Is this even worth writing about?

http://www.thehockeynews.com/articles/14677-Loose-Change-To-hell-with-the-Joneses.html

Does the fact that I don't find this article funny mean that I need to develop a sense of humour, or does it mean that my sense of humour is developed enough that I don't find this funny because it's just plain stupid? As in, I might find it funny if I were still twelve. The odd thing is that the cartoons this guy does are occasionally funny.

I know there's a "disclaimer" at the end, but it's at the end of every article by that guy, so I don't know what spirit it's meant in exactly. I mean, the article is written so simply and with such ridiculous arguments that I'm tempted to go over it piece by piece firejoemorgan.com styles. It's written so badly that it's almost the same thing as this article, except that the ESPN article is blatant satire and meant to mock pieces like the hockey news one. So if I actually bothered to point out all the inane arguments in the THN one, does that mean I'm getting suckered?

In any case, it's a pretty good example of why I have little regard for The Hockey News nowadays. Not that I ever read it regularly, but back when I did have regular access to it, at libraries and such, I rarely bothered with it beyond a quick flip through. Even if I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that it's purely a comedic piece with absolutely no real argument to it whatsoever, they still fail miserably.

The Mouse and the Elephant.

I wanted to write something in response to a book review that E did over at A Theory Of Ice the other day. Now, I’m pretty sure I’ve told her in the past how much I like her writing, and how unique and welcome I think her perspective is, possibly to the point that any more effusive praise will make me sound a little creepy, so she shouldn’t take this as a criticism of her own review.

The book in question is, (surprise!) The Tropic of Hockey. I can’t argue with her own conclusions at the end of the book; I’ve read it a couple times and never really thought about the points she brought up. I may have the odd quibble, but it was still very well done. There’s one little bit that got me thinking though, about a slightly different topic, and it is as follows:

At times, as an American who is chronically upset by her nation’s disregard for hockey, I thought I saw some glimmers of encouragement in the text. It is marvelous to see hockey growing in the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. Maybe there is something marvelous in its growth in those of Arizona too. I have no great love for my country, but I do have a great love for hockey, and am often saddened by what I perceive as a certain provincialism (pardon the term) among Canadian hockey fans that wishes to deny the sport to the rest of the world, or at least those parts of it where it isn’t ‘traditional’.

I’m not sure that E is entirely accurate in saying that some Canadian hockey fans wish to deny the sport to the rest of the world, not even the non-traditional parts of it. I’ve never heard anyone crack jokes about hockey attendance in Japan, for example. For the most part, such sentiments are directed at the US. It’s an attitude I’ve seen before though, put a little less eloquently, for example, here. I find it more interesting when it’s brought up in the context of this book though, because the book is, as it says, about hockey in “unlikely places”. Bidini goes on about how unique and refreshing it is to play hockey in these places, while at this same time taking potshots at other unique places that happen to be in the lower 48.

Now, I’m as guilty of this as he is, for the most part. Believe me, I love the idea of hockey in strange places around the world. If it were a more popular worldwide sport, maybe there’d be an ice rink in my city, and I wouldn’t have to travel 350km to get to the only ice on the island to play once a month. But more (perhaps) on that another time. I’ve made a couple good Taiwanese friends here through hockey, it’s a great social connector for me, and I’m very grateful I get to play at all. But yes, I don’t have quite the same warm and fuzzy feelings about it when it comes to the US, and I’ve had to think about why that is. I’d like to think I’m above the knee-jerk anti-Americanism that is admittedly far too prevalent in Canada.

The answer that I came up with however, to the question of differing attitudes towards each region, goes back to that anti-Americanism. It’s a question of Canada’s relationship towards with (or towards, one-way as it usually is) the US in comparison to other countries, like Dubai or Romania or Mongolia.

There’s a part in Tropic, and I lent out my copy the other day, so I can’t quote it properly, but it’s the part where he’s talking about Esposito and the Summit Series, and Bidini says something to the effect of “That’s all we had, you understand? We aren’t a nation of great wars or revolutions or discoveries, hockey was ‘it’ ”. I think most every Canadian knows Pierre Trudeau’s famous line about Canada being the mouse sleeping next to the American elephant, and how one is always aware of every twitch and grunt. It’s accurate not just population wise or economically speaking, but culturally relevant as well, it’s why the CRTC has CanCon laws for the TV and radio. Hockey, in some ways, isn’t just our thing, it’s our only thing. It’s quite possibly the only thing we have that truly separates us from the rest of the world, and in the eyes of the world, from the US. Other countries have food, books, music, entertainers, handicrafts, dances, histories and all those other things considered “cultural” that are truly theirs, things that everyone can at least use as a stereotype when thinking of when their eyes wander across a map. Canada… we’re just that slightly different version of the US.

