Hoserdome: Kevin Weekes on 'Hockey Night' cannot be understated

Most of the reporting on Hockey Night in Canada's new hires have focused on Glenn Healy returning to TV and Guy Carbonneau finding a way station to bide time between coaching jobs.

It feels like a significant story is being underplayed. Kevin Weekes, the former goalie who has worked for NHL Network, will be the first Afro-Canadian commentator on HNIC. That matters since it was kind of the last barrier for Canadian sports broadcasters who are visible minority, plus it shows that has finally dawned on CBC Sports that maintaining the illusion that the Canada of 1981 still exists is a sure path to obsolescence.

About a year ago, the Toronto Star's Chris Zelkovich, during a radio interview with my friend Tyler King, said the rub with HNIC is that you know what you're getting. That has two sides.

The NHL has opened a season in Stockholm, a team with seven Swedes has won a Stanley Cup, a player may tweet his own trade and the league is micturating all over antitrust law to keep Jim Balsillie from owning a team and do the bidding of some corporate crooks, but goddamn it, Hockey Night in Canada must sustain an illusion of permanency. It should feel like not all that has much changed since the days of the Original Six.

That has its good qualities, although like in anything, if you do something the same way you did five, 10, 20 years ago, it doesn't mean you're stable, it means you're stuck in a rut.

The flip side is lot of us feel like outsiders looking in on the conversation which takes place every Saturday between a bunch of white guys named Ron, Don and Mike. It feels like a bunch of guys having a bull session down at the Legion in Anytown, Canada, in 1975. That has its pluses, but perhaps that created the vacuum that led to Mike Milbury's idiotic "pansification" comment last season. Granted, Milbury's track record with the New York Islanders suggests his idiocy was a pre-existing condition.

Point being, it is also glaring who HNIC's has put on the air (and don't forget the hue-and-cry when Cassie Campbell pinch-hit as a colour commentator one night three years ago when Harry Neale was snowbound).

Almost every other broadcast outlet i Canada has commentators who are visible minority: Jock Climie and Duane Forde on TSN's CFL package; TSN reporters John Lu, Farhan Lalji and Jermain Franklin; Rogers Sportsnet's Ian Mendes and Paul Jones; Leafs TV/Raptors NBA TV's Adnan Virk; The Score's D.J. Bennett and Cabral (Cabbie) Richards.

Not to put words in anyone's mouth, but HNIC is still the holy grail, even if TSN does a better job of staying current with the NHL. . Perhaps it has changed, but back in the day the 18-year-old who dreamed of doing play-by-play said, "I'm going to be on Hockey Night in Canada," not, "I'm going to be on TSN."

That's why it is huge Weekes has been hired. He has to be judged on his own merits. One could certainly detect a sickly scent of the jockocracy since Weekes is stepping straight from the ice into a TV role (then again, Tie Domi did it three years ago and no one objected, until they actually saw him on the air).

We also know CBC Sports and Maple Leaf Sports Entertainment, Ltd., are oh-so-joined at the hip. MLSE has lost a lot of the generation coming up to other sports.

Ultimately, though, the big positive is that an important door has been opened. Weekes wrote a column in February that talked about Caribbean and Afro Canadians becoming a bigger part of the mainstream in Canada.

"Finance, government, arts, hospitality, community service, medicine, architecture and design, education and media are just a few of the sectors in which we've made inroads but certainly have yet to maximize our growth and impact. We can and must continue to advance in these and many other 'non-traditional' sectors.

"There are countless examples of us paving the way in these sectors: Governor General Michaelle Jean, Toronto Deputy Chief of Police Keith Forde, Executive Chairman of AIC Limited, Michael Lee-Chin, Musician Kardinal Offishall, V.P of Blackmont Capital Steven Conville and retired Toronto Argonauts Player and Current President 'Pinball' Clemons."

Well, what's more mainstream than Hockey Night in Canada? That is why any "great, another goalie getting an analyst job" reactions miss the point.

Related:
New Voices At Hockey Night In Canada (Toronto Sports Media)

CBC Sports: The sticks are composite; Cherry's entrance was wooden

Don't ask how CBC Sports can reconcile Don Cherry ripping Alex Ovechkin for doing stuff that's "not part of hockey" and then waste airtime on something that's not part of hockey. At least Ovie's shenanigans are mostly kept to the regular season.



Far be it to say last night's Dos Equis parody was a bad idea, executed very poorly. It was actually a good diversionary tactic. It's more water cooler-worthy than Cherry's "claim Saturday that hockey players 'do not take drugs,' " (Chris Zelkovich, Toronto Star), which was either blissful ignorance or grossly irresponsible.

It was also pretty much exactly what Jeff Blair predicted would happen when news came out last week about a guy who'd been busted for selling steroids claiming he sold them to Washington Capitals players.

Anyway, here's what Blair said last week:

".. it will be fun to see how the NHL turtles in response to a report out of Central Florida that a man is claiming he's sold steroids to members of the Washington Capitals and Nationals. This is how baseball was ultimately outed. This is how the code of silence or more likely lack of interest or moral ambiguity on the part of those of us who covered the game was broken and the whole steroid mess unravelled. Considering how much of the stuff that goes on the ice smacks of good old-fashioned 'roid rage, my guess is there's some fire behind this smoke.

It would not come as a shock. Hockey players would not be any more immune to juicing up than their counterparts in baseball, basketball, soccer, football, mixed martial arts, cycling, the Olympics, and on, and on. The NHL doesn't drug-test in the off-season. There is plausible deniability, though:

"Al Strachan topped (Cherry) a period later. After blasting those who say hockey players just haven't been caught, he added, 'Using that logic, I guess, Mother Teresa was a mass murderer. They just never caught her killing people.' Ron MacLean rightly called that 'ridiculous.' "

The NHL, give it credit, seems aware that the public wants to see leagues at least say they're trying to get rid of the scourge of steroids, even though they help make it possible for players to put on such amazing performances over an eight-month-long season.

Anyway, back to the Dos Equis parody. Not to be Buzz Killington on this, but one would think one of those 553 middle managers at the CBC could have found a voice-over person who at least remotely sounded like the narrator in those commercials.

Those commercials are damn entertaining, but people are aware that they're a rip-off of something else, right?

"Improbable one-liners describing an allegedly interesting man flooded pop culture in 2005, with 'Chuck Norris Facts.' Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird. He sweats Gatorade. His tears cure cancer ... Too bad he's never cried. Etc., etc., etc.

