With the Fronts, the 401's a highway to the crazy zone

Taking a cue from Sunaya Sapurji at Loose Pucks, one would expect to see Rod Serling's ghost host the next Kingston Frontenacs telecast on TV Cogeco, instead of Kinger.

There are some major media outlets starting to echo the popular opinion that, quoth Sapurji, "when did Kingston become the capital of OHL Crazytown?" She also threw in a reference to the Twilight Zone, which was awesometacular.

Serling's catchphrase, "Submitted for your approval," is obviously lost on Frontenacs owner Doug Springer (left in photo, obviously). The movie/TV quote which comes closest to summing up Springer's tenure in Kingston is, "You'll get nothing, and like it!" a la the Ted Knight character in Caddyshack. Anyway, pent-up anger subliminated through cheap references aside, there is a growing clamour that something is rotten with the state of hockey in K-town. Mike Koreen, sports ed. at the hometown Whig-Standard, also started beating one of Kinger's favourite drums: What's going to happen to the team's season-ticket base, especially, as Springer told Koreen, "there's no reason to think otherwise" that GM-for-life Larry Mavety is going to return next season?

At least these questions are being asked by those with a larger forum. It will not help Kingston win any more games or achieve its first two-game win streak, in Game 50 of the season, tonight when it faces the Brampton Battalion, a very strong team. It won't cause Springer to smarten up and it will not bring fans back in the hometown, but at least it's getting harder to avoid the tough questions. Here's the best from Koreen and Sapurji, noting that the spoken word folk such as Kinger, Tim Cunningham and Mark Potter at TV Cogeco were early adopters:

Sapurji, Loose Pucks: if a team's owner isn't a qualified enough expert to talk about his own team, then maybe he isn't qualified enough to own the team?

Koreen, The Whig: The team is not going to have an easy time convincing some of its season ticket holders to renew next season, which could cause further attendance concerns at the beginning of next season. Expectations were high this year after Springer came out and said he expected the team to challenge for a top-four spot in the conference.

Those are welcome words to read, but not as welcome as "Frontenacs up for sale." It's a start. Kingston will continue to be the town that dreaded sundown, but only when the Springer Frontenacs have a home game that night.

(Ethan Werek, by the way, didn't look out of place in the OHL All-Star Game last night, scoring a goal as he and five Belleville Bulls skated for the winning East team. It follows that he wouldn't look out of place if coach Doug Gilmour put him in a shootout.)

It has been 471 days since Doug Springer said he would do "whatever it takes" to bring Kingston a winner. The worst part is we still don't know who stole the strawberries.





Related:
Fronts developing an identity: Gudbranson (Doug Graham, Kingston Whig-Standard)
What a waste of time; City council's grilling of Fronts achieved nothing (Mike Koreen, Kingston Whig-Standard)
K-Town moves into Twilight Zone (Sunaya Sapurji, Loose Pucks)