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10 Better Ways for NHL to Recover from Lockout

12/27/2012

One of my favourite hockey personalities, Pierre LeBrun, published his list of 10 ways the NHL could help the league recover from the current lockout if in fact they ever get back to playing hockey again. While I agree with a few of the items in LeBrun’s collection (give away NHL centre ice package, bring back World Cup of Hockey, 20 year CBA), most of them don’t really address core issues with the game and the NHL’s relationship with its fans.

So I thought I’d come up with my own list of 10 things the NHL could do to recover from their own self-imposed lockout:

1. Fire Gary Bettman and replace him with Wayne Gretzky as Commissioner. Maybe they can pay 99 the money they owe him from the Phoenix fiasco while they’re at it.

2. Lower ticket and concession prices across the league so that real fans and their families can attend NHL games again.

3. End the Phoenix Coyotes experiment and relocate the franchise to one of Saskatoon, Quebec City or the Toronto area. There’s no future in Phoenix for the NHL and no one knows that better than the new commissioner (see item number one).

4. Actively seek out potential relocation options for at least two other failing US franchises once the Phoenix mess is finalized. There are two cities waiting above.

5. Get rid of the shootout. Like most of what Gary Bettman introduced to the NHL the shootout is a cheap gimmick that originated from some Madison Avenue marketing firm. True NHL fans favour the overtime format with perhaps the option of a 3 on 3 version if the first 5-minute OT period doesn’t produce a winner. There’s no shame in a hard-fought tie in hockey either.

6. Get serious with NHL head shots and suspensions. The game has changed over the years and hockey fans pay to see the Crosby’s of the world, not the 4th line knuckle dragging headhunters.

7. Create a plan to expand NHL ice surfaces to international standards. With the speed and intensity of today’s game, NHL rinks need to be bigger and the only thing preventing it is the need to remove seating and the loss of revenue that will follow. With the demands NHL owners are making on the players in the current CBA negotiations they can well afford to make their rinks bigger. Plus, the decline in injuries will only help protect their investments.

8. Start embracing fantasy hockey. The NFL takes fantasy football seriously because it knows that fantasy players are fanatical about the sport, watch more football, consume more online products, spend more money on the game and drive the whole NFL machine to greater heights. It’s time the NHL opened its eyes to the super fans of the game – fantasy hockey enthusiasts.

9. Kill the All-Star Game in favour of the Charity Game where NHL players chosen to play by the fans must play for a charity of their choice, such as their hometown rink or minor hockey association. Donate $1 million in partnership with the NHLPA to be divided equally among the players. The winning team’s players pass along their share to the charity of their choice. The league and players’ association win big with fans, players actually put out an honest effort in order to help their hometowns, and communities and charities around the world see the financial benefits.

10. Start building a relationship with the players to actually grow the game, not an agenda to win the next round of CBA negotiations. If one-tenth of the time, energy and money spent by the NHL in the last year on lawyers and strategists had been spent on working in partnership with the players the future of the game would be unlimited.

There you have it, ten better ways for the NHL to recover from the lockout. Thoughts?

Image Source: C.P. Storm
SlapSticks 8

NHL Changing on the Fly

12/14/2012

It’s hard to take anything the NHL and league Commissioner Gary Bettman says seriously these days. In the midst of a three month, soul sucking lockout of NHL players, the league office has taken to playing musical chairs with its latest ‘best offer’. One minute it’s on, the next minute it’s off, Bettman says it’s take it or leave it, then we hear they’re willing to negotiate.

If it wasn’t so sickening I might laugh at the way Gary Bettman and the NHL owners are flushing all of the momentum the league has generated over the past five years down the toilet. Sad.
HFX-Explosion

Remembering the Halifax Explosion

12/07/2012

The Halifax explosion occurred on December 6, 1917, when Halifax, Nova Scotia was devastated by the detonation of the SS Mont-Blanc, a French cargo ship that was fully loaded with wartime explosives. The Mont-Blanc detonated after colliding with the Norwegian SS Imo in a part of Halifax Harbour called The Narrows.

About 2,000 people were killed by debris, fires, and collapsed buildings, and it is estimated that around 9,000 others were injured.
Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs

Ashton Kutcher as Steve Jobs

12/04/2012

The Real Steve Jobs

I’m an Apple fan like most of the planet and I’ve read a good deal about Steve Jobs. I can’t say the same thing for Ashton Kutcher, however, who will portray the Apple founder in an upcoming movie.

