10 SPORTS THOUGHTS
NHL GAMES - I’ve been very fortunate to have watched three NHL games in the last six weeks in three different NHL arenas. In mid-January I was in Toronto to watch the Leafs blow a 3-0 lead against Colorado in losing 5-3. It may have been the second best game I’ve had the pleasure of being at. The best was Patrik Laine’s rookie season when he scored the overtime winner against the Leafs in Winnipeg. The second game I attended was the Jets beating Pittsburgh 2-1 in mid-February and then this week I watched Calgary defeat Los Angeles 4-2 at the Saddledome. In comparing the three facilities, I have to say my favorite place to watch was Calgary even though they are playing in what is considered an outdated arena. The concourse area is much wider than both Toronto and Winnipeg. The selection of restaurants is great in Calgary and your personal space in the seat while watching the game is also bigger and more comfortable. I sat in section 202, which is a corner in the second deck, 9 rows up, and the view was fantastic. Toronto, obviously, is a wonderful place to watch as well and I would give them top marks on the atmosphere. Although I despise the Leafs, the fans are into it big time and are on the edge of their seats with each pass, hit, shot, save, and goal. Winnipeg, to me, is a lot like Toronto only smaller. It’s modern and also a great place to watch a game and the atmosphere is similar for sure. All in all, I would say my belief in the NHL being a sport where you have to physically go and watch as opposed to being in your living room and viewing on tv to really enjoy it is reaffirmed. The television experience really doesn’t compare, at all, to the in-venue one.
CASHLESS - My beef with professional sports stadiums comes through their ‘cashless venue’ experience. I can recall when debit card payments were increasing in popularity, sports stadiums were slow to transition and so fans would often stop at the bank machines before games so that they had enough cash to purchase food, drinks, and merchandise. Now, these sports stadiums are the first to eliminate cash as a form of payment. To me, cash is legal tender and should be accepted everywhere. To not accept it, is actually discriminatory against some of our elderly (or others) who have never made the change to plastic and what about those who carry cash but maybe forget their debit/card card at home or in the vehicle before entering the building?
NO LAUGHING MATTER, I GUESS - This is Canada, so jokes are unofficially banned here and because of that the Saskatchewan Roughriders were forced to apologize for a ‘girl math’ promotional graphic posted on their social media accounts this week. When I saw the post, I wasn’t the least bit offended and don’t know why anyone would be but we do have a significant segment of our population now that goes out searching for reasons to get upset and seek out a safe space and get attention by whining and complaining and so it was predictable when the Riders issued their ‘sorry’ less than 24 hours later. If only they’d apologize for segregation during the vaccine pass era, they’d probably get back a large number of the fans that have stopped going to games over the last 2 ½ years. I can assure you they didn’t lose a single paying customer with the ‘girl math’ promotion. It remains one of life’s bigger mysteries as to why sports teams are hell bent on self-destruction through appeasing people who hate them and will never support them.
JETS - Ownership of the Winnipeg Jets have threatened their fans for the second time in six months after saying their attendance situation isn’t ‘going to work over the long haul’ as they point to a 27% percent drop in the season ticket base while ignoring the fact that a lot of those tickets are still being purchased on an individual game basis. Yes, season tickets give teams more cost certainty, but the Jets are still playing to 90% capacity and the game I went to against Pittsburgh was a sellout. The Calgary game I went to this week was at 84% capacity. Plenty of empty seats. We live in a different era than 1995 when the Jets moved to Phoenix. Back then, tickets were priced as such that it was a lot more affordable for the average family to attend multiple games a season. Not only were tickets cheaper, but fuel to get there for those who live out of town was also way less expensive and the overall cost of living didn’t have people stressed out wondering where their next meal was going to come from. Mark Chipman is tone deaf on the economic hardships of people (and businesses he relies on to purchase box seats and higher priced season tickets) and I don’t think this goes well for him or the Jets in the short term. I look at my own situation and my knee jerk reaction to his threat is to not even try to go to another Jets game this year. They don’t appreciate it. If he wants to take his team to Houston and play in a 20,000 seat arena and still draw 14,000 fans then go ahead. Gary Bettman was in Winnipeg this week and tried to assure fans the team isn’t going anywhere but if you posted a poll on who is a bigger liar, Gary Bettman or Justin Trudeau, it would probably be a 50-50 split.
DISHONEST OWNERS - I am skeptical of any professional sports owner who cries poor. When it comes to labour stoppages, owners don’t even blink at shutting down the league and going dark. They don’t have the sport’s best interests at heart and claim to lose money hand over fist and plead with the public to understand their tough economic situation as being unsustainable. Yet, during Covid it was no problem playing for an entire year to empty seats. Yes, the owners said they did it because they had the long term vision of the game in mind but that contradicts everything they say during labour disputes when most teams have full barns. In my opinion, Covid exposed all of these sports leagues as being viable without a single fan attending. Ticket sales are, merely, gravy on top of the revenue.
