NHL
Obviously Dominik Hasek is one of the best goaltenders of all time. There is no doubt about that. But going into this season at 40 years old who honestly believed that he could play up to the par of the NHL goalies nowadays. The new rules certainly didn’t help his chances. Although we’re only about 10 games into the season it looks as though Hasek is well on his way to another Vezina Trophy.
The 6-2 Sabres took to the ice at the Blue Cross Arena in Rochester,NY. The Sabres faced off againsed the Washington Capitals looking for their 5th straight home win, while playing on their AHL affiliates rink.
One would be hard pressed to find a person in the United States that says hockey is their favorite sport. As a matter of fact, hockey probably resides on the totem somewhere in the neighborhood of the WNBA. Hockey isn’t nearly as popular as Golf and Tennis, especially women’s Tennis, so it obviously doesn’t come close to challenging American Sports’ Big Three of professional Football, Baseball, and Basketball.
Why is that though? Why is hockey so far outside the scope of the American Sports radar? It doesn’t make sense because hockey, the NHL, has many elements that should catapult it to a higher level of popularity. Hockey has more flashes of excitement than baseball. It has just as much physicality as football. It is often more violent than your average pay per view boxing event. And, it can be said that hockey has the most graceful, elegant, and best athletes.
Attention Philadelphia:
Your title crave is about to be soothed. The championship drought is about to be ended. The 23-year losing streak is about to be ended by one team. Could it be the Phillies who last won the World Series in 1980 (the only one in their 122 year history)? Or could it be the Eagles who’s last championship came in 1960, before there was a Super bowl? Or could it be the 76ers, the last team to win a championship? Or maybe even the Flyers who have not won a Stanley Cup in 30 years?
Detroit Red Wings captain Steve Yzerman signed a one year contract worth $1.5 to $2 million yesterday. And as the pen hit the table, Hockeytown let out a collective sigh of relief. This was more than just signing a good player in the new era of the NHL. This was more than just shoring up a team decimated by a payroll sliced in half by the salary cap. Derian Hatcher, from the shores of the Detroit River, signed with Philadelphia. Curtis Joseph, who came to Detroit for the chance to win a Stanley Cup, is gone. And the most prominent is Darren McCarty. McCarty grew up over the river in Windsor, has spent his entire 11 year career playing for his childhood team, and is now in Calgary. This signing was a bridge for the Red Wings from the spend free to fill wants era to the spend thrifty to fill needs era.
So the NHL is back in the news, but for all the wrong reasons. Just as the league was about to escape the minds of everyone for good, one of the NHL’s more prominent stars came out in the news on a tirade of remarks. The Philadelphia Flyers’ Jeremy Roenick voiced his frustrations recently with both the players and the owners of the league saying how it’s critical that “they” get back on the ice as soon as possible. Roenick ripped everyone imaginable who had any sort of relation with the current hockey mess. However, Roenick didn’t know that he would soon be ripping members of the media. For some reason Roenick felt as though his comments about the art of fans kissing his backside were taken way out of context. Roenick’s comments weren’t necessarily taken out of context, but one thing for sure was- the importance of the NHL to America.
For just a short time take a break, and look at professional sports, namely professional hockey, in a more innocent and relaxed way without politics and television rating prerequisites. Let go of focus on sports market stipulations and the ratios of supply and demand. Instead focus on the required skills of each professional sport and what the fair salary average for each sport would then be. In this we might all realize just how much more professional hockey players should be paid. Or perhaps see how outrageous player salaries are in other professional sports or all professional sports. The bottom line then is no matter what the salaries of professional sports players are, professional hockey players should be paid the most on the basis of skill.
By Chris Mackey
The NHL has cancelled the remainder of the season. Is it a good thing or bad thing? Right now, it’s bad. But in the end it’s good. A second prominent sport in America will have a salary cap, more than likely, and maybe that will cause the other two, baseball and basketball, to follow suit.
Reports out of Canada on Friday night have the NHL and NHLPA reaching an agreement in principle on a 45 million dollar cap. See guys this wasn’t that hard all you had to do was meet in the middle and a deal was possible.
For the eight remaining hockey fans in the United States, this has been a tough week for us. We have been through as many deadlines as Robert Downey Jr. trips to rehab and finally a cancelltion, but as we head into the weekend there is speculation that the players and owners will be meeting this weekend in hopes of finding a resolution to this mess.