The difference then, between hockey becoming all the rage in Dubai as opposed to the US, is that Canada isn’t the mouse to Dubai’s elephant. Dubai isn’t the biggest, strongest, most culturally dominant country in the world, it’s not ten times our size, and it’s not right next door. If hockey becomes the national pastime of the US, even if it’s just as popular in Canada, then it won’t really be our thing anymore. Call it being petty, or small minded, or selfish or an example of little-brother syndrome, it’s probably true in a way, but it’s there, and I hate to use an overused, tired line, but it is what it is. If the NHL replaces the NFL, NBA and MLB (and for good measure, NASCAR and NCAA sports) in American culture, then it won’t be Canada’s game anymore. It won’t be Canada that defines it, that shapes its customs and norms, that tells its stories and says what hockey is. I know, I know, Canada doesn’t even do that now, not if you’re coming from a Russian or Finnish perspective, (or anywhere else hockey has a modicum of popularity) just like Russian or Finnish hockey customs don’t define Canadian hockey. But Canadian hockey at least defines hockey in Canada. Up against the American cultural elephant though, the mouse doesn’t stand much chance. Russia may be another elephant, or hippo or something (I guess a bear is the right animal, huh?), but they’re not sharing a bed with us.

I’m really not a fan of petty anti-Americanism in Canada, and I hope this doesn’t come off as another example of it. I’m just trying to come up with an explanation as to why Canada doesn’t really seem to care too much about hockey in other places, but why there’s so much scorn for it in the southern US, something that goes beyond laser pucks and the loss of the Jets and Nordiques. Throw in those obvious grievances though, add them to the underlying sentiments and concerns that I’m proposing, and I’d like to think that the reasons for the differing attitudes towards hockey in new places is at least at little more understandable.

That's me in the corner....

I've been an Oilers fan for as long as I can remember, though obviously it's a little different when you're six years old compared to when you're 26. Somehow I became one though, mostly I'm sure, because when you're six years old in 1987, there's only one guy you cheer for and one team you cheer for, even if you live in the middle of Southwestern Ontario. I distinctly remember being an Oilers fan not just because of Gretzky though, but because my brother and two cousins of similar age were Oilers fans as well, for obvious reasons. Bandwagon jumping is permissible at that age.

Anyway, I moved to South America for four years when I was seven, far far away from HNIC and cousins and all that. I kept up with the Oilers (in the loosest sense of the term) through the weekly Miami Herald our organization would get, so that's how I'd know when they'd clinched a playoff spot and whatnot. I still remember my dad calling me into the living room in August 1988 to tell me he had some bad news. I didn't understand why Gretzky couldn't just refuse to be traded, why he'd want to play in LA anyway. I was told he wouldn’t be allowed to play hockey at all then, which I guess was an easier answer than getting into contract law with a seven year old. I don't remember the 1990 Cup at all, my only knowledge of it came from a 1990-1991 sticker collector book a relative sent me. I think that's how Bill Ranford became my favourite player, in fact. In any case, being overseas probably saved me from Leafs fandom; when we got back my cousins were Leafs fans, and my brother soon became one as well. I managed to stay faithful, despite the successes the Leafs had in 93 and 94, and only being able to watch one or two Oilers games a year. And then there’s the telling anecdote about how when my cousins and brother and I would play road hockey in our respective driveways and we'd find NHL players to "be" while we'd play, I got stuck with being Petr Klima or Craig Simpson or, lowest of lows, Kevin Todd. Meanwhile, they were Gilmour and Andreychuk and Clark and so on. At least I got to be Ranford in net.


Fast forward to the latter half of the 90's, and the "success" the Oilers had in 97 and 98 had me believing that if they just had the money to keep the players they wanted, Sather could put together a competitive team at a fraction of the cost. Billy Beane before I knew who that was. Or most anyone not in baseball did. I certainly fell for the long running complaint about how small market teams couldn’t afford to keep their stars around, but I remember remarking to a friend around that time that I wasn’t too worried about what players the Oilers lost so long as Sather was still the GM. I figured they’d always remain at least on the fringes of competitiveness at the least, until that magical day somewhere down the line when the Oilers wouldn’t have to worry about money and they’d ascend to their rightful place at the top of the league. 2005 comes, and bam, the Oilers trade for Chris Pronger and Mike Peca. A month after that magical day actually arrives we get actual living, breathing superstars (ok, that should be singular) on the team. Right on track, exactly as I always assumed. Sather’s gone, yeah, (and somewhat tarnished by his spectacular failure in NY) but Lowe’s got that Boys On The Bus thing going for him, how could that possibly go wrong? And his thievery of Pronger only goes to show how the hockey gods have once again decided to smile on Edmonton. And that Spacek trade too? Nice. Then there’s that glorious run in the spring of that season, and everything’s clicking. No reason for me to assume anything was wrong with what I’d always thought as an Oilers fan, even if I’d never actually thought about what that was in any depth. It’s the Oilers, they’re smart, they’re exciting, and they can win even without spending big money and buying up all the stars. Just wait till next year….