"Some of those one liners, I have to say, are funny. But the larger theme under which they are generated is extremely tired. Chuck Norris Facts were spun off, and in some cases stolen from, the Vin Diesel Fact Generator (which also generated facts about Mr. T And Bob Saget). And the Vin Diesel Fact Generator was clearly a rip off of the 1996 Saturday Night Live sketch, Bill Brasky, which involved a couple of alcoholics sitting around reminiscing about their superhuman friend. Bill Brasky inhaled a seagull, scissor kicked Angela Landsbury, and sweated Gatorade, by the way."

In other words, Hockey Night in Canada was way late to the party with Cherry's entrance. Forgive them, though. Look at how long it took to face facts that Jim Hughson should supplant Bob Cole as their No. 1 play-by-play man. As a great man once said, that's the CBC for you!

Top 5: Stanley Cup final rooting interests

The serious analysis of this thing which starts tonight, the Stanley Cup final, is best left to those who do it better: From The Rink, Puck Prospectus, Puck Daddy and so forth. Many of them, not to name names, seem to be saying, "Detroit in 7," which seemed to be a common prediction last year, although the Prospectus says Penguins in 7.

Anywho, there are some good individual stories, after the jump.


5 players to root for on the Red Wings:

1. Darren Helm: The Red Wings energy player could earn his second Stanley Cup ring before he scores his first regular-season goal. (He has five in the playoffs the past two seasons, but zero in 23 regular-season games.)
   
   There is a half a mind to argue for him to be the 13th forward on Team Canada at the Olympics, but it's not clear if it would be a serious case or a parody of puckheadism. Who will be our Rob Zamuner? Besides, the Red Wings penalty killing has actually been poor throughout the playoffs.
   
   Helm was a classic Red Wings find (fifth round in 2005).
   
   
2. Niklas Kronwall: The big defenceman hits hard, and occasionally high and late. Penguins fans have no right to hate him, though, since they loved Ulf Samuelsson, another Swede defenceman who played a greasy game, so during the early 1990s. Kronwall appeals to that raise-the-black-flag, start-slitting-throats side of human nature, the battle between good and evil which cannot be won.
   
   
3. Ty Conklin: By now you've heard 1,001 times that Detroit's backup goalie is in the final for the third time in four seasons, and that his giveaway in Game 1 of the 2006 final with the Oilers led to the game-winning goal (granted, it was Oilers coach Craig MacTavish's fault for being so cavalier about which reserve goaltender dressed while Dwayne Roloson played).
   
   Conklin's also the only player who has participated in each of the NHL's two Winter Classics. It's about time he got a Cup ring.
   
   
4. Dan Cleary: OK, so the story about the former first-round bust who bottomed out and reinvented himself with the Red Wings is passe, since the pride of Harbour Grace, N.L., earned a Cup ring last season. However, this space is sworn to always cheer for Cleary, who played for the Kingston Voyageurs in the mid-1990s before moving on to the Belleville Bulls, where he lit up the Frontenacs on a semi-regular basis.
   
   No one ever seems to make the connection between Cleary's early-career struggles and the fact his OHL coach was Larry Mavety. A decade after escaping Mav's Pro Hockey Factory, Cleary's become a complete player. He has eight goals and a +16 plus/minus in 16 games in these playoffs.
   
   
5. Brad Stuart: No one ever talks about him even though he logs 25 minutes a night on the Detroit blue line. He needs to fire his agent.
   

5 players to root for on the Penguins:

1. Marc-Andre Fleury: At some point, people have got to stop referencing the Pittsburgh goalie's infamous puck-handling gaffe which cost Canada the gold medal at the World Junior Hockey Championship in 2004. That was before the lockout, for pity's sake. It's like The Sopranos: It's over.
   
   Fleury's likely going to have to make 35-40 saves a night for the Penguins to win.
   
   
2. Bill Guerin: The ageless winger took a puck in the face in a game against the Red Wings in 2007 when he was with San Jose and struggled for the rest of that season. Now he's playing against Detroit in the final, so there's a revenge thing happening.
   
   Guerin is almost as old (38) as then-Pen Gary Roberts was during last season's playoffs (42) and he actually takes a regular shift, unlike Gary Roberts during last season's playoffs. However, Guerin's American, so Hockey Night in Canada won't make him out to be the most important player in the series, unlike it did with Gary Roberts during last season's playoffs.
   
   
3. Maxime Talbot: Another late draft pick who's become a solid player for the Pens. He might have also given the Red Wings some bulletin-board material, and you just know this has a chance to get blown out of proportion.

   Maxime Talbot may not have expected Detroit Red Wings fans to be listening during an interview on a French radio station.
   
   If the was the case, the Pittsburgh Penguins center clearly underestimated the reach of his Stanley Cup finals opponent. A Red Wings fan from Montreal translated Talbot's comments about Red Wings forward Marian Hossa and sent them to the Detroit Free Press:
   
   "There's nothing I'd like more than to be able to shake Marian's hand at the end of this series, look him in the eye and say, 'You chose the wrong team.' "

   The hockey gods will surely punish Talbot for such a brazen show of personality.
   
   
4. Sidney Crosby: Reasonable people have made their peace with The Crosby Show playing 24/7/365 for the next 10-15 years. The time for Sidney-slagging was about 2½ years ago. Don't hate him for how he's marketed; he's still only 21 and he has the same representation as Derek Jeter. He's been schooled in the art of saying little.
   
   Besides, as The National Post's Bruce Arthur pointed out a couple weeks ago on Prime Time Sports, Crosby has started to show some personality in interviews. The rote answers he gives (seldom much longer or shorter than 30 seconds) were kind of a defence against the media attention Crosby has had since he was 16.
   
   Face the facts. Crosby is the Boy Next Door ("He comes home and he’s just like one of us all over again," former minor hockey teammate Mike Chiasson, a goalie for the Acadia Axemen, told the Halifax Herald). It's akin to what Bill Maher said about right-wingers who criticize him: Slagging Sidney means you're really just revealing your own inadequacies.
   
   Besides, the Crosby-Ovechkin corollary will be fun to bat around for the next decade. Maybe it's like what baseball fans said about Henry Aaron and Willie Mays back in the day. If you were only going to watch one game, you'd watch Mays (Ovechkin). If you were going to watch someone for an entire season, you'd pick Aaron (Crosby).
   
   
5. Miroslav Satan: Because some people need to believe Sidney Crosby cannot hoist the Stanley Cup without the help of Satan.
   
   (Plus he was once captain of the Buffalo Sabres, who are the third-favourite team of so many hockey fans.)
   

Prediction: Pittsburgh in 7

You kids out there, don't use that word

Irony: On Saturday night, CBC showed Pulp Fiction with the F-word edited out, but some are saying Don Cherry said it on-air earlier that night during the post-game wrap of Game 2 of the Vancouver-Chicago series.



