NHL and the IRL

Watched the Rexall Edmonton IndyCar race today.
Unfortunately to watch it I had to discontinue my ESPN boycott, but I only watched it while the race was on. So that's good. What's not good is I went just 11 days on my latest ESPN boycott.
While watching I discovered the NHL's Edmonton Oilers sponsored one of the cars, Graham Rahal's.

Bob Jenkins and Scott Goodyear announced the race, and Rahal had some trouble early. When that happened, they mentioned the Oilers sponsorship - on ESPN! Amazing! I was very surprised. The NHL and one of its team mentioned on the four-letter.
So Rahal was able to come back, and toward the end of the race he was in another collision. Again Jenkins mentioned, no emphasized, the sponsorship.
"See the engine cowling there that's the Oilers of the NHL logo!"
That might not be an exact quote, but it's close.
Leave it to a Hoosier - Jenkins is from Liberty, Ind. - to do that right thing. It helps he's not a full-time employee of the four-letter network.

Another NHL and IRL connection, of which I'm aware, happened two weeks ago at the Nashville race. Predator goalie Dan Ellis was the race's grand marshal. I heard his interview prior to the race. He and the interviewer made a comparision between auto racing and ice hockey. I don't know what was said exactly has it was hard to hear the PA system.

As a fan of the NHL and IRL, which I am, it's great to see this cross promotion.

Links:
http://www.sportsline.com/autoracing/story/10910461
http://oilers.nhl.com/team/app?articleid=368936&page=NewsPage&service=page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Jenkins
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Goodyear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Ellis
http://www.nashvillesuperspeedway.com/track/press/article.php?dir=200807&id=2078

Evaluating Sports Sites

Evaluating the various sports sites where I'm a member is something I've been meaning to discuss.

I blog at NHL Connect, Sporting News, CBS, and ESPN and all have their pros and cons.

The best cosmetic thing I like about CBS aka Sportsline is the look of teams' logos.

They look good, but depending on where they are they're at different spots.
See how in the Welcome area the Red Wings and the Hoosiers have switched positions?

Also I can't move them, ditto for Sporting News. Depending on what page fans are on the logos might look different too.
This is the Blog page.

And this is the Data page.

Moving logos is what ESPN members can do. I put the Red Wings, my favorite team, and hockey, my favorite sport, first.

Depending on the site, where logos appear and the season, I drop the Colts and Tigers so the Red Wings will be first.

The CBS Sportsline and Sporting News sites fans are locked in as to which sport goes first. That hacks me off.

Anyway I don't get any responses from fans at the four-letter site, but do at the other two. Besides the movable logos is the only thing that's really cool at ESPN.
Look how the "sports leader" totally has the wrong color scheme for the Red Wings.

That's jacked up!
Proving yet again what the four letter thinks of the NHL, look where it appears on the edit screen.

Dead last!
Sporting News also has the wrong color scheme for the Wings, but it's not as bad. Oddly enough the site gets it right on the Hi screen.

Another pet peeve of the News is stars before the screen name. That's a bad design as far as readability is concerned.
The Sporting News add black to the Hoosiers logo, which isn't right either.

I'm also on NHL Connect. That site has some things right. One being it's all hockey!! The blogging area is mediocre at best though, and the coding gets messed up sometimes too. I also can't delete my friends request. Kevin Smith hasn't accepted me yet, after like three months, and since it doesn't look like he will, I'd like to cancel it. Some others who are not so famous have done the same.
Anyway NHL has my nickname jacked up too. auxlepli should be lowercase, not uppercase.

Breaking the streak

I broke the four-month streak.

Over the weekend I watched ESPN. It wasn't one of my prouder moments.

I was down in Nashville for the IndyCar race, and one of my cousins lives there.

We attended the race with his sons and niece. Nashville Superspeedway is a great track, and I hope IRL keeps it on the circuit.

So getting back to his home, after the race, we wanted to see the highlights. Since ESPN showcases IndyCar, we tune to the four-letter.

Call us the kings and queens of wishful thinking, because we were disappointed.

Not one highlight of the Firestone 200, but tons of NASTYCAR and MLB coverage.

So we tune it to the Ocho's coverage of track and field. When do the Olympics start?

Foolishly, I think ESPN will cover IndyCar on Sunday. So before everybody else wakes up I try again. ESPN offers maybe, MAYBE, five seconds of Scott Dixon's win. My estimate is generous. This is from a network that has exclusive coverage of the IndyCar series.

I realize NASTYCAR is more popular. I get that. Yet popularity doesn't make something better. It's also reasonable, in my opinion, for me and other IndyCar fans to be upset at the "sports leader" for their woeful coverage of a sport they supposedly support.

The American football games that are played in arenas received more coverage.

So anyway, this proves to me that my boycott was justified.

Regardless of all that I still watched the "four-letter" tonight to see the home-run derby, and I'm glad I did. That was entertaining and uplifing.

I figured that sometime over the summer my boycott would end. I like IndyCar and baseball too much. Still I somewhat regret my decision.

Any NHL fan who thinks the League would be better off on ESPN is delusional. My experience this weekend proves it.

Anyway, tomorrow is another day.

Day 1, again, of another "four letter" boycott.

Negative hockey writers

Frankly I'm tired of all the negative hockey writers.
To me, it's like they look for something to complain about. They're not happy unless they're complaining.
Examples ...

Jamie Samuelson of the Detroit Free Press isn't happy because he thinks the NHL is using the Wings, and also about the rumored Winter Classic this season being on New Year's Day.

