Tag Archives: concussions

The Barnstormer: Hockey’s Worst Year

Posted on by

The following can be found in its entirety on The Barnstormer. Link below.

Jim Hughson didn’t utter a word. As the final minutes of the 2011-2012 NHL season came to a close, CBC’s Hughson turned off his microphone, took a breath, leaned back in the booth, and did what more sports broadcasts should. He let the images tell the story. The game clock slowed towards its destiny. The crowd stood, and cheered, as crowds tend to do. But not with a desperate fervor, or the pain of relief, but by way of habit, and tradition. Gloves and sticks and helmets were discarded. Grown men, proud men, cried and embraced. An aging goaltender, a native Montrealer, left the ice for what may have been the final time. A smug commissioner, an enemy of hockey patriots, stepped onto the ice. He was not booed, which is a custom unbeknownst to a Southern California crowd. He handed the Cup, a sacred chalice, to a 27-year-old from Ithaca, New York, a grinder, a winger who plays with grit, with sandpaper, “the way the game should be played”. A character guy. He’ll drop the gloves, you know? The Cup, the oldest of its kind, gets passed from player to player to coach to trainer to general manager. Slowly, reluctantly, one-by-one, they left the ice. The crowd remained standing. The crowd remained cheering.

To an outsider, it would appear to be the culmination of a beautiful season, the peak of winter’s game’s crescendo. The anthemic refrain that fades to a contented quiet. But that would be false. It would be a lie. Because beneath the tears, the character, the hyperbole, the pageantry, is what the moment really was. This, was the end of hockey’s worst year.

It began as last season ended. It began with a death.

Continue reading on The Barnstormer.

Where Did Journalism Wente?

Posted on by

Tuesday morning, venti Pike Place in hand, I sat in my local Starbucks as I do most days. I plugged in my earphones, connected to the WiFi and tuned into CBC Radio’s Q with Jian Ghomeshi, then opened up my various inboxes and feeds to try and catch up on what I missed whilst asleep. A normal day would typically progress as such: discover nothing happened, post clever tweet, ‘Like’ friends Facebook post, confirm that the Leafs still suck, reply to my mother’s suggestion that I get a real job, order second venti Pike, write something for my blog that 42 people will perhaps read, poke at freelance projects. You know, a Tuesday.

And if it wasn’t for a message in my inbox from colleague Ian Orti with a link to Margaret Wente’s op-ed on Quebec students (or rather, as Peggy calls them: the baristas of tomorrow) my Tuesday would’ve merrily skipped along, ending in beer and whiskey, eventually becoming a Wednesday where the whole thing would repeat itself. Instead, I quickly wrote a response to the offending Wente column, posted it, the thing went viral, Maisonneuve picked it up, I went on CJAD radio, and for a few days my parents left me alone about the freelance life without a wife or children. It was a good week.

But that was Tuesday, and my 15 seconds of notoriety was fleeting. By Friday night my folks were again asking about the absence of wife and grandchildren. Whiskey and beer supplies were dangerously low. Wente continues to write. So here I sit Saturday morning, same Starbucks, same venti Pike, and unfortunately stuck reading the same newspapers that employ the likes of Wente to lazily write hypocritical and poorly constructed pieces that negligently fit into the modern paradigm of what passes for journalism in 2012.

A friend sent me a piece by Wente from early April, in which she celebrates her Boomerdom and notes that she left university debt free, got a job quicker than an arts grad can whip cappuccino foam, a bought a house in the Beaches with a small loan from her mother that is now worth a small fortune. Easy-peasy. And yet just a short month later, she was condemning students for just wanting just a fraction of the same advantages she had. And it led me to wonder, how does this tripe make it past the editing process? How, in this day and age, are we subjected to newspapers that fail to subscribe to the simplest virtues of journalistic integrity?