In all honesty, it seems pretty innocuous and it's only being pointed out because it was amusing the Ceeb cut the swears out of a late-night movie that aired right after its preeminent puck personality polluted the airwaves.

Cherry was commentating over a series of clips that showed how the Canucks forwards were sagging down low in their own zone and then rushing out to try and block shots, inadvertently screening goalie Roberto Luongo. It starts at about the 1:10 mark.

"I mean, why would you run out like that? Fuck, look the guy's gonna run out again."

The fact it took several days for the clip to get YouTubed suggests it was pretty benign. It happens. There's a scene in The Boys of Summer when Roger Kahn describes his father, a college professor, insisting profanity is superfluous to good English. Kahn, having heard the way ballplayers talk, says it is the other way around in sports: Good English is superfluous to profanity. It's going to happen in sports broadcasting and we should be grateful that it can be laughed off instead nailing someone for it.

Hoserdome 2009: Playoffs, Day 9ish

Forget the NHL for one sec ... how about Mike Murphy stopping 56 in double OT to extend the Belleville Bulls' season? And the Kingston Voyageurs are one win from a spot in the RBC Cup.

1. Not to be fatalistic about it, but Joe Thornton gives good coup de grace. Giving away the puck on the play that became Corey Perry's clinching goal Anaheim's 4-0 win over the somnambulant Sharks was perfect.
   
   It's so dire in San Jose that local columnists are revisiting the choice to draft Pat Falloon ahead of some guy named Scott Niedermayer back in 1991 with the No. 2 overall choice. The rationale was that they were going to take a defenceman in the second round, if that makes sense. (No.)
2. It was a rush hearing that Bob Gainey come about as close as a NHL GM ever will to channeling Jay Billington Bulworth. He aired out the Tampa Bay Lightning, defended Carey Price for acting like a 22-year-old (which he is). It was great. Nothing loosens someone's tongue like the vision of an ax flashing at the top of its arc, eh? When in doubt, blame the media and fans for Montreal losing 253 man-games to injury this season.
3. Game 5 of Carolina-New Jersey is the best game not enough people saw (guilty as charged). Fast-paced, up and down, minimal extra-curriculars after the whistle, hockey for art's sake.
   
4. If you really think about it, the Columbus Blue Jackets' beef makes sense. The referees will let everything go, but they always call a too-many-men penalty just because it's in the rulebook.
5. Sens Chirp is fanning the flames of Jason Spezza trade speculation again.

Anaheim leads San Jose 3-1 — This one is over like The Office, but kudos to Hockey Night in Canada's Scott Oake for some nice work during the 14-minute delay in the second period after a glass panel shattered. Oake had a report covering off the Ducks' non-sellout (1,000 empty seats) that managed not to attribute it to the recession or Angelenos' disinterest in hockey, noting

When play resumed, only one team realized it and that's that. Incidentally, Anaheim rookie Bobby Ryan has four goals in the playoffs; it's too bad for im the playoffs aren't factored into Calder Trophy voting (it's going to Steve Mason, right?).

Detroit sweeps Columbus 4-0 — The Blue Jackets at least went out on a semi-halfway positive note, forcing Detroit to win a rare 6-5 post-season game.

New Jersey leads Carolina 3-2 — Apparently it was something else, with the old master, Martin Brodeur, being just a smidge better than Cam Ward, who's still young but three years removed from being playoff MVP. Going the full seven seemed to be a likelihood.

Pittsburgh leads Philadelphia 3-2 — It's showings like Pittsburgh's that give credence to the old saw about the fourth win being the hardest one to get in a series. It was a dreary enough game to prompt flipping to an early-season Blue Jays telecast (not that they aren't a treat, but the standard practice is TV muted with the radio broadcast on).

The other series:

New York leads Washington 3-1 — Less than 10 per cent of teams come back from a 3-1 deficit, and the Capitals' chances pretty much rest on whether Mike Green snaps to after being slowed down by the flu. If he recovers, they can win.

Calgary, Chicago tied 2-2 — The question has become whether Calgary still has anyone left to play, with three regulars getting by on pills and needles and Andre Roy suspended for Game 5.

The next question is whether Miikka Kiprusoff, 2009, can steal a playoff game.

Hoserdome 2009: Playoffs, Night 2

Playoffs!

Blackhawks 3 Calgary 2 (overtime; Chicago leads 1-0) — There is genuine envy toward the innocents who watched this without knowing that Roger Sportsnet's Calgary correspondent, Roger Millions, had a hopefully not career-ending moment before the game (language not safe for work).



Meantime, one would think that the Blackhawks, given the way which they finished off this game, have momentum for Game 2. The Flames are hoppin' mad about the fact there was no call on Chicago's Andrew Ladd when he made contact with Miikka Kiprusoff a split-second before Martin Havlat's winning goal hit the back of the net.

Fair enough, Flames fans, but it was all part of a greater glory. After Chicago tied the game 2-2, someone — let's call him Neate S., no, too obvious, N. Sager — texted Kinger, "Havlat to score the winner." That was pretty impressive, coming as it did through a haze of Sapporo and Jello shooters.

Bruins 4 Canadiens 2 (Boston leads 1-0) — The Habs lost and they won, since there was some positive news about the team's potential sale.

Ducks 2 Sharks 0 (Anaheim leads 1-0) — San Jose really is the equivalent of Red Shoe Diaries; always on late at night, leaving you screaming, "Just do it, already!" The Sharks did everything but score for large stretches vs. Anaheim and Jonas Hiller ... the tree that goes in San Jose might be an apple tree, but the apple is in the throats of the Sharks. Game 2 could be the most important game of the Joe Thornton era in San Jose.

Ryan Getzlaf's sealer in the third period was a goal scorer's goal.

Red Wings 4 Blue Jackets 1 (Detroit leads 1-0) — The Jiri Hudler-Valterri Filipula-Dan Cleary line dominated and a gaffe by Manny Malhotra, who deflected the puck into the net on the goal on which put Detroit ahead to stay, helped swing the game to the Red Wings.

Is everyone just assuming Detroit wins in four, five tops?

Last, but not least, Chris Zelkovich from the Toronto Star shared the news during the evening. The Save-On Foods grocery chain is picking up the tab for CBC Sports to broadcast Games 3, 4 and (if necessary) 6 of the Vancouver Canucks-St. Louis Blues series in HD.

Never say the squeaky wheel doesn't get the grease.

Pat Burns at peace ...

Pat Burns' interview with Hockey Night in Canada is probably worth a view on a lazy Sunday afternoon. His is an unlikely story, from police officer to Stanley Cup-winning coach. As a coach, he came off the way fans hoped they would if they ever got to coach a NHL team: Nasty, a little dictatorial, but sharp-tongued.

