Friday, March 15, 2013
The Cascade: Scoular: Why America’s pastime trumps Canada’s bloodsport
(cupwire.ca)
Mission and hope, Mission and hope…
To compare baseball to hockey is to risk that same mentality – that one is tougher, that the athletes of one sport aren’t even athletes. It’s a mixture of defensiveness from fans of a less popular sport and false bravado. But this relies on another television twisting – the knowledge of the sport through highlight reels. The emphasis of home runs and diving catches, although exciting, falls into that same trap of predictability and replay. Where baseball lives is in between, the so-called “boring” parts where “nothing’s happening.”
Baseball broadcasts aren’t groundbreaking, but they don’t have the problem of failing to show – everything is before and visible, the pitcher-catcher-batter relation clearly defined and observable. When runners reach base, the imperfect but still effective solution of splitting the screen, showing multiple perspectives, with base-running coaches in the background, cuts to managerial direction and the different plate positions all held on the screen until the last possible second, when the pitch is released, the early jump of a stealing runner or stop at the realization of a strikeout just registering at the corner of the frame.
A friend that helped re-introduce me to baseball offered one observation that also helped when it comes to season and game length: with a game every day, there is less dwelling on the past, an allowance for losses because every team will with such a packed schedule.
What it also means is just more to watch – there are those that try to see everything, but the overabundance means that there’s the routine of there always being a game on, to turn on for a few innings as inoffensive backdrop for an evening of trying-to-but-not doing homework.
Baseball extends through days, timeslots and pre-conceptions. Surely the greatest experience of watching hockey is playoff overtime when the game doesn’t end until a goal, with no commercials to interrupt. With baseball, there is the possibility for this with every game.
Every half-inning is defined this way; it could be over in regular 1-2-3 fashion, or take an hour, with nothing to break in and advertise. Sure, there’s always the signage in sight, and required broadcaster mention, but it’s a pleasant feature, and better yet an outcome of the eternal possibility in baseball – a sport unrestricted by time, where victory is always an open chance.
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< 1 2Have you watched the 70s Canadiens? They were wonderful, some of the best, most stylish hockey ever played. They were prettier to watch than any team today. The Bruins had some great skill too behind Orr and Esposito parking his big butt in front of the net and slapping in rebounds.
The Flyers were thugs, but ironically Shero was the most pro-Soviet Canadian hockey figure of his time, lifting Soviet training drills verbatim and using them for his Flyers. But most Canadians hated the Flyers. They were too thuggish and Shero was too weird. There was practically a national celebration when the Habs swept them in 4 in the 1976 Finals and when (earlier in the year) Larry Robinson landed a flurry of punches on Dave Schultz, one of the most hated goons of all time.
It should be said that Schultz could play a bit and some of the other enforcers of that time could play a lot. Terry O'Reilly once had 90 points in a season. The 1 goal, 3 assists, 189 penalty minutes goon was very much an 80s invention.
Cherry's just sort of there. He's the guy who rants on Hockey Night in Canada during the first intermission, it's all pretty tongue in cheek and Don's almost 80 anyway so who can be surprised that a dinosaur has dinosaur views. Due to the time zone difference I watch most of my live hockey on Saturday night and it's about laughing at what Don wears and what Don says.
But physical intimidation is part of the game and occasionally you have to fight. Getting it out of the way actually allows you to play hockey. Even Jean Beliveau had to drop the gloves a few times in his career.
There was a CBC mini-series I believe called "Canada Russia '72" that showed the Canadians in less than flattering light. They start out as cocky, out-of-shape prima donnas who take the Russians for granted, get booted out of Sweden for gooning it up in some pre-series friendlies, then rough up the Russians for the crime of being better than they thought they'd be.
I too was born a deacde after '72 so I don't have first-hand experience with what '72 meant to Canadians, but I think at this point the relationship with the series is a bit of a complicated one. At least for people I know of my generation there's a tradition of shame about how Canadian international players comport themselves that starts with '72 (it helps that we can associate Clarke with the hated Flyers, but also in past Olympics I know there were some incidents from Curtis Joseph and Rick Nash that a few Canadians saw as whiny, entitled behaviour...not to mention the 1987 brawl with the Russians at the Juniors), and also '72 is seen as the beginning of the proud Canadian tradition of going into a panic about the future of hockey in Canada any time we look like we might lose a tournament. Of course it could just be the group of Canadian hockey fans I associate with.