Continue reading →

An Enforcer Goes to the Office

Posted on by

George woke up the way he so often did: with a rabid hangover, his hands bloodied, his knuckles bruised, and his helmet askew. He had a fair amount of vomit on his jersey, which made him all the more thankful that the jersey was a vomit repelling polyester blend. His mouth was crusted in dried blood, and his living room, in which he was now sitting wearing just his helmet, his jersey, and mismatched socks, was spinning violently. The front door to his condo was missing, and his cat, Donnie, was suspiciously dead. George’s coffee table was covered in crushed Percocets, ground Vicodin, and spilled Jägermeister. He located the alarm clock that hung in the centre of the living room, and found it flashing 9:16. He was late for work. He changed quickly into a fresh jersey, and rushed from his condo, failing to shower off the odour of sick, and Jägermeister, and the late night from his imposing six-foot-four, two-hundred-and-thirty-pound frame.

Despite the fact that George was ever so late for work, it was imperative that he start the work day as he always did, with a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, six thick slices of peameal bacon, four poached eggs, three slices of whole wheat toast, and a happy ending from a middle-aged Asian masseuse. It was fortunate for George that he had drunkenly parked his red Audi A5 on the condominium complex’s front lawn, making the car easy to find and expediting the process of his morning. He sped off towards Eggs & Endings, not bothering to fasten his seatbelt, the windows down to freshen him up, and his helmet so tight it was restricting his blood flow and making him lightheaded. As he weaved recklessly in and out of traffic, blasting HITZ 103.4FM, he considered the previous day at the office. The fighting, the name calling, the screaming, the filing, the drinking, and the data entry. Same Tuesday as it always was, though George thrived somewhat in the monotony of the grind.

Considering the hour, he used Eggs & Endings’ Drive-Thru Full Service, swiping his members’ card, and earning forty bonus privilege points. He arrived at his employers downtown office building at around 10:42, leaving the Audi parked in the emergency lane right out front, and dropping a handful of change into a non-existent parking metre. Quickening his pace, he made a hasty stop at the lobby Starbucks, where he ordered a quad shot Grande Americano, to which he added ten sugars and one Sweet n’ Low. On the elevator ride up to the tenth floor, he popped a package of Extra-Strength Sudafed, straightened his helmet, and chugged a Diet Red Bull.

George knew his boss would be waiting for him at reception, and sure enough there was Mr. Wilson as the elevator doors opened.

“You’re fucking late, Georgie,”  he spat.

“Fuck you, Ronnie, you fucking twat,” George shot back.

The men shoved at each other for a few minutes, before two of the secretaries broke them apart.

“You’re a fucking disgrace, Georgie.”

“Fuck you, Ronnie, I’ll cut you right in the fucking mouth,” George shot back.

Each of the secretaries took the men to their respective offices, which were positioned at opposite sides of the centre of the office’s north wall, an office like so many others, an endless sea of cubicles. For a few minutes the men glared at each other through their large windows, hurling obscenities, coffee mugs, and staplers at the glass. Finally, they settled down and Mr. Wilson went back to work, while George tried to get organized to make up for his tardiness. Though he loathed his job, George liked the company and hated being late. He had missed the anthems, and the morning announcements. He could feel his coworkers knowing eyes on him as tried to get to work. From his top drawer he pulled out a half-bottle of vodka, and used what was left to top up his Starbucks. He straightened his helmet, and then got on with his day, which progressed as any other day would.

Continue reading →

Time for the CBC to Put Don Cherry to Bed

Posted on by

Hockey, and in particular the NHL, is at an interesting crossroads. After a nightmare off-season in which the sport’s flaws and failures were exposed, the coming season will be a watershed moment for Canada’s favourite activity outside of beer and weather discourse. With the NBA in a labour dispute the NHL has an opportunity to have the North American sporting scene to itself after the Super Bowl. And although hockey will never have ratings issues in Canada, the return of the Jets to Winnipeg and an improved Toronto Maple Leafs team should increase the sport’s national visibility to an all-time high. In consideration of this increased exposure it’s time the CBC took into account its responsibility as the rights-holder of the sport’s crown jewel, Hockey Night in Canada, and the crucial nature of the sport’s year, and fire Don Cherry and Ron MacLean.