Meantime, on the hockey front, there are some pointed words for Don Cherry after his editorial reply to Alex Ovechkin's "hot stick" 50th goal celebration. At least Cherry's first rant had a point; this was all over the place.

Much obliged to crazieman76 for the video capturing.

The great Grapes squashing; chickens come home to roost

It seems like there was a coordinated offensive against Don Cherry today in the wake of his "soccer goofs" comment which Duane diced up on Saturday.

Bruce Arthur in the National Post said the legendary hockey commentator has gone from "from straight-talkin' sensation to walking caricature." There is an editorial today in the Vancouver Province ("Cherry totally out of touch") and sassback from a good Carbonear, N.L., boy Dan Cleary from the Detroit Red Wings team which purportedly no one wants to watch because it has too many Europeans, but which is also the biggest road draw in the NHL: "He's getting up there. Who won it all last year? Perhaps he's forgotten." Arthur, though, takes the cake:

"Cherry has done a lot of good for hockey, and for charity, and for the CBC's bottom line. But popularity aside, Don Cherry has almost become the George W. Bush of hockey: Ignorant, ideological, dismissive of the facts, governed by his gut. The crotchety grandfather act can still be fun, but overall, the CBC looks worse every year for his presence."

Please set aside that Dubya comparisons are a no-no (too easy, too obvious, too painful a reminder) and ignore that those links are all from papers in the same chain. It is worth asking how long Cherry has left on his CBC Sports contract. People have taken up rhetorical pitchforks against Cherry before and so long as people have trouble separating their own leanings from what's real, it will be hard to tell if this amount to much, especially since CBC Sports digs in every time.

Cherry actually reached the point of caricature at least five years ago. It seems like the media might feel more emboldened this time around. Who knows, perhaps the Feb. 3 Macleans article by Charlie Gillis which detailed how Cherry used Mike Sanderson, the father of the late Don Sanderson, to advance his agenda has had more impact than it did when it appeared one month ago today.

" 'Other people won’t understand this,' Don Cherry told his coast-to-coast audience after attending Donald Sanderson's memorial service in Port Perry, Ont. 'But Mike is a hockey guy.'

" ... So if you’ve been gathering your information on this slow-moving controversy from Coach’s Corner, it may surprise you to learn that Michael Sanderson would in fact love to see fighting eliminated from the game. You may be shocked to hear he supports measures that would suffocate the practice. Automatic ejections? 'Helluva rule.' Requiring players to keep their helmets and visors on during fights? 'Great. If they know they’re going to be punching plastic with their bare hands, they’ll eventually stop.'

"... Oh, and one more thing: he’s no friend of Don Cherry, with whom he says he has 'issues.' 'He said we sat there like we were buddies [at Donald's funeral],' Sanderson says tightly. 'I'm, like, no we didn’t.' "

It is understandable that some people might say Cherry is being scapegoated at a time when it's an in-thing to seem progressive and sensitive, but that's just obfuscation writ large. This all comes back a core principle of the late, great Fire Joe Morgan: Someone who paid to offer informed commentary on a sporting event is professionally obligated to keep up with what's current in terms of analyzing the sport.

Cherry has not done that in quite some time. During the Stanley Cup final last spring, he insisted Gary Roberts was the most important player in the series when he was getting third-line minutes. He was nowhere to be found after the decisive game when he should have been eating crow and congratulating Nicklas Lidstrom for becoming the first European to captain a Cup winner.

Throw in the fact that it's a big small-l liberal love-in during the first days of the Obama presidency, and it's bad news for Cherry. There is probably no literal connection between the two, but not so long ago you wouldn't have heard Canadian sportswriters rising to the defence of soccer players, like Arthur did on Monday:

"But it was the way Cherry presented his case that left the usual sour taste. Besides the usual anti-European bile ... Cherry showed a montage of soccer players celebrating, and as it showed a group of four enthusiastic black players dancing close to the camera, Cherry said, 'Now watch this, look at this - this is what we want our hockey players to act like?'

"The charge of racism has been thrown at Cherry over his treatment of Europeans and Francophone Canadians, but because those aren't traditionally identifiable minorities, the charges don't seem to stick. But intentionally or not, this looked for all the world like a more familiar brand of racism." -- Arthur

Some might argue that is a little strong, but the gloves are off with CBC Sports for having allowed it to reach this point, Ron-and-Don are bigger than the franchise. Rank-and-file fans in Marmora might not care, but it's held Hockey Night in Canada back (and it's an affront to the legacy of Ralph Mellanby, who always wanted a show that was cutting-edge).

Cherry, in his heyday, brought some levity and a sense of fun to Hockey Night in Canada, but it has long reached the point where it's consumed the man entirely. Things have kind of caught up him in the last little while. Of course, assuming anything is about to change presumes the CBC has its finger on the pulse of the country, and that's a bigger leap of logic than claiming Red Wings attendance has more to do with how many Swedes they have than the Michigan economy.

Snark break...

Corey Koskie possibly making a comeback in the World Baseball Classic, what do you think about that? OK, the Crosby-Ovechkin stuff...



Ron MacLean straining for a pun ("It was one thing for Henry David Thoreau to simply on Walden Pond, but it's another thing to simply on Bell Centre pond and Don Cherry's "bitch" comments were the huh? moments of Hockey Day in Canada, but it works.

It's a small quibble, but does anyone else wonder if MacLean, who was broadcasting in New Brunswick, could have mentioned the Bathurst basketball team? It was true to the spirit of the day. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a hockey guy through and through, saluted the Phantoms.

Incidentally, a major eye-roll is due to Carleton University for inviting President Barack Obama to hoop it up with the No. 1-ranked Ravens on his state pop-in. Carleton should focus on getting the PM out to a game, especially if his alma mater, Calgary, is playing in the CIS Final 8 next month at Scotiabank Place. Granted, if he did, when would he have time to finish that book about hockey he "still claims to be working on?" (Dave Feschuk, Toronto Star)

The Dallas Cowboys absolutely must acquired Ray Lewis. Signing a guy who once faced a murder rap (plea-bargained) would improve the Cowboys' image.

This is nothing to joke about it, but dozens of people became sick recently due to air poisoning caused by a faulty ice-making machine at a rink in Quebec. Perish the thought that getting sick from what you were exposed to at the rink could be dubbed Spezzaitis.

That's playing hardball: The Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning, now a U.S. senator, sees great opportunity rising out of a Supreme Court justice having cancer:

" 'Bad cancer. The kind you don’t get better from,' Bunning went on. 'Even though she was operated on, usually nine months is the longest that anybody would live after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.' "

There are some things you just don't say, man.

