Saturday December 8, 2012
By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Saturday December 8, 2012
Oh the agony we endure without our national sport
Hockey
Wednesday October 12, 2011
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday October 12, 2011
Former NHLers may sue Cherry
Former NHL players Stu Grimson, Chris Nilan and Jim Thomson are considering legal action over Don Cherry’s rant about fighting in hockey.
They issued a joint statement early Tuesday morning calling Cherry’s comments “damaging and inflammatory” and his attempts to qualify them “entirely ineffectual.”
Cherry singled out the three men as “pukes”, “hypocrites” and “turncoats” for speaking out against fighting in the sport during the first “Coaches Corner” segment of the season on CBC’s Hockey Night in Canada last Thursday.
He accused the men of not wanting current players to make a living as enforcers as they did and criticized them for linking drug and alcohol abuse to that role.
On a subsequent show Saturday, Cherry expressed some remorse over using the word “pukes,” but that doesn’t satisfy the former players.
“We’re considering all alternatives including legal recourse, of course, given the nature of Don’s comments,” Grimson told The Canadian Press on Tuesday from Nashville.
“We are curious to know what remedies we have, if any, under the law probably in Canada simply because that’s where most of these events took place. ”
Grimson is a lawyer with the Tennessee firm Kay, Griffin, Enkema and Colbert, which specializes in corporate litigation and intellectual property. The law firm issued the statement. (Hamilton Spectator)
Wednesday September 29, 2010
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday September 29, 2010
Is that Bettman or Booman?
The ideas have taken a few days to take root, but that’s because so many thoughts came to mind when NHL commissioner Gary Bettman was introduced at the J.L. Grightmire Arena in Dundas Tuesday night before the Kraft Hockeyville game between the Ottawa Senators and Buffalo Sabres.
To a chorus of boos, of course.
Why does Bettman insist on putting himself through the humiliation of hearing the catcalls? He heard them on the biggest stage when he presented the Chicago Blackhawks with the Stanley Cup in June. Tuesday he heard them at the 1,200-seat venue, which was full of children.
We understand why Bettman needed to be in the building on both occasions.
Obviously, he needs to be in the house when the league’s champions are crowned.
In the Dundas instance, he wanted to show he believes in the grassroots of hockey. We get that. Not to be overly cynical about it, it was also an opportunity for TV time.
Yet in hindsight, does it really help the image of the NHL — and the future of the NHL — when the guy running the league is being booed in front of several hundred children? Why bring on the hatred by taking centre stage at centre ice?
Surely, Bettman couldn’t have imagined the crowd was going to seranade him. Remember, Dundas is only a long slapshot away from the Copps Coliseum in Hamilton, the place where the NHL commissioner so steadfastly refused to consider as a landing spot for the bankrupt Phoenix Coyotes franchise last year.
Dundas is, in fact, now part of the amalgamated city of Hamilton. (We can imagine Bettman was jumping for joy when a community connected to Hamilton won the rights to the game over every other Canadian possibility).
The Dundas-Phoenix-Bettman connection also serves to highlight the raw joy children feel for the game and the uglier big business side of the sport. There was such a passionate fan base in Dundas that hundreds of fans lined up outside the arena in the pouring rain — the children played hooky to watch hockey, with the support of their parents — waiting for the arrival of the Sabres early Tuesday.
Meanwhile, as much as Bettman tries to convince the hockey world that the NHL can survive in Phoenix, save the franchise rallies in the desert sun have drawn smaller crowds than the one which stood in the rain to catch a glimpse of the mediocre pre-season lineups.
Can it really still be a surprise that another NHL season is about to begin without any concrete developments in the pursuit of new ownership in Phoenix?
Oh, and speaking of another unfulfilled passionate NHL hockey audience, 50,000 fans are expected to show up on the Plains of Abraham Saturday for a rally to support the return of a team to Quebec City.
Hockey in the South versus hockey in the North. The more things change, the more they stay the same. (Source: Ken Warren, Ottawa Citizen)
Saturday February 20, 2010
Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday February 20, 2010
Should women’s hockey be in Games?
There is a growing faction that believes it may be time to put the sport of women’s ice hockey on ice. At least at the Olympic level.
Perhaps more than ever before, women’s hockey is proving to be strictly a two-team affair and there are suggestions that it’s high time to take drastic action to balance the field or dump the discipline from the Winter Olympics program.
In fact, the words “embarrassing” and “ridiculous” and frequently being bandied about in describing the balance in play at the UBC Thunderbird Arena.
The Canadian team is off to a 3-0 start, which is not surprising, but have outscored the opposition 41-2. One victory was 18-0 over Slovakia, supposedly an ice hockey nation, and against Sweden, the fourth-ranked nation in the world, Canada won 13-1. In the Slovakia game, the Canadian women outshot their opponents, 67-9.
There’s also growing concern that the Canadians are celebrating too much after breaking into double digits on the scoreboard against weaker teams.
The Americans are also breezing through the event and it’s almost certain, barring a red-hot goaltender, the two teams will meet for the gold once again.
Chris Rudge, the CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee, acknowledged that the women’s hockey tournament is one-sided but believes there is still a chance to improve it. (Toronto Sun)
May 11, 2009
Re: ‘Letter to the NHL; Spec publisher urges league to explore Hamilton’ (May 9)
It may be The Spectator publisher’s prerogative to plead for more “rabid” sports fans in the streets, but unless I’m supposed to stop considering myself a “Spectator reader,” don’t claim to do so on my behalf. As these hordes of psychologically impaired “hockey-mad” zombies will likely end up rampaging through my neighbourhood, I have no interest in seeing any NHL team brought to Hamilton.
As a “business-friendly” newspaper, The Spectator is entitled to represent the interests of groups whose idea of democracy only includes people who can afford to participate. I don’t dispute that right because I think journalistic objectivity is a myth. But claiming to represent the community alienates anyone who isn’t a sports fan or doesn’t define the word “jobs” as “private profits.” Some of us believe the Chamber of Commerce is just another faith-based political action committee representing a religion that’s failed miserably. Or that taxes should fund the political process, not fees.
The Spectator’s mean-spirited cartoonist has already launched a volley. We’ll probably see letters to the editor followed by an editorial lambasting city council as “dysfunctional” because someone has the audacity to question whether it’s prudent to clamor for spending taxpayer money like drunken sailors or fork over more responsibility to private interests every time a sporting event is dangled in front of our noses. This is still more or less democracy; if you want a more efficient and “business-friendly” system, move to China.
Perhaps worst of all, the space devoted to this issue is sure to infringe upon the persistent and entertaining “evolution vs. fantasy” debate.
S. David Wilson, Hamilton
