Let's celebrate; it's all right

And that is all I have to say about Nail Yakupov and his goal-scoring-related joy.

A haiku exchange on the subject of goalies

Me:
Crawford worries me
but with Keith in net with him
like that, he'll be fine.

Mike S:
The Hawks have spent lots
Of money on goalies with
Erratic results. 

Me:
If you think that that's
what "erratic" and "lots" mean
watch more Philly games.

Mike S:
I am a man of
Sturdy constitution, but
I have my limits.

Another girl's guide to watching hockey

Hey, women who are unfamiliar with hockey! Intrigued by the game and want to check it out but don't know where to start? As a woman who used to be unfamiliar with hockey myself, I'm here to help! Just follow these simple guidelines:

1. Develop an interest in hockey, despite the myriad assurances flying at you from all directions that it's too violent, too complicated, and not meant for you.

2. Find someone who knows hockey to watch some games with you and help you learn the basic rules. Based on my personal experiences with hockey fans outside the internet, there's about a 40% chance that this person will be female.

3. Tell your friends who are into hockey that you're getting into it too. Try to gracefully handle the men who joke about your desire to "get into" whatever player you name as your favorite. (Or handle them ungracefully. Depends how much you value the relationship. You're probably used to making that kind of call in your everyday life.)

4. Find some good hockey writers to follow. These will be more like 15-20% female. (Katie Baker is completely fabulous and should definitely be on your list. And even though she knows her shit cold, she gets the same crap you'll get.)

5. Watch a whole shitload of games. Google terms as you come across them. Pay attention to where the players are on the ice in relation to the puck. Learn the names of the best players, the GMs and coaches, and the different announcers. (None of these people will be female. None. 0%.)

6. Never, ever, ever click on anything from hockey PR or mainstream media that says it's written for women.

How the NHL is like the word "fuck"

There's something special about "fuck." It draws four-figure fines if you say it in the wrong place; it increases pain tolerance; it can even provoke human reaction from a crowd dead-eyed and paralyzed by Nickelback. (I will never get tired of that clip.) It's nothing inherent in the noise itself, of course. "Fuck" has power because we give it power. English-speaking society has agreed that this word means something important, and that's the only reason it does.

The particular group of 30 independently-owned teams that currently comprises the NHL doesn't make the league special any more than the particular group of phonemes that comprises the word "fuck" makes it special. Talent is part of it, but that isn't the cause of the NHL's appeal; it's an effect, as the league's reputation draws the best players. The actual root of the appeal is in the shared experience of the people who have agreed, as a society, that the NHL is the pro hockey organization that matters. Team allegiances shift, individual players come and go, but we stick with the league as a whole--through thick, thin, and lockouts aplenty--because it's the one we all know. Being a sports fan is a very social activity; we need that shared experience.

I was going to watch some KHL games during the lockout. I looked up the schedules for the days when Dynamo Moscow went up against Metallurg Magnitogorsk, so I could see Malkin face off against Ovi. I never got around to it. I did attend a WHL game with some friends--and we spent it talking about Shea Theodore's future and explaining the NHL draft to the hockey-oblivious British friend I dragged along. We have plans to go to another WHL game soon, to see Seth Jones play; I'll probably spend a good amount of that evening checking score updates on my phone for the Canucks/Blackhawks game I'll be missing. I watched World Juniors religiously, and I like to think I would have done so for the quality hockey even if the players weren't NHL-bound, but I can't honestly be sure.

It's not that non-NHL hockey can't be perfectly worthwhile. It's not as good in technical terms, usually, but that's not the reason we stick with the NHL. It's that this league--its teams, its players, its narratives--is the one we all know. I love the game of hockey, and I will happily watch it for its own sake, but sitting curled up on my couch at six in the morning watching a KHL game by myself isn't nearly as satisfying as sitting curled up on my couch at six in the morning watching World Juniors and using the commercial breaks to chat on IM and Twitter with friends watching the same game. And no KHL game, no matter how beautiful the plays, can beat out the experience of watching NHL games with people who know and care about the teams involved, who trade commiserating glares at the mention of Bettman's name and grins at the mention of Luongo's.

In the attention economy of a social hobby like sports fandom, the league that people pay attention to is the best one by dint of attention paid. No one cares about non-NHL leagues because no one else does. It's a frustrating catch-22 for some, perhaps, but on a large scale it makes sense.

You Can Play (to your audience)

Patrick Burke recently published a piece on Deadspin called "What Would Jesus Do About A Gay Teammate? A Christian Response To Torii Hunter’s Comments". It addresses the question of how Christian athletes should treat gay teammates based on biblical doctrine, given the premise that gay people are in fact sinners.

I was iffy on this when I first read it. I don't like the premise that gay people are sinners, and I don't like people who accept it. I don't like arguing with those people on their terms, or giving them the impression that I find their views regarding the hellfiery fates of sodomites legitimate enough to use as a platform for debate, even as a thought experiment.

But here's the thing: I'm not supposed to like it. I'm nothing vaguely resembling the target audience of this article. I spent hours grinning the day I found out that You Can Play even existed; they do not need to waste their energy on material designed to make people like me happy. It would be pretty damn tough for them to knock me off board with the project. The people they need to reach are the ones who don't already agree with them, and with that taken into account, this Burke piece is really smart.

I wrote a post on my personal blog a while back about how to change minds. I did my undergrad thesis on dual-process decision-making, and picked up a few things about the psychology of persuasion along the way. That post was an attempt to organize my knowledge and integrate my academic understanding of the topic into my own habits. Here are the guidelines I came up with:

1. Don't focus on getting your audience to agree with you right now. If they end up expressing agreement during just one conversation, either they were already on the fence or they're saying it to shut you up. Think of your goal as getting them to continue considering the topic on their own time.
2. Start by getting them to want to agree with you. Think of ways things would be better for them if they were on your side.
3. Present your facts in I-statements--this is why I believe this, it's my understanding that, etc. Don't make it about them. If you used to agree with them, tell them that, and try to establish commonalities. The more they can see you as a peer and not an obstacle, the more likely you are to get through to them.
4. Don't shove evidence in their face and demand a response. When you ask people to consider facts that counter their beliefs, their beliefs actually grow stronger. This probably has something to do with defensiveness. So try to avoid getting confrontational. Give them things to think about, not things to react to.
5. Wait. This can be hard, but really, these things need time to percolate.

Patrick Burke is mostly running YCP like he's read this list. (Aside from the occasional lost temper with trolls on Twitter. But that's understandable, given the shit people throw at him, and hopefully time and experience will help him learn when to disengage.) I'm not Christian or homophobic, so I can't say for sure that the Deadspin piece is effective, but with all this in mind, it looks solid to me. Burke establishes common ground and presents himself as a peer to his audience by outlining his history with religion and addressing the LGBT community in an aside, thereby characterizing them as other (though I'm not sure that was intentional). Then he reaches out emotionally, using the kind of language his audience associates with church and morality, and scatters some specific references to scripture to engage the reader's rational desire for evidence and back up their instinct to agree.

After a lot of thought, I've decided that I like it. But my opinion is, of course, completely irrelevant. That's the point.

How Maria von Trapp would deal with the lockout

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

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!)

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.)

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.

My initial reaction to the Devellano interview

(The interview, if you missed it, wherein Devellano compares NHL players to cattle.)