By Hal Maas
Recently I heard a couple of NHL telecasters bring up what could eventually turn into a very hairy dilemma for the Detroit Red Wings – what to do with Steve Yzerman.
Yanking down the Number 19 from "Retirement Row" up on the Joe Louis Arena rafters and fitting Stevie Y. for a new pair of skates and spot on the active roster isn’t one of the options.
But it is a brain-rattling issue. Yzerman has talked about wanting to run a hockey team one day. Right now he’s biding time learning how to be a general manager from arguably the best GM in the game today, Ken Holland.
But Holland is only 53 years old, meaning he could conceivably keep his spot with the Wings organization for another 10-15 years (Oops – well, maybe 20-25. I forgot – with today’s economy everybody’s gotta re-think retirement plans).
After a couple more years of learning the ropes, will Yzerman be satisfied with a limited role? Or will he think his chances of fulfilling career dreams are better served with (GASP!!!) another NHL team?
Healthy food is only good for you when you don’t try to consume too much. Cram too many good things into your stomach and pretty soon all that’s happening is – you’re sluggish and overweight. Right now the Red Wings hierarchy is full of great, healthy hockey minds – Ken Holland, Jim Nill, Jimmy Devellano and Yzerman. The tummy’s full – but not to the point of being painfully full like you feel when you’ve just wolfed down one too many slices of scrumptious Little Caesars pizza that team owner Mike Ilitch serves up. Scotty Bowman, the richest hockey mind in the organization, left to take a position with the Chicago Blackhawks. Even he may have recognized that being part of a loaded front office was just enough to risk (BURRRP!) a little hockey heartburn, so he moved on.
Finding a comfortable fit for all the Wings’ managerial components may be like trying to fit 4 letters into a 3-letter word (think Joe Biden’s attempt with his 3-letter word "j-o-b-s"). It doesn’t quite work. There is no "b.s." here – The Wings have to try to find a way to allow Holland to keep on keepin’ on in his role while making sure Yzerman is a valuable contributor to the hockey club for which he’s given 100-percent of his professional blood and sweat for as long as he desires.
***
Yzerman’s name and number 19 are attached to a 19-game Red Wings ticket package plan this season, while the name and number of the team’s legend of yesteryear, Number 9 Gordie Howe, labels a more modest 9-game ticket package. Hmmm, too bad the Wings didn’t take it to the other extreme – offer a Tomas Kopecky Ticket Package. All 82 games. The Wings take you on the road for every game. Somebody would’ve signed on.
Friday, October 17, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Singing the Blues Over Fight Songs
By Hal Maas
Before you read further and get ticked because you come to realize I've been down this musical road before, I promise that it's the last huffing and puffing I'm going to do over it. When the last word is written at the bottom of this page I'll have gotten it all out.
Could you imagine the Notre Dame football team pouring onto the football field with fight song that sounded like it came from the collection of the best of Slim Whitman? Or instead of "Hail to the Victors" the Michigan Wolverines celebrated touchdowns to something that sounds like a track Eminem might lay down?
Some songs are just psychologically fastened to a team. Over time one is synonymous with the other.
Except when you get down to the poor high schools -- the ones that have to borrow their fight songs, usually from colleges.
The guy who wrote the catchy "On, Wisconsin" is, I'm betting, getting royalty checks the size of the government bailout plan just because of what I've been hearing over the last month of high school football in mid-Michigan.
I go to watch Clio High School's football team, I hear the band march out playing what sounds a lot like "On, Wisconsin". Hmmph, copycats (except they tweaked one phrase so two short notes are played in place of one longer one)... So I drive five miles south to Mt. Morris to watch that football team, and out comes the school's marching band playing ---- Clio's fight song???? Must be -- it sure sounds like "On, Wisconsin".
One of the local TV stations' cameras goes down to nearby Goodrich High School on game day morning to put the students on camera jumping up and down, cheering (how'd they get all those kids out of bed before 6am -- promise free iPhones???!!!) and listening to the band strike up the ol' fight song -- but, wait -- it's the fight song of Clio --, no, hold it...Mt. Morris...uh, sorry..."On, Wisconsin".
That same TV station decided to put a group of middle schoolers on camera to let them whoop it up for game week in the town of Caro. So, hey, let's have 'em sing their school fight song!
OK, kids -- hit it! -- Oh, come on!! Not "On, Wisconsin" again!!!! Doesn't anyone have a different fight song?
So, after frittering through four frustrating Fridays, I sit down Saturday afternoon to watch Big Ten college football. Ohio State soon surrenders an early touchdown to Wisconsin and --- there it is again!
"On, Wis-con-sin......On, Wis-con-sin.....dah, dah, dah, dah, daaaaaaaaaaaaaah".
