For the past decade or so, I’ve made a habit of watching hockey highlights on television. I began with the sadly-defunct SportsPage (a triple-A show for much of the Canadian broadcast talent you see on the CBC, SportsNet and TSN), and subsequently watched TSN or SportsNet.
During the winter, these shows almost always open with hockey highlights, so I’d sit down at 23:00 and be done by 23:15 at the latest.
Living in Malta, there’s obviously no Canadian highlights shows on TV. Plus, we don’t have a TV. So, as I mentioned a few weeks back, I’ve been watching highlights on the web (the CBC, mostly).
This has resulted in one subtle shift in my viewing. Instead of sitting back and watching the highlights from all the games played, I must now pick which clips I want to view. What’s the result?
Surprisingly, I watch far fewer highlights. I always check out the Canucks, obviously, but after that I’m kind of left staring at the other results and wondering which I should choose. I lean toward the Canucks’ divisional rivals and Canadian teams, I guess. Plus I’ve been watching a lot of Penguins and Blackhawks highlights, because they have the most exciting young players in the league.
Part of my problem, I suppose, is that I don’t know which highlights are worth watching–besides the score, there’s no metadata. I can’t tell which games went to overtime, or to a shootout, or which featured a fantastic goal or save.
Here’s a feature request for CBC Sports: add rating functionality to each video clip, enabling viewers to judge each clip. That would help me assess which highlights I ought to watch, and which I can give a miss.
What’s the big lesson? Well, there’s isn’t one. What’s the small lesson? A reminder about mediums and messages, and how moving video from the TV to the web inevitably changes our relationship to it.
Artist Kurt Kauper is causing quite a stir in the Canadian media because of his nude (and a little homoerotic, if you ask me) paintings of 1970s hockey icons:
“I was … interested in the way the male nude is received in our culture,” he said. “I think that it’s seen as something dangerous and threatening. And that’s not at all true for the female nude.
“It’s almost impossible to show a full-frontal male nude,” he added. “To show a male nude is to suggest that men and masculinity are passive objects to be looked at and I don’t think that our culture wants to think about men in those terms.”
I dig provocative, interesting work where sports and art intersects. One of my favourite books of poems is Hero of the Play by Richard Harrison. Here’s a recording (MOV) of “Russians”, a poem from that book (other recordings are here). In another poem, there’s a terrific line about Jagr sliding the puck under the goalie “like a surprise confession”.
This morning I had the peculiar experience of watching a Canucks game in Malta. Courtesy of the NASN, I was able to catch last night’s Vancouver/Calgary game (not live, thankfully) while eating breakfast at our local bar.
And the Canucks won. Considering their early season play, that was a nice bonus. They took a 3-0 lead and then, in classic Vancouver fashion, made it interesting by taking the third period off. Happily Luongo played the full sixty minutes. They did look like a team missing three of their regular defencemen.
This will probably be the only hockey game I ever watch serenaded by the clanking metal-on-metal sound of a blacksmith across the street. When I say ‘blacksmith’, I’m serious. Change this guy’s clothing, and he could be living in any of the last ten centuries. He’s got an anvil at the centre of his workshop, an open fire, and every surface of his workspace is covered in black soot.
Those guys need to learn how to pass the ball rubgy-style.
Speaking of North American sports, I’m pleased to announce that tomorrow morning I’m going to hit our local pub for lunch and, thanks to the North American Sports Network, watch Toronto play New York. At ice hockey. Amusingly, the pub is called “Rangers”, so I’m going to Rangers to watch the Rangers.
James and I were walking down the lane outside our farmhouse on Gozo, and I happened to glance at a bag of garbage awaiting pickup. Look a little closer–what’s that inside?
James Mirtle points to this story in the Washington Times about the Washington Capitals’ aggressive blogger relations program. The team has struggled on the ice, and that’s been reflected in poor attendance over the past few years (holy crap–you can see six games for as little as US $99). In the face of diminishing coverage from the mainstream media, they’ve been inviting bloggers into the press box:
“I was watching the traditional coverage, both broadcast and print, and was remarkably underwhelmed,” Keeley said of his decision to begin blogging last year. “The first thing I wrote was a general sense of being frustrated  well, really more than frustrated. Really angry. I started from this premise that Washington is not a sports town, but there’s nothing innate that says it can’t be. But the old media don’t do anything to change that perception. In fact, they perpetuate, in my opinion. So we started this blog, the idea that if you’re interested in hockey and want more coverage, come here.”
Capitals owner and AOL magnate Ted Leonsis is really drinking the Koolaid. He’s got his own blog, and posted a thoughtful response to the article yesterday:
Also, I do question some of the mainstream media and its programming choices and how it creates self-fulfilling prophecies in how it allocates its dwindling resources on some matters and ignores others. I also wonder – if you are programming one traditional way and you are shrinking, then why don’t you try something different? What do you have to lose as an enterprise if what you are doing today isn’t working? Embrace change. The NHL has and so have the Washington Capitals. Change is good.
Few CEOs blog, and fewer still would include an emoticon in their post. I’ll forgive him that idiosyncrasy, but I can’t forgive him for not accurately citing the Great One’s most famous quote (or, possibly, the Great One’s dad).
I hope the Caps get better. I saw them play Vancouver last year, and Alexander Ovechkin was an incredible joy to watch. He reminded me of a bigger Pavel Bure. Plus their new uniforms are definitely an improvement.
I watched Toews play for Canada at the World Juniors as a 17-year-old. He was a little over-matched among the 19-year-olds, but still had outstanding speed and puck-handling skills.
Oh dear. William Wadsworth “Bill” Wirtz, owner of the Chicago Blackhawks, recently passed away. He was apparently not popular with the fans in Chicago. Consider this pre-game ceremony, and in particular the moment of, uh, silence:
That’s in pretty poor taste. Thanks to Mr. Mirtle for the YouTubage.
