Sometimes when you’re watching a game, and it drags to a 3-2 conclusion, it’s easy to reach back into the past and glorify hockey as it used to be played.

The trouble with such nostalgia is that we only remember the very best, and the very worst.  The highs and lows.  We tend to forget the drab, everyday matters, the faceless games that ran into each other, week after week, month after month, season after season.  An uninspired mid-season Tuesday evening game is the same in any decade.

One part of life that appears to have gone by the wayside here in North America is the infusion of colour in the mainstream wardrobe.  Everyone now seems to wear the subdued shades of black and grey, as if we’re all in a collective state of mourning for something we’re not exactly sure about.

There is one aspect of the mainstream 80’s that Retro Nights get right; the parading of day-glo colours, and other wacky, over-the-top pastels that screamed at you then, and scream at you now.  Everyone did seem to dress up as an extra from the “Let’s Get Physical” video or any Culture Club offering.  There were those of us that rallied around the Johnny Cash man-in-black look, but for the most part, that approach was relegated to the shadows.

In the long history of hockey, there probably wasn’t an NHL team that better represented those overly colourful eighties than the Team of that Decade, the Edmonton Oilers.  They won four Stanley Cups in five seasons, and probably should have won five-in-a-row.  If Gretzky had remained in Northern Alberta, then that team could have taken seven Cups in-a-row, easily.

Recently on The War Room, Peter Berce and I were kicking around some great games from the past, games we would have liked to have attended.  One that leapt to mind for me was the 11-9 game between the Oilers and the Toronto Maple Leafs.

January 8th, 1986.  At Maple Leaf Gardens.

The lowly Leafs really must have put up a fight that night, scoring nine goals against the defending Stanley Cup champions.

Except it was the Leafs who scored the eleven goals.  They won the game 11-9.

That’s twenty goals in sixty minutes of play.  An average of a goal every three minutes.

You wouldn’t have wanted to leave your seat for popcorn in case you missed something.

I was at the Montreal Forum that same January evening, watching the Canadiens beat, ahh, someone.  Trouble is, over the years, I can’t recall who.  We were too busy keeping an eye on the Forum out-of-town scoreboard.  As the digits rose in that game, the hub-bub at the Forum rose in tandem.

To my knowledge, there had never been an NHL game where both teams scored in double digits.  Most of the crowd around me were tickled pink that the Leafs were scoring that many goals on the Oilers, a team not renowned for its defence, but a team that could easily give up five goals and still win the game.  Their offense was that explosive.

A check of the 1985-86 Oilers’s game-by-game record bears that out.

They won a total of seven games when the opposition scored at least five goals against them.  One of those barnburners was a 12-9 win at Chicago on December 11th.  At that point, the gun slinging Oilers sported a 21-5-and-4 record.

This team could play it all ways.  They could squeeze out a tight, defensive victory, such as a 3-2 win over the New Jersey Devils on November 23rd.

They could blow a team out of the arena, such as the 13-0 pasting of Wayne Gretzky’s favourite punching bag, the Vancouver Canucks, on November 8th, or a 12-3 win over the Detroit Red Wings on March 14th.

For a team that led the circuit with 426 goals that season (the second highest total in NHL history after the 446 by the 83-84 Oilers), those three games represented the only times they cracked double-digits in goals scored in a game.

Speaking of records, the 1980’s Oilers hold the top five marks for most goals scored in one NHL season.

That 12-9 win over the Blackhawks tied a Montreal Canadiens/Toronto St. Patrick’s game from 1920 for the most goals scored in one NHL game…not counting All-Star Games.

That 11-9 loss to the Leafs is tied with a 12-8 win by the Oilers over the Minnesota North Stars in January of 1984 for the second-most goals scored in one NHL game.

Image that happening today.  Last week, the Tampa Bay Lightning survived a 8-7 arm wrestling contest with the Philadelphia Flyers, and we got all excited about a mere 15 goals in a game.

Back to the 80’s.

During the 1985-86 season, the Toronto Maple Leafs managed to light the lamp a total of 311 times, which was only good enough for the 12th best total in the 21 team league.

The Oilers led the league with 119 points; the Maple Leafs were 19th with 57 points.

On that January night, it shouldn’t even have been close.

A search of the internet brings up the game summary for that contest.  Hold on, it’s gonna get busy.

Every time the Oilers made their way to Eastern Canada, it was a media circus.  Everyone wanted a piece of Wayne Gretzky.  Even back then, there were calls for the Great One to be moved to the Maple Leafs, or the New York Rangers, in the name of getting the NHL more exposure in the eastern-based U.S. media.

That night the Leaf faithful, who were probably bracing themselves for a beating, were just sitting down with their lattes when Russ Courtnall opened things up with a pair of goals, the first at the 2:40 mark of the first period, the second almost five minutes later.

Seven minutes into the game, the Maple Leafs had a 2-0 lead.

Make that 3-0, after Miroslav Frycer potted one on the power play at the 12:25 mark.

Old MLG must have been rocking.

Gretzky got the Oilers on the board at 14:03 with his 29th goal, but that would be it for the big boys, as the Maple Leafs pumped in two more goals before the end of the period.
Steve Thomas and Brad Smith (Brad Smith!!!) got the goals.

5-1 Leafs after one. 

Going into this game, the Oilers had won five in-a-row, and eleven of their last thirteen.  Maybe they were due for an off-night.

So who were the goaltenders for this epic?  The game summary shows that Andy Moog and Grant Fuhr split this one, while the Leafs went all the way with Tim Bernhardt.

With just under five minutes gone in the second period, the 16,282 in attendance must have been feeling pretty good.  Leave it to Wayne Gretzky to put some doubt in their minds. 

His 30th at the 4:58 mark made it 5-2 Toronto.  All still seemed fine for the home team.

In game that featured twenty goals, there was about a six-and-a-half minute stretch where the red lights got to catch their breath.

At 11:19, Raimo Summanen scored.  And then Gretzky completed his hat-trick less than four minutes later.  C’mon, in a game with twenty goals, you knew Gretzky had to have some of them.

That made the score 5-4 Maple Leafs, with five minutes left to play in the second.

Toronto stopped the Oilers’ express with the second goal by Steve Thomas, a mere 24 seconds after the Gretzky tally.  Undaunted, Kevin McClelland responded for Edmonton just over a minute later.

The Oilers finally tied things up, when Paul Coffey got on the score sheet with his 18th goal of the season.

Toronto had blown a four-goal lead, and was going to head into the dressing room tangled up in a 6-6 tie.

Until Wendel Clark scored 33 seconds after Coffey tied it.

Toronto went to the dressing room with an improbable 7-6 lead.  Edmonton had outscored them 5-2 in that second frame, and still the Leafs led the game.

By the time they dropped the puck for the third period, it was probably safe to assume that nobody had left the game early.  Who could be sure what would unfold in the third?  Often these sort of games calm down by the third period.  There was no worry of that happening on this night.

Who knows what the Oiler’s coaching staff barked at their troops during the intermission.  Edmonton came out loaded for bear, and Jari Kurri joined the scoring parade, popping one in a mere 28 seconds into the third.  Less than a minute later, Glenn Anderson scored his 27th goal of the season, giving the Oilers their first lead of the game.

Image the see-saw emotions of the crowd at Maple Leaf Gardens that night.  They watched their team carve out a 5-1 lead after one period, only to fall behind 8-7 less than two minutes into the third.

Maybe that was the point that some of the faithful lost the faith, and beat a hasty retreat to the subway.

They shouldn’t have thrown in the towel so easily. 

That would be the only time the Oilers enjoyed a lead all night, because 45 seconds after the Anderson go-ahead goal, Frycer replied with his second of the game.

And then he completed his hat-trick less than three minutes later, and the Leafs were on top again, 9-8.

But if anyone thought the run-and-gun Oilers were done, they were wrong.  Less than four minutes later…an eternity in this game…Anderson scored again for Edmonton.

With just over a dozen minutes left in the third, things were knotted up at nine apiece.

And then a strange thing happened.  The scoring slowed down considerably.  With nine goals in the first 48 minutes of the game, the Oilers ran out of bullets.

Miroslav Frycer entered his name into Maple Leafs’ lore when he got his fourth goal of the game at the 10:51 mark.  The Leafs had cracked the double-digit barrier for the second time that season.  They had put 10 goals past the Devils in a 10-7 goal marathon on December 4th, so they knew a little bit about these goal fests.

Dan Hodgson got the insurance marker at 18:42, and the Leafs held on for the 11-9 win.

At the Montreal Forum that night, most of the crowd around me were pulling for the upstart Leafs to upend the Oilers, though we all wanted to see Edmonton also get to double digits.

Considering there were twenty goals scored that game, only three of them came on the power play, Toronto with two of those.  Overall, there were only seven minor penalties called all night.

