The Legendary Voices of Hockey

This is a guest article from author Kyle Roussel. Please feel free to catch up with Kyle at  www.twitter.com/kyleroussel.

There are some voices that are etched in your mind forever. Is anyone ever going to forget Danny Gallivan’s “Lafleur, coming out rather gingerly on the right side…” or Gary Thorne’s call of Gretzky’s 802nd goal. What about Mike Lange’s myriad of bizarre calls? Or just about any Rick Jeannerette call, as homeriffic as they are.

There are some guys that you grew up listening to game after game. Their description of the game, their personality, knowledge and energy was important to the enjoyment of the game as the skill and speed of the guys on the ice. Win or lose, there are some guys who just make things cozy, entertaining, intense and exciting for the fans. They coax you back for more, even if your team stinks.

For me there was no stronger reminder of this than this past February 21. I was relaxing on the couch, enjoying Hockey Day in Canada, when Dick Irvin came on to tell another one of his great stories from hockey’s incredible past. We don’t hear much from Irvin anymore. He called it quits as a full-timer in 1999, but he used to be a fixture on Habs CBC games, on local Montreal news, and as the play-by-play guy for CJAD 800.

When we’re younger, we tend to think that these guys will be around forever. But they’re not. As much as they love the game, they also look forward to their own retirement. And so that came to pass for Irvin in 1999.  I didn’t pay much attention to it at first, which I guess is a testament to the quality of the guys that replaced him. But you soon realize that the old familiar voice, the one that was so comfortable and so much a part of your hockey life was suddenly gone. That’s why I was so happy to see him during CBC’s Hockey Day in Canada. For a brief segment, that great voice, the great stories, made their way back in to my living room.

It forced me to think about the other guys in hockey who’s voice I truly appreciate, but had never really acknowledged in any form, even in my own mind. Off the top of my head, here are some of hockey’s voices:

Love ‘em

Pierre Houde (bonus Kovalev highlight reel – see #10, 8, 6 &4)
Jim Hughson
Chris Cuthbert
Doc Emrick
Ron MacLean
Gord Miller

Like ‘em

Bob Cole (without Harry Neale)
Mark Lee
Gary Thorne
Paul Romanuk (he deserves better than the Spengler Cup!)

Please, no more

(I won’t make you suffer with clips from these guys)

Mike Milbury
Dean Brown
Craig Simpson
Harry Neale
The vast majority of the guys on FSN

Some of these guys are closer to the end than to the beginning (Hi Mr. Cole), but the next 20 years look like they’re set with the likes of Hughson, Cuthbert and Miller. However it’s still a bummer to know that someday sooner than later, guys like Cole and Irvin will disappear from the airwaves completely. They’re a direct link to hockey’s golden age. They were there for the Howes, Richards, and Orrs of hockey’s past. Every night that these guys are on the air is a chance to learn something new and amazing from them.  As for today’s game callers, what do you think about them?

Not to make you feel any older, but…

Put it in the perspective of your children, who will think this way about our contemporaries years from now. Will they feel the same for Gord Miller as we do for Bob Cole? I can still hear my grandfather telling me that nobody was as good as Danny Gallivan. Will I be saying the same about Chris Cuthbert? Hard to imagine isn’t it? But that time is coming, so take the time now to appreciate these guys. They’re an integral part of the sountrack of your life.

Remember back to a few years ago when the broadcasters went on strike and for a brief time hockey games had no play-by-play. It was horrendous – imagine Star Wars without John Williams’ score! This clip isn’t quite the same with the score as without it, is it?. And so it is with hockey voices. They breathe life in to the game and make it come alive. It’s their voices that stand out more than the images.

Think about it – you probably can’t separate the memory of a goal from the call that accompanies it.   If you were going to create a time capsule for yourself, which hockey voices would be a part of it? In a 100 years from now when it was opened, who’s voice would you want representing you and the game of hockey as you would want it portrayed in the early 21st century?