Four weeks -- five schools -- same damned song! So I finally started singing/shouting out at the TV: "Cli-o High School, Good-rich High School......"
....make....up....your...own......sooooooooooonnnnnnng!!!"
Before you read further and get ticked because you come to realize I've been down this musical road before, I promise that it's the last huffing and puffing I'm going to do over it. When the last word is written at the bottom of this page I'll have gotten it all out.
Could you imagine the Notre Dame football team pouring onto the football field with fight song that sounded like it came from the collection of the best of Slim Whitman? Or instead of "Hail to the Victors" the Michigan Wolverines celebrated touchdowns to something that sounds like a track Eminem might lay down?
Some songs are just psychologically fastened to a team. Over time one is synonymous with the other.
Except when you get down to the poor high schools -- the ones that have to borrow their fight songs, usually from colleges.
The guy who wrote the catchy "On, Wisconsin" is, I'm betting, getting royalty checks the size of the government bailout plan just because of what I've been hearing over the last month of high school football in mid-Michigan.
I go to watch Clio High School's football team, I hear the band march out playing what sounds a lot like "On, Wisconsin". Hmmph, copycats (except they tweaked one phrase so two short notes are played in place of one longer one)... So I drive five miles south to Mt. Morris to watch that football team, and out comes the school's marching band playing ---- Clio's fight song???? Must be -- it sure sounds like "On, Wisconsin".
One of the local TV stations' cameras goes down to nearby Goodrich High School on game day morning to put the students on camera jumping up and down, cheering (how'd they get all those kids out of bed before 6am -- promise free iPhones???!!!) and listening to the band strike up the ol' fight song -- but, wait -- it's the fight song of Clio --, no, hold it...Mt. Morris...uh, sorry..."On, Wisconsin".
That same TV station decided to put a group of middle schoolers on camera to let them whoop it up for game week in the town of Caro. So, hey, let's have 'em sing their school fight song!
OK, kids -- hit it! -- Oh, come on!! Not "On, Wisconsin" again!!!! Doesn't anyone have a different fight song?
So, after frittering through four frustrating Fridays, I sit down Saturday afternoon to watch Big Ten college football. Ohio State soon surrenders an early touchdown to Wisconsin and --- there it is again!
"On, Wis-con-sin......On, Wis-con-sin.....dah, dah, dah, dah, daaaaaaaaaaaaaah".
Four weeks -- five schools -- same damned song! So I finally started singing/shouting out at the TV: "Cli-o High School, Good-rich High School......"
....make....up....your...own......sooooooooooonnnnnnng!!!"
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Does This Blog Make Sense? Measure It!
By Hal Maas
'Tis the season to beat point spreads, fa, la, la, la, laaaaaah, la, laah, laaah, laaaaaa".
So what say we rate the top three craziest things you find in a football game, ranking just ahead of offsetting penalties (who exactly is being punished by THAT?) and only putting certain plays up for replay review (hey, they're all important to the outcome. You want the game called perfectly, don't you?)
So let's hit paydirt and spike the ball on the three biggies:
(1) The measurement.
(2) The measurement.
(3) The measurement.
From the NFL down to the nine-year-olds I was watching play a few weeks ago, it is consistent, and is maybe the most thrilling moment you’ll find in a football game. A ball carrier falls to the turf, the ball cradled in the crook of his arm as he somersaults forward from the 28 to the 30 yard line.
Did his knee touch the ground at the 28, 29 – or a half-yard in-between?
The official, --probably a high school science teacher who loves football and needs to earn a few extra bucks and lose a few extra pounds – runs up, head bobbing, eyes almost focused on the 28 yard line. He confidently, but arbitrarily, places the ball a half-inch short of the chalk mark that is the 28 yard line.
A half-inch short. No doubt in his mind that’s where it goes. He saw it with his own 20/20 eye--…. well, maybe more like 20/50...eyesight.
The referee –- a lawyer with a pile of personal injury cases on his desk to review Monday morning and a wife who’s been after him to fix the furnace for weeks – frantically signals time-out and points to the sidelines where the fellows on the “chain gang” are standing. The fellow at the front has his yard marker firmly planted squarely on the 28 yard line along that sideline.
So, they come out ever so carefully…the two guys linked by a ten-yard-long chain, holding the crowd’s collective heart hostage for a few seconds until they place their respective yard markers into the ground.
First down, or short by an inch?
The ref holds…his…breath…and…
deliberately…places…the…lead.....yard…marker…down…and…
(PAUSE)
It’s one inch short!
OMG! What excitement! The heartbreak, the chills, the spills!
