GOD BLESS YOU, AL STRACHAN

Today at the World Hockey Championship, Team Canada is playing the host country, Latvia, whose gone-gaga fans, in the words of Canadian forward Mike Comrie, will be the "sixth man." Uh, Mike, did you forget about the goalie? Just a thought.

COMMISH GETS STRACHED

The Toronto Sun's veteran hockey columnist, Al Strachan, is probably not going to win any popularity contests among fellow scribes or hockey fans. Many scribes, me included, seem to resent the platform he's built for himself over the years, invariably saying the same thing; "he can't write for a hill of beans ... but I'd kill to have his contacts."

With respect to TV, I doubt many fans minded when Hockey Night in Canada quietly dropped him from their Satellite Hot Stove League feature -- his willingness to be critical and not go along with the crowd was potentially costing Ron MacLean invitations to emcee sports dinners and charity golf tournaments -- and replaced him with Pierre Lebrun of The Canadian Press.

Nevertheless, Strachan is a hero in these parts right now (full disclosure: I work for the same media chain, but I'm wearing my blogging hat when I say this). Everyone else is parroting the party line about the new NHL, but he's gone after Gary Bettman with great gusto the past two days in the pages of the Sun for the past two days, first slamming the so-called "fan-friendly league" on Wednesday for some usurious pricing policies. Examples included but were not limited to the following:

• "In Carolina, the Hurricanes have instituted a process that in a less fan-friendly league, might be characterized as gouging. According to the News Observer, fans are infuriated. Seats that cost $85 this round will cost $125 next round and $180 should the team get to the Stanley Cup final. That's a 47% increase in one round and a further 44% in the next."
• "The Minnesota Wild has never had an unsold seat in its existence and consistently has one of the league's lowest payrolls. It has made the playoffs once. Yet the Wild announced that it will be raising prices on every ticket next season."
• "In Florida, where the Panthers didn't make the playoffs, the team had to be a bit more creative. It normally charges $15 for parking ($10 for season-ticket holders). As a result, fans took to parking across the street at a large shopping mall which encouraged the practice, and walking to the games.
  "The Panthers announced that they intend to build a fence around their facility so that fans who walk onto the premises can be charged $5 (for starters)."

Then today, Strachan got after Bettman for the league's numbskulled TV deal with the Outdoor Life Network, which has left fans unable to watch the games in many U.S. markets. Which is a shame, since last night's games -- three 3-2 games, including overtime in Edmonton and Buffalo -- might have been the best night of the playoffs so far.

• "...the NHL got back onto ESPN and was coming along nicely -- until Bettman staged his unnecessary season-long lockout, took the game out of the public's view for a year, and in the process, lost the ESPN contract.
  "Now, the NHL is on OLN. The average ratings for the season were 0.2, which, for those of you not arithmetically inclined, means OLN gets one viewer out of every 500. That's a 60% drop from the last season on ESPN."
• "The game is back and, thanks to new rules which Bettman finally allowed to be imposed after a decade of screaming from fans and media, is better than ever.
  "But in the U.S., it's virtually dead. And to make matters worse, the OLN contract is killing it in the few places where it was thriving.
  "In Denver, for instance, the Avalanche has had high ratings on Altitude, the local outlet. But for the playoffs, OLN takes over and most households do not have access to it."

Yes, I can hear the familiar refrain from Buena Vista to Vancouver Island: "Who cares what the Americans think." Well, that revenue in the U.S. helps support Canadian teams, so like it or not (and here, it's mostly not), what happens in Ottawa or Edmonton does depend on Pittsburgh and Washington. Bad franchises can drag down an entire league.

And yes, a month ago Tony Kornheiser raised my hackles by writing a "hockey is dead" column in the Washington Post. But the ire was more about the fact that he'd commited the lazy columnist's sin of sloth -- pick a random, convenient target rather than dig for something interesting or an angle that hadn't been developed.

Unlike Kornheiser, Strachan isn't a dilettante with nothing better to do going after the NHL. This is a hockey writer who's fighting the current. And you can bet that if Strachan's writing this, some of his sources around the league are no doubt thinking it.

It's a crying shame what's become of some of the traditional hockey strongholds in the States. Minnesota had the North Stars torn away and replaced by another team; in Chicago, the team of Bobby Hull, Stan Mikita and Chris Chelios could fold tomorrow and almost no one would notice. Then there's Boston, where the Bruins were always on par with the Red Sox, Celtics and Patriots, but have been reduced to an afterthought. Bill Simmons, ESPN's sports guy, wrote recently that the Bruins' Game 7 loss to the Canadiens in 1979 was one of the few sports events that's ever made him cry, and yet, he never writes about hockey.

So credit Strachan for saying what it appears no one else in the Canadian mainstream media has been willing to state. Under the genius of Gary Bettman, devoted hockey fans were given a decade of nearly unwatchable, uninteresting hockey, one season of no hockey entirely, all so they could capture that elusive 0.2 Neilson rating on a cable network most of America doesn't get.

Bravo, Gary.

OTHER BUSINESS

• I realize that picture up top of Derian Hatcher with a couple of female camp followers has no relation to the narrative, other than the fact it was posted at Gary Bettman Sucks during the lockout. But I display it as a beacon of hope, to show ugly guys with mullets that they can get laid by women some guys would find attractive -- provided they play in the NHL.
• The Toronto Star and Ottawa Sun are both reporting that Dominik Hasek won't play tonight as the Senators walk the plank, I mean, try to keep their season alive against the Sabres. Let me be the first to say I hope this isn't the last we'll see of Hasek in the NHL, but it very well might be.
• Someone explain why Rogers Sportsnet isn't showing this afternoon's A's-Jays game. Granted, it's a day game, but I don't have to work until 5 p.m., dammit! I wouldn't mind it nearly as much if Sportsnet wasn't showing the Best Damn Sports Show period in some markets. It's one thing to opt for cheap programming, it's another thing entirely to import gadawful cheap programming.
• I'm sure there's good footage of this somewhere: the Italy-Ukraine game on Wednesday at the World Hockey Championship was a complete gong show. No word on whether the Ukrainians' ire was raised after someone disparaged their country in a game of Risk, like Kramer did on Seinfeld that time. Tony Iob, one of the many Italo-Canadians on Team Italy, has been suspended from the tournament. Kingston hockey fans will remember Iob as one of the meatheads who were brought in to play for the Kingston Raiders during their one and only lamentable season in the Ontario Hockey League.
• You just gotta keep livin', man .... L-I-V-I-N. Matthew McConaughey fired off an e-mail to an Austin, Texas, newspaper with his thoughts on Barry Bonds: "If Barry Bonds did take steroids or not, even if you think he did or didn't, you gotta root for him because, whatever is true, or whatever you believe, he's clean now. Fact and perception." (Via Deadspin.)
• What's funny is McConaughey signs off with "Just keep livin'." Dude, that was just a character you played in Dazed and Confused (right?), and that came out 13 years ago.

Hey, check it out: 7-2 for the Jays, midway through the fifth. Nice.