Next year started four days after Game 7, and actually managed to go downhill from the-best-defenseman-in-the-league-who-also-happens-to-be-signed-to-an-amazing-price-demands-a-trade.

It took a while to dawn on me, but over this past summer, it became too obvious to ignore. Kevin Lowe doesn’t appear to know what he’s doing. The return on the Pronger trade, the inability to shore up the D in 06-07, the return on the Smyth trade (oh, and the fact that the trade occurred in the first place and Smyth wasn’t signed months before the deadline)…. And then this offseason: Penner and the offer sheets, the Souray signing, losing Hejda, that ridiculous offer to Nylander.

I’ve already written and moaned about the Smyth thing, so it shouldn’t be necessary for me to explain how I lost some of the sentimental attachment I had to my team. It was hard, but it would have, could have been manageable. Realizing it was done for all the wrong reasons though, that it was a poor hockey decision as well as a poor money decision, that hurt. A lot.

The Penner and Souray contracts are really what did it for me though, what made me lose the faith. I can handle a rebuild, I can. In this “new NHL”, it seems evident that a successful team needs players performing at a level well above what they’re actually receiving payment for, and the best way to pull that off is with good young players. The kind you get by gathering up good draft picks and prospects, which Lowe was doing in spades. Non-successful teams, on the other hand, went out and overpaid mediocre UFAs on longterm ball-and-chain contracts. Which Lowe went out and did over the summer.

So now where are we? Over the last few months, I’ve had to come to grips with something that shakes to me to my core as a fan of a professional sports team, whatever that counts for. My Edmonton Oilers aren’t anything special. There’s nothing that says that they’ll ever be competitive again. If anything, all signs (even over the last fourteen or so seasons) have pointed to the fact that they’re really very mediocre. But we had an excuse before, I could protest. Now though, now I’m seeing what’s really going on. It’s entirely possible that they’re nothing more special than a team like the Islanders or Bruins or Kings or Panthers or Capitals or …. Or the Leafs. Mediocre teams that make the playoffs sometimes, have a little promise, make some smart moves… but miss the playoffs as well, regress, never fulfill the promise of an auspicious end to the previous season. Make stupid moves in a panic, and worst of all, seem to think it means something is getting done.

So if that’s what I have to look forward to… well, it makes losing Smyth all the more painful. I used to know a guy who didn’t have a favourite team, he had a favourite player. His favourite team was whoever Grant Fuhr was playing for, he kept a scrapbook of Fuhr newspaper articles and everything. It made no sense to me then, but it certainly does now, especially when I find myself cheering for Smyth to score a goal against my very own favourite team, even when my team is down by a goal with an empty net. He was the team’s identity, the guy every non-Oilers fan thought of when they thought of the Oilers, when they had occasion to. But then he was gone, and though it’s survivable, though we Oilers fans have seen this story before, this one hurt even more than normal. And for me, he was just one facet of how I saw my team. My sentimental attachment to the Oilers took a big hit that day, but whatever other attachment I have (it’s all sentimental in the end, isn’t it?) took an even bigger one over the summer. In my mind, we used to be Ryan Smyth’s Oilers, former kings but now paupers; underdogs, but only because of filthy lucre. Once that was fixed we’d be back on our way to our rightful place as a respected and feared team in the league. Now though…. Who are we? This is a vastly different team than the identity I developed for them in my mind over the last few years. And I don’t mean vastly different in the player personnel sense.

But I can’t really ditch the Oilers. I can’t move on to another team. I’m still going to wake up early to watch their games, and I’m still going to schedule a decent amount of plans for my time back in Canada around when Oilers games might happen to be on TV. Like my first full night back, they’re playing Detroit, and I’ll have to work something around watching the game and visiting my grandparents at the same time. Part of the fun of having a favourite team is watching how it’s built from the inside, watching players get drafted, come up through the ranks and make an impact, become a core part of the team. You don’t get that if you have five favourite teams you rotate between, you don’t learn the stories that make the players interesting to you.

