deal of room for movement.

Your faithful servant,

zr

Hockey Season Is Here Again, and It’s Time for Combat Corner, with Don Cherry

Hockey Season Is Here Again, and It’s Time for Combat Corner (Coach's Corner), with Don Cherry

Back in the day, when I was a kid (like one of the ones Don addresses weekly), Coach’s Corner used to be about hockey.  Since Canada entered Afghanistan, though, Coach’s Corner has been transformed into Combat Corner.  Links between the military and sports, especially in North America, have always been prominent.  But of course, historically, links between sports and arts and culture have always been prominent.  Crushing someone with force is part of sports, but so has been deploying finesse, discipline, training, practice, intellectual flexibility and mental stamina . . . and – the ineffable occasional outbursts of pure magic that result, utterly inexplicably, from all of the foregoing.

I’m a Don fan, and always have been.  We are at polar opposites, but he is very often right and has the shrewd eye for the game that those who loved and played it but weren’t good enough to be stars often do (think a Kubek, say).

Don is all over the news right now because he accused former fighters (Chris Nilan, Stu Grimson, etc.) of going against fighting now, despite the fact that fighting was what gave them a paycheque.  Now those former fighters are speaking back. 

Well, anyway, all of that is tedious.  I’m not sure what I set out for on this post, and that you may be able to tell, but I’ll write it by offering a few wishes:

1) that he doesn’t die or go to a cable network or whatever.  Although, again, Don and I are polar opposites, I can’t imagine life without him, and I know for sure my watching of hockey would be diminished in his absence.  Essentially because the NHL lost a golden opportunity to gradually reshape itself by enlarging slightly its ice surface when every team in the league got new arenas, the sport has become somewhat unwatchable.  Why are World Juniors and Olympics tournaments often popular?  Duh;

2) that Don and his handlers somehow learn to drop his petty insistence on his often being presciently right.  Live long enough, and you will be.  Week in, week out, Don looks more and more like what he isn’t—a petulant, childish, old man regressing into childhood.  Don’s right maybe 50% of the time, but nobody logs that.  I’d like to see someone take up the issue of Vinnie Lecavalier’s being the greatest player in the world with Don someday, for example.  It will never happen, but Don’s unchallengeability actually ages him and makes him look older and more pathetic than he really is.  Shame.

3) that Don didn’t have to address every remark to “you kids out there.”  Yes, I realize it’s a tic, like “hold it, hold it, don’t show it yet!” but boy is it tiresome.  Does Don think he really is addressing kids?  Possibly, but I don’t hold much with that.  Do kids watch Combat Corner?  Of course they do.  Don is aware of his pulpit.  Fine.  But again, that diminishes him.  Every time he yells: “you coaches out there!!”, he diminishes his own show which, inaccurately or not, is named “Coach’s Corner.”    If Don were really a man, and a hockey man, and his handlers weren’t pantywaists, then Don could just talk about hockey.  If Don just talked about hockey, he might actually get himself into _less_ trouble than if he kept pontificating as if he were hockey Dad to a nation.  The more he wants to extricate himself, often, the deeper he gets.  Nasty Swedes.

4) we could just have two different segments, finally, Coach’s Corner and Combat Corner.  It’s a truth universally known that the last refuge of a scoundrel is nationalism, and Don bucks this one up in ways that would make his ancestors turn away in shame.  True patriotism is something you feel on an almost divine and ethereal plane, and to speak of the flag, or to use a telecast as a teary opportunity to beat your own breast is the saddest desecration of the memories of the fallen.  You don’t touch the Cup until you’ve won it, and you don’t make ratings out of the deaths of servicepeople unless you’ve fought with them.  I’ve certainly never met anyone who didn’t “support the troops,” though I do know many who are against the war in Afghanistan.

Sadly, Don’s momentarily felt sentimental gushes have been popular enough with CBC brass fearful of being pantywaists that they have allowed him now to cut his hockey commentary back even further, so that he can hail police officers and firemen and just about anyone he can’t remember once he gets in his Lincoln outside the ACC at 8:35 p.m.  Let’s put one or two things in perspective, even if only for just a second.  To a much greater extent than it is in the U.S., or many other countries, military service in Canada is a _choice_.  You don’t have to serve, and you probably aren’t in a community so desperately dirt-poor, as in America, such that really there’s no choice but to enlist.  In Canada, too, minimal education can also be a gateway to astonishing wages and pensions and benefits as police officers or firepeople that most Canadians, often with notably greater training and education, cannot even dream of.  It is trotted out endlessly that the war in Afghanistan is to “kill scumbags” (to use Canadian General Rick Hillier’s term—a cut and runner if there ever was one, who cut out and took his pension after barely finishing the word “—bags” and getting hailed for it) and protect women.  But yet, if you look at the police and firefighters, and/or even the military, where are the women, the minorities, the small of stature?  Organizations such as the police and firefighters have constantly fought as hard as they could against any kind of recognition of other people—precisely what Canadian troops are supposedly fighting _for_ in Afghanistan.  Some irony.  If you filled out an application to be a police officer or a firefighter in Canada today, you would see precious little recognition of the fact that, every day, across the world, women and men of every age and colour and size and orientation and whatever are—actually—fighting crime and putting out fires and making their communities stronger.

zr