In his enforcer’s treatment of Comcast Sportsnet Capitals’ commentator Alan May today, Greg Wyshynski begins with a powerful and, in our judgment, accurate overview of the big-picture media climate for hockey in the nation’s capital:
“There is a persecution complex the size of the National Mall that hovers around the Washington Capitals when it comes to the media. It’s born out of voices in the North American press foolhardily saying the team should be contracted or inventing any number of reasons why the franchise doesn’t deserve a unique talent like Alex Ovechkin. It’s born out of a local D.C. media that, for decades, worshiped at the altar of football and basketball while hockey was locked out of the temple. [emphasis OFB's]“
Good on Greg for so framing his discussion. But thereafter his critique of May, whose appearance on 106.7 the Fan yesterday has prompted considerable comment, gets heavy-handed, even ad hominem (“tinfoil hat” is what Greg suggests May was wearing during his appearance on the Fan). May told his radio hosts that Mike Green’s three-game suspension was wholly undeserved and in part the product of intense scrutiny of the defenseman and his team by a Canadian media regime that’s had a longstanding hostility to both. May suggests — with some merit, we think – that both Alexander Ovechkin and Mike Green are on the receiving end of no small amount of invective up in the Great White North, as mold-breaking star performers. Wyshynski himself agrees with this to some degree. So do we. It’s a very interesting line of thinking, and worth further exploration.
And truthfully, there is merit to taking a step back and pondering the multi-game suspensions the Caps’ two highest profile stars have received this season. Has any other NHL club seen its best players (plural) receive such treatment this season?
More discussion of May’s appearance can be found on Dan Steinberg’s blog.
But as it concerns May’s appearance yesterday on local sportstalk radio, our new television studio analyst got a bit carried away, which is too bad, because seemingly lost in the discussion was some terrific contextual claims:
“. . . with the new rules, you can’t just sit back and play defense and cheat and use your stick like the New Jersey Devils did for years, and bored fans right out of the buildings. And you’ll see the Capitals, if you went around the league and saw, they’re the best thing for hockey in my opinion, because they’re trying to win every game.”
That’s actually a good deal more important than the merits of a particular three-game suspension.
Hockey needs more Alan Mays, eloquent and insightful ex-players being so forthright and enlivening, and God knows D.C. needs more such passionate media personalities on the hockey beat. The hope here is that May shoulder checks aside the slings and arrows directed his way this week and keeps bringing it as he has all season long. His arrival in hockey media here has been a highlight of the off-ice season.
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Alan’s comments are prescient. The Canadian hockey “experts” don’t like anything about the Washington team and have been totally against any recognition of Ovechkin, Green, and many others going back to the 80’s and 90’s (Scott Stevens, Mike Gartner, Olie, etc.) as elite and highly skilled players. They have similar condescending attitudes to any US team outside the original 4.
The only thing to do is never acknowledge their ignorant, silly comments without rebutting them completely.
Today I caught an interview on NHL Home Ice Radio with Mike Ross and Boomer Gordon. They were interviewing Wyshienski about the Alan May comments. Neither of the hosts could believe that anyone would insinuate that Canadian media showed any bias against the Caps. The irony was that after dismissing the comments as silly, Gordon took a backhanded shot at the Caps saying that perhaps the Canadian media simply viewed the team as ‘entertaining’ and would take them seriously once they ‘do something in the playoffs.’ Talk about proving May’s point. I listen to HNIC Radio, NHL Home Ice and watch several hours of hockey coverage per week on the NHL Network. Whether they want to admit it or not, Canadians have no vested interest in covering the Caps closely and it does come through in their broadcasts, articles and blogs. After the 8th win of the current streak, Adam Proteau blogged on The Hockey News, not about the positives currently going on with the Caps, but about how they must address their ‘crease concerns.’ This happens way too often to be a coincidence. I shudder to think what the media coverage of a Maple Leafs 11-game win streak would be like. They make a couple trades, beat the Devils and break their losing streak and folks up north are ready to have a parade. It’s just sad that the Don Cherry ‘good ole Canadian kid’ mentality has trickled down to jade the coverage of so many in Canada’s hockey media. The worse part is that they often don’t realize they’re doing it.
Alan May played for the Carolina Thunderbirds in Winston Salem, NC back in the late eighties. He was a take no prisoners type of player who was a brutal checker and the best with his fists. He always took on the tough guys for the opposing team when they started trying to intimidate our best players. We still talk about Alan in this area even though the team is no longer in existence. I’m glad to hear that he’s still involved in hockey. We would see Alan after the games and he was always polite, soft spoken and never said a bad word about the goons that he had just beaten up an hour earlier. We really enjoyed watching Alan play for the Capitals. His style of play is what puts people in the stands. Washington has done a great job of putting together an outstanding team. There’s no reason that they can’t win it all this year. I enjoy watching them play our Hurricanes. We have had a disappointing season this year, but the Capitals/Hurricanes games are usually pretty exciting. I hope that Alan becomes more involved with the Capitals as he played his heart out for them.
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