NASA has what’s called the Space Linear Mass Measurement Device (SLAMMD) designed to provide an accurate means of determining the on-orbit mass of humans between the 5th percentile Japanese female and the 95th percentile American male. That, I’m quite sure, is not nearly as precise as a chain gang measuring for a first down.
So I hope that the system of measuring for a first down doesn’t get SLAMMD.
It is a moment of heart-stopping, palm-twisting, sweat-draining, breath-gulping, toe-curling excitement.
Just one thing: Why didn’t they just ask the official with the 20/50 eyesight? He knew!
'Tis the season to beat point spreads, fa, la, la, la, laaaaaah, la, laah, laaah, laaaaaa".
So what say we rate the top three craziest things you find in a football game, ranking just ahead of offsetting penalties (who exactly is being punished by THAT?) and only putting certain plays up for replay review (hey, they're all important to the outcome. You want the game called perfectly, don't you?)
So let's hit paydirt and spike the ball on the three biggies:
(1) The measurement.
(2) The measurement.
(3) The measurement.
From the NFL down to the nine-year-olds I was watching play a few weeks ago, it is consistent, and is maybe the most thrilling moment you’ll find in a football game. A ball carrier falls to the turf, the ball cradled in the crook of his arm as he somersaults forward from the 28 to the 30 yard line.
Did his knee touch the ground at the 28, 29 – or a half-yard in-between?
The official, --probably a high school science teacher who loves football and needs to earn a few extra bucks and lose a few extra pounds – runs up, head bobbing, eyes almost focused on the 28 yard line. He confidently, but arbitrarily, places the ball a half-inch short of the chalk mark that is the 28 yard line.
A half-inch short. No doubt in his mind that’s where it goes. He saw it with his own 20/20 eye--…. well, maybe more like 20/50...eyesight.
The referee –- a lawyer with a pile of personal injury cases on his desk to review Monday morning and a wife who’s been after him to fix the furnace for weeks – frantically signals time-out and points to the sidelines where the fellows on the “chain gang” are standing. The fellow at the front has his yard marker firmly planted squarely on the 28 yard line along that sideline.
So, they come out ever so carefully…the two guys linked by a ten-yard-long chain, holding the crowd’s collective heart hostage for a few seconds until they place their respective yard markers into the ground.
First down, or short by an inch?
The ref holds…his…breath…and…
deliberately…places…the…lead.....yard…marker…down…and…
(PAUSE)
It’s one inch short!
OMG! What excitement! The heartbreak, the chills, the spills!
NASA has what’s called the Space Linear Mass Measurement Device (SLAMMD) designed to provide an accurate means of determining the on-orbit mass of humans between the 5th percentile Japanese female and the 95th percentile American male. That, I’m quite sure, is not nearly as precise as a chain gang measuring for a first down.
So I hope that the system of measuring for a first down doesn’t get SLAMMD.
It is a moment of heart-stopping, palm-twisting, sweat-draining, breath-gulping, toe-curling excitement.
Just one thing: Why didn’t they just ask the official with the 20/50 eyesight? He knew!
Saturday, October 11, 2008
"Hockey Night in Canada" Loses Musical Identity
By Hal Maas
"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."
Six musical notes that since 1968 have quickened the heartbeat of any hockey fan who's ever heard Don Cherry ranting about the too-sweet Swedes and making fist-clenching, vein-popping arguments for no-touch icing because there have been way too many too-hard icing "touches" -- so hard that players' ankles have snapped and careers have been zapped (think Pat Peake).
"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."
Oh, I started watching and appreciating hockey years earlier, when the tinny-sounding "Hello Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland..." from the maestro
of the mic at Maple Leaf Gardens Foster Hewitt would open a Saturday night telecast -- an 8pm game always joined in progress at 9pm ET because, ..well, uh,....gee, you know, as a ten-year-old I didn't really KNOW why I only got to see 90 minutes of the game, nor did I know why the Toronto Maple Leafs were always on. I thought it was another weekly game show like "Truth or Consequences", where the winner came back to play a different opponent the next week. The Leafs always won -- and next Saturday night, dammit, there they were again against another team. And the only round thing Tim Horton was selling then was his able stickhandling of a hockey puck -- not a jelly-filled doughnut washed down with a steaming cup of coffee.
But then a few years went by, I learned how the NHL schedule actually worked (duh!), and suddenly for me the sun started rising at night --- whenever I heard those six musical notes:
"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."
Boom, ba boom, ba boom, BOOM --- goes the heart. It's time for " Night in Canada"!
A whole generation learned through the '60s and '70s that it's really not the National Anthem that officially begins a Saturday night National Hockey League game. Naw, it's ----
"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT..."
