Sunday, December 24, 2006

I never thought I'd rant against Don Cherry, but for once he's actually gone too far. In this case, he's insulted the people who if they didn't exist, he wouldn't have his salary. The fans.

Now, I didn't watch Coaches Corner, as, unfortunately, I was busy christmas shopping and christmas shopping is more important than watching yet another crappy crappy pointless leafs game (I'd rather watch Anaheim play Pittsburgh than watch the Leafs play anybody) And, as a side complaint, Don Cherry's finally available in something other than RealVideo. It's about time, CBC. freakin Realvideo. honestly. Anything was better than that crap. Still its amusing that they can't get the rights to show NHL clips online. Wow. You can't even see online the clips that Don is discussing. Hey, NHL, it's a freakin CLIP. ITS FREE ADVERTISING FOR THE NHL. Man the NHL is really run by idiots. The CBC too, but we all know that. It's an interesting case study, an organization run by hippies, and an organization run by lawyers, and they amount to the same thing.

But that's irrelevant. We're talking about Rory Fitzpatrick. Now, I know Don didn't call him a Joke, but he's saying people are looking at this as a joke, and he's saying the NHL is NOT a joke. This is where I disagree. The *NHL* IS a joke. What with teams in cities that shouldn't have them, what with the league not wanting teams to move into Canada wheras doing less than nothing to prevent the opposite. What with everything Bettman has done over the years and is still planning to do in the next few. That people don't respect the institution enough anymore to vote overpayed millionaires to an all star game in Dallas. Why even have a vote then? Why not just pick whoever has the best stats and just automatically send them? The vote exists because the NHL wanted people to feel involved. Which is a surprisingly valid thought coming from those in charge of the NHL. I voted for Rory a few days ago. I ended up voting for a bunch of other players I wouldn't have even bothered voting for if I didn't feel like voting for Rory. Because of Rory, Teemu Selanne got another vote. Because of Rory, people are actually paying attention to a hockey game being played in the southern united states.

Rory IS an all star. He's an all star enough to play in todays NHL. If you say otherwise, it implies the quality of the game has gone downhill. He's no Wayne Gretzky, he's never going to try to sell me McDonald's Big Mac's, or a new car, or season tickets to a hockey team playing in a desert.. But to us fans he's an all star because he makes a living playing hockey. He's an all star because we say he is. He's a step away from being one of us, working our hum drum day to day jobs living our lives. The fans jumped on this bandwagon for a reason. Perhaps they're implying the league has become a joke, perhaps they're just having fun and poking fun at the apparent seriousness of the All Star game (Which should really just be a party celebrating the sport people enjoy watching and playing)...

In fact, Personally, I've never cared about All-Star games. I don't even think fans particularly care much about the All-star game either. If we want to watch the best players in the world play each other, thats what the Olympics are for.

Plus, for the record, we're not laughing at Rory. We like Rory. He knows how to have fun. We're laughing at all of you who are taking this so seriously. It's just a game, you know.

As for Cherry's line "They never saw him play, how could they say he's an all-star?", well, don't get me started on overrated Leafs players getting more recognition and fame than they deserve on account of the CBC.

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