New CokeFrom an
actual NHL press release:
“The lighter, drier uniforms generated 9% less wind drag in wind tunnel tests at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.”
Its arenas notably emptier than a year ago, its television ratings in the toilet, its marquee star of the next generation uncertain where his home rink will be come July, it’s good to know that the NHL leadership is spending millions of dollars and commissioning MIT eggheads to improve . . . fabric performance.
With approximately 15 percent of the league’s players on crutches this week from slapshots taken to their feet in the bedroom slipper Bauers that MIT likely also had a hand in improving recently, imagine the comfort the crippled will derive moving from MRI to MRI 10 percent faster!
I wonder how many of the 13,000 gathered last Saturday afternoon at Verizon Center, numbed by the three-hour whistle-blowing, entertainment-ending penalty box parade, believed that unnecessary sweater friction was all that held them back from a matinee of riveting drama?
Did I say “sweater”? I better stop that. This week we’ve also apparently lost, forever, that sacred term, in favor of “uniform system.” Doesn’t that sound precisely like a federal government committee derived euphemism?
For sh*t.
There is something Everyman about the classic hockey sweater in its loose and shielding bulk, something unrivaled anywhere else in sports fashion in its cocooning fullness, enjoyed in recliners and on couches by generations of puckheads. I regularly see men — some women, but mostly men — solidly in their 40s and 50s amble about the concourses of Verizon Center and the CHL and AHL rinks I patronize in their team’s sweater. Conversely, this new “uniform system” has a faddish, Generation X, Y, or Z quality to it — I can’t quite put my finger on it, but I’m willing to wager Commissioner Bettman $424 that the greybeards take a pass on it.
Quite a marketing formula when you think about it: the “system” is far too expensive for those flat-bellies who might be intrigued by it and too juvenile looking for those with gobs of disposable cash. Ah, yes, the latest Madison Avenue mindset from NHL HQ.
More good news arrived from the league yesterday. Every hockey loving human being in North America hates the league’s present chemically unbalanced schedule — the one that keeps, conservatively speaking, between four and five thousand fannies out of Verizon Center every night; the one that allows one-third of North America exposure to Ovechkin and Crosby once every three years. So of course yesterday the league’s board of governors decided to stick with it for next season.
Ironic, isn’t it, to think back just a year, to the league’s relaunch television ads, the ones that touted “My NHL.” Numerous focus groups uncovered a fanbase feeling isolated and unwanted from the game’s governing structure. So post-lockout the league pledged to award fans some manner of say in staple moves. A year later the fans hate the uniform destruction and want a balanced schedule. Guess what they get? Pre-lockout ingratitude, and the back of Gary Bettman’s hand.
Really, this league needs to be saved from itself.
Complete turnaround from last night, kick-started by three unassisted goals in about six minutes. Of course, that was followed by Carolina scoring two goals to make things interesting, but the Caps finally got some separation on Eric Fehr’s first NHL marker.
Consistent critics of pro hockey ticket prices, we also praise well-conceived and meaningful discount schemes, and the Caps have 
Word from Down Under
