I may have touched on talking about music (sweet music…music everywhere) but the topic of note is the one that my name is usually linked to: The Tampa Bay Lightning. Creative Loafing’s 2017 reader poll doesn’t lack nor neglect notable aspects of the Bolts – directly or indirectly – which sets the table for Lightning fans to show support for cogs they know regarding the club.
Mind you, there may be more nominated aspects and assets with ties to the franchise (Amalie Arena, or perhaps a locale within the arena). What’s being cited here is from the section called People, Places, Politics which features categories pertaining to public figures, locations and sports. Read More
In a way, ice hockey can be much like soccer/futbol. Oh, I’m not comparing playing on an ice sheet to playing on a huge field of grass, nor players wearing a ton of gear to men in shorts and shirts and somewhat-regular shoes. It’s the fact there are so many tournaments of an international variety that come in to play at all levels of the game that is the similarity. Some are annual, some are vastly irregular and others are on a regular schedule a few years apart… Like the Olympics.
The Olympic games are just a variant of grandiose sport-specific tournaments like the World Cup in Soccer which is played ever four years. I’ll cite the World Junior Championships in hockey, which is an annual tournament of junior-aged players (upper-teens to 20 years old) doing battle, country versus country. There’s also the World Championships which is a toned-down general hockey championship that utilizes players that aren’t involved in the playoffs in pro leagues around the world and those who don’t have to rest and recuperate from a trying season in their respective leagues.
The World Cup of Hockey is an irregular tournament of national teams played in late summer or early fall which can amount to preseason action for the big name talents from around the globe (though that’s not entirely true – the Euro leagues have started by this point while the NHL is in preseason mode). The irregularity sort of dims this and a thin history doesn’t do it any favors either.
The timing may seem a little odd to do this now as we are in the middle of the summer doldrums of the NHL and ice hockey in general, but this afternoon I’ve posted a little poll on Twitter asking public opinion on coverage and broadcasting of the NHL on NBC Sports:
What is your overall opinion of the coverage & broadcasts of the #NHL on NBC Sports / NBC Sports Net?
I’ve already posted this summer with a negative opinion about a certain personality of NBCSN, and I made him a key figure when criticizing the network in the past. I’ve toyed with writing a new article regarding the network but that seems like a useless feat if general opinion of their on-air hockey experience is taken in a postie way.
The poll will be open until Monday, July 31, 2017. Vote, and perhaps retweet things.
Let me start with a link to an old article on Raw Charge by one Mister John J. Fonts Esq. (me, it’s a pseudonym ): Suffering Mike Milnury and the NHL on NBC. It’s an issue that doesn’t get highlighted enough during hte regular season. That, or a base group of fans complain on and off about Milbury, but things stay the same; there are issues with the style of Mike Milbury (whom had his own issues during his NHL career) and yet he continues on with television coverage on US Network TV (ESPN and then Outdoor Life Network / Versus / NBC Sports Net
The last few days have put a special spotlight on NBC Sports broadcasts as the NHL was at its climax – the Stanley Cup Finals of 2017. Leave it to Mike Milbury to line-cross and give his personal dislike of a player just enough attention in coverage to sully things and make the way for the spotlight to be his in the worst way possible. Read More
Forget the politics for a second. Forget the anti-NAFTA scree coming from the White House. Go to sports, go to the National Hockey League and the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoff which are in their second round. This evening, the Edmonton Oilers host the Anaheim Ducks in game 3 of the series and fans at Rogers Place did a noteworthy feat: They took over the performance of the Star Spangled Banner before the game.
It’s common for fans to sing along with the national anthem before a game, but to take over the performance? To do it for another country’s anthem — this is Canada, ladies and gents, not a US market — is a grand gesture. It’s even bigger when there are strains in relations at the moment between countries.
