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Not A Good Match
by Paul on 02/11/08 at 08:22 AM ET
Comments (2)
from Tony Gallagher of the Province,
What’s troubling, at least to hockey fans, is that UFC and WEC are doing promos and buying time on NHL telecasts, further linking hockey with fighting in the minds of Americans and almost certainly turning off women and mothers with young children from the game of hockey.
In the U.S. public eye, hockey has forever been associated with fighting, long before this unseemly unofficial association began taking shape. Jokes from such comedians as Dave Letterman and Jay Leno quickly spread to big time sports commentators, who are simply too lazy to learn anything about the sport. But since the NHL got turfed off ESPN and began showing its games on Versus, hockey and fighting seem inexorably linked in the minds of sports fans in the U.S. This association is becoming more pronounced, and it has to be turning off a lot of fans.
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Joke. Right or not right… Americans and a lot of Canadians are attracted to violence. Sadly enough, I’ve had 4X more traffic on my site than I have EVER had because people are looking for a Youtube of the Zednik incident. That speaks volumes. And while I won’t go into a pro-fighting rant, I will say that the Province just got done running an All-Time Enforcers tournament bracket last year: http://twominutesforblogging.blogspot.com/2007/02/province-has-update-picks-for-enforcer.html
So much for sending a consistent message.
Posted by Sig from Washington DC on 02/11/08 at 01:17 PM ET
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This is completely commical on so many levels and the Montreal Gazette should be ashamed for printing it.
For starters, the topic has been discussed on the most listened to sports radio show in Canada (Bob McCown PTS on the Fan). They joked about it weeks ago and brought up the merits of coupling the two forms of entertainment. Good work on an original piece…
Secondly, fighting is a small fraction of the game, and is a much smaller fraction than the commercial advertising the interrupts the action upwards of a dozen times a period. To say that violence and its associations with hockey are spoiling the sport for families is erroneous and foolish. It is such a small fraction of the game that likening it to the destruction of the game would be like blaming one NFL personal foul on its lack of viewability. Ask anyone if they’d rather square off in a fight, or take a punch in the nuts in a scrum and you’ll get overwhelming support for the former.
Also the report is from Montreal, and we all know how they prefer their style of play up there— clearly much more European and less physical.
Posted by Cloud9 Sports from Canada on 02/11/08 at 11:18 AM ET