And you get to build an identity for them. I’d never thought about what identity I’d given my Oilers in my mind until it was suddenly switched on me, till it was gone. I have no idea how I’ll view my Oilers five years from now, though I’m guessing it’ll be less naively overall. Hopefully it’ll involve a new GM, and maybe even a new owner. But they’ll have an identity in my mind that goes beyond who’s playing for them at the time, and that’s something I won’t be able to just pull out of thin air with any other team, even if I started now.

How to disappear completely and never be found.

Last twenty minutes of the season are left, and I'm trying to positive here, I'm trying desperately to be OK with this, at the least.

I tried changing my whole stance on the Pronger thing, I tried giving him the benefit of the doubt and took the view that he did what was best for his family and he actually made a courageous decision and all in requesting a trade. I tried, but it's far too easy to just have an enemy to hate, I can't do it.

So I'm trying to be positive and look at guys like Selanne and Marchant and be happy for them, I can do that, maybe even moreso than for any of the Senators.

And I'm trying to be thankful that the "Mighty" part has been removed from the Ducks name. I honestly have no idea what I'd do if that were still the case. The combination of that name going on the Cup along with Pronger's might be enough to put me off the league for a year or two.


I need some of that memory-erasing surgery from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. This season did not just happen, I refuse to recognize its existence. Being a sports fan is far too much pain, and very little gain.


At the very least..... at least it's not the Flames or Leafs.

Sticks.

I read this book The Stick by Bruce Dowbiggin a while ago, my dad has a copy of it at home for some reason. It's quite possibly the only hockey book that mentions my hometown of New Hamburg, Ontario (~6000 people) repeatedly by name, as a location of one of the first hockey stick factories in the country.


Anyway, yesterday I was reminded of one of the more interesting bits of information in the book. Thankfully, it's reproduced online at the book's website, so I can just c&p it here. From www.thestickonline.com :

One hundred fifty years after it was first carved from a hornbeam tree near Truro, Nova Scotia, the hockey stick endures in every recess of the culture. It tells us who we are and why we do things differently from the rest of the world. Such as shoot lefthanded. How in the name of Wayne Gretzky does lefthandedness with the stick make us distinctive? Well, Gretzky shoots left; so do seventy percent of stick purchasers from St. John's to Victoria. This in spite of the fact that Gretzky and 90 percent of his fellow Canadians are right-handed in all other things. But Americans are the mirror image: seventy percent of U.S.-born players shoot right. "It may be a cultural thing," says Mark Hughes of Easton. "It really is strange." And not a passing whim, either; statistics kept by Sher-Wood over the decades consistently reflect this ongoing 70/30 left-right split . Canada also produces a higher proportion of left-handed golfers (Mike Weir) and baseball hitters (Larry Walker, Matt Stairs) than does the U.S. “Maybe Canadians are just smarter,” says Todd Levy of Ice Hockey in Harlem, an American-based community program. Thank you, Todd. But before we get too chuffed about Canadian ingenuity, it should be pointed out that almost ninety percent of European players shoot lefthanded-- in keeping with the traditional 90/10 split in the general population. That means that while Americans may be totally clued out on the subject, about 20 percent of Canadians are dim bulbs on which way to shoot. (Including this author). But why are we so different from Americans? The simplest explanation may be that to exploit the full reach of a hockey stick when poke- or sweep-checking, you must hold the stick at the knob end. If your dominant hand (usually the right) is placed at that end, you have greater control of the stick . Putting left hand below right on the stick makes you a left-handed shooter. As well, a left-handed shooter finishes his follow-through on the dominant right leg, helping him put more force behind the shot and maintain better balance. The playground suggests a more homespun explanation. In ball hockey, players must take a turn at all positions, including goal. A left-handed shooter can hold the goal stick in his right hand, then quickly adopt a shooting position by grabbing the shaft with his lower (or left) hand. A right-handed shot in goal, however, must either hold the stick in his left (weaker) hand or else reverse the stick each time he shoots-- an inconvenience that takes time. Young players soon learn to shoot with their dominant hand on top when they play goal in ball hockey. It's a cultural quirk that Americans, who slide the dominant right hand lower on golf clubs or baseball bats, are denied. So when it comes to hockey sticks, Canadians are used to taking sides.

Another article here at USA Hockey Magazine seems to both agree with those stats and simultaneously contradict them, first saying that "...67 percent of the sticks sold by major manufacturers have right-handed curves..." It's not clear if they mean "in the US alone", but I'd imagine they do, or else their numbers are far, far different than the ones quoted by Dowbiggin and kept by Sher-Wood. Then it goes on to say that "Statistically, 61 percent of USA Hockey’s elite female players shoot left-handed, along with 53 percent of their male counterparts..." So unless shooting left provides an inherent advantage to playing hockey (see the rest of the article for far more on that topic) then there's something not quite right there.