VALUE FOR MONEY - Let’s look at the Jets for a moment. When you drop $150 or so for an average ticket what are you getting? For some, a winning team should be enough but I can tell you I want to be entertained as well. When the Saskatchewan Roughriders had winning seasons in the Chris Jones era I couldn’t bring myself to attend because the games were a bore. The team had nothing to offer at quarterback and grinded out their wins in a manner that was the furthest thing from being entertaining. And, again, for some people that’s all you need to do. Win. To their credit, the Jets are doing that. But, I believe most fans want to have a reason to get excited. The Pittsburgh game that was a sell out was sold out because Sidney Crosby was in town. If you look at the other games that are sellouts, it’s because a marquee player is on the visiting team. The Jets simply don’t have that superstar player (well they do, but a goaltender doesn’t put bums in the seats). Say what you want about Laine, but he was why I used to go. Yes, he was lazy but he was also capable of a hat trick on any given night. The Calgary-LA game this week had 3000 empty seats because neither club has a superstar.
REMPE - New York Rangers rookie Matt Rempe has been the talk of hockey for over a week and it’s not because he has 1-goal and 1-assist in 6-games played. It’s because of his eagerness to fight and the fact he dropped the gloves three games in a row to try and establish himself. The NHL is trying to eradicate fighting from the game, but it’s never been more clear fans and media are thirsty for it. Rempe shouldn’t be talked about more than Sam Reinhart, who is second in the league to Auston Matthews in goals scored. But, he is. If the NHL was serious about wanting full arenas in every single centre, they’d go back to the mid-1990s when it comes to rules on fighting. Yes, you’d get raging complaints from those who hate the game (some of whom will be the same media giddy about it today) but the people who spend money on the game would actually increase.
I’m going to offer a take here that may be unpopular with long time hockey fans. I don’t like what Rempe has done to try to stay in the league. The kinds of fights Rempe is engaging in are exactly why the league has taken steps to remove fighting entirely. It’s a side show that has nothing to do with the actual game itself. I do support a game where Connor Bedard has a tough guy on his wing and if you want to try and take a liberty with him, you have to answer for it. In that kind of environment, Bedard never gets knocked out for 6-weeks with a broken jaw because players simply aren’t going to touch him. Those that are tough enough to do it have honor among the peer group. It keeps everyone honest. I’m actually surprised Rempe was able to play last weekend. His hit on Nathan Bastian was 10x as bad as the one Brenden Dillon got suspended for and yet all I heard was how punishing a hitter Rempe is.
RUSH UPDATE - I had a chat with a fellow Saskatchewan Rush fan this week about the state of the club and I said I’m still not sure what to make of a team that appears to be a face-off man and a veteran defenseman away from being very good but because they are so bad at faceoffs and because they struggle to get loose balls they are also on the brink of dropping right to the bottom of the standings. In two losses to Halifax, the Rush dropped 63 of 71 faceoffs. It’s an instant recipe to lose and yes Jake Withers is the best faceoff man in the world, but you still have to find a way to win 10-15 more faceoffs against him. In the Albany loss, the Rush were only 3-for-25 on faceoffs and in overtime, they couldn’t get the ball even once despite several saves from Frank Scigliano. In the blown game to Vancouver, the Rush won 10-of-24 faceoffs (which still isn’t great but a monumental improvement from the other three games I’ve outlined) but were dominated on faceoffs in the second half. Tonight, the Rush play at Colorado and will face a Mammoth team that also isn’t great at loose balls and are 5th overall on faceoffs. Tim Edwards has a 59% success rate. Whether it’s Mike Messenger or Bobby Kidd III taking the faceoffs, the Rush really need to try and get their faceoff win % in this game up to 40-45% and if they do, I believe they will win. As far as loose balls go, Robert Hope has 79 in 11 games to lead the Mammoth. Jake Boudreau has 63 in 8 games for the Rush so this is an area Saskatchewan can make some headway in even if they aren’t great on faceoffs. Contrary to some out there, I see Scigliano as being the best goaltender the Rush have had since the championship years and he’s played more than well enough overall. He was dreadful in the season opener against Halifax and wasn’t great last week against them either but all the other games in between he’s been one of the best in the league.
MORE RUSH - While it would be a lot to expect from the Rush, their next four games are all very winnable. Colorado is just 4-and-7 and from here, they’ll go to Buffalo where the defending champion Bandits are just 5-and-5 and then it’s back to back with New York, a team that is 5-and-6 and distracted over the fact they are relocating to Ottawa next year. While a 2-and-2 split over these next four isn’t disastrous, I believe they need to go 3-and-1 to give themselves a realistic shot at the playoffs. There is lots to like about this Rush team but they are teetering on either hustling up the mountain or falling all the way down.