The promo picture for the film as seen above shows Kutcher certainly has Jobs’ look down, so there’s that I guess.

Objects in the Rearview Mirror

12/01/2012

And when the sun descended and the night arose
I heard my father cursing everyone he knows
He was dangerous and drunk and defeated
And corroded by failure and envy and hate

There were endless winters and the dreams would freeze
Nowhere to hide and no leaves on the trees
And my father’s eyes were blank
As he hit me again and again and again

I know I still believe he’d never let me leave,
I had to run away alone
So many threats and fears, so many wasted years
Before my life became my own

And though the nightmares should be over
Some of the terrors are still intact
I’ll hear that ugly coarse and violent voice
And then he grabs me from behind
And then he pulls me back

Jim Steinman for Meatloaf

Waiting for Celebration Day

11/30/2012

When I was 13 or so my older brother Bob and I discovered the Columbia House music subscription service. At the time, it seemed like a scam – get 10 albums for $1.99 or something crazy like that and agree to buy 7 more sometime in the future. I know I was skeptical as hell when my brother first proposed we give it a try, but I figured there wasn’t much to lose so we split the picks equally and sent the order by snail mail.

When the package arrived a few weeks later, we nearly went out of our minds. I mean literally. Overnight we had practically doubled our record collection and our bedroom was littered with some of the best classic rock ever recorded. I can’t remember all of the tunes we chose on that first order to Columbia House (there were many more orders over the years), but I do recall us getting a mix of Ozzie Osbourne, Blue Oyster Cult, Jethro Tull, Rush and my personal favourite, Led Zeppelin.

By the time I went off to high school a few years later I had a pretty healthy addiction to Columbia House. My brother and I amassed an impressive music collection this way and as a result we were exposed to a wide range of artists that many of my friends had never heard before. I can remember spending way too much time in Grade 9 doodling ‘Led Zeppelin’ on my books, to the point where my friends finally confronted me one day with some kind of intervention. Who the hell is this ‘Led Zepp’ they demanded to know and why did I need to go all grafiti artist with it on my personal belongings. I tried my best to explain but, sadly, they really couldn’t get their heads around the fact they had no idea who the greatest rock band in the universe was or why it mattered. So I went back to doodling and they probably went back to listening to Brian Adams.

Years later while I was in university at Ryerson struggling to pay the rent and keep my then girlfriend, now wife, and baby daughter alive I spent the grocery money on tickets to see the Page-Plant tour at SkyDome. Oddly enough, my better half wasn’t quite as ecstatic as I was over the whole affair and after a rocky few days around the apartment, I relented and agreed to scalp my ticket at the doors the night of the concert.

I had every intention of getting my money back that night. I got there early and made a few half-assed attempts to move the ticket. After about an hour or so of this I realized my heart really wasn’t into it. Not fair, I remember saying to myself, waiting my whole life to see Robert Plant and I’m gonna sell this fricken’ ticket? Screw that! So as the minutes passed and the crowds began disappearing into the stadium, I knew the jig was up. It was time to make a stand. To hell with the groceries, I’m gonna hear me some Kashmir.

My wife tells that story to this day and it’s still a thorny subject around our house. I paid dearly for weeks after that little escapade and there were times I wished I’d just sold the damn ticket and brought home the diapers. But not really…Now, almost 20 years later, I find myself asking Santa Claus for Celebration Day, hoping, praying, that all the bad blood spilled over Led Zeppelin around our house can be forgotten once and for all.

Poolies – The Video Series

11/28/2012

Prior to the start of National Hockey League lockout in 2004-05, I was busy producing the trailer for a proposed series of video shorts called Poolies. The show concept focused on the seedy underworld (notice I didn’t say underwear) of fantasy hockey addicts Jerry and Ken and a cast of office working misfits. The trailer was pitched to all of the major sports networks at the time, including TSN, Sportsnet, The Score and others.

We even tried to get the venerable Hockey Night in Canada interested but, alas, they felt their second intermission segment with Ron MacLean offering coaching tips was more attractive for their core audience of forty-something beer drinking Canadian males. Funny how a few years later, Hockey Night went in head first on fantasy hockey by teaming up with car maker Kia to run a season long fantasy hockey pool. Oh well.

The timing for the series couldn’t have been worse, actually, since none of the networks knew how or when the lockout would end and they had no interest in committing to new features until it was resolved. Couple this with the fact that the all-sports networks were severely limited on the amount of drama they could show on air, and so it meant trying to find ways around the CRTC rules and regs in order to make room for it. There were many highs and lows with the Poolies project, as we went from having a verbal agreement from one network to purchase it, only to have the producer involved get fired a week later. When he went out the back door, so did the project.