This scheduling still strikes me as awfully weird. It would be like a small fledgling religion trying to place a major holiday on December 25th. I just don't think it would get the attention it would on another date.
New Years Day is college football. It's a Federal holiday on the calendar and a de facto holiday for sports fans. I'll bet if most guys could only pick one day each year to sit on the couch and watch as much football as they could, they would pick New Years Day.

Well to me it's the perfect day. Last year's game was a boon for the NHL. Look at the numbers. In my opinion it wouldn't have been nearly as big if had been the following week. Of course that's my opinion. The above is his, just an opinion. His gets more play becuase his audience is bigger. He's ignoring the numbers though; I'm not.

Another negative ninny is The Hockey News' Mike Brophy.

Apparently it is going to take more than a salary cap to stop the insanity.
The cap, after all, was supposed to be a mechanism that prevented NHL GMs from shooting themselves in the foot. Cost us a whole year of hockey to get the damn thing implemented.
Well, there are a number of GMs limping today from self-inflicted wounds and hockey – off the ice, at least – appears to be in critical condition.

Hmm I didn't read of any NHL general manager going to the hospital. His whole tone is negative. There were many readers who sided with this guy too. There were a couple who said Brophy was off base, but Dave the Rave summed it up best.

As much as I respect Mike Brophy, IMHO he is missing the point regardng the money to talent ratio. Whether these guys are 'worth' the salaries is irrelevant. Players are now a commodity and the price rises according to supply and demand. Teams who feel they have to gamble and have the means to do so, will, simply to get a shot at the extra revenue that these names can bring in terms of attendance and playoff money.

The lockout wasn't for nothing, but Brophy and Jim Kelley with sportsnet.ca would make many think that it was.

Ever since the ink dried on what is now one of the ugliest documents ever agreed to by team owners in any sport, Bettman has been muttering "it’s all good" to just about anything you could throw at him short of Boots Del Biaggio’s checkbook.

He lists a bunch of players and the money for which they signed, and then writes, "This is cost certainty?" I get what Brophy and Kelley are getting at, but they're wrong for the reason Dave the Rave stated and for what, Kenothicles, a Kelley reader wrote.

Nice try Jim - salaries are fixed to revenue now, so the salaries aren't increasing at a pace greater than can be sustained by the aggregate average of all teams.

Or as Thunder points out.

Jim, you say "the customers have no say until the players say the CBA is over or it dies its natural death".
Wrong.
If the customers stop going to the games en masse, if the rinks in every building are filled to less than half their capacity (and that means in Montreal and Toronto too), then you'll see a little more action to correct the ridiculous, out-of-control, spiralling (sic) salaries.
No fans, no salaries, no play

At least hockey-hating Stephen Harris of the Boston Globe understands that. He correctly puts the "blame" on the fans.

General managers and owners took their fiscal irresponsibility to new lows, lavishing ridiculous contracts on average, unproven players, some fading toward the end of their careers.
The big losers of free agency?
That’s easy, too:
The fans, who will see ticket prices continue to rise so players can make more and more millions. The teams keep spending, and the fans keep paying. As W.C. Fields advised, “Never give a sucker an even break,” and there is no group of saps more eager to part with their money than American sports fans.

Even Damien Cox, who wrote a mostly positive story about the Red Wings organization, makes a dig toward the Wings home arena.

That, it seems, is the only way to understand the decision of Marian Hossa yesterday to accept a 25 per cent discount on his services for one year to go and live in Detroit and play out of crumbling, smelly Joe Louis Arena.

So his assumption that players aren't supposed to play there, but fans are supposed to keep showing up at a "less than perfect arena." By the way, in my opinion, the Joe is a great arena. It has the best sight lines of any arena where I've seen an NHL game.

Much was made this past season that the Red Wings couldn't sell out the Joe. Maybe it's because Red Wings fans aren't suckers as Harris proclaims most sports fans are. Maybe Wings fans want their general manager, Kenny Holland, to be fiscally responsible.

Of course Cox, Harris, et. al. probably wrote scads of negative articles about the Red Wings woeful attendance figures.

Hackel: Therrien pushing Penguins away

Stu Hackel, writing with the New York Times, agrees with me about Michel Therrien and why so many Penguins left Pittsburgh. Though admittedly Hackel points to some different reasons, more than just the player - coach relationship.

And there’s one more factor in Hossa’s decision that no one talks about: That would be Penguins coach Michel Therrien. He was badly overmatched against Mike Babcock in the final and even though, like many of his inexperienced players, he probably learned a lot by going four rounds this spring, the whispers persist that a number of Pens who have fled were not members of his fan club. Nor are some who remain.

Therrien is not the emotional train wreck he was when he coached Montreal, but how far he’s come since then and how adroit he is at bench management remains debatable. Scratching Roberts at the outset of the final reveals some questionable judgment at work.

Perhaps it’s unrelated, perhaps not, but that’s why we’re not entirely surprised to read that talks on a contract extension for Therrien have been put on hold.

Penguins fly the coop

OK so Penguins don't fly, but they are speedily marching away from Pittsburgh.
Who left: Gary Roberts, Ty Conklin, Ryan Malone, and probably most surprisingly especially considering where he landed, Marian Hossa.
Why did they leave?
Is it a mere coincidence or something more? I think it's the coach, Michel Therrien. His Final series antics - working the referees by complaining how the Red Wings cheated - annoyed his players. A national writer mentioned this in an article. That even Sidney Crosby had a tough time swallowing the company line.
Why those players left might be coincidence and a money grab by the players.
Still, I can't help but think that something might be rotten in the city of Pittsburgh, or at least with the Penguins organization.