Don Cherry has been espousing closed-minded ignorant childish opinions on the CBC for nearly 30 years. For a long while, it was somewhat amusing in a nationalistic way. It would never be seen on an American network. For that matter, it would never be seen on any other network. Anywhere. “Coach’s Corner” is ultimately very Canadian. It’s a caricature of sports commentary, an homage to the self-deprecating and humble manner in which Canadians can laugh at themselves and each other. “Coach’s Corner” would be a hit on Saturday Night Live. It’s a parody. Near brilliant comedy. The segment has a one-camera setup, because early efforts to teach Cherry how to manage multiple cameras ultimately failed. Cherry quite often gets players names wrong, notably Jarome Iginla (Igilina, or Ingila), Roberto Luongo (Lulongo), as well as the surname of every player born east of Newfoundland and west of Victoria. His suits are a national punch line, and would make Liberace blush. He cheers for the Leafs and the Bruins, openly, and hates the Canadiens and most things Quebecois. He sings the praises of tough players, players equipped with grit and sandpaper, players who hit and fight, and after the game drink beer and bed women. He uses the pejorative “Redneck” as a positive. He hates “Pinkos” and “Commies” and the sissies on the Left. When he isn’t on TV, he’s at rinks in Mississauga and Pickering and Ajax watching midget and peewee games, which would be creepy if he wasn’t Don Cherry. During the summers he sits on his porch on Wolfe Island with a shotgun and a Molson Canadian. He’s a War of 1812 buff. He supports Rob Ford and Stephen Harper. He’s had a series of female Bull Terriers named Blue. He hates cats.

His partner for the bulk of the 30 years has been Ron MacLean, who at some point was a sports journalist of sorts, who has deteriorated into and embraced the parodic nature of his role. He is Cherry’s straight man. Cheech to his Chong. Abbott to his Costello. Wayne to his Shuster. MacLean’s job is the simplest in pro sports broadcasting. He asks Cherry about, you know, stuff, and Cherry talks about it. Or yells about it, rather. Then MacLean makes a really bad pun, and the segment ends. The only exception being the segments where Cherry talks about fallen soldiers and policemen, and then cries a bit after calling them brave and beautiful. (Seriously. The fact that Lorne Michaels hasn’t pilfered “Coach’s Corner” as a running skit on SNL is beyond me.)

MacLean should act as a voice of reason. He should be Cherry’s conscience. Our conscience. He should verbally slap Cherry across the face, knock him down a peg or eleven. Over the past few years, and notably since his very public contract dispute with the CBC, MacLean has developed quite the ego. Though he still facilitates Cherry’s insanity, he speaks with more of an air of arrogance than he did before. He refers to players and management by their nicknames and first names. He takes every opportunity to discuss his minor league refereeing.  He speaks of the game’s issues in absolutes. Worst of all, he has a frighteningly diverse knowledge of Canadian Indie rock bands, and is taken to quoting lyrics in intros. Actually, I correct myself. Worst of all MacLean enables Cherry. He is a walking talking bottle of scotch with a straw holding a loaded syringe next to an addict. He completes the parody to perfection.

Except it isn’t a parody. Padgett Powell, the brilliant American writer, once told a writing workshop I was in that a parody requires the author giving his audience permission to laugh. And the problem has become that “Coach’s Corner” is no longer amusing. The CBC has been complicit in allowing the segment to continue, in allowing Cherry and MacLean a pulpit from which to preach to the masses every Saturday night. And the sermons are racist, ignorant, ill-informed, baseless, self-serving, childish, offensive rants that have no place on television, let alone on the public broadcaster. If the CBC took the two off the air tomorrow, there would certainly be public outcry, but not lower ratings for Hockey Night in Canada. Hockey is our scotch and loaded syringe. It’s our addiction by birthright. And in its most important hour, intelligent, informed, and thoughtful opinion needs to be at the forefront of the discourse. The CBC is wasting the forum, and insulting us all the while.