EDIT: I should add too that if asked who was the great player of the '72 series a lot of Canadian hockey fans I know would say Tretiak.
Fighting and intimidation and roughing up the fast skaters still occurs. And it still occurs because many hockey fans would stop watching if it didn't.
There's already a model for how hockey should be played. It's called college hockey. You get in a fight, you're gone. You do something unsportsmanlike, you're gone. So the only thing you see in a college hockey game is hockey. If the pro game was played like college hockey, it would be a lot more popular, IMO.
Getting back to the '72 series, I watched it. The expectation going in was that the NHL players would crush them. But after the first game, it was apparent the Russians were going to crush the NHL. The score was 7-3 and if not for some heroic goaltending by Dryden, it could have been 10-3. And the Canadians came off as sore losers, refusing to shake hands after the game. The pros fell back to plan B, which was to drag the series down into the mud.
Clarke's hack of Kharlamov was the exclamation point. It was basically saying "We can't match your hand so we're kicking over the card table instead.".
As evidenced by the lack of interest in college hockey outside of Minnesota?
We all know Clarke slashed Kharlamov but if you're going to paint it as a the Canadians winning by being goons I'm not signing off on that. Serge Savard tightened up the defense while Paul Henderson, Yvan Cournoyer and Phil Esposito played out of their skins up front.
Isn't this the site's motto?
I never even realized that people had a problem watching the puck until Fox started their stupid puck trax. I'm not a hard core hockey viewer, but it's never even occurred to me that people couldn't or weren't figuring out where the puck was at. As you point out, you don't need to actually see the puck to know where it's at, the actions and movements of the players tell you everything you need to know. I just find it to be by far the easiest sport to follow (with basketball you have the dribbling rules which complicate the game a little for the novice...something like you must dribble the ball for every step you take, except when charging the basket, and then you are given a number of steps based upon your popularity where you don't have to dribble, or something like that) for a novice in it's simplicity.
This is not to imply there aren't complex strategies involved etc. This is to point out how easy it is to understand the game with basically one sentence worth of rules, anything complex is about specific rules on the how and why etc. (note same could be said about almost all the games of this type, but I feel hockey is more approachable due to it's frequency of scoring along with the frequency of chances. Soccer is too low on both accounts, and basketball is too high. A casual fan seeing 10 baskets can think this game is too easy, while a soccer fan seeing a 2-1 game, and the relatively deliberate pace of the game might just find it a tad too slow. Hockey gets it about right you get 3-4 games with some regularity and they score about 1 out of every 5 scoring chances so it makes it seem difficult, and frequent enough that you can't turn your eyes away from the tv. Which is why I think it's of all the major sports, the most tv casual viewer friendly one)
Illaqueatus in valorem iudicia
The networks don't exactly clamor all over themselves for NHL contracts either. If pro sports were a corporation, the NHL would be the mailroom clerk. The only way to rectify that is for the NHL to start taking itself seriously and get rid of all the unnecessary contact. The rationalization "hitting is part of the game" is ridiculous. It's only part of the game because that's the way it's been taught. If you reduce the hitting and emphasize the skills more, it might be more interesting to watch.
For instance, every time someone digs the puck out of the corner, the defender nails him against the boards, or at least tries to, without even bothering to go for the puck. Why? How is that a part of hockey? All it does is take both players out of play temporarily. Even football, a much more violent game, does not allow forceful contact on the skill players unless they have the ball. So it gets reduced to the least common denominator, a bunch of dimwitted brutes scrumming for the puck. I wonder how many amazing hockey players are out there who we don't know about because they would be buried under the gratuitous contact distributed by thugs on skates?
They aren't great at hockey then but some kind of basketball on ice, hockey is a physical sport.
Actually there is a kinder, gentler stick-on-ice-game, Bandy, with pro leagues in Sweden and Russia. Being a goalie in Bandy is probably one of the worst positions in terms of physical punishment in all of sports though.
