Getting More out of the Game

Uh Oh! Hockey rant! My female readers just went glassy-eyed and moved onto the next blog!

The NHL Board of Governors (another group that proudly carried the initials BOG) decide this week not to change next season's schedule to allow more inter-conference games. They'll look at it again at their next meetings in early 2007, but the Eastern Conference doesn't want to change the schedule. Why would they? Almost every away game is still in the same time zone for them.

The problem is that the new era of the NHL also has the new generation of superstars: Sidney Crosby, Eric and Jordan Staal, Evgeni Malkin, and Alexander Ovechkin. Fine, if you want to add a few more, there's also Dany Heatley, Jason Spezza, Rick Nash, and Gilbert Brule (I'm stretching with Brule, I know). Crosby, Malkin & Ovechkin are definitely the ones to watch right now, though, no one can argue that. They're also all on Eastern Conference teams, which means they have a single road trip meeting with the Western Conference teams once every 3 years. So, if we in vancouver see (we did see him too) Alexander Ovechkin in 2006, we won't see him (as long as he still plays with Washington --a gimmie, really) again until 2010. And what happens if he's injured? 2014?

Long way off to see the new up-and-coming superstars. Pittsburgh rolls into town next season. I can't remember the last time Mario Lemieux played in Vancouver, but I'm sure it was closer to the mid-1990s and he's now retired.

Needless to say, the Western Conference really misses out on a lot of things. Superstar players in the East, traditional favorite teams (Toronto and Montreal are huge sellouts in Vancouver), and we end up seeing the same teams over and over again. Great if there's a good rivalry, but when our team gets constantly whupped by them, it becomes a drag after a while. Especially with the anemic offense the Canucks are "producing" this season.

As much as the fans are missing out on these games, so too are some of the players. Right now, I'm thinking of the college basketball games I was at when some of the NCAA teams came to Canada to play some exhibition games. The NCAA teams were permitted extra practice time by playing these exhibition games, so the little defense they went up against with the CIS (Canadian Inter-University Sport) and CCAA (Canadian Colleges Athletic Association) teams, meant they also had numerous practices before their seasons started in the U.S. We had people from all over the U.S. fly into Vancouver to attend these games. It was once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for some fans to see these players, but it was also an opportunity for some college players to play against upcoming NBA players.

I took a lot of pictures (part of my job at the games) and gave one of the guys a picture where's he's defending against Wayne Simien (now of the Miami Heat). It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime event for him!! (he (not Wayne Simien) still emails because he really appreciates me giving him that picture).

So, for the Eastern Conference teams to rarely play against the Western team means that there are rookies and younger players who may never be able to tell their friends and family about the time they played against a hall of fame player. They're missing out too.

Imagine if no one in New York got to see Michael Jordan play? It's time to change the schedule.