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• It is only three weeks to March Madness, so start reading up on bracket-busters such as Utah State, even though it lost on Saturday.
• TSN.ca has a list of all Canadians playing NCAA Division 1 basketball. The next step: List female players, such as Ottawa's Steph MacDonald (Canisius), Jenna Gilbert (La Salle) and Courtnay Pilypaitis (Vermont), among others.
  
• Last, but not least, birthday wishes to my mother and brother-in-law, Kathie Sager and Amer Murad, who each had theirs yesterday, thus making it even more unforgivable that I forgot.

Mats Sundin's poker face

Some gambling websites are having a little fun with how Mats Sundin handled a poker question during a Hockey Night in Canada After Hours interview late Saturday. It's more worth it to see how he reacts when he's asked about coming into Toronto next month to face the Leafs, around the four-minute mark.

Related:
We Hope Mats Sundin Sits at Our Table (Wicked Chops Sports)
Mats Sundin fails Poker 101 (Gambling911.com)

MacLean closing out '08 with a bang ...

On a show on the See Bee See no one will see...

"The seven member Royal Canadian Air Farce troupe went out in style, offering a fast, funny show that will air as an hour-long special Dec. 31 at 8 p.m. on CBC. There were several guest stars, including Hockey Night in Canada host Ron MacLean, who got to fire the chicken cannon at his favorite target (you know who)." -- TV Feeds My Family

One can only presume that would be NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and run with it like Derrick Ward did for the New York Giants in the NFL Sunday nighter. MacLean and the commish have a special rapport. Perish the thought whether it's appropriate for a serious broadcast journalist to be making sport of someone he covers on the beat, even if it is Bettman. Try to see the humour in this, although it would be about the first time anyone has been anything humourous in Air Farce since about 1997.

For the uninitiated, here's how the Chicken Cannon works.



Sports figures have been on the receiving end of the Chicken Cannon's blast from time to time, dating back to March 18, 1994, when future Kingston Frontenacs figurehead coach Doug Gilmour fired on a Detroit Red Wings poster on March 18, 1994. Presuming Bettman's getting it, it would be the second time the NHL commissioner-for-life has been the target of the year. His image, along with then-NHLPA Bob Goodenow's, got a joint splattering on the year-end 2004 show, during the last lockout.

Not that anyone asked, but an Air Farce finale definitely had to have some HNIC representation, since it allows shut-ins and people stuck working New Year's Eve to ponder which franchise is more date. (Luba Goy was making Lorena Bobbitt jokes when she was given a large knife to cut the cake at Friday's taping, for crying -- certainly not laughing -- out loud.)

Keeping it classy, Air Farce was a lot better as a radio program, especially when they taped in a different city each week and rip on the mayor and such. The humour tended to be broad, but one million viewers per week for 16 straight seasons demands that attention must be paid.

Those of you who demand that a Canadian sketch comedy should be absurdist (The Kids In The Hall), inventive (SCTV), topical (the original This Hour 22 Minutes) or goofy in an understated way (The Red Green Show) should drink a glass of shut-the-hell-up. Someone found Air Farce funny all these years.

Since this post is completely self-indulgent, it's probably OK to post one of the all-time greatest Kids sketches.

Snark break ...

A bunch of staff that happened as you debated what Carol Alt, at age 47, doing a layout for Playboy, has to do with sports -- other than the fact she and ex-Sennies captain Alexei Yashin are together and hockey players might be the only people who still give any cachet to the Hefmag.

Hockey Night in Canada is airing a doubleheader on the NHL's North American opening night and Bob Cole isn't commentating either game. Don't worry, though, if Cole is no longer the lead announcer, surely the Ceeb surely would have said something by now.

Just a suggestion: With the state of the U.S. economy and the death of originality in Hollwood, the timing is right to bring back The Waltons.

The New York Nets are hopeful that having Yi Jianlian will endear them to New York/New Jersey's 650,000 Chinese-American population. They also plan to point out that Vince Carter is more delicate than fine China.

Forgive the obvious question: No school wants to be Syracuse's football rival, because you know what that would mean ... they're as bad as Syracuse. (How long until basketball season?)

As if it wasn't going bad enough for West Ham United so far in the English Premier League, their team doctor isn't actually allowed to practise medicine in England.

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• Faceoff Factor did a liveblog of the Kingston Frontenacs' 5-1 stomping of the Ottawa 67's, their first win of the season (and thus making it more plausible to believe they won't go 0-for-3 on their western swing over the holiday weekend).
• Another book recommendation: Nathan Whitlock's debut novel A Week Of This ($16.98 on Amazon.ca) is worth a look-see, and that's not just being said because we have a given name in common. It came out in the spring, but it's very much a fall novel, since it gets in the whole bleak-beyond-belief nature of living in a small Canadian town. There were times when reading it, you almost had to look away, it hit that close to home.
  
  (Whitlock is reading at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto two weeks from now.)

Cooking the Books ...

The spirit has been there to add sports books reviews to Out of Left Field for quite some time -- and that day is finally here.

Promise you this: The reviews will neither be timely nor professionally written, but will be helpful if you’re looking for some new reading material or for a gift for the sports-loving bookworm or book-loving sportsworm in your life. This is open to commentators – if you want to write a review, or merely have a recommendation, fire off an e-mail to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

That's probably enough of an introduction. This edition of "Cooking the Books" (the title was Keith Borkowsky's idea) includes titles by Pat Jordan, Will Leitch, Kenny Mayne, Ralph Mellanby and Deadspin editor Clay Travis, after the jump.

The Best Sports Writing of Pat Jordan
By Pat Jordan with Alex Belth (editor)
Amazon.ca price: $17.61

Gay Talese is said to have popularized fly-on-the-wall literary sportswriting with the Joe DiMaggio profile back in 1966. Jordan has perfected the craft. It's made him the sportswriter’s sportswriter and enabled him to keep his own hours, but it's worked against achieving the fame and fortune of Rick Reilly, say.

Jordan just disappears so thoroughly into his subject and is such a straightforward writer that it's easy to forget how many major pieces flowed out of his fingertips. That piece where the famously reticient Hall of Fame pitcher Steve Carlton talked about the "12 Jewish bankers" who control the world? That was Jordan. That article when Deion Sanders' mother called her famous son's future wife "trash"? Jordan. Three guesses who got sued in the early 1980s by Steve and Cyndi Garvey for a profile that basically left readers to infer that baseball’s poster couple were on the verge of splitting up – which they did, inside of a year later.

