Norman Einstein's
ISSUE 10 (03/10)
"For Puck's Sake"
by Eric Nusbaum
[Eric is a Seattle-based writer. Mostly, he writes about baseball at Pitchers & Poets and the Rogue's Baseball Index.]
My favorite cliche in sports broadcasting comes at the end of a game or a series or a tournament when, as if there is nothing else one could possibly say about what just happened, the man in the booth shrugs his shoulders and says, "Well folks, you couldn't have scripted it any better." The problem, of course, is that in the movies there are good guys and bad guys. In real life, lines are blurry. Allegiances are sensitive. People are just people.
The line was delivered on Sunday by a Westwood One radio broadcaster about twenty minutes after Sidney Crosby beat Ryan Miller to clinch gold for Canada. I was driving home from a friend's after watching the game, preparing to write this essay, and I heard a voice on radio – one of the team of Chris Cuthbert and Pierre Maguire – say the words. "It couldn’t have been scripted any better."
Except this year, it could have been scripted better. And not just for the Americans and the Fins and the Slovakians and the Swedes and especially the Russians. It could have been scripted better by anybody who has ever read a book or seen a movie. This year's Olympic hockey tournament saw the narrative surrounding the competition take a back seat to the competition itself. There were no underlying human dramas, there were no geopolitical stakes, and there was no miracle. Instead, there was two weeks of the best hockey any person is likely to see.
Credit: The Blackbird (Flickr)
And that could not have been scripted. The excellence that marked this year's competition - the pure, unadulterated hockey-ness of it all - is what convinces me that the excitement surrounding America’s performance and the tournament in general won't just disappear. It's what convinces me that while there may not be a hockey renaissance coming soon to America, there will certainly be a reawakening.
It began, in earnest, with the USA's preliminary matchup with Canada. The 5-3 victory got the attention of the people who had been busy watching Lindsay Vonn and Bode Miller or gearing up for Spring Training. It got the American people behind their hockey team. The sports radio airwaves here in Seattle, where hockey fans are rarer than Styrofoam cups, were quickly filled up by excited callers getting behind their team and excitable hosts pontificating on the grace and athleticism of a sport that they hardly ever watch.
The bars were packed with twenty-somethings asking what icing was. People who had never watched a hockey game were saying prayers for Ryan Miller and barking orders at Ryan Callahan and trying to figure out who Dustin Brown played for. In the course of few moments, "I can't follow the puck" became "did you see that save?!?!?" "Hockey is boring" became "Why the hell is this game tape delayed?"
And now it's over. And we're left to try and answer the real question: What does all this mean for hockey in America? For two weeks, the sport was momentarily elevated from the deep basement corner of the public subconscious to a lofty perch at the top of the hour on SportsCenter. That first USA-Canada game, the preliminary matchup that was aired on MSNBC, earned higher television ratings than game seven of the 2009 Stanley Cup. (That Stanley Cup game between Pittsburgh and Detroit was the most watched hockey game in America in almost four decades.) But it was still watched by far more people in Canada – a nation of 34 million – than the United States whose population is almost ten times the size.
Ratings for the gold medal game withstanding, you can bet that there are quite a few television and advertising executives teetering on the edges of their swivel chairs right now. The real issue to them is not how many Americans watched the game, but how many will watch next week's NHL Game of the week on NBC between Chicago and Detroit. With a silver medal around our collective neck, will America now deem NHL games a worthy endeavor? Will we still be watching a month from now? How about by the time the Stanley Cup Playoffs roll around?
The general theory is that the increased American interest in Olympic hockey was the result of a few crucial elements that won't ever be part of the NHL picture. We're drawn to Olympic hockey because the quality of play is much greater. We're drawn Olympic hockey because the games aren't constantly interrupted by television timeouts that ruin the viewer experience. We're drawn to Olympic hockey because it's the Olympics, and we're nationalists, and we love to win. Basically Americans have never cared about professional hockey and this is all one big faux-embrace.
Some of those points cannot be argued. The quality of play at the Olympics is significantly better. Even the disappointing Russian and Swedish teams had their moments of brilliance. The USA-Canada games were both high-pressure, high-skill affairs, un-riddled by mistakes, and even the Swiss became an unexpected threat to the gold and silver medalists behind Anaheim goaltender Jonas Hiller.
Here is the problem with the "too good" argument. Excellence is a good thing. Excellence is what draws fans in. The point being that fans watched Olympic hockey because they wanted to watch hockey. They weren't watching to see a speed skater's soul patch or a snow boarder's red hair or a skier's swimsuit body. They weren't watching because the hopes of a nation were resting on one figure skater. They were watching because they wanted to watch good hockey – the Olympics have the benefit of options going for them. American fans know they are better off turning to other events if all they want are American medal.
Most of the players who suited up in these Olympics - including all the North American players - are NHL stars, which mean they aren't household names to the everyday sports fan. In this way, the Olympic tournament serves as a showcase. Potential fans get to meet the players beyond Crosby and Ovechkin. These new fans also get treated to hockey at its best. They are given a taste of why it's worth tuning into a game between Phoenix and Toronto. They are given a taste of the nervous tension, of the mini heart attack a puck bouncing in front of the net late in the third period can give you. The quality might not be the same when they turn on the pro game, and the commercial-heavy broadcasts will not be the same, but the product will be. The excitement will be.
Before the overtime period began, Jeremy Roenick, who served as an analyst for the NBC broadcast, looked as if he was on the verge of erupting. Roenick, known for his outspokenness as a player, won a silver medal with the US team in Salt Lake City. But even distanced from the action he couldn't keep calm. He said on air he was about to cry. His words came out all stilted. The studio makeup on his face appeared to be holding back an avalanche of emotion. He began to use his hands awkwardly when he spoke. All he could do was guffaw; his analysis of Zach Parise's tying goal with 24 seconds left in regulation devolved into the incoherent ramblings of an overzealous fan. "And Neidermayer! I can't believe he let two guys get past him like that! Wow!"
Even before Sidney Crosby ended the Olympics by sneaking a puck through Ryan Miller's legs, there was a sense that scripted or not scripted, a fan of hockey could not ask for anything better than what was provided by this tournament. There was a sense that it was not about miracles or about narratives or about anything but the inherently compelling power of a sport played at its finest. There was a sense that after seeing what they saw for two weeks, American sports fans might embrace Roenick's attitude.
After all, this is not the season for miracles. This is late February. This is a time for quiet wintry self-examination, for the nursing of Super Bowl hangovers, for the gathering of our wits before spring's onset. Normally, we pass the short afternoons reading baseball annuals and brushing up on college basketball standings. Opening Day is near. College Hoops is on the verge of crescendo. This was supposed to be a lull. So when something excellent happens - something as fulfilling as the 2010 Winter Olympic hockey tournament - it is only fair to expect the glory of it all to linger and to lift us up, if only slightly.