The Death Of The Jersey Retirement

The current NHL season has certainly had its fair share of special events with the 100th Anniversary of the Montreal Canadiens, the Winter Classic at Wrigley Field in Chicago, and various teams honoring former players by retiring their jersey number. The jersey retirement has been known to be a great honor bestowed upon a former player for their contribution to the franchise over the course of their career.

What has recently become disturbing to many hockey fans is the manner in which certain players have been chosen to have their jersey retired. Unlike many other honors in the game, the retirement of a jersey has no standard set of league wide criteria that are required to be met in order for a player to receive the honor.

What Are the Minimum Standards?

While it is certainly wishful thinking to believe that a set criteria would be agreed upon league-wide, there is an expectation by fans that franchises should be responsible in their selections of players to honor. Just as with the selections for the Hockey Hall of Fame, there are players whose accomplishments are (at least statistically) greater than some of those players who have been honored.

The Carolina Hurricanes honored Glen Wesley – Yes, they retired the number of Glen Wesley [apparently] using the ideology that tenure, being a good guy, and one Stanley Cup ring is good enough to hang a slightly above average defenseman’s jersey next to that of Ron Francis, the NHL’s 4th leading scorer of all time.

The New York Rangers used this season to honor Adam Graves, a one-time 50 goal scorer who had a decent tenure with the Rangers and suited up for the 1994 Stanley Cup winning team. What baffles the minds of many hockey historians is that the jersey of legendary Rangers Brad Park has yet to be lifted to the rafters at Madison Square Garden, while the jersey of Andy Bathgate was finally honored several weeks after Graves’ ceremony.

Logic And Rationale

If we argue that the main reason for Graves’ jersey retirement was his 52 Goal season in 1994, helping to bring the Stanley Cup to New York, then Sergei Zubov’s Jersey should have been retired long before Graves was honored. Zubov led the 1994 Rangers on both regular season and playoff scoring while quarterbacking the Rangers potent powerplay.

Simply put, without Zubov there is no Stanley Cup in New York in 1994. Zubov, a defenseman, also managed to score nearly twice as many points per game than Graves did as a Ranger and also has more career Stanley Cups than Graves (Zubov earned one more in 1999 with the Dallas Stars).

If we argue that Graves had a long tenure with the Rangers and that he was loved by fans, we must be prepared for an onslaught of Jersey retirements from every team who had a player suit up with the franchise for a decade (See Glen Wesley). Furthermore, if we combine the statistics of having a long tenure with the same team and winning a Stanley Cup, there are still several players who fit the bill. Most notable in this list is Mats Naslund.

Mats Naslund led the 1986 Stanley Cup champion Montreal Canadiens in both regular season and playoff scoring and played the overwhelming majority of his NHL career with Montreal. This leads us to the question of whether playing for a franchise with more Stanley Cup victories is a detriment to having ones jersey retired?

For instance, by New York’s [apparent] standards, Naslund would have his jersey raised to the rafters. However, I don’t think that anyone in the Canadiens organization would dream of honoring Mats Naslund before a legend such as Elmer Lach has been recognized.

Leveraging the Retirement of Jerseys

It is unlikely that the majority of hockey fans have a problem with teams wanting to celebrate their former players and create more history for the franchise. However, it almost seems as though some teams are using the retirement ceremonies as a way to spike ticket sales more than to truly honor the commitment of a great hockey player.

Yes, I realize that there are more criteria than just statistics, trophies and records that can be used to determine the value of a player to the organization. However, without any basic criteria teams may eventually find more ways than not to draw in a crowd for special game featuring the jersey retirement of (Insert name here).

Brendan Shanahan Fights Eric Boulton

Brendan Shanahan showed that, even at 40 years old, he still packs as much intensity into his game as he fought Thrashers tough-guy Eric Boulton on February 6, 2009.

The elder statesman did not so much as flinch when Boulton decided to challenge the veteran to a fight. While it wasn’t exactly a classic toe-to-toe battle, Shanahan sent a message to his teammates by so willingly dropping the gloves.

