| Soundy | 05-24-2009 07:28 AM |
... Quote:
Appeasing TV gods costs NHL its dignity
Cam Cole, Canwest News Service
Published: Saturday, May 23, 2009
Every time you think the National Hockey League can't possibly sink any lower in its subservience to the great god Television, Gary Bettman's outfit gives us fresh evidence there is still plenty of grovelling room in the subbasement.
Here's the latest embarrassment: the league announced Friday that unless both the Eastern and Western conference final series ended in sweeps--meaning by Tuesday night, when the Pittsburgh Penguins would play their Game 4 in Raleigh, N. C. -- the Stanley Cup final would not begin until June 5.
Now, never mind that this could mean 10 days between games for the Penguins if, say, they were to sweep Carolina while Detroit took even five games to polish off the Chicago Blackhawks. The Wings, under that scenario, would go eight days between games.
It's worse than that.
After lollygagging through the first three rounds of playoffs with nonsensical extra off-days thrown in willy nilly, the NHL is prepared to play Games 1 and 2 of the Cup final on back-to-back nights, because NBC is weak in prime time on Fridays and Saturdays, and will deign to telecast both games if the NHL doesn't mind twisting itself into a pretzel to co-operate.
And in that case . . . well, do the math.
If they play on the 5th and 6th, and go every second day from that point on, they would play Game 3 on June 8, Game 4 on the 10th, and so on, meaning a possible Game 7 on the 16th, a day later than the NHL's written-in-stone pledge to have the season end by June 15.
So to keep its promise, the league would have to schedule another back-to-back within the series.
No two Stanley Cup final games have been played on consecutive dates since 1954, when the Red Wings played Game 4 in Montreal on April 10, and the teams travelled to Detroit for Game 5 on April 11.
And that's when the playoffs consisted of only two rounds.
In the modern era, such an idea would be considered preposterous: four rounds into the playoffs, when fatigue and injuries have mounted, playing on back-to-back nights--maybe twice in the same series?
Absurd. Unconscionable.
If the series begins June 5 and goes seven, it would be the latest-finishing Stanley Cup final in a non-Olympic year since 1999, when Brett Hull's toe-in-the-crease goal won it for Dallas at 1:30 a. m. Eastern, on June 20--after which I distinctly recall NHL senior vice-president of hockey operations Colin Campbell telling me the league simply had to find a way to end the hockey season before June.
But in the NHL's scruple-free administration, anything goes to appease U. S. television.
If the league's owners had the stones they were born with, they might actually rise up and challenge the commissioner once in a while when his desire to be bigger than he (or the league) really is-- regardless of the cost to its dignity --makes hockey look pathetic.
But he has led them this far, and they have drunk his Kool-Aid. Evidently, they are unwilling, or unable, to rally in the name of common sense.
Vancouver Sun
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