Jari Kurri had a great night, with a goal and five assists.  Gretzky had his usual production, getting three goals and chipping in with three assists.

For the Leafs, Frycer led the way with four goals.  Marian Stastny assisted on the last three Toronto goals. 

Frycer, who defected to the Quebec Nordiques around the same time the three Stastny brothers did, had a couple of good years in Toronto.  His four goals this game represented a career high.  He scored 32 goals that season, also a career high, and retired in 1989 with 147 goals in 415 games, most of them with Toronto, but he also served time with Quebec, Detroit, and Edmonton.

As for shots, the Maple Leafs edged the Oilers 39-31.  Which means there were twenty goals on seventy shots.  Obviously no problem with goaltending equipment being too bulky this game.

Will we ever see a game like this again?  Well, probably not for a while, considering that it took 64 years between 20-goal games.  Then the league had three in short order, but
that’s part of what made 1980’s hockey so invigorating.

The Maple Leafs were unable to build on that game, dropping ten of their next twelve games, including a 10-1 loss in St. Louis a week later.  Two night after 11-9 slugfest, the Leafs lost 9-7 in Buffalo.

How many goals did Toronto surrender that season?

386.  Only the Red Wings and Kings were more porous.

And that team that Montreal beat that same night at the Forum?  None other that their age-old rival, the Boston Bruins.  One would think I would have remembered being at that game, but we were all too busy scoreboard watching…in January.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Can somebody please drive a broken composite stick through the heart of that saying that is trotted out every time a big trade is made in the National Hockey League?

You know the saying; whichever team ends up with the best player wins the trade.

Yeah, says who?

Sam Pollock, that’s who.  The legendary general manager of the Montreal Canadiens worked the phones at a time when it often seemed that half of his fellow GM’s in the league approached their job like it was a hobby, something they did for kicks after the dishes were done.

In this day-and-age, despite what the frothing fan base of a particular franchise may feel, every one of the thirty NHL general managers are top notch.  In this instantaneous over-informed society we live in, there is no way a GM not up to the job would last for any length of time.  They would very quickly be exposed.  Bob Pulford should thank his lucky stars he handled the job at a time when dinosaurs such as Bill Wirtz walked the Earth.

When two teams make a major trade, such as the one the Calgary Flames and Toronto Maple Leafs engineered on the last day of January, some hockey pundit somewhere will bring up that old Sam Pollock saying.

It’s often true; just think of the Montreal Canadiens moving disgruntled goaltender Patrick Roy (along with Mike Keane) to the newly minted Colorado Avalanche in exchange for goaltender Jocelyn Thibault, and forwards Andrei Kovalenko and Martin Rucinsky (December 6^th, 1995).

But it’s not always the case.

Steve Simmons uttered the Sam Pollock phrase on “The Reporters” on TSN, citing defenceman Dion Phaneuf as the best player in the Flames/Maple Leafs deal.

If that is indeed correct, then why did Flames’ GM Darryl Sutter trade the best player?  Did Sutter bump his head during a weekend trip to Okotoks?

Of course not; Sutter appraised his team, what it needed and what could be sacrificed, all the time keeping in mind the underlying factor of the salary cap, and its often far-reaching implications.

Maple Leafs’ GM Brian Burke did the same thing to his team, and presto, we had a big trade to discuss.

On paper, or at least on a piece of paper dated January 31^st, 2008, Phaneuf is without question the best player in the swap.  But that is a long two years ago.  Since then, Phaneuf has become everybody’s favourite whipping boy, and as the Flames were awash in expensive defenceman, it was pretty clear they would move the underachieving, at times selfish, rearguard.

Time will tell if Phaneuf is the best player in the deal.  Maybe big defenceman Keith Aulie will end up being the best player.  That’s the chance any team takes when it swaps warm bodies.

The Calgary Flames traded Brett Hull to the St. Louis Blues.  The young emerging sniper went on to a Hall-of-Fame career.  The Flames profited from that trade by winning the 1989 Stanley Cup.  Hull would not win a Cup in St. Louis.

The Golden Brett was the best player in the trade in hindsight.  Even at the time of the transaction, the Flames knew they were giving up a future superstar.  Still, who won that trade?

That March 7^th, 1988 trade breaks down as such…Brett Hull, and Steve Bozak to the Blues for defenceman Rob Ramage and goaltender Rick Wamsley.  The Flames were upset that spring by the Edmonton Oilers (Wayne Gretzky’s final hurrah as an Oiler), but Ramage was a key part of the Redwood defence that helped the Flames win it all a year later.

Speaking of blockbusters, how about Gretzky going to the Los Angeles Kings during the summer of 1988?  It put hockey on the map, as the cliché goes, in many non-traditional markets in the U.S. (feel free to debate the pros and cons of that result), but the Kings never won the Stanley Cup.  They lost to Montreal in 1993, while the Oilers won the 1990 Cup, two seasons after trading The Great One.  As for Gretzky, he never won another Stanley Cup after 1988.

Who won that Gretzky trade?  Well, the Kings, even though they never won the Cup.  If anything, that trade was a harbinger of what the NHL would face during the 1990’s; the marginalization of small market teams and the resulting player moves necessistated by monetary concerns.

That August 9^th, 1988 trade breaks down as such…Gretzky goes to the Kings along with Marty McSorley and Mike Krushelnyski.  To the Oilers goes Martin Gelinas, Jimmy Carson, 1^st round draft picks in 1989, 1991, and 1993 and money.

Money, because Oilers’ owner Peter Pocklington was beginning to experience the first of his many business/legal headaches to follow.  “I’d Trade Him Again”, indeed.

Gelinas and Carson were key members of that 1990 Stanley Cup winning squad in Edmonton.

Even if either Phaneuf or Aulie outperforms the players sent to Southern Alberta in this latest blockbuster, when a GM makes a trade, he’s looking to improve his team, not worrying about the legacy of the trade.  If his team improves, either short-term for a playoff drive, or long-term, then the legacy issue usually takes care of itself.

Exhibit B about the foolhardiness of investing 100% faith in the Pollock saying also involves the Calgary Flames.

Flames fans were up-in-arms when Magic Kent Nilsson was traded to the Minnesota North Stars on June 15^th, 1985.  Through that trade, the Flames received two draft picks, one which they used to grab Joe Nieuwendyk in the second round (27^th overall) in the 1985 NHL Entry Draft.

When Nilsson hoisted the 1987 Stanley Cup with the hated Edmonton Oilers, many Flames’ fans decried the earlier trade, asking “Joe Who?” about Nieuwendyk, until Joe Who popped in 51 goals as a rookie in 1987-88.

Joe Who was part of the Flames 1989 Stanley Cup team, so when it came time for Calgary to move him along to the Dallas Stars (December 19^th, 1995), they got Corey Millen, and some guy named Jarome Iginla.

Iginla had been the Stars 1^st round draft pick in 1995, and all these years later, the captain of the Flames is a reasonable bet to make the Hockey Hall-of-Fame upon his retirement.

Still, some Flames’ fans grumbled about losing Joe Who to the Stars.  You’d think they’d have learned their lesson; the team that gets the “best player” in the trade doesn’t necessarily win the trade.

The Minnesota North Stars got Nilsson, but he won a Cup with the Oilers.  The Dallas Stars got Nieuwendyk, and he helped them win their only Cup, but they paid a heavy price in giving up Iginla.

Arguably, both teams won that trade.

Then there’s the June 13^th, 1987 swap between the Quebec Nordiques and the Washington Capitals.  Dale Hunter, the heart and soul of the 1980’s Quebec Nordiques went to D.C., and coming back to Quebec was a draft choice that ended up being Joe Sakic.

(The actual trade was Gaeten Duchesne, Alan Haworth and a 1^st round draft pick to Washington for Dale Hunter and Clint Malarchuk).

Perennial playoff failures, the Capitals got a shot-in-the-arm with the inclusion of Hunter on their roster, and they finally won a Game Seven in overtime when La Petite Peste scored on a breakaway against the Flyers’ Ron Hextall the following spring.

The Nordiques entered some very bleak years, before stockpiling high draft picks, and emerging as a young, promising team, led by Sakic.

Both teams can claim to have won that trade, all depending on how you view it.  The Capitals needed to change up their chemistry, and the Nords needed to rebuild.  Both succeeded thanks in large part to that trade.

In reality, the team that really won that trade was the Colorado Avalanche, but no-one had any inkling of that reality back when the Hunter trade was consummated.

A final note.  Even if Dion Phaneuf wins the Norris Trophy, the Leafs/Flames trade is not even close to being a duplicate of the January 2^nd, 1992 trade that brought Doug Gilmour to Toronto, despite what the Toronto-based hockey media has been repeating over and over and over again.