They play real hockey in college too and it doesn't include the thuggery. I find it more interesting to watch.
Remembering 72 as 'when the Russians skated circles around Canadian thugs' not only leaves out some important reasons why Canada won the series, it also leaves out what happened next.
Unlike some other countries who, once surpassed in their national sport, flailed about in the global midcard for generations (I'm looking at you English soccer), Canadian hockey regrouped. Fifteen years later Canada won another huge game against the Russians, this time on a goal made and finished by the two greatest players since the 70s and possibly ever, Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux. To this day Canada produces some of the most skilled players in the world, like Sidney Crosby, John Tavares, Jonathan Toews, and Nazem Kadri (hey, I said I was a Leaf fan).
Are you kidding? Red lines, blue lines, "offside", and just when the action gets going, everyone stops and just skates around in circles for seemingly no reason. If you think the average casual viewer finds this easier to follow than the other three major sports, I strongly suspect you're Canadian. Or maybe it's just that I'm not.
Yeah, there's never a break in the free-flowing action of NFL football.
No, I want to be able to actually see the puck, the way I can see the baseball, the basketball, and the football. I want to be able to see it easily and clearly as it passes from one player to another. Color me dense, but on TV, at least, it all comes across as a lot of dissembled motion, way too often interrupted by the puck sailing down to the wrong end of the ice, which I take it is some sort of a defensive move.
Football, OTOH, is ridiculously easy to follow on TV and understand in about five minutes. You advance the ball 10 yards or more in 3 tries, you keep going. You don't advance it 10 yards or more in 3 tries, you have the option of trying again or kicking. You cross the goal line with the ball, six points. You kick it over the crossbar, 3 points, or one point after the touchdown. But what makes it easy to understand is that the game stops after each down, so each play can immediately be set in context by the announcer. Anyone who's confused can be straightened out before the next play even begins. You don't have this breathing room in hockey.
And hockey on radio, Jesus. Sixty minutes of describing action, and maybe 6 or 7 goals a game, with no way of anticipating when they're about to be scored. Unlike the other often low scoring game (baseball), the scoring seems random to the casual listener or viewer. In this respect it's much more like soccer, another sport where the defense can totally interrupt the flow of the game with one strategic kick that makes the entire preceding action totally inconsequential. But I guess it's much like baseball or American football, in that if you grow up with it, its rhythm seems both dramatic and obvious. Basketball is the one major U.S. sport that even a 3 year old can understand and follow.
Of course there is, but it's there for a clear purpose, and not just the commercial one. With hockey the interruptions are random.
Hockey, the goal is to score a puck in the other teams net. There is a weird rule about offsides, and another rule about passing, beyond that, everything makes sense.
I'm not even going to pretend that baseball and football are remotely easy to understand by a casual viewer, to think that is nuts. Imagine trying to learn cricket... that is similar to the complexity of baseball. Football same way.
Really only basketball and soccer are comparable in ease to comprehend, and basketball (at the professional level) has the weird rules, that the number of all star game appearances a player has determines the number of steps he's allowed to make without dribbling the ball. In all seriousness, basketball is just as easy to follow as hockey, I just think the high scores create an illusion of the game being too easy. I understand both games have unique rules that stops the play, but that just takes a little bit of watching to understand.
Why? I'm sorry but knowing where it is enough. The game is the athletes and their movements. I understand it's your preference and all, but I don't think that casual viewers care that much about it. There is a reason why women have a tendency to like hockey at a fairly high percentage, it's easy enough to understand if you didn't grow up with a sports background.
You have got to be ####### kidding me with this. It's massively complicated. You have to learn the concept of downs, you have to learn concept of formations, you have to learn the concept of start and stop of plays. Line of scrimmage, etc. There is way too much for a first time viewer of the sport to take in. Saying football is easier to watch on tv than hockey is absurd. Hockey, basketball, soccer, polo, jai alai, etc. Are all the same game, the only thing you have to learn is the unique features of the individual sport(no hands in soccer, stick only in hockey, dribbling in basketball, horse and stick for polo, water for water polo etc.) but the concept is simple. Football is massively more complicated. If it was easy, like the other sports there would be no stoppage of play(it would be a lot more like rugby).
