Christmas song parodies sung by tonedeaf guys [*]
YMCA danced by goalies of small size [*]
Ovi's head winning a fight with the glass [*]
These are a few reasons hockey kicks ass
When in the playoffs Mike Smith takes a long shot [*]
When Captain Toews bodychecks a poor wee tot [*]
That time your guy made that fucking sweet pass [*]
These are a few reasons hockey kicks ass
The sweet little kid Tortorella's the pal of [*]
The train-wreck career arc of Ilya Bryzgalov [*]
Failure by censors when Lundqvist gets crass [*]
These are a few reasons hockey kicks ass
When the league snipes
When the Fehrs sass
When I'm feeling mad
I simply remember that hockey kicks ass
And then I don't feel so bad
Sunday, December 9, 2012
Thursday, November 29, 2012
NHLPA Director of Operations talk at Queen's University
Last Thursday I got an e-mail from my friend L, who attends Queen's
University in Ontario. She'd just spotted a poster
advertising a talk the next day titled "Inside the NHL Negotiations: A
View from the NHLPA," given by NHLPA Director of Operations Alexandra Dagg. I begged L to take notes for me, and she came through like a
champ. Here's a rundown of the highlights, most of it paraphrased
because I don't want to misinterpret L's notes and accidentally
attribute an incorrect quote.
The talk was focused on unions and labor relations, since it was put on by the Industrial Relations program in the School of Policy Studies. Apparently they tried to get an NHL player for the talk, but that wasn't viable. So it was just Dagg, who's worked with the NHLPA for a year and various other unions (specifically garment and hotel unions) for decades before that. If you've been paying attention to media coverage of the lockout, you might recognize her as the person who wrote that letter to Canadian Parliament about how this lockout is all the owners' fault. She's also been quoted in various articles about the NHLPA's attempts to get the Canadian government involved in ending the lockout.
Dagg said that in her previous work, the biggest media challenge was drawing attention to the disputes, whereas the NHLPA is surrounded by media. (You can tell she's based in Canada, not the United States.) When asked how the media scrutiny affects communication channels between the union and the players, she said they try not to put things on paper and expect anything written to be leaked. They have a password-protected mobile app for communication with the players, which I hadn't heard about, but they try to communicate confidentially by phone. NHLPA conference calls can have 100 players on them, out of 730 players in the league. (That number sounds low; that must be because only players who are currently under contract are union members. Huh--that must mean free agents like PK Subban and Michael Del Zotto don't get any input into negotiations. I hadn't thought of that.)
Most of the discussion of CBA negotiations was what you'd expect--it's about respect, the players are at a disadvantage, the owners are the ones who started the lockout and they're the ones letting it continue. Dagg said that the league's initial offer was insulting, and she called their organization a "cartel" in her explanation of the reasoning behind the decertification option. There's no real industry competition to draw customers elsewhere, so the NHL can basically do whatever the hell it wants without fear of recrimination. She said there's this assumption that the players have bargaining power because they're the product, but the issue with that is career length--the average NHL career is four years, and 70% of the current NHL wasn't around for the last lockout. They want to get back on the ice while they can, and the owners know it. Also, you have to be pretty rich to acquire an NHL franchise in the first place, so none of the owners are losing their entire income from this.
Dagg cracked the Bettman's-hat-trick-of-lockouts joke (which got a laugh because apparently not everyone spends as much time reading about the lockout on Twitter as I do) and then said, "Bettman doesn't think that's funny." She called Bettman a lightning rod, which I think is a pretty accurate metaphor for the abuse people pile on him that should be directed at the owners. When someone asked a question about the signing frenzies in the summer, Dagg said that the owners need the union to save them from themselves.
In response to a question about mediation (this was last Friday, before the federal mediators were brought in) she said that the NHLPA isn't entitled to it and there's no reason for the owners to agree to it. I know she wasn't going to just come out and say, "oh yeah, mediation is happening next week, keep an ear out for the announcement on Monday," but this answer strikes me as less of an avoiding-the-question type answer and more of an implication that she actually wasn't aware of the imminent development, which kind of intrigues me. Not that it matters, what with the clusterfuck the mediation attempt turned out to be. I still say they should give Arthur Boylan a shot, both because he actually seems to understand the concept of battling depersonalization and because the idea of Don Fehr and Gary Bettman going out for cocktails after work together cracks me up. But I digress.
