Melting Away the NHL’s Lost Season

The carcass of the National Hockey League's canceled 2004-05 season continues to smolder, like a pile of charred logs in the bottom of a fireplace.

It's fun to poke it and see what falls off...

Splinter No. 1: The Hockey News Begs For Forgiveness

Journalists make mistakes. Sometimes, the mistakes are (ahem) "Rather" large, like believing the validity of 1973 Texas Air National Guard medical documents that were created with Microsoft Word.

Sometimes, the mistakes are rather small, like spelling a name incorrectly — something I've pled guilty to, and have been the victim of, many a time.

How do we deal with errors in our work? Clarification, for one; correction in other cases. Simply getting the facts correct in subsequent articles works, too.

But getting on all fours and licking the feet of your readership until they pat the back of your head and tell you "all is forgiven?"

A simple "The Hockey News regrets the error" would have sufficed.

Instead, the venerable puck publication decided to issue an embarrassing indictment of its own lack of integrity in the form of an article by editor Jason Kay, dated Feb. 22:

First, an apology:

In case you missed it, on the night of Friday, Feb. 18, we reported on our website the expected return of NHL hockey for 2004-05.

Under the headline, "Season Saved Saturday?", we stated: "The NHL season is expected to be 'un-canceled' Saturday in New York."

We went on to report a player close to the talks who asked to remain anonymous said the two sides had agreed to a deal in principle that features a $45 million salary cap.

By Saturday night, we were the subject of scorn from some corners of the hockey world for the erroneous story.

We stand up and take full responsibility for the error. We've identified our mistakes and have learned from them.

An overbearing apology, but perhaps sincere. Except they couldn't leave well enough alone, and began a patronizing "explanation" of this journalist failure.

This is where The Hockey News decided to apply a yolk facial:

The story was not intended to be an unequivocal declaration the season had been saved. The question mark in the headline and use of the word "expected" in our lead sentence were qualifiers. Understandably, other media outlets picked up on the phrase "deal in principle" in the subsequent paragraph, but didn't mention it was a player source making the statement, not us.

So a question mark and the cover-our-asses word "expected" are supposed to counteract any notion that the article was a "unequivocal declaration the season had been saved."

But what about the most prominent quote in the Feb. 18 story, in the lead paragraph:

A player close to the talks who asked to remain anonymous told The Hockey News the two sides have agreed to a deal in principle that features a $45 million salary cap. Asked if there was any way a deal won't get done, the player said, "not that I can see. I couldn't possibly imagine the idea that somebody is going to try to make a name for themselves in the last minute here."

Gee ... I wonder how anyone could come away with the notion the season had been saved?

The Hockey News contends its story was blown out of proportion by a desperate hockey media, which is laughable when you consider the fact that it ran an irresponsible article that quotes a single anonymous source about a deal being made. (The Hockey News claims the information was corroborated by "many other well-placed sources in the industry," none of which made the "season saved" story in identified or anonymous citation.)

And then we get another explanation:

We stand 100 percent behind our source, both in terms of his character and legitimacy. We have absolutely no reason to believe he intentionally misled us. To the contrary, we have every reason to believe he was convinced a deal was done, less the fine print and was in a position to know what was happening.

Without knowing who the source was, it's impossible to know if he was in the room on the negotiation. But the NHLPA said no new proposals — and a $45 million cap would be a very new proposal — had been put forth by either side. Veteran hockey writer Sherry Ross of the New York Daily News had the real story after the meetings were done: "Bad rumors rushed in. The supposed $45 million cap said to be proposed by the NHL was a myth. The 'done deal' was a result of brutally poor reporting and lazy fact-checking. We in the media need to shoulder blame here, too. Like Fox Mulder, we wanted to believe."

Shoulder the blame, yes. Grovel, even though you were used as a tool by the NHLPA's public relations machine? No. The Hockey News should have simply written the correct story, and then outed the player who fed them this horrendous information; after all, he turned out not to be much of a source, right?

Splinter No. 2: Shut the F—k up, Mario

I have no respect for Mario Lemieux as an arbiter of what's right or wrong or fixable about the NHL. He's selfish, shortsighted, and always has been.

He bitched about clutching and grabbing in the mid-1990s, before one of his various retirements, as if hockey players had just discovered hugging and hooking. That's pure revisionism — are you telling me the Dale Hunters and Ken Linsemens of the world were defensive geniuses who never grabbed a jersey or set a pick for a more skilled teammate? Perhaps if Mario had been a more vocal advocate of that great antidote for obstruction (fighting), he would have suffered less hooks and holds during his stellar career.