So when none of the major networks would bite, we looked at a variety of ways to develop the series for the Web but none of them really took hold since there was no visible revenue model. Since that time, there’s been a number of similar video ventures catering to the fantasy sports market, most noticeably the TV series The League. While that show is a cult classic dedicated to hardcore fantasy football fans, it pretty much captures the original Poolies concept quite nicely.

Given the fact we fantasy hockey diehards now find ourselves enduring another painful NHL lockout, the only bright spot I can see is that the Poolies promotional trailer is suddenly relevant once again. Who knows, maybe with the reach of social media I can get someone to take enough interest to finally see it produced for television.

Create Your Own Bookmarking Tool with Genesis and WordPress

11/28/2012

In my work with SkillsPEI I have the pleasure of managing the development of a career awareness initiative called N3XT Network. While the project’s flagship product is a teen hosted Web series called N3XT TV, there’s some other pretty neat tools available to students, teachers, parents and guidance counsellors.

One of these is a job board called N3XT Job which until today featured a widgetized homepage design similar to popular Web tools such as PopURLs and Alltop.com. But after receiving some input from one of our N3XT TV hosts who requested the ability to search for jobs under various terms (temporary, part-time, etc.) we decided to give the site a makeover.

Bookmarking on N3XT Job

N3XT Job

Enter Tasty, a clever little WordPress powered child theme for the Genesis framework built by Jared Atchison. With Tasty, we can post jobs directly to the site without ever visiting the post editor area in WordPress by using its built-in Press This bookmarklet feature. Now this unto itself isn’t so remarkable, but with Tasty all posts are published to N3XT Job as hypertext links which, when clicked, will take visitors directly to the job advertisement.

In the case of N3XT Job we’re using Tasty as a lean, mean job board for students. But after realizing the potential for the theme I decided to install it on a self-hosted blog of my own for use as an all-around bookmarking tool. The theme provides great search functionality with a custom tags widget to make searching for old bookmarks a breeze.

If you’ve ever used Delicio.us or other social bookmarking tools you’ve already experienced the convenience of having a single source in the cloud for storing your must-have links from across the Interwebs. Tasty provides a nice alternative that ensures you own your data on your self-hosted WordPress blog.
slapsticks_7

Slapsticks #7 – Who Loves Who?

11/23/2012

As the NHL lockout drags on it’s become clear that all of the rhetoric and public posturing, all of the PR spinning and half-truths being told by both parties, all of it – is just a smokescreen for what’s really going on here. We have billionaire owners no longer wanting cost certainty, something the last lockout and the much sought after salary cap was supposed to ensure. No, this time around the owners want profit certainty, and the only way to get that is to make sure you’re no longer paying the players 57% of hockey related revenues.

Meanwhile, the players are holding steadfast to the claim that the owners locked them out and, as such, the NHL is responsible for the losses that are piling up every day there is no hockey. That’s partly true, but like all the weasel-wording spun by the NHLPA’s leader Donald Fehr, the fact of the matter is that the players knew when they hired Fehr they were choosing to go down the lockout road. After all, they didn’t hire Fehr to fight the good fight only to fold the tent in August just in time for training camps, nor did they instruct him to take the best deal available in November.

So, undoubtedly there’s shared blame on both sides for the state of the NHL today. While Gary Bettman was recently quoted by a Winnipeg newspaper that he loved the players, and the players are always quick to point out they truly love the fans, the only thing that’s crystal clear about the NHL lockout situation is that all parties involved really love the money more than anything else.
Scrumblr

Try Planning with Scrumblr

04/28/2012

I’ve always been a visual learner and often find ways to use visual tools to help me organize my thoughts. A great online tool you can use to do this kind of thing is Scrumblr.

Imagine an online cork board where you can create sticky notes (they actually better resemble recipe cards) and post them into categories that you create. This app is really simple to use and once you spend a few minutes with it I’m certain you’ll see how you can make use of it at both home and work.

A really sharp feature of Scrumblr is the ability for remote collaboration, meaning groups of people can see the cork board and contribute together in realtime. Warning, this can be a little creepy when you first witness it, but once you see the simple yet powerful feature of group collaboration the true beauty of Scrumblr will open up to you.
Slapsticks 6

Good for Gagner

02/07/2012

The Edmonton Oilers’ Sam Gagner stunned the NHL hockey world last week when he scored eight points in the team’s lopsided win over the Chicago Blackhawks. The feat was significant since Gagner tied an Oilers record of eight points in one game with Oiler Hall of Famers Paul Coffey and Wayne Gretzky, and came within two points of the league record of 10 points in a single game set by Darryl Sittler.