Any of the sports of this type is absurd on the radio. I couldn't for a second imagine enjoying a hockey radio broadcast. Only reason to ever listen to it, is if you are a fan of the team and have no way of watching the game and want the results, but yes, you are right it's a horrible medium for the sport(same with basketball, soccer etc.)
I think Hockey is about the perfect tv sport. I obviously think baseball is the better sport overall, especially MLB because of the nature of the season, the value of a division title, the value of bench depth and a host of other reasons.
Sure, if you grew up with it, or had someone patiently explain to you why the action starts and stops for no apparent reason. The basic goal of all the non-baseball games is the same: Advance the ball across the goal (or through it). But the offside violations in hockey are NOT easy to pick up on TV, and yet they continually disrupt the flow of the game for what to the untrained eye seems like a mere technicality.
I'm not even going to pretend that baseball and football are remotely easy to understand by a casual viewer, to think that is nuts. Imagine trying to learn cricket... that is similar to the complexity of baseball. Football same way.
My wife grew up in Switzerland, England and France, and had been to about 2 or 3 baseball games in her entire life before we met, and I was able to explain all the basics to her over the course of the first game we went to together. There are children's books written for six year olds that explain the game with perfect clarity. And of course with all that time between pitches, you've got plenty of opportunity to further explain these concepts while the game is unfolding.
Football is massively more complicated. If it was easy, like the other sports there would be no stoppage of play(it would be a lot more like rugby).
But regulated and pre-known stoppage of play is essential to the nature of American style football. By itself, stoppage of play doesn't make it any more complicated. If anything, it just makes it easier to follow, for the simple reason that as in baseball, you have time to collect your thoughts between bursts of action. The nonstop flow of hockey, with turnovers taking place at a much higher rate than in any other major American pro sport, makes it much harder, not easier, to follow.
Football strategy is complex, but that's not what most casual fans care about. They care about feats of strength and athleticism, all of which are easy to pick up on TV without any advanced knowledge at all. A casual viewer may have no idea why the quarterback is gesticulating and yelling "Hurry, hurry!" before the play begins, or why his backs are simultaneously in motion, but he or she can easily see and appreciate when a perfect pass threads the needle between two defenders, or when a running back slithers through several tacklers to break off a long gain. There's a reason why football is the highest rated TV sport, and it doesn't all have to do with gambling or the one game a week scheduling.
As for basketball, how long does it take to explain the shot clock, the concept of fouls, or even the concept of deliberate fouling in order to delay the end of the game? To understand the Triangle offense or the floating zone defense gives a fan a greater appreciation of the game, but like football, the basic goal and appeal of the game can be understood by small children.
Any of the sports of this type is absurd on the radio. I couldn't for a second imagine enjoying a hockey radio broadcast. Only reason to ever listen to it, is if you are a fan of the team and have no way of watching the game and want the results, but yes, you are right it's a horrible medium for the sport(same with basketball, soccer etc.)
Not basketball. Basketball on the radio, in the hands of a good announcer like Marv Albert, comes to life in a way that hockey or soccer never can. The pattern of a basketball play takes place within a relatively small space, and often involves just one or two passes before a shot, all easily described. Hockey and soccer feature many more passes over much larger territory, far more turnovers, and far fewer shots relative to everything else. All of that makes the radio game inherently much less satisfying.
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My preference is for hockey. For me, the NHL version in its current incarnation is the only perfect game. It wonderfully blends skill, physicality, pace, frequency and transparency. No other sport hits on all five of those marks, at least in my view.
I'll say this for hockey: The skates add an extra dimension to the difficulty of the sport that IMO makes the overall required skill set higher than in any other sport. If I'd grown up Canadian, I'm sure I'd be singing a different tune than I've been singing on this thread so far.
I didn't grow up in Canada. I don't think that really matters. Exposure, and open mindedness is what I thinks differentiates.
As for openmindededness being much of a factor: Perhaps it is, but then why don't most Americans eat like rural Koreans or 19th century Frenchmen, munching on Big Fidos or filet of Secretariat? Is it because we're not "open minded", or simply because the cultural preferences of another time or another place don't particularly resonate with us?