Dagg talked about the players' charity efforts, mostly in "look how kind and generous the players are, not like those Scroogey owners" terms, but one bit of info stood out: apparently the players have to pay their own insurance to play in charity games. I hadn't realized that, and am now more sincerely impressed by those who played in Operation Hat Trick.
According to Dagg, the NHLPA will pay for the airfare and hotel costs of any player who wants to attend negotiations. This is another reason it's ridiculous for the NHL to try to claim that Fehr isn't being honest with players. Almost 100 players have taken the NHLPA up on this offer at some point; if they can't keep confidential memos from leaking to the press, there's no way those hundred players aren't telling the rest what's going on in the meetings.
In response to a question about Roman Hamrlik, Dagg said that it was her first time dealing with an NHLPA member publicly criticizing the union, and that they try to keep difficult conversations internal, but all players are allowed to have their opinions. She contrasted that with the NHL's quarter-million fines for speaking out. Then she pointed out that Hamrlik hasn't been on any of the conference calls or showed up to any of the meetings, and said that he should come. If I were a player, I sure as hell would.
(Many thanks to L for the detailed notes!)
The talk was focused on unions and labor relations, since it was put on by the Industrial Relations program in the School of Policy Studies. Apparently they tried to get an NHL player for the talk, but that wasn't viable. So it was just Dagg, who's worked with the NHLPA for a year and various other unions (specifically garment and hotel unions) for decades before that. If you've been paying attention to media coverage of the lockout, you might recognize her as the person who wrote that letter to Canadian Parliament about how this lockout is all the owners' fault. She's also been quoted in various articles about the NHLPA's attempts to get the Canadian government involved in ending the lockout.
Dagg said that in her previous work, the biggest media challenge was drawing attention to the disputes, whereas the NHLPA is surrounded by media. (You can tell she's based in Canada, not the United States.) When asked how the media scrutiny affects communication channels between the union and the players, she said they try not to put things on paper and expect anything written to be leaked. They have a password-protected mobile app for communication with the players, which I hadn't heard about, but they try to communicate confidentially by phone. NHLPA conference calls can have 100 players on them, out of 730 players in the league. (That number sounds low; that must be because only players who are currently under contract are union members. Huh--that must mean free agents like PK Subban and Michael Del Zotto don't get any input into negotiations. I hadn't thought of that.)
Most of the discussion of CBA negotiations was what you'd expect--it's about respect, the players are at a disadvantage, the owners are the ones who started the lockout and they're the ones letting it continue. Dagg said that the league's initial offer was insulting, and she called their organization a "cartel" in her explanation of the reasoning behind the decertification option. There's no real industry competition to draw customers elsewhere, so the NHL can basically do whatever the hell it wants without fear of recrimination. She said there's this assumption that the players have bargaining power because they're the product, but the issue with that is career length--the average NHL career is four years, and 70% of the current NHL wasn't around for the last lockout. They want to get back on the ice while they can, and the owners know it. Also, you have to be pretty rich to acquire an NHL franchise in the first place, so none of the owners are losing their entire income from this.
Dagg cracked the Bettman's-hat-trick-of-lockouts joke (which got a laugh because apparently not everyone spends as much time reading about the lockout on Twitter as I do) and then said, "Bettman doesn't think that's funny." She called Bettman a lightning rod, which I think is a pretty accurate metaphor for the abuse people pile on him that should be directed at the owners. When someone asked a question about the signing frenzies in the summer, Dagg said that the owners need the union to save them from themselves.
In response to a question about mediation (this was last Friday, before the federal mediators were brought in) she said that the NHLPA isn't entitled to it and there's no reason for the owners to agree to it. I know she wasn't going to just come out and say, "oh yeah, mediation is happening next week, keep an ear out for the announcement on Monday," but this answer strikes me as less of an avoiding-the-question type answer and more of an implication that she actually wasn't aware of the imminent development, which kind of intrigues me. Not that it matters, what with the clusterfuck the mediation attempt turned out to be. I still say they should give Arthur Boylan a shot, both because he actually seems to understand the concept of battling depersonalization and because the idea of Don Fehr and Gary Bettman going out for cocktails after work together cracks me up. But I digress.
Dagg talked about the players' charity efforts, mostly in "look how kind and generous the players are, not like those Scroogey owners" terms, but one bit of info stood out: apparently the players have to pay their own insurance to play in charity games. I hadn't realized that, and am now more sincerely impressed by those who played in Operation Hat Trick.