And then in the '80s and '90s still another generation learned the same lesson.
But there won't be another generation. This latest one is getting screwed because the Canadian Broadcasting Company decided not to renew the rights to the song. There'll be a different
song opening this season's NHL telecasts on CBC, the result of a contest between 15,000 entries. I'm sure many are fine songs -- as SONGS, not as an automatic connection to a significant facet of one's life. A "second national anthem", if you will.
I am American and I'm super-ticked about this -- I can only imagine how Canadians felt about the song that's become a part of their fabric. I understand that other Canadian networks are planningto keep the song alive in their presentations but, again, it's not about just the song, per se -- it's about how certain music is inexorably tied to certain elements of life. You mess with the psyche when you break 'em apart.
The nine people that still watch the Miss America Pageant still expect to hear somebody singing "There she iiiis, Miss A-merrrr-i-caaa...." when she's crowned. And I'll bet that, even though it never made the "Hot 100" at either Billboard or Blender magazine, you still can clearly hear in your head Doc Severinson's orchestra belting out that theme music whenever Johnny Carson crosses your mind. Certain music triggers certain events. How in the hell do you get through a hockey season without ---
"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."
So go ahead. Shoot me now.
Sorry, but I'm already feeling like I'm Jack Nicholson wanting to break down and peek through that door in "The Shining". Hey, -- let's open the telecasts THAT way. Use the new theme while you make play-by-play guy Jim Hughson the guy peeking at you through the hole in the door.
Imagine him on your big screen TV sneering, "Heeeerrree's HOCKEY!!!!!"
"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."
Six musical notes that since 1968 have quickened the heartbeat of any hockey fan who's ever heard Don Cherry ranting about the too-sweet Swedes and making fist-clenching, vein-popping arguments for no-touch icing because there have been way too many too-hard icing "touches" -- so hard that players' ankles have snapped and careers have been zapped (think Pat Peake).
"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."
Oh, I started watching and appreciating hockey years earlier, when the tinny-sounding "Hello Canada, and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland..." from the maestro
of the mic at Maple Leaf Gardens Foster Hewitt would open a Saturday night telecast -- an 8pm game always joined in progress at 9pm ET because, ..well, uh,....gee, you know, as a ten-year-old I didn't really KNOW why I only got to see 90 minutes of the game, nor did I know why the Toronto Maple Leafs were always on. I thought it was another weekly game show like "Truth or Consequences", where the winner came back to play a different opponent the next week. The Leafs always won -- and next Saturday night, dammit, there they were again against another team. And the only round thing Tim Horton was selling then was his able stickhandling of a hockey puck -- not a jelly-filled doughnut washed down with a steaming cup of coffee.
But then a few years went by, I learned how the NHL schedule actually worked (duh!), and suddenly for me the sun started rising at night --- whenever I heard those six musical notes:
"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."
Boom, ba boom, ba boom, BOOM --- goes the heart. It's time for " Night in Canada"!
A whole generation learned through the '60s and '70s that it's really not the National Anthem that officially begins a Saturday night National Hockey League game. Naw, it's ----
"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT..."
And then in the '80s and '90s still another generation learned the same lesson.
But there won't be another generation. This latest one is getting screwed because the Canadian Broadcasting Company decided not to renew the rights to the song. There'll be a different
song opening this season's NHL telecasts on CBC, the result of a contest between 15,000 entries. I'm sure many are fine songs -- as SONGS, not as an automatic connection to a significant facet of one's life. A "second national anthem", if you will.
I am American and I'm super-ticked about this -- I can only imagine how Canadians felt about the song that's become a part of their fabric. I understand that other Canadian networks are planningto keep the song alive in their presentations but, again, it's not about just the song, per se -- it's about how certain music is inexorably tied to certain elements of life. You mess with the psyche when you break 'em apart.
The nine people that still watch the Miss America Pageant still expect to hear somebody singing "There she iiiis, Miss A-merrrr-i-caaa...." when she's crowned. And I'll bet that, even though it never made the "Hot 100" at either Billboard or Blender magazine, you still can clearly hear in your head Doc Severinson's orchestra belting out that theme music whenever Johnny Carson crosses your mind. Certain music triggers certain events. How in the hell do you get through a hockey season without ---
"Dunt, da dunt, da dunt, DUNT...."
So go ahead. Shoot me now.
Sorry, but I'm already feeling like I'm Jack Nicholson wanting to break down and peek through that door in "The Shining". Hey, -- let's open the telecasts THAT way. Use the new theme while you make play-by-play guy Jim Hughson the guy peeking at you through the hole in the door.
Imagine him on your big screen TV sneering, "Heeeerrree's HOCKEY!!!!!"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