The Flames and Maple Leafs exchanged five players each that day, with Gilmour being the prime asset.  He was a very good player with Calgary (and St. Louis before that), and thanks to a contract impasse with GM Doug Risebrough and the Flames’ brass, Gilmour was shipped out-of-town.

This transaction actually fits the Sam Pollock saying about which team wins a trade.

Even on that day, unless you were a diehard Flames fan, one could see the Leafs “won” that trade.  The inspired play of Gilmour, and the sizeable contributions of the likes of Jamie Macoun, and Ric Nattress, far out shadowed the meager contributions in Cowtown of the likes of Gary Leeman and Michel Petit.

I know, for I had a sprited argument with the Calgary cabbie who was dropping me off at the Calgary airport that evening, as I was returning to Toronto after spending Christmas with the family.  He was convinced that the Gilmour trade would put the Flames over the top, as they were getting 50-goal scorer Leeman.

Leeman would win his only Stanley Cup two seasons later as a role player with the 1993 Montreal Canadiens.  His stay in Calgary was brief and uneventful.

The Toronto Maple Leafs and GM Cliff Fletcher won that trade easily.  It helped revive, on-ice, that franchise, and set up the Leafs to enjoy, for the most part, a rather successful decade.  In both 1993, and 1994, the Leafs were legitimate Cup contenders.

That was a trade that shook up the NHL.  The current Flames/Maple Leafs trade only shakes up those two teams.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Back in those (mostly) innocent days when I was a kid, one sports story that worked its way through my Grade Four classroom was the sordid tale of a couple of New York Yankees pitchers that swapped their entire families.  Not just their wives, but also their kids and their dogs.  No word if the furniture was thrown in, or if there was a set-of-dishes to be named later.

Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson were solid pitchers for the Yankees, but to a bunch of nine-year-old growing up in suburban Edmonton, these guys were as famous as Reggie Jackson or Catfish Hunter.

It was just plain weird what the southpaws did, never mind what your personal morals may be.  Sure, it was the early 70′s, and the hangover from the technicolour Sixties was upon us, but this went beyond wife swapping.  To this day, I still scratch my head at the notion.

Hockey, being a mostly conservative sport in almost every aspect of that definition, has never publicly had the same arrangement, though you hear stuff sometimes you can’t repeat, though no doubt someone is squirreling it all away for a future tell-all book.

So it comes as a complete shock to me that former Edmonton Oilers’ owner Peter Pocklington reveals in, what else, his new book, that at one point during the early 1980′s, two National Hockey League teams almost went all Kekich/Peterson, and pulled off the most outrageous trade in the history of sports.

Having obviously squirreled away a ton of inside stories over the years, along with a map of where all the bodies are buried, Peter Puck has grabbed the attention for his new book he hoped he would by revealing that he worked out a deal with Toronto Maple Leafs’ legendary owner Harold Ballard that would have seen the two men swap teams.

Swap teams.  Completely.  Which means the fine folk of Edmonton would have been saddled with the complete roster of the early 80′s Maple Leafs, just in time to watch the young guns of the Oilers emege as one of the greatest teams in NHL history.  The trouble is, those young bucks would have been hoisting all those Stanley Cups dressed in Maple Leaf blue.  Worse, the city of Edmonton would have had Ballard within their city borders.

Apparently, for whatever reason, Ballard changed his mind and the entire thing was scuttled.

The mind is boggled at the implications of such a wholesale trade, if it had been allowed to proceed.  Since such a possibility reads like science fiction, let’s put on the Spock ears and follow the changes that would have occurred to our timeline, if that deal had actually gone forward.

It should be noted that the pebble in the pond, check that, the giant boulder in the pond that the Oilers-Leafs swap would have been to the rest of the NHL would have had far-reaching implications, that would still be felt to this day.

The Edmonton Oilers would have moved years ago, if that deal had materialized.  Most likely, the Houston Oilers would have had to wait until the death of Ballard, and the battle over his diminished estate had been settled, before they could finally concentrate on the business of hockey, and during the 1995-96 season, Houston would win the Stanley Cup.

The Quebec Nordiques would still be in the league, though they never would have ended up with goaltender Patrick Roy, and thus, to this day, the Nordiques still would not have won the Stanley Cup, and there are still concerns about building a new arena.  There are whispers the team may move to Kansas City.

Roy would remain with the Montreal Canadiens, though head coach Mario Tremblay would have lost his job as a result.  The Canadiens would make the Cup Final in 1998, losing to the Detroit Red Wings.

The Nordiques would not have been in position to draft Eric Lindros first overall in 1991; that honour went to the Edmonton Oilers, who had earlier traded the rights to the New Jersey Devils for Tom Kurvers, and it was the Devils who took Lindros first that year.

Lindros would thrive in the Swamp, and he never suffered a concussion from that devastating Scott Stevens open-ice hit, as they were on the same team.  Lindros would retire as a member of the Devils, having won three Stanley Cups, in 2000, 2001 and 2003.

A young Peter Forsberg would captain the Philadelphia Flyers to the 1995 Cup.

If Pocklington had ended up with his young team in Toronto, he would have most likely made a ton of cash over what he realized in Northern Alberta.  Even with his business problems that existed in other industries he ran (Gainers Foods), Peter Puck would have not needed to cash in his depreciating asset known as Wayne Gretzky.  Even if he later broke up the Boys On The Bus, odds are Bruce McNall would have been exposed as a charlatan by then, which means the Great One doesn’t end up in L.A, after winning five Cups with Toronto.

Let’s say, instead, Gretzky is traded by the Leafs to the Rangers.  It is he, in 1994, that hoists the Stanley Cup over his head, as the Broadway Blueshirts end their 54-year drought.

As for the Kings, they continue to flounder, though the NHL props them up financially.  As a result, there isn’t a mad rush to pan fool’s gold in the U.S. south, meaning that the likes of the Anaheim Ducks and Florida Panthers never come-to-be.

The NHL still would expand to Ottawa and Tampa, though the Lightning are moved to Minnesota, and that’s where they win the Stanley Cup in 2004 over the Flyers.

The Thrashers and Predators never see the light-of-day, though Penguins’ owner Mario Lemieux threatens to move his team to Nashville if he doesn’t get a sweetheart arena deal from the city of Pittsburgh.

The league is impressed with the Nashville bid, and promises to consider expansion to Tennessee, and Kansas City, in the near future.  Canadian billionaire businessman Jim Balsillie, by now a personal friend of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, is often mentioned as the owner of a Nashville NHL franchise.

No-one ever hears about William Boots Del Biaggio.

The Islanders still need a new arena, and threaten to move to Hamilton, which Pocklington blocks.

The Winnipeg Jets still move to Phoenix, as the NHL is emboldened by the relative success of the Houston Oilers and Dallas Stars, though even in this alternative timeline, the Coyotes still lose a ton of money.

The North Stars have moved to Dallas, setting up a great rivalry with Houston, but overall, the NHL have dipped a tentative toe into the expansion waters, instead of diving in headfirst, and ending up with the fractured neck they have now.

Which only goes to prove that in every scenario, no matter how bleak, no matter how wacky, there is always a sliver of hope.

Makes me wish Ballard didn’t get cold feet.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

There are a handful of players in a given sport that people will go out of their way to see play.  These are the true superstars of their respectives games.  In the National Hockey League, the pantheon of current hockey gods is a short list.  It usually starts with Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby, followed by Evgeni Malkin, and could also include Henrik Zetterberg, Pavel Datsyuk, Jarome Iginla and Ilya Kovalchuk, among others, depending on your preferences.

One of those hockey gods passed through Toronto on Tuesday evening, March 24th.  Ovechkin and his merry men of Capitals took on the Maple Leafs at the Air Canada Centre.  The Capitals are among the elite teams in the league, with serious Stanley Cup aspirations, though there are continuing questions about their goaltending.  The Maple Leafs have been out of the playoff race for a couple of months, though their recent strong play has put them back in sight of eighth place in the East.

Regardless, no-one seriously expects Toronto to make a run for that last spot, though no-one in Hogtown have thrown in the towel as-of-yet.

With all this in mind, one might have expected a Caps-Leafs game this late in the season to end up something like 7-6 Caps, which might not be textbook hockey from a coaches perspective, but it would be something the fans would appreciate.

I made my way to the A.C.C. early tonight, fearful that all the seats up in the pressbox would be occupied.  After all, the Capitals are one of the league’s most exciting teams to watch, and it’s Ovechkin’s first game in Toronto since his mini-feud with Don Cherry over the extent of AO’s goal celebrations.  There should have been a palpable buzz around the arena.

There wasn’t, or at least there wasn’t one I could detect.  Maybe Leafs’ fans are resigned to missing the playoffs once again.  Still, Ovechkin is in town.  That should be enough.

6:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time – made my way through the corridors up to press row.  The Capitals were just outside their dressing room, preparing to take the ice for the pre-game warm-up.  Jose Theodore and Ovechkin were closest to the door.  All of the Caps rocked back-and-forth on their skates, anticipating getting onto the fresh sheet of ice.  They looked like the kids at my local Scarborough arena every Sunday afternoon during public skating hour; they couldn’t wait to get out there.  Anyone who thinks these guys only play for the money are completely off-the-mark.  These guys got this far not only because they have talent, and worked to develop that talent, but because they all share a deep-seeded passion for the game.

I once read that John Lennon used to look forward to getting on-stage during the early years of Beatlemania, as it was one of the few places where he, and his bandmates, felt they were safe, where they were in control, and could be themselves.  Looking at Ovechkin, this thought crossed my mind. Waiting to hit the ice, he looked like he was in his element.  Nothing could touch him here.

6:40 pm - during the warmup, one of the cameras centres in on Ovechkin as he scoops up the puck, shakes-and-bakes his way towards the net, and unloads a rocket.  The camera proceeds to follow him for the majority of the warmup, as this is broadcast onto the giant screen perched atop the scoreboard suspended at centre ice.  Even in the warmup, Ovechkin is the show.

6:45 pm – Ovechkin is the second-last Cap to leave the ice at the conclusion of the warmup; Michael Nylander is the last.

7:06 pm – the teams emerge from their respective dressing rooms and charge onto the ice in preparation for the game.  Ovechkin hits the ice, and the camera centres in on him again.

7:10 pm – puck is dropped to begin the first period.  The crowd is strangely quiet tonight, as though they were attending a night school seminar.  The early play in the game mirrors this.

7:11 pm – Alexander Ovechkin takes SHIFT #1.  There is a fair amount of cheering as Number Eight heads over the boards.  After about a minute of skating around, he heads back to the bench.

7:15 pm – SHIFT #2.  This is a quick shift, 30 seconds at most, as a faceoff is required.

7:17 pm – SHIFT #3. The Caps employ their chief offensive weapon high in the opposing team’s zone.  He’s like a Russian bomber, flirting with Canadian airspace, but never actually dipping a toe over the line.  Ovechkin curls behind the Leafs’ defensive pair, who have to be mindful of his position, while at the same time, keeping their eyes on the play unfolding in front of them.  For those who criticize Ovechkin for not having the word backcheck in his vocabulary, he’s gone one better.  Any time he’s on the ice, he’s a threat to score.  The other team has no choice but to be constantly cognizant of this factor.  That, in turn, directly affects how they play.  How’s that for backchecking?  Ovechin knows what he’s doing.

On this shift, Ovechkin is hit with a long pass, but he’s offside.  The moribund crowd stirs to life at the possibility of magic, but slumps back into their seats with the whistle.

7:21 pm – the scoreboard shows a brief yet tasteful tribute to former NHL’er and one-time Maple Leaf sniper Walt Poddubbny, who passed away earlier this week.

7:25 pm – SHIFT #4.  On this tour-of-duty, Ovechkin throws his body around, first with a hit on Leafs’ defenceman Luke Schenn, and then with a very slight crosscheck to the chest of Matt Stajan.  One of Ovechkin’s longer shifts, or so it seems.

7:32 pm – SHIFT #5.  Once again, Ovechkin silently patrols the Leafs’ blueline, waiting for a pass to spring him free.  It reminds me of watching a game at the War Memorial Auditorium in Buffalo back in January 1990.  The Sabres were hosting the Pittsburgh Penguins, and Mario Lemieux was in the midst of a lengthy point-scoring streak, before injuries forced him to pull up short of Wayne Gretzky’s record.  Lemieux would be employed in exactly the same manner as Ovechkin, but remember, back then the centre-ice two-line pass was still forbidden.

7:30 pm – Peter Ing, former Maple Leafs’ netminder, is introduced to the crowd as that night’s Alumni member.  He’s in attendence with his young daughter.  A hearty round of applause for the mostly forgotten Ing, who looked like the Next Big Thing for the Leafs when he debuted in the 1989-90 season.  It wasn’t to be, and Ing only played 74 games in the NHL, also suiting up for the Oilers and Red Wings.

7:39 pm – SHIFT #6.  The Caps keep trying to hit Ovechkin with the long bomb, but to no avail.  You can sense even the pro-Leafs crowd would perfer to see one of these passes connect, if only to inject some life into this stale game.  During this shift, Ovechkin has to take a faceoff, the only one all night he’ll take, and he loses it.  Okay, so he’s not Bobby Clarke or Stan Mikita.  Also during this shift, Washington manages to sustain some pressure deep in the Leafs’ zone.  One gets the feeling the Capitals have the ability to ratchet up their game when they wish.  Tonight, we are wishing.

7:44 pm – first period over.  No score.  10-6 shot advantage for Washington.  No penalties called.  No real flow to this game yet.  Ovechkin had six shifts, and was on the ice for 7 minutes and 1 second, third-most ice-time for the Caps, but the longest average shift time.  Luke Schenn of the Maple Leafs was on the ice for 8 minutes and 18 seconds.

8:02 pm – second period begins.

8:03 pm – SHIFT #7.  Ovechkin get physical with Leafs’ centre John Mitchell during this shift.  Also notice TSN’s Pierre McGuire wildly gesticulating between the benches.  He’s planted there during the TV broadcast to offer a different perspective on the proceedings.  He sticks out like a sore thumb.  One cannot be the shy type to have that job.

8:06 pm – SHIFT #8.  During this shift, the first penalty of the game is called.  Milan Jurcina goes off for two minutes for tripping.  Ovechkin does not play on the PK.  The crowd perks up with their Leafs on the powerplay, and the home team applies some pressure in the Capitals zone, but fails to capitalize.

This game needs a goal.

8:11 pm – SHIFT #9.  Ovechkin can’t beat the defenceman one-on-one.  It only takes once.

8:17 pm – TORONTO SCORES.  The shot from the point snakes its way through the crowd and eludes Jose Theodore in the Washington net.  1-0 Toronto.  The A.C.C. erupts, proving that everyone hadn’t nodded off.  It’s the first NHL goal for Maple Leafs’ defenceman Phil Oreskovic.

8:18 pm – SHIFT #10.  Nothing to note.

8:21 pm – Washington picks up another penalty.  Shaone Morrisonn is nabbed for hooking.  Jose Theodore makes about five very nice saves in-a-row during this penalty kill.

8:23 pm – SHIFT #11.  Ovechkin makes a nice deke behind the Toronto net, but ends up losing the puck.  It appears to be only a matter-of-time before he finds the back-of-the-net.

Attendance tonight is announced as 19,362.  That’s 19,362 people who’ll have a problem falling asleep later tonight, as they’re catching a few winks at the arena, and will be well rested when they get home.

8:30 pm – SHIFT #12.  Ovechkin shoots the puck into the Leafs zone, just off-side.  After a faceoff, he’s part of the cycle the Capitals utilize in front of Martin Gerber.  No quality scoring chance is created as a result, but once again, the Caps hint that they could take this to another gear, if they so choose to.

With exactly a minute left to play in the second period, the Maple Leafs pick up their first penalty of the game; Jamal Mayers gets two for interference.

SHIFT #13.  Apparently I’m so excited at the prospect of watching the Capitals on the powerplay, I neglect to write down the time on my Coleman wristwatch.  Suffice to say, Ovechkin comes over the boards and takes his place on the point for the beginning of the PP.

One thing leads to another, and AO finds himself cutting towards the net, to the left of Gerber, who he dekes with a nifty little move that pulls the Leafs’ goaltender out just enough so that Ovechkin can go to the backhand and deposit the puck in the net.

1-1 tie. Ovechkin’s powerplay marker is his 51st goal of the season.

The question-of-the-day, though, in this hockey mad city, is in which manner will he celebrate said goal?

The answer is…in a subdued manner.  A brief kiss of his finger, and then a raised hand.  Then again, what did anyone expect?  Ovechkin tearing off his uniform, to reveal a Coaches Corner t-shirt underneath?

When the goal is announced by the booming voice of Andy Frost, there is a fair amount of applause from the crowd.  There weren’t that many people pulling for Washington this evening.  The hockey fans in Toronto know the game as well as anyone else on the planet.  They may be rather staid during most of the game, but they know a good goal when they see one.

The second period ends with the score knotted up at 1 goal apiece.  Ovechkin finally had the opportunity to come alive in this frame, registering a number of shots, and, of course, the powerplay goal.  He’s averaging a minute and 3 seconds per shift.

8:55 pm – third period is underway.

8:57 pm – SHIFT #14.  Ovechkin just missed connecting on a one-timer to the right of Martin Gerber.

It’s around this point that Washington head coach Bruce Boudreau calls a thirty-second time-out.  Not sure why, but I am curious how his team will respond afterwards.