Not in the postseason, which is the parameters Andy set up with his list. The longest one of those merely matched the regular game's length.
I have literally never in my life heard someone argue that pre-planned stoppages in play are an asset to a sport. One of hockey's best features is that, in games between skilled teams, they can go 10 minutes or more without a stoppage, with full player substitutions every 45 seconds, without breaking the flow of play. If you need bathroom breaks, they stop for 20 minutes every 20 minutes of game, 30-45 minutes of real time. And the stoppages aren't complicated at all, it's when the puck is lost, either to the goalie or going out of play, or a penalty.
Unless you are arguing that you, personally, find hockey more complicated than baseball or football, Andy, you are objectively wrong.
*Unless you play for the Avalanche.
It's an asset in that it gives players a chance to regroup. What's the alternative?
One of hockey's best features is that, in games between skilled teams, they can go 10 minutes or more without a stoppage, with full player substitutions every 45 seconds, without breaking the flow of play.
It may be one of hockey's best features, but to say that this makes hockey somehow superior to football is about on the same level as saying that football is superior to soccer because in soccer only goalies can use their hands. All sports have their distinctive features, and all of us have our preferences among them. There's nothing "objective" about any of these preferences one way or the other.
And all all of the major sports other than perhaps basketball are extremely difficult for a casual viewer to pick up on without having someone explain the intricacies of the rule as they go along. TV announcers certainly don't do this, as they rightly assume that the great majority of their viewers understand the basics already.
I assume you mean meaningless for off-sides. It does still play a role in determining icing.
Not meant to be conclusive data, merely my personal experience, but hockey is a very simple game for the unfamiliar to grasp fairly quickly. I'd say soccer may be easier, simply because it moves a bit slower. Baseball is certainly the most complicated that I can think of for a newbie...possibly cricket, though it's tough for me to say because I have zero memory of ever being a newbie to baseball.
One way of thinking about it is to think of how many times a person would stop and ask "why did he do that?/what is he trying to accomplish?" in the course of their first game. For hockey I would think most of the questions would arise over the off-side rule - why did the play stop? Why did that player stop at the blue-line? which comes up every now and then, but can be explained fair succinctly. Puck has to cross the blue-line first to prevent people from hanging around the net. Other things like pulling the goalie are pretty easily explained as well.
Just think of all the concepts you need to explain in baseball...when is it a force, when is it a tag play? Why is a pop fly in foul territory live but a ground ball in foul territory foul? Why is that pitcher throwing the ball 4 feet outside? If a foul is a strike why didn't that guy just strike out? Why does the runner run on a ground ball but not on a fly ball? (This one seems particularly difficult to grasp for new players) Why does the runner run through first base but not the other bases?
And these are all things that happen every game, not even getting into infield fly rules, dropped third strikes etc.
EDIT: I do think Andy has a good point that the form baseball and football take (the regular pauses in action) are a benefit to teaching someone the game.
On the other hand, football's absolute worst feature is that it is constantly going to commercial. Especially if you actually bother to attend.
And I was not saying that my preferences were objective. Don't move the goal posts, they're fine at 6 ft. What I was saying was objective was that football and baseball are more complicated, objectively, than hockey to learn.
That's a good way of looking at it, but to that you have to add "How many times does this basic confusion present itself during the course of a game, and does the TV announcer ever bother to explain it to the first time viewer?"
And that's why I don't think hockey is all that obvious to the casual viewer. You constantly see "real" action, with players fighting over the puck and advancing it with passes. And them suddenly everything stops, players just skate around in circles, and nothing is explained. WTF?
OTOH baseball, for all its complications, spends most of its camera time focusing on the duel between the pitcher and the batter. It's easy to grasp intuitively that the object of the batter is to try to hit the ball as solidly as he can, and for the pitcher to stymie him in his attempt. And the pleasure of watching that duel doesn't require any particular knowledge of the rules, any more than it takes rule knowledge to enjoy the spectacle of an uninterrupted hockey play.
Now once you get past that, and concepts such as "icing", then hockey is a lot more basic a sport than baseball or American football. That doesn't make it "better" or "worse", it just makes it different, and subject to personal preferences.