That discrepancy between Canadian and American shooting tendencies seemed pretty intriguing to me, and it still is. The given explanation seemed/s insufficient. The first explanation makes absolutely no sense, and the second "homespun" one might suffice, but it seems to me that by the time a kid has developed physiologically enough to play road hockey or minor hockey, he already has a stick side picked. Most all kids love playing goalie though, so who knows. It might have something to do a wider prevalence of other "stick" sports in the US where the right hand is taught to be the dominant one, but I don't know enough about that to know if that makes sense.

And what of the Europeans? The bit about 90% of European skaters shooting left kinda surprised me as well. I checked the NHL's stats page and three or four minutes on there told me that of the top ten scorers from each of Sweden, Finland, Czech Rep and Russia, 32 of the 40 players shoot left. And four of those were Russian. Though oddly, Ovetchkin, Alfredsson and Selanne (the scoring leaders from each of their countries), all shoot right. What does that mean? You're right, probably nothing. Small sample size, margin of error, etc etc I know, but I'm not about to spend more time looking through players bios to see what way they shoot.

Contrast that with my experience this weekend. I went to an inline hockey tournament with the group of university kids I play with here in Kaohsiung. There were seven teams there, all with about 10-15 players on each team, about 80 skaters in total. I wasn't allowed to play in the tournament, not being an actual university student, so I had lots of time to wander around. I started noticing sticks, and aside from noticing that each and every stick there was a two-piece, I also started noticing that there was a distinct lack of left shot sticks. As a left shot myself, and someone still trying to find the perfect stick on this (largely) hockey-forsaken island, I pay attention to these things. Anyway, I started counting the left shot sticks I saw, and the grand total at the end of the day was three. Out of probably forty or fifty sticks I saw. And one of those leftys belonged to my teammate...... from France. It's virtually the same thing on my team, everyone shoots right, except the two foreigners.

All in all, some pretty drastic differences between cultures, and I don't think the "taking turns at playing goalie" theory is really strong enough, though it certainly could be a supporting factor.


On Dowbiggin's site, a reader writes in with possibly the best explanation of all:

As someone who has several years experience in the manufacture of hockey sticks and has a degree in physics. Years ago I came to the conclusion that the main reason that the Americans shoot right and Canadians shot left has to do with the age at which we pick up a stick. In Canada that age is generally much younger.

The top hand on a hockey stick has to be able to handle the torques of a hockey stick while the bottom hand just has to handle the weight with no torques. Since the torque (the shaft being a lever) can be rather hard to handle, at a young age one has to use their strongest hand to handle the torques thus a youngster (say 4 yr old) will use his strong hand (generally right) to hold the top of the shaft, thus they will learn to shot left if right handed. As we get older (say 10 yr old), the torques are not as hard to handle and one then will try and put the power hand (generally right hand) on the lower part of the shaft, since the weak hand (generally left) can now handle the torque of the stick.

Cheers Kent Mayhew

A scientific explanation for a cultural phenomenon which tells us something about the way different cultures approach the game, I love it.
This makes by far the most sense to me. Hockey cultures where sticks are more likely to be found in garages and basements means its more likely that a kid there will pick up a stick at a much younger age as a part of interacting with their environment. Compare that to a kid in a culture where hockey is more scarce, where becoming a hockey player might be a conscious decision at a much higher age.
What would be really interesting would be to see the figures for right and left shot sticks sold in places like Minnesota and New England, compared to the rest of the USA. Or numbers from places like France, Switzerland and Austria compared to other big hockey countries like Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic. I think you'd see that the number of lefty shooters are higher in Minnesota and New England, and those numbers quoted by USA Hockey Magazine linked to above would bear that out; if 67% of sticks sold in the US are rightys, but 53% of USA Hockey's elite males shoot left and 61% of their elite females shoot left, and if it makes sense that the majority of the players on those teams come either Minnesota or New England, then I think we can understand why the nationwide numbers are so different from the elite player numbers. I'd also be very curious to see if there's the same separation between the Canadian public and elite (by elite I mean not just NHL players, but also minor leaguers, and basically anyone good enough to actually earn a living playing hockey) Canadian players.

Who knows, maybe I should email Sher-Wood or Easton or CCM or whoever and see if they're willing to share those numbers, I'm sure they're kept.