The best argument in favour of the dismissal of Cherry and MacLean, is that it is hard to believe that any other broadcaster would hire them. There is no competition for their services. And if no one else wants them, why should the CBC? TSN and Sportsnet and their various properties, while certainly not perfect in their approach to covering hockey, have at least taken to hiring progressive and informed voices. Bob McKenzie, Jeff Blair, Stephen Brunt, Damien Cox, Elliotte Friedman, Dave Hodge, Bruce Arthur, James Duthie, Pierre McGuire, Gord Miller, and Michael Farber, just to name a few, are professionals. They are keenly aware of the sports flaws, as well as cognizant of its evolution. They’re not perfect. They’ve been complicit themselves in ignoring some the sports issues like concussions and drug abuse. But they’re not xenophobes. They’re not troglodytes. They’re not racists. They’re not idiots. They’re not Cherry and MacLean.

Last night on “Coach’s Corner” Cherry pushed his antiquated opinions too far. After the suicides this summer of NHL enforcers Derek Boogaard, Wade Belak, and Rick Rypien several former fighters bravely came out and spoke openly and honestly about their own struggles with the role, as well as their addictions and troubles with drugs and alcohol that they feel were brought on by having to literally fight for their dinners. It was an example of selfless and generous humility in the face of tragedy that should have been (and was by many outlets) celebrated and commended. But not by Cherry, and not by MacLean. Instead, Cherry berated the former players, called them out as it were.

“The ones that I am really disgusted with … are the bunch of pukes that fought before: Stu Grimson, Chris Nilan and Jim Thomson.”

“[They say] ‘Oh, the reason that they’re drinking, [taking] drugs and alcoholics is because they’re fighting.’ You turncoats, you hypocrites. If there’s one thing I’m not it’s a hypocrite. You guys were fighters, and now you don’t want guys to make the same living you did. You people that are against fighting, you should be ashamed of yourselves. You took advantage of that to make your point on fighting.”

- from The Globe and Mail

Anyone who has struggled with addiction or depression, or witnessed those struggles first hand, knows how difficult it is to talk about it, let alone talk about it publicly. What Cherry did was make the discussion about him. He changed the focus. He is a child who had an on-air tantrum. And at a time when pugilism in hockey and its connection to serious mental issues need to be argued by the enlightened and informed, Cherry and his partner MacLean have retarded the progress of an important discussion. The CBC needs to be a responsible public broadcaster and remove “Coach’s Corner” from Hockey Night in Canada. This is a time for serious discourse on a troubled sport, and the children need to be sent from the room so the adults can talk.

Click here for more posts on hockey.

The NHL Will Miss Sean Avery

Posted on by

The New York Rangers waived Sean Avery, the divisive NHL winger, yesterday morning and if the transaction proves to be the end of his NHL playing days, then it is truly a sad day for the league. In a sport that religiously fears change and creativity, Avery stood out as an innovator as much as an agitator, and in a league whose culture celebrates the status quo more than any other pro sport, Avery was always considered a pariah. While never a fan of Avery himself, as a fan of the sport who has great concern for what it has become, I’ll miss what he brought to hockey’s discourse, and regret what the NHL could be like if the league would embrace its Sean Averys.

Avery’s history of suspensions and controversy highlight hockey’s hatred for innovation and its insulated old boys’ culture. It was not long into Avery’s NHL career before he upset the hockey powers. Following just one year with the Detroit Red Wings, the team that drafted him, Avery was traded to the Los Angeles Kings. Soon after, Wings GM Ken Holland told the press that he didn’t think Avery “respected the game.” This was because Avery played the role of the agitator, along the lines of Kenny Linseman, Esa Tikkanen, Clause Lemieux, and countless others who never received the wrath of the hockey elite that Avery did.

Once in LA, Avery became enamoured with the celebrity culture, and began dating a series of Hollywood starlets. He also made appearances on several TV shows including MadTV, Punk’d, and TRL, while also being featured in People magazine’s Sexiest People Alive issue. This would have made him a tabloid star, and media darling, in the NFL, the NBA, or MLB, but in the cloistered world of the NHL, it did not jibe with their good ole boy, salt of the earth, farm boy from Saskatchewan star system. The NHL, as it always seems to, missed out on a great marketing opportunity, one that would have provided some exposure to the celeb-hungry public in the US that the sport hasn’t had since Wayne Gretzky was sold to the Kings, and married the sixth lead from Police Academy 5: Assignment: Miami Beach. Instead, it furthered Avery’s journey to becoming the NHL’s most hated man. Literally. There was a poll.

