I’m working on an essay on the decline of the NHL, but I won’t post it tonight (if at all–hey, if it’s a real essay, I’ll try to sell it first, werd). Since it’s taken my attention, you, too, should focus on hockey, particularly the violence within it (as illustrated by the Todd Bertuzzi incident).
Go forth and read:
- This letter to the editor in USA Today from Eric Weinrich, a new St. Louis Blue. A letter to the editor? Wow, I might have expected that from Steve “Harvard” Martins, a graduate of Harvard University, or Mark “College Puke” Rycroft, who used to spend time after a game writing papers for his classes, but not Weinrich. He’s responding to a column by Christine Brennan that asserts that hockey could be an easy also-ran in the greater scope of the American sportscape. She’s right (a thesis I touch upon in my essay, or will when I get to writing it instead of amusing you, gentle readers). If the NHL folded, fewer people would miss it than the NHL or the NHLPA and all associated stakeholders would like to think.
(Link seen on American Realpolitik. Welcome to the blog roll.)
- The Meatriarchy Guy lays into the other American sports in a spasm of defensiveness. Dude, hockey’s not one of the big three sports in the (United States’) American mindset. It never will be. Stop fighting the apathy, and cheer on your (lesser) Eastern Conference team.
- Don’t forget Hockey Pundits.
- Also, you Blues fans out there who bemoan the big contracts handed out to a handful of players (Weight, Tkachuk, Pronger) that deprive the team of midlevel scoring help, you’re barking up the wrong tree. The money’s not the issue. Read the fine print, which offers the players an extra, unheralded extra benefit for signing: four extra weeks of vacation in 2004. A-ha!