I could certainly see that theory in work on the weekend at that tournament, I doubt many of those students playing had ever picked up a hockey stick at the age of five, most of them (and this goes with talking to my teammates as well) didn't start playing until well into their teens or when they started university. There's probably some sort of feedback loop at work as well, if 98% of the sticks in your environment shoot one way, you'll probably learn to like to shoot that way as well. What I should do is check out the higher level kids team that plays around here, there are some younger aged kids and most all of them would have started out at a pretty young age. It won't really be much of a scientific exercise, but who knows what might come up.


In any case, I'm quite glad that Mr. Kent Mayhew could provide me with a solid, sensible answer to a question that has bugged me ever since I read that book a few years ago.

Two months....

This is why I need a niche, a reason to keep writing here.... so I don't go ignoring this thing for months on end.


I'm not under any impression that I have any sort of regular readers, I've said before that I'm writing this more for my own sake than any feeling that I have something valuable to share with the wider world, but I guess I should post something every once in a while.


Anyway, the Smyth trade took more out of me than I thought. I stopped downloading and watching Oilers games (for the best, apparently) and started concerning myself with other things, like finding more places to play hockey over here. That, and the fact that I found another, more reciprocal outlet for my hockey-writing thoughts, and suddenly I start to forget about this place.


So I'll try and write more, not for you, but for me. I still have ideas bouncing around my head that I should really try to flesh out properly into concrete thoughts, and I may as well thrown them down here sometimes.

Call this a placeholder.

Pause.... sob.... "cause that's where my heart is"

At first I was OK with this trade. It's a damn good return for a UFA, and there's always the chance that they weren't gonna get this done by July 1st and they'd lose Smyth for nothing. I didn't like the idea of paying him 5.6 or whatever (I've heard 5.5-5.8) when Smyth was 36, or overpaying him because he's in a career year. And hey, the Islanders have a storied history of trading their prospects who later become stars elsewhere, see McCabe, Luongo, Jokinen, Chara, Spezza (k, as a pick) and to a lesser extent, Torres.

But that press conference yesterday turned me. He would have been worth overpaying for.

I'm not getting into whether it was the smart hockey move or smart money move or whatever.
It was a bad move because of what I said in my last post, Smyth WAS the Edmonton Oilers. He was everyone's favourite player, to the point that he was a default and people had to pick others. Ok, so Pisani and Moreau and Hemsky and Reasoner are your favourite player... but that's only after Smyth. Smyth was just a given, there wasn't any point in actually saying he was your favourite player, everyone knew it. He was your favourite player even if you didn't know it. Hell, he was your favourite Oiler even if you didn't like the Oilers.

As fans, we need reasons to keep coming back. Smyth was invaluable to us as fans because he was a reason you could always cheer for the team. He was the identity that not all teams get to have. Even when your top-three-in-the-league defenseman demands a trade four days after leading the team to G7 of the Finals and one year into a five year contract, you can still cheer for the team because you still have the team's identity. You still have the embodiment of what you want your team to represent.
Now... the Oilers don't have an identity. If Smyth doesn't come back, in five years time it might be Ales Hemsky. Which of course is right when his contract is up. But Hemsky is no Smyth, he never will be, he can't be.

Losing Pronger hurt because we lost a great player. Losing Smyth really hurts because it feels like we've lost the whole team.

Overpaying for Smyth.

Given that this might all be moot in the next 24 hours, I may as well write something down now.

I think a differentiation has to be made between what Ryan Smyth is worth to the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club and what he's worth to the Edmonton Investors Group.

Ryan Smyth and the Oilers have been negotiating a new contract for him for the last few months. Given Smyth's status as an Oiler (in fitting with the topic, use all the cliches you want, "heart 'n soul", "bleeds oil" "face of the franchise" etc) it's obviously a big deal in Oil Country (which I think is an attempt to ape the Red Sox Nation branding move). Apparently they're not far apart, Smyth is asking for somewhat over $25MM over 5 seasons and the Oilers offering $20MM over four. Roughly.

With the Oilers, salaries have to be balanced twice, both against the cap and against the pocketbook of the EIG. A look around the Oilogosphere will tell you that there's some suspicion over just how much the EIG has to spend on players salaries, that they cry poor while pocketing alot more than they let on. I'm no business student, so I don't really get into that myself. But from the basic looks of it, the critics are right, the oilers have a pretty high per-game gate revenue and just came off a huge moneymaker of a playoff run, all while aided by a large growth in the value of the CDN dollar over the last few years.

In any case, with the salary cap going up again next and the probability that the Oilers won't be spending that high no matter how much they're actually making, I'm not sure that an argument against overpaying Smyth because of salary cap concerns makes sense.

The argument for overpaying him (for an example, lets say paying him anywhere over 5.5 per) because of the restrictions on the EIG pocketbook is a little stronger. This is all assuming that the EIG does indeed make money, and will again this year.