There’s a lot the wound-and-the-bow to Jordan’s choice of topics. Since he pitched in baseball’s minor leagues, pitchers are a favourite subject, so along with Carlton, there’s in-depth looks at Roger Clemens, Rick Ankiel (when he had his control problems) and the author's friend, Tom Seaver.

The scenes with Seaver provides insight into the mind of an elite ballplayer. It put Blue Jays ace Roy Halladay's recent uncharacteristic "Groundhog Day" comments into some perspective. Jordan and Belth, the editor, subdivided the book into two sections, Fame and Obscurity, so there's plenty of variety if you prefer to read the book piecemeal, one chapter at a time. Another masterstroke was a Q-and-A between Belth and Jordan that explains interviewing and journalism better than a reporter with 20 years' experience ever could.

Recommendation: If you only buy one book about sports this year, make it this one. It's perfect for a true sports connoisseur or anyone who is interested in writing, period.

God Save The Fan: How Preening Sportscasters, Athletes Who Speak in the Third Person, and the Occasional Convicted Quarterback Have Taken The Fun Out of Sports (And How We Can Get It Back)
By Will Leitch (founding editor, Deadspin)
Amazon.ca price: $16.35

Some would say that title tail ended up wagging the content dog in God Save The Fan. Leitch was rapped because many reviewers believed that his criticism of the American sportscape came up short with the pars construens, where one makes constructive suggestions about how to change a singularly rotten system.

That overlooks the reality that any good Gen-Xer writer born after 1975 knows the most you can hope to do is change attitudes. Whatever God Save The Fan lacked in remedies is made up for the fact that it rides along on a wave of indignation that sustains it across 200-odd pages -- no mean feat. It's the same vibe that makes offerings from comedians such as Bill Maher or the late George Carlin readable, not to mention, re-readable. Including a glossary that tweaks each major pro team’s fanbase? ("Raptors, Toronto: Quite pleased, actually, that Vince Carter pulled that stunt because it opened up an outlet to release anger, in a polite Canadian way, of course." It's nice to think this had something to do that item.) That's what Carlin might do to avoid getting too preachy and keep making with The Funny.

The energy is enough. The thrust of Leitch's rally-the-troops argument to sports fans – "It's about embracing the matters you do have control over" – shines through loud and clear. ESPN, or TSN, isn't going to change. But we can.

Recommendation: God Save The Fan is apparently due out in paperback early next year. You could wait a few months and save a few bucks. It would make a good gift for someone who likes sports, but not to the point where they would read a book about it. It also should be required reading for anyone who’s contemplating working in the sports industry.

Dingers: Contemporary Baseball Writing
The Moosehead Anthology 11
Edited by David McGimpsey
Amazon.ca price: $13.83

Books directed to those oddball Canadians whose favourite sport isn't played on ice are few and far between, so on that alone, Dingers is worth having on your radar screen.

Short-story collections can be hit-and-miss. This offering from DC Books, has a few misses, but hey, that's inevitable for a book dedicated to sport where a hitter who fails six times out of 10 is a superstar.

The one story that I kept coming back to was Ian McGillis' "Who Needs Your Stinking Pennant?" An Expos fan, McGillis explores the phenomenon of how, as a fan of a team, "the position of the one being stomped upon is a place that can grow comfy; even reassuring."

That might be the most honest sentence ever written about being a diehard sports fan. It's bound to end poorly -- especially in the case of the late and lamented Expos -- but there's a security in knowing ahead of time. It's something that's appreciated more and more over time, as you get farther and farther away from the adolescent who expects championships to just fall out of the sky (i.e., like 90% of Toronto sports fans).

Dingers also includes selections from Dave Bidini, George Bowering and the Governor General's Award-nominated Kevin Connolly.

Recommendation: It's probably too scattershot a collection for some tastes, but there's enough good stuff there to look for it at a library or a second-hand store.

Walking With Legends: The Real Stories of Hockey Night in Canada
By Ralph Mellanby with Mike Brophy
Amazon.ca price: $16.48 hardcover, $14.56 paperback (due Sept. 1)

Mellanby's memoir was a timely read. It was picked up shortly after CBC Sports’ Hockey Night in Canada wrapped up its coast-to-coast cornfest for the summer.

It’s part memoir, part insider account, but a big takeaway – intended or not – is the rebuke of Canada’s longest-running sports series. Mellanby and Brophy use the behind-the-scenes stories of the show's stars from the ’60s,’70s and ’80s to illustrate the vision he had for Hockey Night in Canada – a truly national broadcast, that was educated and opinionated (in that order), which prided itself on being ahead of the curve in producing good sports television and wasn't afraid to take a stand.

Considering the current state of HNIC, it’s almost like unearthing a secret history to read that Mellanby hired Helen Hutchinson as the show’s first woman host some three decades before Cassie Campbell working as a colour commentator practically provoked a national outcry. He also introduced a World Hockey Report as an intermission feature. Mellanby also tells of how he tried to convince NHL owners to adopt rules intended to make the game faster and more exciting – such as allowing coaches to only change players on the fly, not during stoppages in play. (One warning is that Mellanby is a bit of a figjammer, but it takes one to know one.)

It’s fair to say he never would have stood for HNIC obsessing over the Leafs, hired P.J. Stock as a so-called studio analyst or let the talent's egos get bigger than the show. If you don’t need that, though, Mellanby – who was part of the TV production of both the 1972 Canada-USSR Summit Series and the 1980 Miracle on the Ice – has more than enough anecdotes about the famous games and names – broadcasters and players – to be entertaining.

Recommendation: At $29.95 in hardcover at Chapters, Walking With Legends was veering way too close to the typical overpriced bit of tripe from the Canadian hockey mafia. It's best to wait for the paperback edition or visit a library. It's an essential read for any long-time hockey fan who is interested in TV production.

An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport: … and other Random Thoughts from Childhood to Fatherhood
By Kenny Mayne
Amazon.ca price: $17.61

This came out just in time for Father’s Day and well, no one ever went broke by preying on the average white guy’s strained relationship with his Pops. "What to get Dad? Hey, look, that guy from ESPN who always does those off-beat segments that are cute-funny but not actually laugh-out-loud funny has a book out? Maybe he’ll like that instead of some Old Spice."

The hell of it is that on some level, it works, somewhat.

Recommendation: Stick with the Old Spice on Father's Day next year.

Dixieland Delight: A Football Season On The Road In The Southeastern Conference
By Clay Travis (co-editor of Deadspin)
Amazon.ca price: $12.05

Canadians always view big-time college football in the U.S. the same way a shopaholic looks at Saks Fifth Avenue – nose pressed up against the glass, looking at something extravagant that you'll never know for yourself.

