Wednesday » October 8 » 2008
Canadian fans faithful through Cup drought
Cam Cole
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, October 08, 2008
Brian Burke. general manager of the Anaheim Ducks, says Canadian hockey fans and media don't have the patience for five-year plans when it comes to their teams.
CREDIT: Lisa Blumenfeld, Getty Images, File
Brian Burke. general manager of the Anaheim Ducks, says Canadian hockey fans and media don't have the patience for five-year plans when it comes to their teams.
Not to pre-empt the National Hockey League's 2008-09 advertising campaign -- Is This The Year? -- but can we hear an "Amen" from the six Canadian franchises, which are about to bark up that tree for the 15th straight October?
Even if you write off the lockout season, 2004-05, as a non-starter, it still counts as a year in which Stanley didn't come home. The time didn't just disappear. It passed, along with the 14 others since the Montreal Canadiens won 11 of their 16 games in overtime en route to the 1993 Cup.
Four Canadian teams have got to the brink -- the 1994 Canucks and the 2004 Flames, pre-lockout; the Oilers and Senators in the first two years of the salary cap -- and hundreds of players carrying Canadian birth certificates have hoisted the chalice while playing for U.S.-based clubs in the interim.
So the question is not "Why aren't we better?"
We're good. We just don't represent well.
We'd love to leave the Toronto Maple Leafs and their permanently dysfunctional ownership-management relationship out of the discussion. The whole world knows why the Leafs never succeed except at the bank -- even ownership must know -- but while their fans would kind of like to win, the Leafs' owners have other priorities.
They are the only Canadian team that hasn't made it to the Cup final in the past 15 years (or 40), and are the objects of much well-deserved derision.
They also may be, alas, as good an example as any, of the No.1 impediment to Canadian-based hockey clubs winning the ultimate prize.
In good times -- and in the Leafs' case, the times don't have to be all that good -- they are fawned over, pampered, put on a pedestal, and pursued everywhere by fans and autograph seekers. In not-so-good times, they are psycho-analyzed, lampooned, spied upon, and excoriated for their shortcomings.
Why don't teams from Canadian cities win more often, when we care so very much?
Because we care so very much.
Why don't more big-name free agents want to play in Canadian cities? Because we strangle them with our passion, cover their every twitch and mis-step, examine their private lives, call in to talk shows to discuss ad nauseam every minute happening in their season.
To this day, the best supporting argument to the theory that we love our teams to death, which has appeared in this space before, came from the man who, ironically, now coaches the Maple Leafs: Ron Wilson.
Two years ago, when Edmonton was on a tear and headed for a Stanley Cup meeting with the Carolina Hurricanes, Wilson's San Jose Sharks were one of the Oilers' Western victims. One afternoon, anticipating the ear-splitting din that no doubt would greet the hometown Oilers that evening, he put his finger on the double-edged sword.
"Anywhere in Canada you go, it's a bit different," Wilson said. "But I think that sometimes can be very burdensome, to have that kind of scrutiny.
"How many Canadian teams have won the Stanley Cup in the last 10 years, since the media [explosion]? I played in Toronto early in my career, and that was kind of like San Jose is now. You had two beat writers, a couple of columnists, and one camera -- and only in the last 10 years has it gotten to this craziness.
"I think it's difficult to play in that environment, especially if it slides a little bit. Everybody has an opinion, and it's heard now, and you can't get away from it. I mean where we are, and where the Ducks are, if you have a bad couple of games you can get out of that quickly. Here, you can run, I suppose, but you can't hide, ever.
"And whether you think that's good or bad, I don't think it's all that good, myself, to have that kind of scrutiny, especially if you're a younger team."
The Ducks were another casualty of that playoff run, and GM Brian Burke knew there was truth in what Wilson said.
"I love Canada, I loved being a GM there, I love the atmosphere and how much people care," said the former Canucks boss, whose team would win a Stanley Cup a year later, "but I'll tell you what: if you're a GM in Canada, you can forget having a five-year plan. The only plan the fans and media there are interested in is the RFN plan."
RFN? Right F---ing Now.
In the States, with the newspaper industry in free-fall and reporting staffs being stripped to the bone, the hockey beat is among the first to be sacrificed. Which means that as thin a slice of newspaper space as hockey used to get, it's a whole lot thinner now. In many markets, hockey is a "starter" beat for interns or fresh-from-journalism-school kids, so the level of analysis is understandably superficial, and TV reporting on hockey has to fit into such a tiny hole, it barely scratches the surface.
The newspaper business isn't any healthier here, the difference being that papers in Canada will cut anything BUT hockey coverage, because survey after survey of readership tastes keep coming back with the same results: give us more hockey, we'll live without the rest. And radio and television have all kinds of time, and staff, to devote to hockey.
So if anything, the disparity between the amount of external pressure exerted on an NHL franchise in Canada, compared with its American equivalent, is only growing larger.
Absent the heavy, everyday scrutiny and relentless demand for results, a player can work his way through a slump without being pilloried in the U.S., a coach can survive a losing streak, a smart hockey man can take his time, make a studied plan and stick to it until his team is built.
No such luxuries are available in Canada.
So the brain drain of managing and coaching talent heads south, to gentler climes. And the most sought-after free agents don't want to sign up for the kind of relentless attention they get up here.
The exchange rate on the dollar may be getting us closer, but as for the hockey talent that could put us over the top....
"I mean, hockey is not a sport in Canada. Everyone knows that. It's a religion," Burke said during his team's 2007 Stanley Cup victory over the Senators -- the end a playoff run greatly aided by Chris Pronger, who abandoned Edmonton after the previous season because he'd had his fill of scrutiny.
"Does it put more pressure on Ottawa? I don't know."
He knows, all right.
Is This The Year? Could be ... if the Detroit Red Wings join the Continental Hockey League.
ccole@vancouversun.com
© The Vancouver Sun 2008
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