9:03 pm – SHIFT #15.  Ovechkin lands his third hit of the game on Matt Stajan.  Why’s he ragin’ at The Stajan?  Actually, all the hits have been minor, just part of the flow of the game.  Ovechkin is known for enjoying that aspect of hockey as well as collecting the goals, a big reason why fans have taken to him.

9:06 pm – SHIFT #16.  Ovechkin takes one of his shorter shifts of the game, as the puck goes over the boards, and he changes up before the resulting faceoff.

9:07 pm – The “Go Leafs Go” chant starts up for the first time this evening in the A.C.C.

9:14 pm – SHIFT #17.  Wow, it’s been almost 8 minutes since Ovechkin was on the ice.  Can’t remember now, but there had to have been a TV timeout factored in there somewhere.  On this shift, he moves into the slot area with his stick coiled, but Gerber freezes the puck before it can get to Number 8.

It appears to these eyes as Ovechkin’s (and most everyone, with the notable expection of Mike Green) shifts are getting shorter as the third period progresses.

As for Washington defenceman Mike Green, I’ve heard and read the hype for the entire season, so it was also a delight to finally see Number 52 in action.  He’s everywhere, and he’s fast.  Green is a rover, and against a team like the Maple Leafs, he’s able to rocket safely back into position after one of his many forays’s deep into enemy territory.  No doubt other games he occasionally gets caught out of position, but the rewards far outweigh the risks.  Thank goodness he plays for a team, and a coach, that permits him to fully utilize his formidable skill set.  Green is a delight to watch.

9:17 pm – SHIFT #18.  Ovechkin chops at (on?) defenceman Jeff Finger in the Leafs’ zone.  Nothing to see here, move along.

9:21 pm – SHIFT #19.  Ovechkin takes a feed and gets off a nice shot that’s either just wide of the top left post behind Gerber, or hits a piece of the goaltender, and goes wide.  It happens so fast, I don’t know, and I don’t have the benefit to replay where I’m sitting.  Ovechkin has a lightning-fast shot.  During the same shift, he falls down deep in the Toronto zone, but still manages to pass the puck towards the slot.

WIth less than three minutes left, the Capitals come as close as a team can to scoring without actually lighting the lamp.  Somehow, Gerber keeps the puck out of his net.

And, as we all know, for TV hockey commentators will remind us each and every time, when that happens…

…the other team comes back and scores.

Well, first, John Erskine gets nabbed for hooking with 2:26 left in the third.

Toronto goes on the powerplay, and wIth 2:36 left to play, Pavel Kubina’s slapshot from the point finds its way into the back of the net.  The puck goes through the legs of Theodore, who had some traffic in front of him.  Typical NHL goal.  2-1 Maple Leafs.  The crowd finally appears to be fully awake.

We all had no idea what was in store for us mere moments away.

9:25 pm – SHIFT #20.  OVechkin sets up behind the Leafs’ goal, not in a Gretzky Office sort of way, but just because that’s where the puck is for the longest time.

With just over a minute left to play, Boudreau elects to pull Theodore.  It leads to almost immediate dividends, as the Caps push the equalizer past Gerber.  2-2 tie with 57 seconds left on the clock. Brooks Laich, who I understand is the extra attacker, gets the goal.  Ovechkin picks up an assist.

A hotly debated goal, at least by Leafs’ netminder Martin Gerber, who in his Curtis Joseph-like zeal to get to the offending referee and make his objections known, gets a little too physically friendly with ref Mike Leggo, and then proceeds to shoot the puck in the direction of the officials, though I have to admit, I didn’t see that infraction occur.

Doesn’t matter.  The officials did, and after assuring all that the goal stands, they hand Gerber a ten-minute misconduct, and he is asked to retire to the splendour of the dressing room for the remainer of the game.

Which means a cold Curtis Joseph, with a big grin on his face, is pressed into action.  After sitting at the end of the Maple Leafs’ bench for the past 59 minutes and three seconds of the game.  Scarfing down hotdogs.

Okay, maybe not, but Cujo couldn’t be any colder than when Toronto head coach Ron Wilson elected to use him in the shootout earlier this season instead of Vesa Toskala, and that turned out very badly for the Leafs.  No doubt the Capitals were licking their chops.

When the Washington goal is announced, the A.C.C. crowd boos very loudly.  They are finally into this game, though to be fair, there wasn’t much of a game to be into for most of the night.

SHIFT #21.  Curtis Joseph stones Ovechkin on a one-timer with 10 seconds left on the clock. The place erupts.  Ovechkin makes a face like he thought he should have had that one.   Probably everyone else in the joint thought he was going to connect, as well.  We head to overtime.

9:31 pm – SHIFT #22.  Ovechkin wasn’t on the ice to start the first, second or third period, but he’s out there to start the extra frame.  4-on-4.  Plenty of room for the Capitals’ predators.  He makes a nice rush up the ice, and sets up Mike Green in the slot, but Joseph is square to the puck, and stops it.

9:34 pm – SHIFT #23.  Ovechkin gets in a few rather light slashes at Alexei Ponikarovsky.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

9:36 pm – SHIFT #24. First off, the official NHL game sheet has Ovechkin having only 23 shifts, so somehow I’ve got him taking an extra shift.  The NHL stats guys know what they’re doing, but since this is how I tracked the game, I’m going with this phantom Shift 24, just to I don’t have to go back and figure out how I screwed up the math.

Regardless, Ovechkin helps draw a Pavel Kubina hooking penalty with 52. 3 seconds left in overtime.  During the 4-on-3, Ovechkin can’t keep the puck in the zone, but the Caps regroup quickly and regain the zone.  Once again, Joseph stones Ovechkin in the slot, and the A.C.C. crowd parties like it’s 1999.  We head to the shootout.

I’ve only seen one previous NHL shootout live, and it was that game where coach Wilson had Joseph come out of the bullpen for Toskala.  Doubt there will be the same result tonight, as Cujo has been at the top of his game in his less than six minutes of service.

Toronto elects to shoot first, which I think is almost always the best move for the home team.  Noted sniper Jeff Hamilton starts things, and damn if he doesn’t bury it.

That would be the only goal of the skills competition, as Theodore shuts the door on Blake and Mitchell.

As for Joseph, he stops Backstrom and Semin shoots wide, which sets up Alexander Ovechkin against Curtis Joseph.  Either Ovechin ties the game, or Joseph is elected mayor of Toronto.

The crowd is completely into the affair by now, whipped into a frenzy by their distate for the tying goal, and by the huge saves by Joseph.  The boos cascade around the building as Ovechkin sets himself at centre ice.  It’s a delicious piece of theatre, the game distilled down into this solitary encounter.  It’s the shootout as its best.

Ovechkin gets the signal, and moves in on Joseph.  Cujo goes down a bit early, and maybe guesses on the shot, but Ovechkin can’t find the handle, and as he moves to his right with the puck, rapidly running out of room, the crowd roars as it anticipates that this game is over.

Which it is.  3-2 Toronto.  58 minutes of mostly subpar hockey, with a few exceptions.  It’s the last two minutes, and all the extra activities, that have people talking.

The three stars reflect the peculiar nature of this game.  Oreskovic gets the third star, a homer call, thanks to his first NHL goal.

Mike Green gets the second star, and for good reason.  He was everywhere, registering 10 shots and was on the ice for 30 shifts, totalling 29 minutes and 7 seconds.  This man earns his pay.

Curtis Joseph is awarded the gold star, and even though he was only out there for the last chapter of the game, he earned it.  Former NHL goaltender and current broadcaster Greg Millen was sitting about three seats to my left, and I heard him loudly proclaim as he left the press box, that he’d never seen anything like it in all his years in hockey, a goaltender getting the first star for what was basically a one-inning relief appearance.

As for Alexander Ovechkin, the superstar ended the evening with a goal and an assist.  The goal was a powerplay marker, and the assist picked him up a plus one rating for the night.  He was on the ice for 23 shifts, for an average of a minute and one second per shift.  Ovechkin totalled 23:27 in ice time overall, and took 7 shots.

He was pretty much everything he’s advertised to be.  All eyes were on him whenever he took to the ice.  The game overall, save the last six minutes, was a dud, but one always had the feeling that at any time, given just an inch, Ovechkin would explode and fill the net with pucks.

23 shifts.

A player worth paying to watch.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

So I’m reading Sports Illustrated on the long subway ride home, when I come across this small article about the San Francisco Giants of the National League, and how they’re going to unveil something they’re calling “dynamic ticket pricing” for the upcoming baseball season.

Which basically means this…depending on some complex algorithm that was developed by a couple of eggheads from the University of Texas, 2,000 of the least-desirable tickets way up in the nosebleeds will be sold are varying prices, depending on what formula the computer spits out after considering 20 variables.