According to Dagg, the NHLPA will pay for the airfare and hotel costs of any player who wants to attend negotiations. This is another reason it's ridiculous for the NHL to try to claim that Fehr isn't being honest with players. Almost 100 players have taken the NHLPA up on this offer at some point; if they can't keep confidential memos from leaking to the press, there's no way those hundred players aren't telling the rest what's going on in the meetings.
In response to a question about Roman Hamrlik, Dagg said that it was her first time dealing with an NHLPA member publicly criticizing the union, and that they try to keep difficult conversations internal, but all players are allowed to have their opinions. She contrasted that with the NHL's quarter-million fines for speaking out. Then she pointed out that Hamrlik hasn't been on any of the conference calls or showed up to any of the meetings, and said that he should come. If I were a player, I sure as hell would.
(Many thanks to L for the detailed notes!)
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
My Halloween costume: The God Damn Bettman
My favorite reaction of the night: "The commissioner of... what? Oh. Sorry, I don't follow football."
(I know the NHL logo is off-center, but the tie was kind of a last-minute idea, and I drew the logo on freehand in about eight minutes. Not sure what I'll do with it now, but it's bound to come in handy at some point.)
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Why the Oilers should move to Seattle (and Santa should bring me a pony)
Okay, okay, they're not going to. The visit was a dirty ploy to get the arena deal they want in their own market, they just did it because it worked for Lemieux, and there's no way they'll actually leave. Everyone's clear on that. But in these difficult times of hockey paucity, we're all relying on our imaginations for entertainment; if you can hope that Bettman's heart will grow three sizes in time for the Winter Classic and there will be HBO 24/7 and roast beast for all, we Seattle hockey fans can permit ourselves a little daydreaming about what it would be like to cheer for Nuge in the shiny new arena Chris Hansen is about to bestow upon us. Here, then, are a few reasons for Daryl Katz to send his crew along the yellow brick road:
1. In Seattle, unlike Edmonton, there will be no risk of Nail Yakupov finding himself in a situation where he might actually have to fight a bear.
2. What kind of a namesake for a hockey team is petroleum? We would name them after a much cooler and more ice-appropriate local product, like coffee or terrible operating systems. The Seattle Vista, that sounds way more inspiring than "Oilers."
3. If the team is no longer named after petroleum products, they no longer need to show their support for such products by eating Dairy Queen "ice cream." Hall and Eberle could move their traditional pre-game date night to a higher-quality establishment like Molly Moon's or Peaks Frozen Custard.
4. Curtis Hamilton is from Tacoma. He could show everybody around.
5. We'll give them a downtown arena. Eventually. When we build it. Whatever, the Oilers are used to being patient and waiting for good things to happen.
1. In Seattle, unlike Edmonton, there will be no risk of Nail Yakupov finding himself in a situation where he might actually have to fight a bear.
2. What kind of a namesake for a hockey team is petroleum? We would name them after a much cooler and more ice-appropriate local product, like coffee or terrible operating systems. The Seattle Vista, that sounds way more inspiring than "Oilers."
3. If the team is no longer named after petroleum products, they no longer need to show their support for such products by eating Dairy Queen "ice cream." Hall and Eberle could move their traditional pre-game date night to a higher-quality establishment like Molly Moon's or Peaks Frozen Custard.
4. Curtis Hamilton is from Tacoma. He could show everybody around.
5. We'll give them a downtown arena. Eventually. When we build it. Whatever, the Oilers are used to being patient and waiting for good things to happen.
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Monday, August 20, 2012
How You Can Play Is Doing It Right
When I decided to write a Wikipedia page about You Can Play, I had never even edited Wikipedia before. I spent six hours reading the guides, learning the markup language, researching sources, and writing the page, because I think the organization is important. I think that in twenty years, being able to say "I wrote the original Wikipedia article on You Can Play" will get me cred in both the sports community and the queer community.
Here's why I think that.
The first thing to understand here is that pro athletes, in general, are good at meeting clear-cut expectations. It's what they do. They are chosen, in part, for their demonstrated ability to do as they're told. But they won't jump to just anybody's beck and call; they answer to the people they recognize as authority figures. Mostly that means coaches and officials in their organization, but besides that (current CBA friction aside) they answer to the NHL.