I'd say the worst by far is late game basketball when the score is close and deliberate fouling combines with about 10,000 time outs. That's as close to insufferable as I can imagine. Football is pretty bad, however, hard to argue with that.
And I was not saying that my preferences were objective. Don't move the goal posts, they're fine at 6 ft. What I was saying was objective was that football and baseball are more complicated, objectively, than hockey to learn.
As I just said above, I think that it depends on what stage you're at. For the absolute virginal viewer, all sports seem complicated. The learning curve is probably steepest for baseball, followed by American football, basketball, and then hockey. But all of those sports can be learned fairly thoroughly during the course of any given complete game, given the companionship of a patient spouse/fellow fan and a willingness to pay attention to the explanations. Even baseball's not really all that complex in its basics.
I do find this frustrating about rugby broadcasts. I don't know enough about the rules so the play seems to stop at random intervals. In this I suspect Andy-the-hockey-viewer and Greg-the-rugby-viewer are very similar people.
Though I think this points to style of broadcast more than anything else. I've noticed that European broadcasts seem to assume a level of familiarity with the sport. American broadcasts seem to almost take upon thesmelves an educational role. I usually tune out baseball announcers when they go into "explanation" mode, but my British friends getting into baseball here absolutely love it, because it's a great way to pick up on some of the basics of strategy and technique if you're not familiar. There's not really the same tradition in broadcasting here, which when it comes to soccer I find refreshing. The announcer is very much describing action, not teaching. However, when it comes to rugby I probably could use a little bit of help.
I think we can all agree on this sentiment, and (I'd have to read the thread in more detail to be sure) no one has suggested otherwise.
That's funny, since of all the thousands of baseball games I've probably watched on TV, I can't recall any explanations of anything but (somewhat) advanced strategies. But then I nearly always keep a book or magazine nearby between pitches, so I'm often only half-listening.
The real "other extreme" is the ESPN telecasts of nine ball tournaments, where at the beginning of each match, and often at least once later on, the announcer says "the object of nine ball is to pocket the nine ball, and you do that by pocketing the balls in numerical order, with the nine ball last....[etc.]" At first this used to annoy me somewhat, but then it dawned on me that this is necessary to keep first time viewers from being only time viewers. So if you can skip the stupid cartoon graphics, I think that this insight might be applied by announcers of all the major sports.
Sorry, I don't see how any of those type of sports could be satisfying on the radio, maybe soccer just because grass grows faster than the action, so the announcer could realistically give you a verbal cue at the positioning of the relevant players. But basketball and hockey just move too fast to get a good feel of the game to a casual viewer. Baseball is the only sport that works on the radio as more than just getting the information of what is going on in the game to a fan. Basketball is too fast paced to be good radio.
Which is what I have been saying. Hockey is easy to watch on tv, and outside of your personal preference to see the puck, there is absolutely no reason that is necessary. It doesn't take a genius on physics to find the puck. Heck I have an old baseball annual, where they showed a play that you can see all 10 players on the field, and the goal was to pick out where the ball was based upon the positioning of the players bodies, arms and head. It isn't that difficult, and it's intuitive.
I can see arguing that basketball is as approachable as hockey for a new tv sports viewer, but there is zero chance that either football or baseball come close to being as approachable.
As to the silliness of "there is nothing like ot playoff hockey".... so what, the same can be said about every other major sport. There is nothing inherent in hockeys style of play that makes it better. Baseball is by far the most fair post season style. Football is just stupid. Basketball combines a lot of the same game strategy with a sense of urgency that doesn't remove you from the actual game. (mind you I find basketball to be painfully boring, but that doesn't mean I'm going to undermine it's viability in this argument, I'll accept what it's fans say about the sport's relative merits...except silliness like "it's great on the radio"...sorry, but it's pace completely ruins the ability of the radio guys to tell a good story, so you are usually getting half a story.)
That guy who was caterwauling about "personal preferences" would like a word with you.
He's part of the fabric of the sport. Doesn't stop Hockey Night in Canada from being the most appealingly broadcast sports production in North America for at least two decades, probably longer.
Hockey Night in Canada covering the Stanley Cup Playoffs versus Fox Sports covering the baseball World Series is a Foreman-Frazier size mismatch.