Mario doesn't have any credibility in my eyes because he doesn't want solutions that serve all facets of hockey. Can a player who scored 683 goals possibly be an objective critic of the state of the game, balancing the need for both offense and defense? Of course not, and neither can the owner of a small-market piece of relocation bait in Pittsburgh be a qualified quibbler of equitable revenue sharing.

If Mario ran the NBA, the Atlanta Hawks would get half of the Lakers' profits, and LeBron James would take 75 free throws a game.

Now, Mario's at it again, telling Alan Robinson of the Associated Press that changes are a-comin' if and when the NHL returns to an arena near you:

"There's been a lot of talk about making the game more exciting, opening up the game, bringing back the offense that was there in the 1980s and early 1990s," said Lemieux, the Penguins' player-owner. "It's going to be a lot more exciting when the NHL comes back. It's going to be a great game with, hopefully, a lot more scoring and a lot of offense ... and (less) clutching and grabbing."

I think hockey fans can agree that less clutching and grabbing would be nice. A great way to accomplish that would be to get rid of the instigator rule and let players police themselves. Or, they could do something idiotic, as Robinson writes:

The NHL is also toying with eliminating the red line, thus doing away with the dreaded two-line passing rule and creating the end-to-end breaks so common in international play.

Ah, elimination of the red line. End-to-end passes.

Any chance Mario, who hung around the offensive zone like a hooker waiting outside of a Vegas casino, had any influence in this decision?

Later, Mario laments defensive hockey:

The NHL believes the changes will force coaches to play a more wide-open style. In recent seasons, overachieving teams such as the Carolina Hurricanes, Anaheim Mighty Ducks, and Calgary Flames relied on suffocating, star-controlling defenses to reach the Stanley Cup finals.

(Ed. Note: DAMN LEAGUE-KILLING PARITY!)

"Hopefully, we're going to take that out of that game," Lemieux said.

Yes, Mario – a bunch of silly rules changes will put an end to the kind of defensive hockey that's hindered the NHL's growth for the last decade.

Except, when you really think about it ... why would a team, that's already leaving four players on its own blue line, change its defensive philosophy if there's no red line and the other team is trying to complete 50-foot passes all game?

Oh, that's right: they won't.

One more note from the AP article:

To aid the impression that hockey is a fast, edgy game, NHL uniform supplier Reebok plans to outfit players in flashier, sleeker, and more form-fitting uniforms next season.

Just when you thought they couldn't screw up hockey any more, here comes Tie Domi skating into the neutral zone in muscle shirt and spandex bicycle shorts...

Splinter No. 3: The Blueprint For a New NHL

Everyone is entitled to his or her opinion, even when it's as ill conceived as that of Brian Ross of MinorLeagueNews.com.

Mr. Ross recently penned an article called "Blueprint For The New NHL? Are This Year's Crop of AHL All-Stars The Foundation of a Reborn NHL?" (Never mind the term "AHL All-Stars" or any players by name do not appear in the piece.)

Besides his suggestion of a convoluted system of regional all-star teams and tiered divisions, Ross contends that the best way to save the NHL is to actually remove it from television. Seriously: that's what he wrote. Because they haven't yet figured out a way to transfer the game from the arena to the TV, they should just keep it off television.

And he thinks this will actually help the sport.

Let me tell you about the Pearl Jam Theory.

A while back, after PJ sold millions upon millions of records with its first two albums, the boys stopped making videos for their singles.

No more MTV. No more VH1.

The good news is that the band still puts on a kick-ass live show, so people still show up to see Pearl Jam play. Only, the arenas the band used to play in have now become suburban amphitheaters. And the merchandise the band used to sell went from being in every alternative store in hip college towns to being on tables at concert venues. The band stopped selling as many CDs as it once did, radio stopped playing the new stuff, and Rolling Stone stopped putting them on the cover.

The quality of the product remained high, but the product was now shrouded in irrelevance. Fans could see Pearl Jam, buy Pearl Jam, and wear Pearl Jam, but they had to seek it all out. The band is out of the mainstream; to many, simply a historical footnote to a forgotten trend.

I'm still a Pearl Jam fan. I saw PJ on its last tour. One of the best shows I've ever seen. Something I wish more people could have experienced. I'd sure as hell watch a Pearl Jam show on MTV before the latest season of "Pimp My Punk'd" or "Ashlee Simpson's Super Sweet 16."

But they don't show concerts featuring cult curiosities on primetime television ... especially those who shun the mainstream.

Mr. Ross's plan would accomplish one, nearly impossible thing: making the NHL even more obscure than it already is.

Greg Wyshynski is also a weekly columnist for SportsFan Magazine. His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].