Whatever the reasons, we're not the type to abandon ourselves to tailgating, filling an 80,000-seat stadium, figuring out which school has the most beautiful women and placing the origin of Bama 'Bangs. That might be a good thing. Travis, with his irreverent style, is an ideal writer to take readers through a tour of all 12 SEC stadiums in the fall of 2006 -- the premise for the book was that he would travel without tickets, hotel reservations or even a map. As a graduate from the law school at Vanderbilt, the SEC's perennial doormat, Travis was aided by a plethora of former classmates who cheer for teams across the conference. (It's bit of an inside joke that, like most college football fans, Tennessee Volunteer-loving Travis cheers for a team from a school he didn't actually attend.)

This isn't a book for peeling back the onion on the South's obsession with college football, which is fine, since sports are supposed to be a respite from daily drudgery. Even at 384 pages, this goes down superbly -- you can get through it in a day and a half.

Recommendation: Dixieland Delight was a $6.99 find at a second-hand bookstore on Front St. E. in Toronto, so that might be the best way to seek it out. It's more accessible to a non-football fan than you would think.

Notes

Jeff Pearlman, the author of (among other works) of the Barry Bonds bio Love Me, Hate Me, has a blog on his eponymous website. Without it, I wouldn't have found it until much later that his Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty, will be published by HarperCollins on Sept. 1 … the Washington Post has reviewed Stefan Fatsis' much-anticipated A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-foot-8, 170-pound, 43-year-old Sportswriter Plays In The NFL ... Joe Pelletier has a site called hockeybookreviews.com.

OSGOOD ON RIBEIRO, OR VICE-VERSA

Everyone who checked out early that Stars-Red Wings game -- seldom has a 2-1 lead seemed insurmountable -- missed all the fun at the end. This does little for Mike Ribeiro's approval rating.

Mirtle's summation: "Was Detroit effective in this game? No doubt. Entertaining? That's more debatable."

The CBC's production standards, it should be said, exacerbated the boredom. Has anyone else noticed that when you flip to Hockey Night in Canada, after watching sports on another network, that you have to crank the volume way up? TSN and NBC's use of extra microphones at rink level has created certain expectations when it comes to ambient sound, and Hockey Night in Canada is behind. It really sticks out when it's a dull game in Detroit, where the fans are so used to winning hockey that even those who are still coming out don't get too animated.

IF THERE'S A SPORTS HEAVEN, YOU KNOW THEY GOT A HELL OF A PLAY-BY-PLAY MAN

The favourite fact from Don Wittman's wire-service obit is that he called tennis for the first time in 2004, at age 67. 

Would that we could all be that brave to try something new and not worry about embarrassment, but be confident in our abilities. That's a message to take from Wittman's work and his life, along with him calling so many major moments.

Requiescat en pace, Don.

Related:
CBC Sports' Don Wittman dies (The Canadian Press)

A DEBATE THAT NEVER FLAGS...

Someone (beyond our man Jean-Pierre Allard) was bound to say it:

"... anyone else sick and tired of the jingoistic tone taken by Don Cherry, supported by his doormat Ron MacLean, on Hockey Night In Canada?

"It's simplistic and embarrassing, no matter what one's view of political policy. Canadians are the first to criticize jingoistic U.S. TV coverage of the Olympics, yet we tolerate this nonsense every Saturday night during the regular hockey season and every second night during the playoffs."

Bill Bean, Take The Lane blog, Waterloo Region Record

It would grate a lot less if the People's Network let the other side have its say on HNIC. Somehow, it's doubtful we'll see Cpl. Matthew Dinning's parents talking with Cherry and MacLean about military death benefits if the Senators stay alive to host Game 6 of the Cup final on Saturday. It was different back in the day. One Saturday night in the 1960s when Ward Cornell was host, the Prime Minister -- either Diefenbaker or Pearson -- was spotted at a game and was interviewed, more or less on the spur of the momet. The next Saturday, by a CBC equal-time edict, the Opposition leader (again, either Pearson or Diefenbaker) was interviewed.


That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

PLAYOFFS? PLAYOFFS?! DAY 34: HEY, RON MacLEAN'S GRANDPA FOUGHT FOR THIS COUNTRY IN SOME WAR

Hockey Night in Canada's Ron MacLean never lets us down when it comes to being a vessel for cringe-worthy moments of pure hoser pathos.

Between periods of the Senators-Sabres game last night, HNIC showed a shot of the Parliament Buildings. MacLean observed: "There's the eternal flame," referring to the fountain in front of the Peace Tower.

It's actually the Centennial Flame. It's not even an actual eternal flame. (That was a 1980s pop song by The Bangles, as best as can be recalled from Grade 10 history class.)

Hockey Night in Canada, with MacLean as its public face, is always quick to wrap itself in the flag and give Don Cherry carte blanche to turn Coach Corner into a forum for his politics and, occasionally, a recruiting ad for the Canadian Armed Forces. So you would think MacLean would be able to correctly identify an iconic Canadian monument, right? Otherwise, all that thanks and praise MacLean regularly lavishes on the military women and men serving in Afghanistan might come off as kind of phony and pandering.
Who knows if the gaffe came from the strain of anchoring playoff telecasts almost nightly for more than a month now, or it if just read from a TelePrompTer? Regardless, it's so classically Canadian to be so ignorant of our own national symbols or landmarks. Do you think an American broadcaster would ever be put in a position to misidentify the Washington Monument or the Lincoln Memorial, let alone actually do sot?

Secondly, it looks good on MacLean. His act plays well in the sticks -- referring to intellect, not geography -- but "there's the eternal flame" is sickeningly sweet to hear for those who have had it with MacLean's routine of being the flag-waving, friend to all (unless it's Gary Bettman or anyone involved with NHL officiating), Canadian everyman (albeit one not above using the same agent as the players he covers). It's OK for MacLean exploit that role for fame and fortune, you do what you gotta do. It just makes him fair game when he can't name a Canadian landmark that even the 12-year-old offspring of NDP voters can identify.

It goes to show that the Old Man had Ron MacLean pegged way back in 1987: "He's no Dave Hodge."

Senators 1 Sabres 0 (Ottawa leads East final 3-0): Ottawa showed some creeping signs of reverting to their Dynasty That Never Was form -- witness Chris Kelly not shooting at the empty net with 30 seconds left and having the puck stolen -- kept a tight enough grip on it to pull out the win. The Senators were probably a little too sweet, Buffalo remained in a funk and when you throw in an early penalty parade, it was a pretty craptacular game. That's not for the Sens to worry about. The hay was in the barn after they took both games in Buffalo.