Good. And hopefully they never will. The last thing hockey needs is to be ruined by the "casual fan."
Hockey's too energetic and complicated for most Americans.
EDIT: Are you kidding? Red lines, blue lines, "offside", and just when the action gets going, everyone stops and just skates around in circles for seemingly no reason. If you think the average casual viewer finds this easier to follow than the other three major sports, I strongly suspect you're Canadian. Or maybe it's just that I'm not.
Exhibit A.
You should listen to test cricket sometime. You get to learn about the weather, how lovely the trees outside the ground are, what time tea is, and, in exacting detail, the firmness, moisture content and condition of the grass. Though the latter is actually important to the game.
Good. And hopefully they never will. The last thing hockey needs is to be ruined by the "casual fan."
Hockey's too energetic and complicated for most Americans.
EDIT: Are you kidding? Red lines, blue lines, "offside", and just when the action gets going, everyone stops and just skates around in circles for seemingly no reason. If you think the average casual viewer finds this easier to follow than the other three major sports, I strongly suspect you're Canadian. Or maybe it's just that I'm not.
Exhibit A.
I know that's a slam, but believe it or not, I agree with the sentiment that underlies it. If I were a hockey fan, the last thing I'd want would be for the sport to Foxify itself just in order to gain converts among doltish non-hockey fans like me in my current state of hockey ignorance. From everything I can gather from this thread, you've got a sport that's at least somewhat resisted the bells and whistle BS that accompany the three major U.S. sports, and I can certainly understand why you'd want to keep it that way. We all have our lines in the sand, and that's as good a one as any.
There's an old Hockey News cover (clearly set in overtime) that shows a defenseman with a smoking pistol standing over the body of an opposing player. The caption is something close to, "This is your last warning!"
Worth noting that Canada's series start (Paul Henderson) was probably the fastest skater on the team (with Bobby Hull not being on the team and Orr injured). He wasn't anything like a star in the NHL (still isn't in the HOF -- and probably doesn't belong). In other words, the Canadians weren't the only team that had problems with speedy forwards.
Also note that style cut both ways. On one key play the Soviet defense was simply unable to deal with a more powerful forward (Pete Mahovlich), and they had a lot of problems dealing with Phil Esposito.
As other have noted, both sides learned a lot from each other.
Sure. But thugs with a great goaltender (note that after Parent left they stopped being a dominant team) with several very good offensive players.
A lot of teams copied the Flyers gooning, but they didn't have the other players to make it work.
Worth noting that one of their players set a record for goals in a playoff year that still stands.
In all of the broadcasts I've heard recently the referee was miked and they give an explanation of what caused the stoppage (rugby refs never seem to stop talking -- and they take absolutely no crap from the players. It's really quite a culture shock. I'd love to see how a rugby ref would fare with soccer players -- who never stop pissing and moaning at the ref)
One thing I've learned from the rugby players I've met is that rule one is that the officials are always treated with the utmost respect, (to the point that it is customary to call the ref, "sir" on the field).
Notts County Football Club* plays at Meadow Lane. The Nottingham Rugby Football Club also play in the same field, but the set-up is very different depending on who's playing. When it's the soccer guys in town, the home fans and visiting fans are separated into different sections, with a section of empty seats between them which is patrolled by police officers. You can buy beer, but you have to drink it in the concourse, not at your seat. When the rugby team is playing, visting fans and home fans inter-mingle in the crowd and beer freely flows.
It's a well-worn cliche here that soccer is a gentleman's game played by (and watched by) hooligans, and rugby is a hooligan's game played by (and watched by) gentlemen. Hmm, google says that was originally an Oscar Wilde line, so I guess it's been that way for a while.
*Oldest football club in the world, as they proclaim proudly, and often.
EDIT: I suppose my bigger problem is I'm usually watching rugby in a pub where I can't hear anything anyway...maybe the broadcast isn't the problem after all.
How great can it be if Canadians are so good at it?
And I suppose you'll have us believe curling, shoveling snow, and writing poems about beavers aren't great past-times as well!
Curling is legitimately great. :) or at least a blast to watch every 4 years. I have no idea what it's ratings are during the Olympics, but every bar I was in, everyone was into it.
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