And those variables include what team the Giants are playing, the weather, who’s pitching that game, how fresh the hot dogs are, and whether-or-not Barry Bonds has been jailed.

According to SI, that means the cheapest 7 dollar ticket could suddenly be had for, say, 12 dollars, or, the most expensive cheapest ticket, normally yours for a mere 30 dollars, could rise as high as 80 bucks.  Well, not right away.  The tickets could only fluctuate 50 cents per day.

Meaning, the suddenly poverty-stricken Giants could reap an additional $810,000 in ticket revenue this upcoming season.

(Which they’ll probably squander on some burnt-out, steroid-laden pitcher who’s released at mid-season).

Good plan.  If, of course, anyone even wants these tickets in the first place.  The Giants didn’t exactly set the NL on fire last season, though they are expected to be much better in 2009.

Why this relates to hockey is obvious; anything pro sports teams can do to squeeze a few extra bucks out of sports-mad fans, well, the other teams will fall over themselves rushing to copy each other.

Remember personal seat licenses?  One of the most disgusting concepts in the long-rotten history of attempting to fleece the consumer.

Let’s see.  You pay us for the season tickets to watch the Amityville Horrors.  But…first…you have to pay us just for the right to buy those season tickets.

But get this…that seat, the one your oversized bum will settle in for 81 painful home games?  That seat is now YOURS!!!!

You can’t rip it up and take it with you after the season is over, or paint it your favourite colour, but you could sell the rights to putting your butt in that seat to someone else.

See, creative capitalism can be fun!

Here in Toronto, the Maple Leafs have rarely had a problem selling tickets in Maple Leaf Gardens or the Air Canada Centre, though the myth of every ticket being sold for decades is exactly that, a myth.  During some of the franchises darker days in the mid-80’s, larger-than-life owner Harold Ballard was known for buying up some of the unsold seats himself, in order to keep that myth alive.

Regardless, the Leafs are a tough ticket.  Even though the team recently alluded to the fact even they’ve been somewhat impacted by the tough economic times gripping the globe, the franchise is in no danger of having to hold a fire sale, and moving to Kitchener-Waterloo.

Their sporting neighbors across the way, the once-proud Toronto Blue Jays, cannot say the same thing.  During their heyday’s of the early 90’s, the Jays won back-to-back World Series Championships, scooped up most of the glitzy free agents, and were the first MLB team to draw over 4 million fans to their ballpark in one season.

It seemed like the good times would never end, and the franchise developed an arrogance that took them years to shed, even after the party had been over for a while.

Now, the team regularly papers the house, and they’re one of many MLB franchises that have gone the route of variable pricing for their home games.

For instance, everyone knows the New York Yankees, and the Boston Red Sox, always attract more fans, whether they be from out-of-town/out-of-country, or merely curious Torontonians who don’t really care about baseball, but wanna gawk at A-Rod and Jeter.

So, most of them folk won’t mind, or even notice, if their tickets are jacked up, say, 10 extra dollars for these “premium” games.

And why stop there?  Everyone knows that Opening Day is one of the time-honoured Rites of Spring; any team is practically guaranteed to pack the house.  Heck, the Montreal Expos even were able to coerce 40,000 souls to show up for Opening Day, only to see attendence settle back into the 5,000-7,500 range for the next two games of the same series.

So, a team raises the price for the Yanks, and the Bosox, and Opening Day, and, saaaaay, what about Saturday and Sunday afternoon games?

You know the ones that families can actually get to with their brood?  They’re probably good for the additional money, because most families won’t be attending weekdays games that might end at 10:20 pm, if they’re lucky.

Throw into that mix whatever team is the “hot” team that year (the Angels?  interleague games against the Philllies?), and presto, you have just created for your team additional revenue sources without doing a darn thing.

Brilliant.

If…people actually buy the tickets.

You see, that’s the thing.  Regardless of price, people still have to want to attend your event.  You could offer me Toronto Raptor tickets in the nosebleeds for 10 bucks a pop, and I might take my young son with me to see a game or two, but that’s the extend of my interest.  It would be a novelty.  I care not a bit for basketball, and affordable tickets will not change my mind.

It might work with those that have never been exposed to a game, say, like NHL hockey, in what we all call non-traditional markets, so it might be worth a try.

Cheap tickets, that is.  Just this week, the ever-amusing Tampa Bay Lightning announced really cheap, and I mean, REALLY CHEAP season ticket packages for the 2009-10 season.  And they were widely ridiculed for it, one pundit even comparing the Lighting to a WHA team, which is rather accurate, come to think of it.

I don’t think what the Lightning are doing concerning cheap tickets is a joke, but it contains an inherent risk.  If you greatly devalue your product, in an effort to attract more paying customers, unless you completely hook them, what you’ve effectively done is cheapen your own product, maybe permanently.

If a couple buys 2009-10 season tickets for the Bolts, and actually end up becoming fans of the team, well, unless they’ve got considerable disposable income (which it appears more and more of us don’t have), how will you convince them to upgrade their tickets to a pricing range that will be much more economically beneficial to your team?

You can’t very well turn around and say, okay, next season, these same tickets will have a price increase of 300%.  Or can you?  It all depends on how many people re-up, contrasted with how many give you the middle finger.  Churn, I believe we call it…as in, go sit on a butter churn and rotate.

The Lightning may not have a choice in the matter.  The NHL is very much a gate-driven league.  A couple of people attending a Tuesday night game on cheap tickets, who would have to pay for parking, and overpriced popcorn, and watered-down soft drinks, and maybe an ad-filled program, and if the kids are along, a stupid foam finger ((believe me, we have a couple of them littering our house), and maybe a souvenir puck…well, that’s better than not having those folks pass through your doors.

Other markets can afford not to dance with the discount devil.  In their cases, variable pricing may be exactly what the market can bear.  Because, after all, tickets to a pro sporting event is not a basic human right.  It is a luxury, even if it’s a reasonable price.  It’s the circuses part of Bread and Circuses.  If your local pro sports team prices itself out of the market, and have to leave town or fold, well, yes, it’s sad, because we’re all sports fans, but except for the employees of the team, it’s really not that big of a deal.  Your city will not fold up.  There are other things to do.  Read a book.  Heck, learn to read.

Yes, some would lose their jobs, yet most of the jobs lost would be of the low-paying, low skill set variety.  I’m not suggesting these jobs are not important, but people are not making a decent living off them, and often these jobs are seasonal anyhow.  These low-paying jobs are not reason enough to give public money to pro sports teams.

And here’s the thing pro sports swindlers try to trick you with every time a team threatens to move.  Yes, there are spinoff financial benefits that come with having a pro sports team in your town.  For example, the adjacent restaurants and bars are filled the nights the home team is home, and often when the home team is on the road, so they benefit from having that team remain in place.

But if that pro sports team backs in the Mayflower vans and leave, they’re not taking the community’s money with them.  In some cases, it has been argued, the community actually come out ahead financially, after not having to shell out for sweetheart deals to keep said team in town.

The money that Mom and Dad and kid and sister spent to see the Amnityville Horrors will be spent somewhere else.  Maybe at the movies, or at the hardware store, or at the local arcade, or at whatever other entertainment choices their city boasts.

The pro sports teams does not have a secret vacuum that will suck your money along with them.  Oh sure, some out-of-town visitors won’t drop by to cheer on their team, but when you do the math, more-often-than not, the money spent in order to keep a pro sports team happy, is not made up by this out-of-town revenue.

It’s the same thing when teams argue that public money should be used to fully or partially fund the building of a new arena, or ballpark, or football field.  “Think of all the concerts that’ll come to town and the money they’ll generate”.  That’s a common line.

Yeah, money for other people.  These carpetbaggers can convince me if they were to argue sports is part of the city’s culture, as important as the ballet, or the symphony, or even a museum, and I’m willing to swallow that.  But it’s always interesting to watch staunch capitalists turn into cultural socialists overnight if it means they can tap into public funds.  It’s so blatant, it’s shameful, yet it continues.

Did Springfield really need a Monorail?

Want a evocative sports read?  Then pick up a copy of Field of Schemes by Joanna Cagan and Neil deMause.  They throughly deconstruct the simple-minded arguments that a city gains financially by giving into the demands of a caterwauling sports team.  It’s worthy reading, particularly in these times when so many common folk (meaning you and me and most of us) are worried losing their jobs, and keeping their house.

With that in mind, it made for great reading last month when one of the bigwigs of the New York Yankees wrote a newspaper piece on why public money was not wasted when it was poured into the new playpen for the Bronx Bombers.  It read much like the propaganda from the mid-90’s that attempted to convince people that personal seat licenses were a liberating thing for sports fans, not a cash grab by greedy owners who know a cash cow when they see one.