You Can Play isn't the first organization created to combat homophobia in sports, but it's the most effective for two reasons: they have a widely respected authority figure in Brian Burke, and they have a simple, easy way for athletes to jump on board. It's one thing to ask players to commit ongoing involvement to a social activism campaign; it's another thing entirely to just ask them to commit out loud to not being assholes to potential gay teammates. That's a clear-cut expectation they can easily meet, and after the initial star-studded video was released and it became apparent that supporting YCP is good PR, there's no reason not to do it.
And the videos are accomplishing their goal. It's not the content that matters so much--they're well-done but fairly bland and similar to one another, for the most part. What matters is the fast-expanding list of players who have filmed them. According to a Sports Illustrated poll of pro athletes conducted in 2006, 80% of NHL players would support a gay teammate. But it's gotta be hard for a gay athlete to believe that when no one's talking about it outside of anonymous polls and he's hearing homophobic slurs all over the place. The more players film YCP spots, the easier it will be for the first guy to come out. That's the next step, and the YCP folks say they think it won't be too much longer.
In addition, the act of reading the script probably helps strengthen the positive attitudes of athletes who appear in the videos. The psych literature is full of evidence that behavior leads to belief; when people are asked to write a persuasive piece making a particular argument, for example, they then profess more agreement with the argument in question, even if they don't think their opinions were changed. Expressing support for YCP likely increases athletes' investment in the cause, which could make them more likely to speak up against casual homophobia in the locker room.
That's the only real way to make social change happen. Rules and official positions are a good start, but the actual culture isn't going to change unless there are guys who are part of it saying, "Hey, not cool, man," when someone drops the three-letter F-bomb. When Cam Janssen said that sucking cock would get a guy beaten up and got a ton of public backlash, I expected him to get yelled at by management, be forced to release a statement obviously written by a Devils PR person, stop being so blatant about his homophobia, and keep on being an asshole inside his own head. And that's pretty much how it went down. But he also had a talk with Patrick Burke, and Burke's description of it after the fact made me honestly believe that he might have gotten through to Janssen. That's another thing YCP is doing right: when an incident like this happened, they reached out to the offender on a "hey bro, can we talk?" level, rather than sticking to the "homophobia is damaging and it's important to be respectful"-type language of the PSAs.
And then there's Tim Thomas, who actually did the movement a huge favor by supporting Chick-Fil-A's anti-gay stance. Because I'm sure there are other NHL players who are against gay rights, but there is not a single player in the league right now who has any desire whatsoever for their personal politics to be publicly associated with Tim Thomas.
YCP is mostly focusing on hockey right now, which I think is a good call. But I think the movement is going to spread across sports in a few years, probably after an NHL player or two comes out and the mainstream media starts paying attention. American culture in general is becoming more queer-friendly, and prejudice isn't as socially acceptable as it used to be. Football players are giving soundbites to Out.com about being totally cool with potential gay teammates. If YCP keeps being smart about how they do this, eventually they're going to revolutionize sports culture. And when they do, I'll be right there updating the Wikipedia article.
Saturday, August 18, 2012
The Edmonton Eulers Jersey Design
Some context for this incredibly nerdy photomanip I just made: Mark Napier played for the Oilers in the '80s, John Napier is the dude who discovered logarithms, and that is in fact how the name "Euler" is pronounced.
Monday, August 13, 2012
Hipster Hockey History
I realized six hours into the process of creating my awesome throwback Seattle Metropolitans T-shirt jersey that I was dripping irony on the carpet. I'm not usually a hipster, I promise, but the bespectacled, skinny-pantsed soul of my city possesses me sometimes when the subject of local hockey comes up. So give me a moment to take a swig of my PBR, and then let's talk about the good old days before the Stanley Cup made it big and hockey sold out to the mainstream.
1915-1924: Seattle Won The Stanley Cup Before It Was Cool
As proclaimed by my blog's tagline, Seattle has won the Stanley Cup more recently than Vancouver. The Vancouver Millionaires won the Cup in 1915 and the Seattle Metropolitans won in 1917, a few months before the NHL was formed. That was the Challenge Cup era, when winning teams got to defend the trophy the following year instead of having to work up through four rounds of playoffs.
The 1917 Cup series was played against the Montreal Canadiens. It was the first time the Stanley Cup was ever won by an American team. One 1917 newspaper article after the last game of the series described the Mets as blowing through the Habs' defense "like a tornado on wheels in huckleberry time" and another called the Habs' play "as clean as the bottom of a parrot's cage." (Does anyone else feel like something is somehow missing from today's hockey media?)
