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Photo credit: Len Redkoles
Over the past eight years, there have been too many games lost to lockout, especially for a “fringe” sport that once had lower TV ratings than poker. In 2004-05, the NHL scrapped a whole season to cram a salary cap down the players’ throats. If that weren’t enough, in 2012-13, fans lost 34 games because the owners and players played chicken with record-high revenues, finding compromise only when the drop-dead date drew near. It’s friggin’ stupid.
I guess it’s appropriate to start by saying that we’re all unimaginably happy about the return of hockey. That said, we’ve learned a lot over the four-month lockout, and this seems like the appropriate time to take stock.
The NHL is a garage league. I’m not talking about riff-raff players spoiling up the staid finesse hockey of a bygone era; I’m talking about business competence. Since my adolescence, the NHL has lost part or all of three seasons. Fans who have been following hockey for a decade have seen 20% of that time obscured or obliterated by lockouts.
Imagine running a business where you do work 80% of the time. The rest of the time you’re struggling to master a skill most functionally social humans learn in kindergarten: sharing. Your business plan is flawed.
Peter said it best a few weeks ago. RMNB has zero interest in covering the actual lockout. “Financial negotiations (and their public face) are all about posturing, tedium, and equivocation,” he said. “Whereas our principal interest in hockey has always been scoar, moar, and goals.” We have gone to great lengths to cover hockey and try to make things fun as possible while patiently waiting for the NHL to end the madness.
But now that Washington Capitals players are bickering with each other through the media, we feel compelled.
Ahh. The Velvet Hammer, Connie Moreau. You might think she was the Ducks’ token girl, but I’d argue she was so much more. Connie brought both elegance and elbow-checks to the Ducks. She was a voice of diplomacy to cut through District 5′s bitterness, reaching out to Gordon Bombay (“Coach,” she calls him in the image above, smiling). Connie brought love into sullen Guy Germaine’s life– and the lives of nine-year-old boys across the world. She was much more than just a compulsory female presence.
And Connie Moreau was transformative for a adolescents. She was like a family friendly Phoebe Cates, all smile-flash and quiet toughness. And not for nothing, but Marguerite Moreau’s performance as Connie was one of the best in that young cast. What follows is my love letter to Connie Moreau. No apologies.
Gangsta rap, this is all your fault. Criminy, it’s like headwear bingo up there.
It’s been twenty years since we learned to quack. In that span of time, our Ducks have flown far and wide. Now we have this opportunity to check in on Gordon, Charlie, Hans, Jack, Averman, Goldberg, Jesse, the other one, the short one, the guy from that other movie, and all those other unforgettable characters.
The career trajectories varied as much as their crazy hats in that picture above (Guy Germaine, what the hell is on your head?). Some actors rose to fame making out with Tom Cruise’s ex-wife, and others had to settle for making out with Paula Abdul. Follow me past the jump for a trip in the wayback machine.
A few months ago I was on Up the Pucks, a podcast that mixes up punk rock and hockey. They asked me what got me into hockey and I blurted out The Mighty Ducks! After some thought, that answer rang true for me and I imagine for lots of other fans my age as well.
This week, that seminal movie celebrates its 20th anniversary. And as much as I am petrified by time’s march, the thought that The Mighty Ducks is twenty fills me more with nougaty nostalgia than existential dread. Yeah, it’s a craven exploitation flick starring an aged brat packer and liking it instantly brands you Too Old To Hit On College Girls, but it’s still an important part of our shared culture. So let’s take a moment, nay, an entire week, to revel in this Hockey Cinema Classic.
Photo credit: Flickr / catrinamariee
[Editor's note: Over the next however long, we'll be pondering a few ways to brighten up the hockey world. Sometimes silly, sometimes not: here are our proposals for the 2012-2013 season... whenever that may happen.]
Goals, assists, plus-minus. That’s supposed to be how you tell how good a hockey player is. When a skater’s name pops up on the CSN-Washington chyron, they show goals, assists, and plus-minus. ESPN, Yahoo, and NHL.com place plus-minus among their marquee stats for ranking players. But the more we learn about hockey and statistics, the more we know that plus-minus kind of sucks at measuring talent.
Proposal: This season, let’s throw out the plus-minus stat. In this article I’m gonna tell you why I think plus-minus has gotta go, and I’m gonna pitch a stat to replace it.
Photo credit: @Jeffler
There’s going to be a lot of shortsighted posts from angry bloggers over the next few weeks about how greedy NHL players and owners are. How this lockout is going to forever hurt the game. How fans will never come back like they used to.
As much as I want to be able to write that post, I can’t. It might take some time, but the game will come back stronger than ever and the fans will come back too.
I love this sport with all my heart, but my life will go on without hockey. Yours should too.
SB Nation’s blog for the Buffaslugs takes on all comers. Photo by the great Clydeorama.
Like fantasy teams, sports blogs tend to have boldly silly names. Onomasticians fill their hours dissecting the tribalism and secret etymology of blogs with names like Russian Machine Never Breaks and the late, great, way too punny Kings of Leonsis.
Fun fact: here are some names we didn’t pick for RMNB: Red Line to Stanleytown, Laing’s Gang, various names with a bongo theme. Meanwhile, across the net at SB Nation (a blog network of which our colleagues at Japers’ Rink are members and Caps owner Ted Leonsis is an investor), there’s a blog for every team in the league. It’s a panoply of fun, imaginative names.
To pass the time on this long and languid summer, we decided to pick our favorites. Behold: the RMNB’s SB Nation Sports Blog Blog Name Ranking Index Presented by RMNB.
Photo credit: Kyle Terada
Alex Ovechkin is no stranger to the Olympic games, but this summer in London he’s just along for the ride. He’s been watching his girlfriend Maria Kirlienko compete in tennis for Russia and soaking in the special atmosphere of the Olympics, watching events, meeting new people, forming new friensh –
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