CKNW Editorial
for February 24, 2000

It’s pretty rare that I do a hockey editorial let alone two in a row. But I think this McSorley incident indicates that it’s time that the owners in the NHL took a look at themselves and we at them.

First we might want to look at the Vancouver Canucks. From a Stanley Cup finalist in two years they were out of the play-offs. Over the past few years they’ve traded away an all-star team including the most exciting player in hockey. (It’s interesting to note that the Canucks paid the equivalent of a small countries gross national product to get the ancient warrior, Mark Messier and justify it on the basis that he will lead the Canucks whereas in fact under his leadership the team has gone into and remains in the sewer.)

The ticket prices are now beyond the reach of the ordinary working person – in fact, even for better off families going to a hockey event is something you must carefully budget for.

As to the league itself it has gone from being financially viable to where Canadian teams must beg for a hand-out from local government. Players salaries have gone from slave wages to the kind of money even corporate executives only fantasize about. It is true that the Players Union has driven these salaries up but it has been with owners who, frankly, had it coming and now have no stomach for the fight to control runaway salary levels.

The problem with some of the franchises – Edmonton, Calgary and especially Ottawa come to mind – is that they should never have had franchises in the first place – any more than Quebec City and Winnipeg should have. I say they should never have had franchises because the NHL has always been unwilling to do that which is necessary to keep everyone afloat – full equalization of all gate and TV revenues. Canada – whose national game it’s supposed to be – will soon be left with three teams only and then only if Vancouver survives, which means surviving Brian Burke which is asking a hell of a lot.

In order to make it go, the teams must play 1/3^rd more games than makes sense. Not only do the players get tired and jaded but so do the fans. Not only are there too many games in the regular season there are two many teams and too many teams making the play-offs. It’s overkill to the extreme.

Yesterday I spoke of the violence so let me just say that you cannot expect to encourage violence at every turn – after all it’s the owners who hire the general managers and coaches who select players and give them their marching orders – and still not have the kinds of disgraceful incidents which have become so commonplace. The McSorely incident is not an isolated one – there is a direct line between what he did and what general managers and coaches encourage. After all, McSorley – like Brashear, ironically – has spent his entire career getting penalties for being excessively violent. Every team must have a goon because if you don’t, the other team’s goon will disable your best players. Has anyone actually sat down and thought that one through? Surely it says that the rules of hockey and the enforcement of them are inadequate to protect players with talent who simply want to use their talents to skate and score goals. The acceptance, indeed encouragement of goons, is the NHL admitting that they cannot and will not enforce the rules they have on their books.

You would have thought that the refusal of governments to bale them out of their financial woes would have come as a wake-up call – especially since the government was prepared to help but voters across the land indicated that they had no intention of letting their tax dollars subsidize millionaires on skates.

But no. No lessons will be learned. McSorley will be made an example of because he "crossed the line" and players will continue to seek that line by ever pushing authority a little further. In short, McSorley will be the scapegoat for the National Hockey League.

The game has been driven into the ground by owners, who, in a sort of Ponzi scheme, continue to expand and pocket the expansion fees while they run the game into the ground.

No … the McSorley disgrace is not an isolated one but was bound to come in a league which at the very most clucks hypocritical tongues at violence and which treats the game as an excuse to bilk the public.