During the 2004-2005 NHL lockout Avery was publically and privately berated for his comments towards NHLPA head Bob Goodenow, saying, “”Bob thought he was bigger than he was. Bob brainwashed players like me. We burned a year for nothing. We didn’t win anything. We didn’t prove anything. We didn’t get anything. We wasted an entire season.” Of course, years later we know that Avery was right, and that the lockout was a waste of a year that did nothing for the sport, except maintain its place in US culture somewhere between Arena Football and Llama Dressage.

In 2005, after Denis Gauthier, a notorious headhunter, gave Jeremy Roenick a concussion with a cheap shot hit, Avery was quoted as saying “I think it was typical of most French guys in our league with a visor on, running around and playing tough and not back anything up.” Don Cherry calls French Canadians horrible names, when he can actually pronounce their names that is, but has never received a fraction of the vitriol that Avery received. He was forced to apologize, and though the prejudicial generalization was uncalled for, the manner in which players like Gauthier carry themselves and the attention to headshots was both relevant and ahead of its time.

Later that year, Avery received a fine for diving and was labeled a repeat offender by the league. In his comments protesting the fact that the CBA did not allow for players to appeal such fines for diving, league VP Colin Campbell said of Avery “Mr. Avery has besmirched the reputation of all NHL players, coaches, general managers and owners who, collectively, have been successful in providing a more entertaining game for our fans.” This is the same Colin Campbell known throughout the game by GMs, players, journalists, and general hangers on as Colie, whose stewardship as the NHL executive charged with maintaining order and safety within a very fast, and at times, very violent sport, resulted in an era of concussions and superfluous on-ice violence. Who damaged the game more during their tenure, Avery or Campbell? It would be difficult to argue the former, and Brendan Shanahan has recently replaced the latter in a move celebrated throughout the sport.

Many incidents of notoriety and infamy followed, including run-ins with former NHL goaltender and current broadcaster Brian Hayward, Kings assistant coach Mark Hardy, enforcers Georges Laraque and Todd Fedoruk, David Clarkson, Martin Brodeur, Jason Blake, Darcy Tucker, a trade to the Rangers, and continuing relationship with medium-profile actresses. It’s worth noting that Laraque made and Fedoruk makes their NHL livings as pugilists and not players, their combined career goals equaling those of Avery; that Hardy was once arrested and charged for sexually assaulting his daughter; that Brodeur left his wife for his sister-in-law; and the incident with Blake and Tucker (where Avery was accused of invoking Blake’s cancer in an on-ice taunt) had to be retracted by the reporting radio station only upon being served with a libel suit by Avery. Varying degrees of morality at play here, yes, but in each incident the hockey community, by and large, put its support behind whoever wasn’t named Sean Avery.

What is perhaps he most apt example of Sean Avery as an innovator in a sport of close-minded and dated thinking occurred on April 13, 2008 during a playoff game between the New Jersey Devils and the New York Rangers. On a Rangers 5-on-3 power play, Avery stood above the crease in front of Devils goalie Brodeur, put his stick in Brodeur’s eye line and waved his hands in the goalie’s face. Well within the rules, but against the unwritten rules of the hockey community’s self-appointed moral governors. The play itself was genius, and if the Devils wanted Avery to stop they should have cross-checked him in the head as is the sport’s way. Instead, the community cried foul, Don Cherry called him a jerk (once again, raising the level of intelligent discourse), and the next day the league instituted the Sean Avery Rule outlawing such antics. This would be like the NBA outlawing Kareem Abdul-Jabaar’s skyhook, baseball eschewing the knuckleball, or the NFL putting an end to the fumblerooski. But this is the NHL, whose last innovation was the forward pass.