It's safe to say that Smyth is indeed the face of the Oilers franchise. He's a (mostly) local boy, one of the few (or the only) draft picks from the 90's to actually make on the team and succeed. He's played his whole career in Edmonton, which is rare enough these days. What is that kind of story and myth worth to the EIG? What does he mean to the fans? I don't have any stats, but I'd be quite willing to bet that Smyth sweaters are the biggest sellers in Edmonton, by far.
The Oilers have been milking the glory years for a while now, what with the number retirements and banner replacements and whatnot, but eventually that'll run out. As an example, they're retiring Messier's number tomorrow night, and I'd bet they're gonna retire Lowe's number someday as well. And after that? From the last 17 years, who is there they could possibly retire? If they wanna follow the Flames lead (Vernon?) and do some reaching, they could do Bill Ranford's number 30 maybe...
But if Smyth plays his entire career in Edmonton, regardless of whether he wins a Cup or not, I don't see why he wouldn't get his 94 retired somewhere down the line.
Being able to give your franchise a face must be worth something in the long haul, even if it's not quantifiable. Being able to say "look, our players are loyal to you, so you can be loyal to them" to the fans must count for something, no? If some fans long for the days when a player spent his entire career with one team and was identified as such (Yzerman in Detroit, Beliveau in MTL, Bossy on the Island, Neely in Boston) what does it mean to them to have a player on their team do that?

So if Ryan Smyth the hockey player is worth say $4.5 - 5.0MM as a productive player to the Edmonton Oilers Hockey Club, what is Ryan Smyth the "face of the franchise" worth to the Edmonton Investors Group? Another $1MM per year? .5MM? It's gotta be something, no? And if it doesn't affect the Oilers salary cap concerns, what's the EIG so concerned about?

IMOJ

At the end of Home Game, Dryden and MacGregor finally tie it all together. They've written this big book about hockey and Canada, from a number of topics, and finally they have to explain why this whole thing was worth writing in the first place, why it actually means anything.
If I had the book here, I could quote the relevant parts properly. Unfortunately, all I have is the following, but it's enough to get the basic point across.

“Why should this game matter? Why does it matter? It matters because communities matter. ... Dreams, hopes, passions; common stories, common experiences, common memories; myths and legends; ... links, bonds, connections - young-old, past-present, East-West, French-English, men-women, able-disabled ... they matter. And that is why hockey matters.”

A year ago on February 19th my cousin Jeff was killed in a car accident. He was six years younger than I, so there was a bit of an age gap. I remember being disappointed in myself that the majority of my memories of time with him were hockey related.

Playing mini-stick hockey in his and our basements when we were really young, playing hockey in Grandpa's basement when we were a bit older, which we did for hours at just about every family holiday there. Road hockey at any relatives gathering. Playing hockey on my dad's 50th birthday party when Jeff put the pads back on and started playing net again.
One of my strongest memories was from Christmas 2004. We were in Burlington, and I suggested to my cousins and uncles that everyone bring their skates and sticks along and we'd find an outdoor rink somewhere. We ended up finding the worst rink I've ever played on, it was as though someone had thrown a hose down in a parking lot and left it at that. I remember our skates would spark as they hit gravel left in the ice or went right through. Jeff kept wiping out because his goalie skates were even worse at gripping the ice than ours were, I was surprised that he was even able to skate at all.

I was disappointed because I felt like I should have more memories of him than just hockey related things, he's my cousin, we're supposed to share more than just that.

But at the funeral home, I realized just how big a role hockey played in his life. Former teammates from all age levels showed up and signed his goalie stick. The picture book was full of hockey pictures. One of the flower baskets had a ministick in it. A family friend brought some things Jeff had given him, one was a wooden ministick from a time I'd long forgotten about, making them with my cousins so we could design and draw on them ourselves.

And I realised at some point, that without hockey, what memories might I have had? We were six years apart in age, and I spent four of my years growing up on another continent. Without hockey, would there have been as much for me to remember in the first place? Would there have been something else in place of those links created by hockey? I can't answer that obviously, but I'm not sure what else might have had the same effect.

These links/bonds/connections of hockey are evident throughout my extended family. Every single one of my male cousins on both sides have played organized hockey at some point, and the majority of us still do play in some form or another. I'm pretty sure it's the same with all the uncles. We've made it a habit in the last couple years to schedule our Christmas dinner around the opening game of the World Junior Championships. We need this as a connection, as a way of keeping track of each other and connecting outside the usual family occasions. And it helps us understand each other in some small way.

So here's to common experiences and common memories and relationships and hockey. And here's to Jeff, staring down Rocket Richard and Valerie Kharlamov on a two on none.