A disappointing season in sports – both professional and amateur — is just that, a disappointment, a downer. Things don’t go as planned and the results are lesser than you (as a fan) wish. It’s something that you can’t hold against a high school or college team while the pro sports competitive disappointments can be outright atrocities of a competitive kind, run asunder by a multitude of choices by management as well of incidents of both a competitive variety and by bad luck.
The 2016-17 Tampa Bay Lightning season is a disappointment of a competitive nature where bad luck (injuries) and a horrible schedule played part in the Bolts not roaring into a competitive, playoff-bound position that has become a constant the last three seasons. There was a noted attitude problem in the Lightning locker room, and once that was brought into check the team turned up its competitive vibe and is where it is now: Just outside the playoff bubble with a scant chance of making it and a growing chance of missing the playoffs.
It’s a disappointment, yeah. Yet the strength of the team hasn’t collapsed, things haven’t been put asunder with bad coaching or low quality management moves. For the casual fan that’s locked in on disappointment in the trades of Ben Bishop, Brian Boyle and Valtteri Filppula: They weren’t going to stick around long term by way o the salary cap and costs to do so. Bishop and Boyle will be unrestricted free agents come July 1st, Filppula was due to become one in the summer of 2018. With the club already working with a very tight salary cap, retaining them over retaining forthcoming restricted free agents Ondrej Palat, Jonathan Drouin and / or Center Tyler Johnson just couldn’t be done.
Disappointing to lose fan favorite players, especially Bishop who was such a steady hand in the crease. But when looking at the broad picture, at the “Yzerplan” that accentuates player development, it’s understandable as something that had to be done.
To cut that short: shit happens. Ho hum. Next season is going to be something worth checking out, just as this season was, and the season before…
In comparison to professional sports in the history of the greater Tampa Bay Metropolitan area which has existed 40+ years, this season of Lightning hockey ranks a hell of a lot higher on the disappointment list than oh-so-many others coming from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Rays and Lightning. All that history, all the back-story of each club doesn’t gain web-clicks or sell newspapers at the immediate moment though.
That’s where I’ve been revitalized as a sports blogger, because something so limited in view, perspective and opinion got the green light from the only newspaper in the region. Something so inane, random and weak didn’t just get published – it’s going to get someone his paycheck because he put words down and it fit a column length requirement. Read More
I posted over on Raw Charge last night in the wake of goalie Ben BIshop’s trade from the Tampa Bay Lightning to the Los Angeles Kings. Click over to read.
As one of the longest tenured bloggers tied to the sport of hockey (well, at least up until a few days ago when I stopped for the most part), I’d like to take a moment to try to make mention of a category on Reddit where you can have feature content from your blog posted.
If you’re a fan of the NHL or the sport of ice hockey in general, you’re going to go with the no-brainer of /r/hockey, which is the top spot for hockey coverage on Reddit…. and it gets bogged down with at-the-moment coverage, chatter, videos, etc.
Promoting feature writing, though? There’s a subreddit aimed specifically for doing that (though few people are posting within the group) called /r/hockeywriters. Yeah, the name makes you think that this is specifically for The Hockey Writers authors, but it’s not specifically for them (unless I missed a memo). It’s to help promote content from hockey bloggers who do feature write-ups on just about any network.
If you’re looking just for feedbavck (and that’s the last post done on the group), it’s probably wiser to post the request on a different group. If you’re looking to promote a specific write-up you’ve done? Or promote a featured article written that you enjoy (not news — feature article) that sellsyou on the author of the piece, then /r/hockeywriters may be the place to go.
Downside: Only 100 subscribers at this point. That can be remedied, can’t it?
Sports are a business, the fan is a consumer, and mediocrity of a team doesn’t earn high turnout (nor should it earn judgment of a market). Click the title to go to the article.
“They’re as big as the Beatles!” “He is / she is / they’re bigger than the Beatles!”