What followed that playoff season, one in which the Rangers 4-1 series’ victory over the Devils greatly benefitted from Avery’s inspired play, likely put any chance of a happy marriage between Avery and his sport permanently to rest. That summer Avery joined Vogue magazine as an intern, with reports that “Avery is a self-confessed clothes horse who has been known to give girlfriends advice on how to dress, and in interviews has expressed a dream to become a fashion editor after his days on the ice.” He was widely ridiculed by the community, one that fears not concussions or drug abuse or post-career depression, but rather the appearance that one of its own is anything less than the norm, anything less than a man’s man, drinking beer and growing beards, spending offseason’s at the rodeo, or chasing broads.

After that, Avery unfortunately became almost a caricature of himself, perhaps tired of being the leagues whipping boy, a result of the NHL’s use and abuse of him. He signed an ill-fated four-year, $15.5 million contract with the Dallas Stars and never meshed with the team’s culture and played only 23 games for the club. He called Jarmone Iginla “boring” (well, he is), Stars captain Mike Modano called Avery an embarrassment (Modano appeared in the first Mighty Ducks film, you know – glass houses and all that), Brodeur would only refer to him as “the Vogue intern” (okay, that’s pretty funny), he was suspended for 6 games for implying that Calgary Flames’ defenceman Dion Phaneuf enjoyed Avery’s “sloppy seconds” (Phaneuf was dating Avery’s ex, Elisha Cuthbert – kind of funny, if not very creative), and eventually he was sent to the AHL before making it back to the NHL with the Rangers.

During this past May, Avery came out publicly in support of same sex marriage, and recorded a video for the New Yorkers for Marriage Equality campaign. The video prompted Uptown Sports Management, an agency that represents around a dozen NHL players, to post on their Twitter feed its disappointment in Avery’s stance, tweeting “Very sad to read Sean Avery’s misguided support of same-gender ‘marriage’. Legal or not, it will always be wrong.” There were no sanctions from the NHL placed upon the agency, no public support from teammates, only a brief spatter of Twitter support. The NHL does not encourage its membership to have political views, or any views for that matter. Once again, Avery should have been promoted and celebrated. But he wasn’t, because hockey is for men, men with wives and children and tractors and bruised knuckles that like vanilla ice cream and country music and own Ford F150s.

This preseason, in a game versus the Philadelphia Flyers, Avery was taunted with homophobic slurs by Flyers’ winger Wayne Simmonds. The incident was caught on camera, and in an era of high definition television a blind man could have read Simmonds’ lips. The timing was intriguing, as only a few days earlier Simmonds (who is black) had a banana peel thrown at him during the shootout of a game in London, Ontario. It was a snapshot of the league’s intolerance, of an undercurrent of quiet racism and prejudice against all things not traditionally hockey, a bi-product of it’s reluctance to embrace progress. There was no suspension for Simmonds, the NHL claiming there was insufficient evidence. Many journalists defended the NHL’s decision, clinging to the old trope of what’s said on the ice stays on the ice, and that it’s a man’s game. That’s the sport’s way. The NHL is quick with excuses, and slow on progress. And it hates anyone who stands out as an individual. And it hated Sean Avery.

Innovation is the lifeblood of sport, and while Sean Avery was not the most graceful of innovators, the lesson remains that the Sean Avery Rule and the NHL’s failure to embrace a uniquely marketable individual, is indicative of a sport that stubbornly refuses to foster and encourage creativity. The NHL would prefer that each game was made up entirely of Sutters, teams of 25 Albertan farm boys who love their mothers and give a 110% for three full periods, always willing to drop the gloves, leaving it all on the ice. It’s a league that celebrates cliché, and shuns ingenuity. It’s that thinking that keeps the sport from achieving the popularity that it’s natural grace and beauty deserve, that will always fill arenas in Winnipeg but not Atlanta, and will never make its way to the forefront of popular North American culture. Sean Avery was a marketer’s dream, in a sport devoid of them. He was a Toronto-boy, good looking, with grit and a diversity of interests who was never shy in front of a microphone. The NHL won’t miss Sean Avery, but it should.

Click here for more hockey posts.