December 15 2007

The NHL is going through one of it's worst yers in terms of vilently aggressive on-ice behaviour. Would it be too much of a stretch to mention that, in light of developments in baseball this week, the league might take a closer look at steroids and their spinoff--the so-called 'roid rage.

The NHL has always had it's head in a rabbit hole when it comes to this subject. The company line has been; steroids can't help a hockey player. That is an absolute crock.

Anabolic steroids build muscle. More importantly, they also speed up recovery time. In a league that features an 82 game schedule (soon to be 84); In a league that forces teams to play five games in eight days in 5 different cities; in a league that tacks six weeks of gruelling playoff hockey onto it's schedule it would take someone of very strong will to say away from the temptation of steroids.

Dick Pound has called the NHL testing policy a "sham". He's right. The plicy allows for no more than two tests a year, both of them in-season. Once that second test has been taken the player is free to go on the juice until the start of the next season. Steroids are a training drug and most hockey training these days goes on during the summer. So far the NHL says there have been 3,000 tests and only one player has been caught. Are you kidding me? Only one?

December 8 2007

Twenty-five years ago a member of the Los Angeles Kings named Paul Mulvey ignited one of the worst public relations disasters the NHL had ever had to face. Don Perry, the Kings coach ordered Mulvey who was the Los Angeles tough-guy to start a bench clearing brawl against the Vancouver Canucks and Tiger Williams. Mulvey, who had just come off a suspension, refused to leave the bench with the words "I'm not going to be a designated assassin". Within hours the 23-year old Mulvey was placed on waivers and sent to the minors and ultimately never played another NHL game. The coach was fined and suspended and within a year was fired never to be heard from again. Mulvey eventually took a settlement on a 22-million dollar law suit against the Kings.

A quarter-century later the NHL is feeling the public relations heat aain. Testimony under oath that Vancouver Coach Mark Crawford told his team that "Steve Moore must pay the price" words that led to the infamous Todd Bertuzzi incident. Thewre's a very winable 38 million lawsuit in the courts and Bertuzzi is apparently not going to take the rap alone. Andonce again the so-called 'hockey culture' is put under the microscope.

We're constantly told that players should be able to police the game themselves. As we watch player after player being carted off the ice on stretchers we have to say that not only are the players incapable of policing their game but neither is the NHL itself. And where does that leave us?

December 1 2007

The NHL approved the sale of the fan-challenged Nashville Predators this week to a consortium that has the look and feel of the one that took over the Expos and within a decade ran the team into oblivion. The NHL had a chance to go with a single owner, and a billionaire at that, but passed on that because Jim Balsillie was a little too opinionated for their taste. So instead of Nashville pulling up stakes next year it will be 4 or 5 years from now.

No league has been as injudicious about it's team ownership than the NHL. Unlike the NFL which will not allow large ownership groups, the NHL is filled with them. The NFL has been the North American sports icon because the league front office deals with individual owners rather than boards-of-directors.

In the NHL we have the Toronto Maple Leafs under the control of a teacher's union with all of the attention to product quality of a Chinese toy-manufacturer. We had the Canadiens for years owned by a brewery more concerned image than the team and thus ordering the general manager to unload, at any porice, such perceived liabilities as Chris Chelios, Shayne Corson, Guy Carbonneau and Mathieu Schneider. Only when the Canadiens returned to the single ownership of George Gillett did we see the beginnings of a return from the wilderness.

For all intents a consortium is a committee. And as Sir Alex Issigonis told us back in the 30's---"a camel is a horsedesigned by a committee". In the NHL there seem to be a lot of camels right now.