Sure, the civic pride takes a bit of a hit when a big league team pulls up stakes.  Here in Toronto, only Canada’s largest city, and one of the major media markets in North America, the same cast of characters continually talk of “putting Toronto on the map” by chasing after big money dreams like the Olympics, or the NFL.  And, you’ll notice, most of these folk who dream these impossible dreams want to use your money to fund their dream…and then they’ll sell it back to you as “Our Dream”.

It’s called bribing you with your own money.  And sadly, it usually works.

(In that case, you’re damn right it’s a basic human right to get tickets to the Opening Ceremonies or the Gold Medal Game; after all, my tax money paid for it).

So now that we’ve established that attending pro sporting events is not a human right, why should any of us care what a particular team wants to charge for a ticket?  They can be shortsighted and price themselves out of the market, or they can be shortsighted and devalue their product in a desperate attempt to get you to go out with them.

But I have a suggestion to add to what the San Francisco Giants, and no doubt other teams, are going to do this year.

The variable pricing model?  Why stop at pre-game pricing?

How about in-game variable pricing?

Let’s take what I’m calling the Kern Kash (C) model and apply it to pro hockey.

Before the game starts, we’ll copy what the Giants are doing, and come up with some 20-point checklist to determine how much a ticket for a specific game should cost.  For example, here are some of the factors we’ll weight before determing how much you’ll have to fork over for a ticket:

- where is the seat located?

- how close is it to a washroom?

- how close is it to a clean washroom?

- will “Wally The Beer Guy” show up more than once-a-game?

- who’s the opponent that night?

- weekend or weeknight game?

- pleasant or terrible weather outside?

- who are the starting goaltenders?

- is Pierre McGuire between-the-benches that night?  (that’s good for an extra 5 bucks a ticket)

- who’s singing the National Anthem(s)?

- do fans promise not to do The Wave?

For argument’s sake, let’s say the Amnityville Ice Dogs are playing the visiting Hartford Jets.  The Jets are second in the division, and are starting hot-shot rookie goalie Scary Price in net.  Factor all that together, and your second-level blue-line ticket will cost your 85 dollars.

But wait!  Here’s where the Kern Kash (C) model gets interesting.  Depending on how the game unfolds, and how other in-game experiences go, you either will be refunded a portion of your initial ticket price, or will have your credit card charged for an additional fee, when you leave the arena that night.

But never more than 10 dollars either way.  Trust me, though, as the priniciple owner of the Ice Dogs, I’ll make sure we collect more than we refund; after all, this is a business.

After the first period, the Jets hold a 3-1 lead, thanks in part to a shorthanded goal by 58-year-old Claude Lemieux, attempting yet another comeback.

Since the home team is playing poorly, all ticket holders in the variable pricing areas of the arena are immediately credited with 5 dollars.

Halfway through the second period, some drunk in Section B spills his beer all over seats 1-5 in row 14.  These good folk are credited an additional 5 bucks, keeping in mind this part of the promotion might be swiftly discontinued when fans clue into the fact that spilling your beer, on purpose, on the good folk in front of you, will lower ticket prices.

Then again, REAL fans would never spill their beer.  Even our watered-down swill.

Third period is underway.  Goaltender Scary Price is sensational, stoning the home team, and the visiting Jets win 5-1.

Now, normally, the home team losing would be a bad thing, and everyone is attendence would receive a two-dollar credit, but tonight, the opposing goaltender is an emerging superstar, and you were lucky enough to see him turn in a virtuoso performance, and such artistry has a price, so everyone in attendence now owes an additional ten dollars on their ticket.

Which means your 85 dollar ticket that you bought to enter the Ice Dog House will now end up costing you 90 dollars, unless you were doused with beer.  Oh, and Pierrre McGuire was between-the-benches, so that’s 95 buckets, buddy, and be thankful it was only that much.  Don’t you know we have a ticket waiting list 25 years long?

Now that would truly be variable pricing.  Let the market bear what the market can afford, but on a period-by-period basis.

And, of course, every game will be on the club-owned pay-per-view cable station.

And, if you don’t like it, keep this in mind.

You don’t have to buy a ticket.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Not sick-in-the-head, though many would advance that theory.  Sick as in “Man, I can’t get outta bed, it hurts so bad” sick.   One wicked case of sinus infection, which seems to happen this time every year.

Stuck at home, feeling like I blocked an Al MacInnis slapshot with my forehead, until the drugs kicked in.  Dragged myself to the basement TV room couch.  Thankfully, there were a lot of NHL games on this particular Tuesday evening.

Started with Pittsburgh in Montreal.  Talk about a game both teams wanted to win.  The Penguins trying to claw their way back into an Eastern Conference playoff spot; the Habs trying to hang onto theirs.

Don’t know what Canadiens’ head coach Guy Carbonneau said to Alex Kovalev, but the enigmatic Russian sniper played with some jump in his step.  Carey Price still makes me nervous as I watch him tend net.  His positioning is top-notch, but get the dude to move, and you’ve got a good chance of burying the puck.  Price will excel with a defensive core dedicated to clearing the puck.  Sounds simple, but not all defenceman master that basic skill.  Even so, Price appears to give up one questionable goal a game.  And he’s gotta stop doing that annoying shrug of his shoulders whenever he is scored upon.  It’s like he’s saying, “wasn’t my fault”.

Switched over to the resurgent Florida Panthers at the Toronto Maple Leafs.  Had intended to attend this game, but no such luck.  The Leafs staked themselves to a 3-1 lead, but watching it from the couch, I just knew that the Cats were gonna tie this thing up.  Toronto’s Alexei Ponikarovsky got caught for boarding with less than two minutes remaining in the game, and of course, Florida tied it up.

What cracked me up about that sequence of events was how Leafs’ uber-GM Brian Burke reacted, high up in the pressbox.  His face indicated he probably thought the penalty was horse-bleep.  Funny how that is.  It was clearly a boarding call.  It was also the only situation all night where a Leaf went to the penalty box alone.  Why can’t a team, or a homer TV/Radio play-by-play guy, or for that matter, most homer fans, admit when a penalty is a penalty?  Show some class.  Shuddup, and skate to the penalty box and feel shame for two minutes.  Or less.

And to complete the evening, ex-pat Bryan McCabe scored the overtime winner for Florida on a two-on-one slapshot.  Nice shot, but really, Vesa Toskala should have had it.  He’s a starting goaltender in the National Hockey League.  They’re supposed to get those ones, not allow them to squirt past him for the game-winning tally.

Hey, every so often one of those gets through.  Grant Fuhr was with the Maple Leafs when Trevor Linden unloaded a similar shot on him during a game at Maple Leaf Gardens during the autumn of 1991.  No doubt you could hear me scream with joy miles away, even though I was ensconced way up in the corner greys.

That goal stood up as the winner in a 2-1 victory for the Canucks.  After the game, Fuhr admitted one or two of those find their way through him every year.  He played the shot correctly, but sometimes, that little vulcanized rubber projectile has eyes of its own.

Same thing could be said for Toskula, but the trouble is, like Price, he tends to give up one bad goal a game.  A team cannot constantly win knowing they’re effectively one goal down to start.  Not that the Leafs’ brass probably minds; wasn’t this Year One of the constant rebuilding phase?

Switched games and caught the tail-end of the Capitals putting down the Devils 5-2.  Jose Theodore in net still makes me nervous.  Come to think of it, most goaltenders make me nervous.  So much so, I forgot about the sinuses for a while.  What will the Devils do when the Best Goaltender Of All-Time (C) returns?

A couple of late games that I was able to catch.  The mighty Marty Turco and his band of Merry Dallas Stars were at home and dropped the Calgary Flames 3-1.  Turco is back to playing like, well, Marty Turco, and the Stars are the force most of us expected them to be.

Which is why everyone has to keep their cool when it comes to watching this grand game of ours.  It’s a long, long season.  82 regular-season games.  All that matters is where you stand once your 82nd game is played.  Most teams will experience highs and lows during the course of the season.  Don’t allow either to convince you it’s a trend.

Having said that, Dallas moved to erase the cancer in their dressing room, and slowly, this team has rediscovered its confidence, even with key injuries.  Let the 2008-09 Dallas Stars stand as an example why a team should not automatically fire its head coach when things aren’t going as planned.  Often, the fault lines run deeper than that.

(Now watch, of course, as the Stars lose every game for the rest of the season).

Dallas were able to pull themselves out of a troubling nosedive, yet the Ottawa Senators seem keen on continuing their descent.  They get rid of the perceived malcontents, design some horrid third sweaters, the owner tells reporters to go blow themselves up, and then they fire head coach Craig Hartburg affter only 48 games.

48 games?  That’s not even as long as most people get to try out their fancy new widescreen HDTV before realizing they can’t pay for it, and return it to the store.