A thin slice of ice.

Malcolm Gladwell had a pretty famous book a bit ago called Blink, which was essentially about how making snap decisions (called Thin-Slicing) without actually thinking can often be the best course of action, assuming you're opperating in your own area of expertise. The example from the begining of the book is one where an art museum buys a statue which initially is thought to be real but later proven to be fake. The second group of experts who examined the statue needed but one look, a single glance to know that something wasn't right. They couldn't explain why they knew it was fake, they just did.

So the other morning I was watching bits of the Blue Jackets - Oilers game from a few nights/mornings ago. At one point in the second, Horcoff et al. were coming in on a three on three. Horc carried it up to the blueline and dished it off.... right then, I knew something was wrong, even before the whistle went. I was only half watching Horcoff, paying more attention to the Oiler at the top of the screen (Smyth I think), but as soon as Horcoff crossed the blueline, some sort of ... I dunno, alert... went through my head. After the whistle went to indicate the offside, I didn't really think anything of it for a few seconds. Then I realized I wasn't actually sure where the offside had been. Had it been Smyth at the top of the screen? Was it Hemsky? Did Horc carry the puck over the line and then pass it back across? Where was the infraction exactly? I rewound and watched the scene again.... too fast, too many players and moves to track. Even then, I could still tell something was wrong. I slowed it down at watched it at third time, and this time I finally understood that it was none of the above, Horcoff had dished it off to Hemsky about six inches before he crossed the line, putting himself offside. The puck was sitting on the blueline, inches from the Columbus zone while Horcoff's skate was no more than an inch over the line. By the time my brain caught up to what was happening on the ice and I heard the whistle, Horcoff was already across the line with his teammates, and everything looked normal.

I'm sure anyone who's watched a fair bit of hockey has experienced the same thing and knows what I mean. There are other instances, a quick turnover in the offensive zone and suddenly the opposing defenseman has the puck and he's just pounded it up the ice. But the puck's barely ten feet from his stick and you just know that he's not clearing it, somehow a forward has snuck behind your D, and though he's certainly not visible on the screen and the broadcasters haven't had time to even raise the excitement in their voices, you know he's about he's about to receive a breakaway pass. You haven't been tracking the opposition numbers in their zone, if the game were paused just as the defenseman grabs the puck, you wouldn't know that there are only four bad guys visible and the fifth is somewhere dangerous unless you actually thought about it and looked for it. But years and years of watching hockey (from the TV camera perspective) has told you that something's wrong here, and you get a bad feeling even though you don't quite know why yet.

After thinking about it, I was reminded of the book I just mentioned, and I realized that refs must have that ability on a much more detailed scale. That's how they see the subtle little infractions that happen a mile from the action, they don't know it, but something in their brain goes hey, high stick! even before the offended player has the chance to double over and grab his face to check for blood/missing teeth.

Now, if it wasn't so late and I actually had the book with me, I'd get into what Peter Gzowkski talked about in The Game of Our Lives with regards to elite athletes ability to "chunk" their environment into particular scenarios and instantly discern order from what would look like chaos to anyone else. It's sorta related to this topic, making instant decisions without actually knowing what you're seeing.
Actually, a brief google of the words "gretzky chunking gzowski" gives us an article by Gladwell himself which uses the example of Gretzky from that very book, so perhaps I'll just post a bit where Malcolm gives an excellent example chunking :

"A chess master, for example, can look at a game in progress for a few seconds and then perfectly reconstruct that same position on a blank chessboard. That's not because chess masters have great memories (they don't have the same knack when faced with a random arrangement of pieces) but because hours and hours of chess playing have enabled them to do what psychologists call 'chunking.' "

and the quote from The Game of Our Lives (which gives a much better description of chunking, including the chess example) :

"What Gretzky perceives on a hockey rink is, in a curious way, more simple than what a less accomplished player perceives. He sees not so much a set of moving players as a number of situations. . . . Moving in on the Montreal blueline, as he was able to recall while he watched a videotape of himself, he was aware of the position of all the other players on the ice. The pattern they formed was, to him, one fact, and he reacted to that fact. When he sends a pass to what to the rest of us appears an empty space on the ice, and when a teammate magically appears in that space to collect the puck, he has in reality simply summoned up from his bank account of knowledge the fact that in a particular situation, someone is likely to be in a particular spot, and if he is not there now he will be there presently."

In that five-hundreth of a second where Horcoff was over the blueline but the puck wasn't yet, my brain at least knew something was wrong, even if it had no idea what was wrong yet, and then on replay couldn't even tell exactly where the infraction was.