Because the Habs were a National Hockey Association team and the Mets were a Pacific Coast Hockey Association team, half of the games were played by NHA rules and half were played by PCHA rules. So they all had to switch back and forth each game between having six players on the ice and seven, between being allowed to substitute players in during penalties and getting power plays, and between forward passing in the neutral zone being allowed and not allowed. I gotta be honest, this sounds pretty hilarious. I would be highly entertained by playoffs hockey in which the rules changed every game. Too many men? Naw, ref, it's game 3 of the series, we get a spare!
The awesome T-shirt jersey mentioned above has a 4 on the back, which, as far as the internet seems to be able to tell, was the number worn by Frank "The Flash" Foyston. Foyston was one of three Hall-of-Famers on the 1917 Cup-winning team, and one of ten players in history to win the Stanley Cup with three different teams. The other Hall-of-Famers were Jack Walker, another of those ten players, and Hap Holmes, who is one of two players in history to win the Cup with four different teams.
In 1919, the Mets were up for the Cup again, once more against the Canadiens. The deciding game was canceled by the Seattle health department because basically everyone on the Canadiens was on their deathbed with Spanish flu. "Bad" Joe Hall actually died in a Seattle hospital four days after the game was supposed to be held. So let's just assume that if they'd played that last tiebreaker game, Seattle would've been able to beat them.
But they never won again after that. They made it to the finals once more, but were beaten by Ottawa. Attendance at PCHA games fell in the early 1920s, and in 1924 the league folded and the Seattle Metropolitans ceased to exist, along with Seattle's relevance to NHL hockey.
1924-1989: A Dry Spell To Make The 40-Year-Old Virgin Look Like Hugh Hefner
We had some other PCHL and WHL teams after that, but the NHL had laid claim to the Stanley Cup and all the associated prestige, and there were no serious attempts to bring NHL hockey to Seattle until the 1960s. In 1965, the NHL announced plans to add six expansion teams to the Original Six. Seattle was all psyched for a team, but the NHL told them not to even bother applying, because they were only going to consider cities of "major league status" and Seattle wasn't enough of a sports town to qualify.
Then the Seattle sports scene exploded in the '70s, and in 1974, the city was awarded an expansion franchise. The investment group was headed by Vince Abbey, president of the Totems, Seattle's WHL team (the now-defunct minor pro league, not the current junior league, which--just to be difficult--also includes a Seattle team called the Totems). Seattle was all set to start up a team in the 1976-77 season, along with Denver. Then Abbey started missing financial deadlines, and the NHL pulled the franchise. Foiled again.
1989-1990: Bill Ackerley, President Of The Republic Of Equatorial Douche
In December of 1989, the NHL announced that it was opening applications for expansion teams again. Two Seattle investment groups coalesced, one financed by a Microsoft exec named Chris Larson and the other headed up by Bill Ackerley, the son of the guy who owned the Sonics (Seattle's NBA team). The two groups decided to pool resources, and because Ackerley had already put in his application, they moved forward under that one.
Seattle was basically a lock for getting a franchise at this point. We had the market for it, there was Microsoft money behind the bid, there were arena plans afoot, the initial presentation went beautifully, it looked like there was no way the plan could fail. All that was left was the final presentation in December of 1990. There, in Florida, is where Ackerley went for the gold medal in Olympic long-douching. Just before the group was set to present, he met with the NHL Board in private, which he had the right to do because the application was in his name. He informed them that the Seattle group was withdrawing their application, and then he left the building, leaving the rest of the group dumbfounded.
The NHL awarded franchises to Tampa Bay and Ottawa instead. And then Ackerley rebuilt Key Arena to be entirely unsuitable for hockey, just in case there was anyone left who doubted his rightful claim to the Douchebag King throne.
Now: Okay, Fine, I'll Pretend I Care About Basketball If It Gets Us A God Damn Hockey Team
There are currently major arena talks going down between Seattle's local government and a hedge fund dude named Chris Hansen. Hansen wants the NBA back, and is willing to use the potential of an NHL tenant as leverage for his basketball plans. I'll write another post soon about the details of all this--I've been paying close attention, and showing up to council meetings in my homemade hipster hockey shirt.
Some people who oppose the arena have been saying that Seattle has too many sports teams and can't support two more, which amuses me, since hockey was the first pro sport in this city. We were here first. It's kind of... *dons thick-framed glasses* ...ironic.
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