Whatever.  It looks good on the Senators that they lost tonight 1-0 to the rebuilding Los Angeles Kings.

Are we to expect a 11 am press conference on Wednesday morning announcing the firing of head coach Cory Clouston?  That’s the way things are tracking in Ottawa.

Flipped the channel.  Saw video of Adam Graves getting his number 9 retired by the New York Rangers.  With all due respect to Larry Brooks of the New York Post, who I enjoy reading, but is the whole world going crazy???

Okay, I get it.  Graves was a great guy off-the-ice, did great things for his community and was a key cog in the 1994 Stanley Cup winning Rangers team.  But c’mon.  This isn’t Rod Gilbert, or Jean Ratelle, or Ed Giacomin, or Brad Park, or Brian Leetch, or Mark Messier, or even Andy Bathgate, or Harry Howell, or Bill Gadsby, Vic Hadfield or the Cooks we’re talking about.

This is Adam Graves.

Messier commented that the night was not about honouring Graves’s stats.  Fair enough.  Raw numbers don’t always tell the whole tale.  But retiring his uniform number?   It should be first-and-foremost about what happens on the ice that determines sweater retirements, and Hall-of-Fame inductions, etc.

The standards have been lowered.  Ranger fans, take your best shot.  And don’t try and feed me the line, “ya had to be in New York to truly appreciate Graves”.

What about Bathgate, and Bernie Nicholls, and Rick Middleton, if the Rangers hadn’t been so stupid, stupid, stupid and traded away Nifty.  These guys also served as Number Nine.

Wow, win one Cup, one stinkin’ Cup after fifty-four years of nothing, and I guess you truly do walk together forever.

Then again, hey, it’s your team.  Do what you want.  The way things are going, each and every member of that ‘94 team will eventually have their number raised.  I can hardly wait for Jay Wells night.

And I thought the 1967 Maple Leafs were honoured to death.

Stop the presses!  As I type, the Vancouver Canucks actually win a game, 4-3, at home against the Hurricanes.  Alex Burrows pots the shorthanded winner with under two minutes to play.  Mats Sundin stays out of the penalty box and contributes a goal and an assist.

Stay tuned.

Time to take some more drugs.  All is well in the NHL.  Goodnight.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Okay, okay.  I know.  The National Football League game that was held on Sunday, December 7th, 2008, at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, was not technically a neutral site game.  It was a home game for the Buffalo Bills, and a rather important one, if they still entertained any playoff hopes.

The truth is, it was unlike any Bills’ home game ever.  Sure, there were more Bills’ fans than Miami Dolphins fans, but the “visitors” were well represented.  And, as it was the first-ever NFL regular season game in Toronto (in all of the Dominion of Canada, from sea-to-shining-sea, for that matter), there was a sizable contingent of fans in attendence who cheer for other NFL teams.

The Pittsburgh Steelers, for one.  So much so, that the good folk at the Rogers Centre who stock the souvenir booths, made sure to bring a healthy supply of Steelers’ paraphernalia, in addition to the Bills and Fish.

But mostly, this NFL game was about being seen.  I don’t consider myself a football snob, though I love the game (NFL and CFL), and played some of it earlier in my life.  But I do know when I’m surrounded by folk who are there more for the experience at being at the big league NFL, as much as they’re in attendence for a football game.  And that describes a great deal of the people at the Rogers Centre on this Sunday.  The football was secondary to the experience of commenting on the size of the crowd, texting their friends across the way, trying to start the wave, and drinking copious amounts of bad beer.

But that’s all fine.  After all, pro sports is entertainment.  Some of us hold it near-and-dear to our hearts, but for the vast majority, it’s another way to spend a frosty Sunday, even better so when there’s a novelty factor involved.

The game itself was a dog (16-3 Dolphins), and a lot of people started streaming for the exits at the beginning of the fourth quarter.

Which was a shame, but you pay your money and you take your chances.  The Bills aren’t exactly setting the football world on-fire this season, but one hoped that this heated rivalry would produce sparks.  It didn’t.

What it did produce was an appreciation by myself for when the National Hockey League used to play a couple of neutral site games during the early-to-mid 1990′s.  The league played an 84 game schedule, and ended up taking to the ice in exotic locals such as Cleveland, Halifax, Sacramento, and Hamilton.

It was at Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, Ontario, that I attended two of these neutral site games.  The second one (11-18-93) featured Ron Hextall and the New York Islanders defeating the Montreal Canadiens 5-1, with the majority of the crowd festooned in Habs’ gear.  It was a lively crowd, though the game was lukewarm.

It was the first neutral site NHL game at Copps that remains fresh in my mind.  That cold November night, Ron Hextall and the Quebec Nordiques took on the Toronto Maple Leafs…and there was no doubt whatsoever what team was the crowd favourite.

Thanks to a sell-out crowd, and apparently most of those folk deciding to pick up their tickets at the will call, there was a huge throng that jammed the front doors, and most of us did not get into the venue until after the first period was finished.  It was frustrating standing out in the cold, knowing a game was going on which you had a valid ticket for, but there was no way to do anything about it.

By the time the puck dropped for the second period, Copps was packed.  To this day, it remains the noisiest sports crowd I have ever been a part of.  It tops even the game at the Montreal Forum, the one where Guy Lafleur first played on Forum ice against the Canadiens.  He suited up for the New York Rangers, scored two goals and added an assist, and brought the roof down with each goal, particularly the second one.  It was so loud I could not make out at all what the guy in the next seat was trying to shout at me.

That was February of 1989.  A few years later in Hamilton, November 17th, 1992, the crowd topped that.  Since it was a neutral site game, it appeared most of the corporate fat cats didn’t bother to make the trip down the road to The Hammer.  The real hockey fan filled the building that night with a true appreciation for the game in a way no typical Maple Leafs’ crowd could hope to match.

The Nordiques won the game 3-1, but that’s not what has stayed with me.  I’m probably the furthest thing from a Maple Leafs’ fan, but that evening I developed a real appreciation for these fans, who didn’t need a scoreboard to implore them to cheer, didn’t resort to the wave, didn’t need to rely on overplayed cheesy commercial rock music to fill the spaces between action.  They stood and cheered and yelled and laughed and argued and cheered and drank and cheered until the final star was announced.

They were just happy to be at a Toronto Maple Leafs game.

This wasn’t a European soccer crowd either, which itself can be very impressive.  There was no organized singing or chanting.  There was just real hockey fans watching a pretty good game.  It’s a shame it can’t be that way at every game.

It was after this game that I stopped picking on the real Maple Leafs’ fan, and came to the realization that real fans of whatever sport are very much the same.  They share a undiluted passion for their sport, and their particular team.  You can dress up the arena, the field, the ballpark.  You can, as everyone’s so fond of saying these days, put lipstick on a pig, but the real fan doesn’t care.

Just give them a shot at half-decent tickets, and let the actual game be the centre-of-attraction, and, trust me, word-of-mouth will spread and people will want to be there.

The trouble is, with the high cost of tickets, and the scarcity of said ducats (depending on the market), the real fan is either consigned to the upper deck, or have to be content to watch from their living room.  Which saps the arena of the very lifeblood of what makes sports special in the first place; the shared experience between a group of strangers, who have come together for three hours with a united purpose.  Which is a rare and precious thing these days.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Gotta love winning those “getaway” games!  And, you have to love the grit and determination that we have now seen in back to back games in the third period with the outcome hanging in the balance.

On Tuesday, it was a come from behind win over the Kings. They Coyotes didn’t get greedy, didn’t take chances, and found a way to win.  Last night, in a tie after two, they kept coming at Toronto in waves.  Steven Reinprecht with two huge goals, but they wouldn’t have mattered

If not for Martin Hanzal’s first ever hat trick. We all know what he can do on the defensive end of the ice … and as Wayne has said over and over and over again (just listen to the pressers on this site!) the offense is there and it will come.

Last night it did, and it came in front of his parents who have been visiting from over seas for the last three weeks. They are leaving this morning.  As he told me after the game, “this was for them.”  That was a nice touch.

Listen here to Wayne’s post:

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See you in St. Louis on Saturday night!

- Todd

With a swarm of media from Toronto, here’s Wayne’s pre-game dialogue after the morning skate at Jobing.com Arena.  Telly gets the start, again.  The Coyotes in a getaway game situation tonight trying to build on their third period comeback against LA on Tuesday.

Best part of that comeback? The leaders of the team had a few choice words between the second and third period. Personally, I love it when team’s govern themselves.

Listen to Coach Gretzky’s comments:

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Check it all out on Fox Sports Arizona tonight starting at 6:30pm local with “Coyotes Live!”  Olli Jokinen will join us, live … and of course, the Coach.  We have some special video to show him (won’t be very popular in the Toronto area, rest assured!)

- Todd