N H ell

ah, for the good old days ...

It’s finally happened. I’ve become one of the duffers. One of the crusties who remembers the good old days when one referee was just as incompetent as two, overtime was restricted to the playoffs, and the shootout was a cheap way to win an international hockey game. When the stars played with goons watching their backs and the boys thought twice before hitting a guy in the numbers.

When Ron MacLean hosted Hockey Night in Canada instead of a Sunday night mercy slot.

The game has changed, the league has changed, nothing is sacred and precious little makes sense.

The Flyers lost two in a row over the weekend. In the old days, I’d have gone, Guys, smarten up. Now I’m looking at the schedule and thinking, with 82 games in a season, who gets five days off then has to play back to back, one at home and one on the road? Who set that schedule in stone? I didn’t see the Columbus game, but the boys arrived in Montreal at 1:00 a.m. on game day against the Canadiens and tried to claw their way back from a 2 goal deficit only to fold like a cheap tent in the third period. They were tired! Heck, I get dopey after a long weekend and these guys are expected to hit the ice running after twice that long? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re professional athletes, they’re millionaires, they have nothing else to do but stay in shape for a brutally long season, but come on.

And that’s just the players. The fans are suffering mightily too, since the wedding news broke last spring: Rogers had bought broadcast rights to all NHL games and everyone else could go fish. Which is pretty much what TSN has had to do.

Not that TSN trumped CBC for hockey broadcasts, because for most of my life, CBC was where hockey lived. But there were also Canuck games on Wednesday nights, on the CTV affiliate out of Vancouver. Then cable TV expanded and sports channels were born. The Sports Network, for one. I was miffed when the CBC let the Hockey Night in Canada theme go to TSN, but got over it because, hey, TSN ran NHL double headers on Wednesday nights. Better yet, Tuesday night Flyer games were picked up by TSN2—a joy I discovered right before the apocalypse happened.

Most Canuck games were cast on Sportsnet Pacific, called by John and John—Shorthouse on play-by-play and Garrett on colour commentary. A pair of goofballs to be sure, but I enjoyed their banter as much as (and often more than) the game, and it was good to know that, if Ter and I were at loose ends on a winter’s night, there was probably a game somewhere on Shaw’s basic cable.

And, like Old Faithful, on Saturday nights, the CBC reigned supreme.

Not anymore.

HNIC still exists, but I no longer recognize it. Ron MacLean could be cloying, but I liked him better than George Snufflufagus. At least MacLean has sports broadcasting cred. Strombo is a glamour boy trying to be hip and falling embarrassingly short. The broadcast teams are all haywire. Gone from the booth are Rick Ball and Kelly Hrudey, replaced by no-name whozits dredged from the Sportsnet vault. And the panel between periods? I avoided Sportsnet to steer clear of Nick Kypreos and now he’s sitting in PJ Stock’s place with the sad remains of the HNIC talking heads.

Gone almost entirely are TSN broadcasts. Oh, there are games on the new TSN3, TSN4, TSN5 cable stations, when there’s no blackout in effect. Most are part of a new “sports channel” package requiring extra payment for the privilege of viewing. Which might be okay if there were no commercials, but who are we kidding?

Sportsnet channels … now there are a thousand of them, only three of which remain attached to the basic cable package (demanding no extra funding from the viewer) and none of which seem to carry Canuck games on a regular basis. Or any games, for that matter. When we do catch a Vancouver game, the Johns aren’t always calling it. As for the games included in our already exorbitant cable fee, the screen is often so busy with tickertape news items, irrelevant stats and those truly irritating banner ads for cars, restaurants and upcoming broadcast events, that the game is as disrespected as the viewer.

I hate this. I loathe the change, resent the suits responsible, and am powerless to do anything about it. I would stop watching hockey, but I’ve been robbed of that form of protest because I will not pay for games that were once “free” on basic cable.

Only on the Rogers network, you say?

Pity.