What’s even more amazing is that Gagner was involved in every Oiler goal on the night and before the hockey world could stop buzzing, followed up that performance with three points in the first period of the Oilers next game – a 5-4 shootout win over the Detroit Red Wings in which Gagner also scored in the shootout.

Heady stuff for the former first round pick who has struggled after a breakout rookie season and whose star has lost much of its luster thanks in large part to the emergence of a handful of new Oiler superstars in the making in Taylor Hall, Jordan Eberle and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Prior to this offensive outburst, Gagner was mired in another mediocre season and was constantly popping up in trade rumours around the league.

The Slapsticks crew might be right on this one, since many a young player has been written off by the so-called experts long before they’ve had a chance to prove their worth in the NHL. Let’s hope Gagner can use last week’s heroics to help him find success in the NHL over the longterm.

Superbowl: It’s About the Commercials

02/04/2012

Superbowl has always been more hype than substance in my opinion. I’m a casual NFL football fan who cheers for the New York Giants but I’m not the sort who gives up every Sunday to watch non-stop NFL. I do like the commercials though, even if we rarely see the best of them on the actual day of the Superbowl when watching feeds from the US here in Canada. Last year served up one of the best Superbowl ads in recent memory. I give you the brilliant spot from VW – The Force.
slapsticks_template_cast

Return of Slapsticks

02/03/2012

Some time ago I came up with a comic strip called Slapsticks that poked fun at goings-on in the NHL and the sub-culture of the game of hockey. The cast on the right features a handful of hockey sticks and other objects typically found on the bench during a hockey game.

After a half-dozen or so strips I found myself too busy to maintain the site at slapsticks.ca so I had to shelve it for a while. I’m hoping to revive Slapsticks here on my personal blog and will begin by posting a few of the original comics. Soon after I’ll try to post one here on a regular basis during the NHL hockey season.

So if you haven’t met the cast yet (I know, hard to believe), starting from the left we have Tape, Puck and Gee (a Gatorade bottle) along with Sherwood and Christian (paying homage to two of the original wood stick manufacturers) and Easton (the new guy made of composite materials).

Look for more Slapsticks in the weeks to come.
lego

Minifigu.re

01/31/2012

As a kid I was a big fan of LEGO but in those days it typically meant building square objects in either red or white brick and not much more. With my son now 11 years old I’ve watched him grow up in the new era of LEGO and my interest has been rekindled thanks in large part to the company’s brilliant licensing strategy with major entertainment brands.

In the past ten years or so, LEGO has aligned itself with some of the most memorable media icons of all time, such as Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Harry Potter. LEGO now releases kits, often depicting memorable movie scenes, built around these brands and featuring Minifigures – small LEGO people who populate the kits or who are released independently in themed series.

Minifigures - Aged 5+

As might be expected, the enormous popularity of LEGO Minifigures has spawned a cottage industry around collecting and trading and my son Jacob has quietly started his own impressive collection. I find myself so drawn to the whole thing that we’ve decided to start a new blog together celebrating the LEGO Minifigure and our experiences building our collections (yes I want my own collection too).

We’ll be launching minifigu.re soon so keep an eye out for it if you want to learn a thing or two about the exciting new world of LEGO.
led_zeppelin

Classic Albums Live

01/31/2012

If you are a fan of classic rock and haven’t attended a Classic Albums Live event, you really should. I’ve been to four shows now, including Pink Floyd’s The Wall, The Eagle’s Hotel California, Led Zeppelin IV and just this weekend took in Led Zeppelin III at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown, PEI.

The world’s greatest classic rock albums – live on stage, note for note, cut for cut.

While I routinely carry the entire Led Zeppelin catalogue around on my iPod Touch, it’s been some time since I really sat down and listened to many of the tunes on III. That all changed Saturday night as my 11-year-old (and emerging classic rock aficionado) and I enjoyed over two hours of Zeppelin by the Classic Albums band. The show opened with CAL performing Led Zeppelin III in its entirety while the second half included over an hour of the band’s all-time classics. Yes, they’re a cover band, but they’re as close to the real thing as you’ll find and pride themselves on keeping the show all about the music.

Next month, CAL will be back in Charlottetown with The Door’s LA Woman and I’ll be there.
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