Mike Rupp was ready to fight Boulton for cross-checking Shanahan in the back, but in Classic Shanahan style, he jumped an and fought his own battle! Shanahan ended up with a bloody nose, but actually seemed excited about the fight.

“We hit each other with a couple,” Shanahan said. “It felt good. More the part of me hitting him than him hitting me.

“It’s (fighting) not something you get to do when you don’t play in the NHL without staying out of jail. Usually that’s frowned upon in society. I was starting to wonder if I’d ever get to do that again. It’s always fun to go against a tough guy.”

After a quote like that, it’s really hard not to appreciate Brendan Shanahan as a hockey player and stand-up guy.

Will The NHL Always Be The Best?

The following article was submitted by columnist Kyle Roussel.  Please feel free to catch up with Kyle at www.twitter.com/kyleroussel.

So it appears that the KHL is floundering. Who would have guessed that a league with questionable financial backing, and slipping resources (the Russian economy is largely based on oil, which has dropped BIG TIME) would be in jeopardy after less than one year? With the price of oil dropping out of sight, teams in the KHL are reportedly having trouble paying their players. Apparently players have had to take a 40% pay cut to help the league stay afloat. I can’t confirm that, but where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

They came on like gangbusters, scaring the NHL and NHL fans alike by poaching Jaromir Jagr and rising star Alexander Radulov from the Predators. It looked as though trouble could have been on the horizon for the NHL. But it seems all is in order now. The oil industry is in turmoil, bringing the KHL down with it.

I haven’t done my homework, so I don’t know for sure, but I’m having a hard time thinking of any top-tier league that is consistently given a run for its money from a competitive league. The NFL is the king of the hill, no one is even close. The CFL is probably the next top team after the demise of NFL Europe.

MLB sits alone in its sport. There are some good Asian baseball leagues, but they’re far enough away that they don’t chip away at MLB’s market share. In fact, MLB poaches the best talent from those faraway leagues which in turn gets Asian advertisers to pay up big dollars for space in MLB stadiums (ever seen Safeco Field’s ads since they’ve acquired Ichiro Suzuki?).

MLS doesn’t pose a threat to Champions League, or any other European soccer league, though they have had some success in luring a couple big names, with more names rumored to be on the way (to be fair, the big names have more or less cemented their legend status before coming to MLS).

The NBA is similarly dominant in its space. The NCAA is the next most popular league, but those players are all dying to step in to the NBA. So much so in fact that we no longer see dominant teams because sophomores want to get their fat NBA contract asap (see Kobe, Lebron, Oden – all guys who either never went to, or completed college).

The WHA challenged the NHL in North America in the 70’s by paying an aged Bobby Hull a then unheard of salary of $1,000,000, and they also managed to get their hands on Gordie Howe as he entered his 50’s. But even that league fizzled out before long; the rest of the league’s caliber was just too weak to draw enough eyeballs. and the NHL absorbed the fallout, which delivered teams to Edmonton and Winnipeg among others.

The best players want to be where the best hockey is being played. It’s pretty simple. Of course, where you find the best hockey, you also find the best paychecks.
(but not always, as we saw in the case of Radulov and Jagr…but accepting money from the KHL is now akin to investing in…well, anything really…besides, Jagr is quite the gambler)!

Both of those factors together will ensure that the NHL, and each dominant league in its sport will remain on top until their own stupidity ruins them. But even overwhelming stupidity and work stoppages doesn’t seem to be enough to cripple a league enough to make it slip from it’s spot.

All this to say that once you can establish yourself as the first and the best, you’ve got a huge advantage over any present and future competition. I believe Seth Godin has some blog entries that state the same (so it must be true!). If you’ve read his book “The Dip” (see page 10) you’ll know what I mean.

Can anyone think of a league that rose up and took away the #1 spot from the king? Can anyone think of a way that one of today’s dominant leagues can lose its grip on their #1 spot?