Senator under the microscope: Chris Neil seems to have gone missing, pre-game monkeyshines notwithstanding. If that's the biggest quibble with Ottawa, it must be going well.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

CASE AGAINST SHOULDER PADS

If you were watching the Hockey Night in Canada pregame a couple minutes ago, then you probably saw Ron MacLean really grilling NHL vice-president Colin Campbell about head injuries to players where the hard-shell shoulder pads they use were almost certainly a contributing factor. MacLean and HNIC rolled out a long montage of clips of injuries result from con

OK, so MacLean fancies himself a rules expert because he referees Junior B, and he's doing the bully-pulpit thing, but he's right here. Campbell couldn't offer much in response except for "we're trying every day to fix these problems." He also tried to turn it on MacLean with, "You need a day job during the week," which was repeated.

Anyway... "Padded wetsuits," anyone?

IMPACT OF REGEHR HIT MAKES YOU WONDER: WHAT ABOUT PADDED WETSUITS?

If you begin or end your day to the sports highlights, then you probably saw the replay of Flames defenceman Robyn Regehr's hit on Aaron Downey that sent the Canadiens winger to the hospital with a severe concussion.

Regehr delivered what appeared to be, both live and on replays, a clean open-ice shoulder check. Regehr didn't leap to deliver the check; it wasn't a "high hit," no matter what any Habs fans try to claim. Still, Downey is hurt, who knows for how long, and maybe it could have been avoided. It's a little troubling when severe injuries result from clean checks.

My mind flashed back to the chapter on injuries in former pro Mark Moore's recent book Saving The Game. Plenty of hockey commentators have wondered about the equipment these guys wear, but Moore went one step farther. He writes of how of he once asked an equipment company rep why they didn't make a "padded wetsuit" similiar to that worn by fencers or speed-skiiers.

"His reply shocked me: he said they did. Their design staff came up with prototypes very similar to what I was dscribing, he said. But here was the reception they got: they were scoffed at and ridiculed by the sponsored pro players they showed them to, who said they looked absurd and vowed they would never wear them. And they were rejected by consumer parents in test-marketing, who statistically always preferred the biggest, bulkiest, most armourlike equipment offered, for their kids."

That's not really shocking that players would be reluctant to try something new. Hockey players, even compared to other athletes, are not especially noted for maverick behaviour. However, they set a bad example.

Why would parents who only want the best for their kids reject those "padded wetsuit" prototypes for their hockey-playing daughters and sons? Probably because they don't look like what the NHLers wear. So they buy a giant pair of Robocop shoulder pads for little Cooper or Sydney and then go have a chuckle out at how cute he or she looks "struggling to skate beneath heaps of restrictive equipment." (Moore's phrase, not mine.)

You can't blame the equipment makers who are in business to make money for not pushing a product that no one wants to buy, even if it is a good product. However, the NHLers don't have all the answers here and nor do the hockey parents. Maybe some influential media guys can talk about this, Canada Safety Council-types can promote it, and the equipment makers can take another stab at trying to get someone to put on the "padded wetsuit."

Why wouldn't people in the sport promote the use of equipment that could reduce the likelihood of injury, be easier to move in and provide more protection? Sadly, if you say "no reason at all," then you don't know the old-guard hockey types -- who aren't necessarily old -- that tend to push back hard whenever someone suggests the time-honoured practice might not be the only way.

That's another column, though. One wonders what's become of those "padded wetsuit" prototypes Moore was told about.

CASSIE CAMPBELL ON HNIC

There's not much to add this late in the game about Cassie Campbell's big debut as a fill-in colour commentator on last Saturday's Flames-Leafs telecast, other than to say it's strange what some media outlets assume about sports fans and the quote, unquote "overwhelmingly male" hockey audience.

That was the phrase used last night on Rogers Sportsnet by reporter Erin Paul, who was garnering opinions from the Toronto Star's Chris Zelkovich and and Ray Ferraro, who does colour for Edmonton Oilers games for the cable network. Both were fair and generally positive, which might indicate that there's really no controversy.

As for the "overwhelmingly male" comment, here's hoping that was just how the question has phrased and it doesn't reflect the general point of view among Paul's employers.

If you check the blogroll on the right side of this page, there's several hockey blogs written and edited by women, including Double D(ion), D.C. Sports Chick, Girls Don't Love Hockey, Hockey Will Tear Us Apart and The Universal Cynic. That's not a representative example, but it goes to show that the TV folks shouldn't assume that it's 90% guys watching, and that those guys all go for the lowest common denominator beer-and-babes equation that's used to sell sports.

Personally speaking, as a male in his late 20s who grew up alongside girls who competed in sports and were interested in sports, and who has had female bosses and supervisors at work, having Campbell do colour commentary just seems like a natural progression.

It is a big deal, but any controversy only seems to be a media creation. Not all sports fans are all beered-up knuckle-draggers. Not true. Some of us prefer our gin-and-tonic.

From here, it looks like the Hockey Night in Canada producers just exercised common sense. A freak snowstorm kept Harry Neale from driving to the game from his home in Buffalo (had it been a Leafs-Senators game, one would have suspected mass prayer on behalf of Sens fans), so everyone took one step to the left.

Besides, Hockey Night in Canada, and sports broadcasting in Canada in general, could stand to move from being bastions of WASPy white males (this coming from someone who is one) and
be more reflective of today's Canada.

In fact, right before the Campbell segment, Sportsnet anchor Mike Toth made some comment about how "we need to get a ring card girl in here." Thanks for showing why we need more diversity, Mike.

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.

LATEST LOSS FOR CBC SPORTS

Big topic du jour in Canadian sports today is word that CBC Sports boss Nancy Lee has bailed to take a position with the Olympic host broadcaster for Vancouver/Whistler 2010.

The People's Network, so-called, keeps losing sports properties, on-air personalties and no-personality personalties (that would be Br-rrrr-i-an Wil-li-ams, who jumped ship to CTV/TSN back in June). The vultures are circling, the denials that this is the end are flying, yadda yadda yadda. The handwriting is on the wall, though.

It's hard to imagine the Grey Cup, the biggest sporting event that's purely Canadian, not being aired on the CBC. (Then again, some people will remember a split CBC/CTV crew working the game in the '80s, so nothing's sacrosanct.)

Hockey Night in Canada as we know it will likely end after the 2007-08 season. The timing and tide, not to mention the party currently in power on Parliament Hill, are all wrong for the CBC to keep the sweetest plum in Canadian sports television, especially when you hear about the figures for the right fees -- $1.4 billion Cdn over 10 years from Bell Globemedia -- being bounced around.

Back in the summer, Neil Acharya argued eloquently for HNIC staying on CBC, but even he admitted there may be "no logical reason that justifies dipping into the public purse to get into a bidding war with Bell Globemedia." So it goes.

Back with more later. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.