That’s rock and roll and pop music, not hockey. The four Liverpudians who invaded North America 50 years ago last week and changed pop culture in America, set a new standard in music. They raised the bar for other groups to meet or exceed. From time to time in decades after the onset of the British Invasion and well after Beatlemania waned from the worldwide psyche, comparisons would be thrown out for different groups or different individuals who inspired a mania of some sort or another from their fans and who were wildly popular and charismatic.
The thing is the Beatles – both the event of appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 and their influence on pop culture and music – went well beyond a mania and album/record sales. They changed the course of music and their contribution still holds weight and influence today. Can you say the Bangles achieved that? How about the New Kids on the Block, or the Backstreet Boys and the Spice Girls? Is Justin Bieber’s music going to be endearing to the masses in the years ahead? One Direction?
Now what the bloody hell does this have to do with hockey?!
Last night while putting together Sunday’s deadliest s post, I came across Larry Brooks article in the New York Post that suggested that Saturday’s Olympic hockey win for Team USA over Russia was the biggest win for USA Hockey since the “miracle” at the Lake Placid games in 1980. I should not have to explain that event or that achievement to any single person who reads Raw Charge or knows the sport of hockey. If you want to know that story from those who were involved in it, I urge you to check out “Do You Believe In Miracles?” from HBO films. It’s not a dramatization like the Disney film “Miracle”, but it’s actual footage, actual interviews, actual recollections from the likes of Herb Brooks, Mike Bossy and other key players on both Team USA and Team USSR from the Games of the 1980 Winter Olympiad
Lake Placid, the rag-tag college bunch trumping the versed pros of the Soviet Union, was a cultural moment. America was down; America was on a morale low that cannot be compared to at this time. Vietnam was in the recent past and the scars from it were still visible; Richard Nixon had resigned in disgrace almost six years earlier, and the US economy was in the gutter at the moment. Iran was in revolution and the American embassy in Tehran breached, with hostages taken and failures by the US military to rescue them.
Things were shit.
The Soviet Union’s ice hockey team was indomitable. I can’t even tell you how incredible and powerful and successful their national hockey team had been for decades on end in international play. The geo-political landscape was black-and-white: they were the enemies and they were a force that could not be stopped, a force that could not be trumped.
And what happened at Lake Placid? Herb Brooks coached a bunch of college kids above, beyond, and outside their abilities (and with a whole lot of luck) to beat them. Team USA didn’t just defeat the Soviets; they’d end up earning the gold.
So what the hell do the Beatles have to do with that?
February 1964 was a dark time In the USA as well. John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been slain in Dallas only three months earlier; “Camelot” was over. Race issues were at the forefront at home, a military action was taking place in Southeast Asia that would further define the generation but hadn’t escalated to an oppressive force at that point. The cold war raged on… The Beatles and their mania had already seized Europe but had failed to dent the US up until February 1964. An America in mourning got a shot of pep out of curiosity, and perhaps regained a moment of innocence that had been lost in Dealey Plaza with Kennedy’s assassination. Oh, I’m sure plenty of people turned up their nose during the performance of “All My Loving” (American TV’s live introduction to John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Richard “Ringo Starr” Starkey) – Sullivan’s own musical conductor famously stated that the hair was the only difference between the Beatles and everyone else – but the event of that performance stands out in American history… Much like Lake Placid stands out for USA Hockey.
There are no hockey events by USA Hockey – be it the World Junior Championships or the Olympic games – that compare to the feat of Lake Placid. And while the game of hockey probably enjoyed an uptick with the result of those games, it did not influence a grander embrace of the sport in America as-so-much boosted national pride; the chips were still down but god damnit! we beat the Russians! We can still do things!
A 2010 interview that this long-time hockey blogger did with SB Nation founder Tyler Bleszinski. Click the post title to be magically whisked away to SB Nation and the interview article.
Author Note: This was published on Boltsmag.com and now exists on Boltsmag. Also please note – to access the stories on Raw Charge, you will need to use the Wayback Machine as the linked-articles are no longer available at their source URLs.
