THE CADRE, MARCH 10, 1973, PAGE 4

‘You dropped something.

The myth of Canadian hockey died with the Russia— Team NHL series.

A game that Canadians once monopolized has shown this country exactly where the fans stood in relation to big business. It has shown the contempt of the NHL for the working class. ‘

Since 1967, the number of professional teams in North America of supposed major league calibre has risen dramatically from six to 28, with two more scheduled for next year, and an additional six by 1980.

Each new franchise paying six million dollars to start, every expansion year adds approximately $1,000,000 to established clubs’ profit at no operating expense. But they've expanded too fast and

now have too little to sellfor too much. While the “

NHL has always been given to making money, their perverse dream has caught the public eye much more because of lack of tact on the part of the league owners. They let their greed get away from them.

On the heels of the NHL-Russia series, and the start of another “exciting” pro hockey season comes a book that studies, in depth, the selling of the Canadian game. \

The Death of Hockey, by Bruce Kidd and John Macfarlane, presents a very good historical analysis of the gamethat most Canadian males have played for years. The book explains the rationale behind a lot of decisions that have led to the decline of the NHL since the birth of the league, especially since the post—war period. '

Canadian Deceived

The recent NHL-Rssia series would have sent NHL money barons reeling had the Canadian public stillbeen their main source of funds. Although the NHL won four games to Russia’s three, the Canadian public had been deceived into believing that the NHL had the only show in town. The damage'had been done

by the antics of some of the league’s leaders in'

relation to the whole series.

The NHL exposed its true face during the encounter; we saw quite clearly that they no longer had the only show in town, and that their product was second-rate. The quality of the game is too low for, Canadian fans, but the product is now being pushed at Americans in cities likeA Atlanta, where the fans’ first contact with the game is their town’s new NHL team, the Flames.

The question is, what happens to Canadian hockey. No longer needing Canada, the league is moving south. The three NHL and four World HOCKEY Association teams in Canada are pushing a product that would have been virtually unsaleable six years ago.

A game that was once played by and for the working class has become a product for the rich few, no longer employing or entertaining the average man on the street.

Big money for everyone in hockey has become fashionable only since expansion. It coincided with the launching of the NHL players association with Bobby Orr and Alan Eagleson.

With Orr the biggest hockey attraction since Murice Richard, and Alan Eagleson a smooth talking exploiter, the salary of the average hockey player has created a new financial elite in Canada, the professional hockey player. V

Now, not only do the owners exploit the fans, but so do the players. The Death of Hockey lays down what has come before, What hockey used to be, and

provides an alternative but does not recognize it, as ‘ .

such. The book looks at the development‘ of pro

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hockey, expansion in the NHL and its side effects, the NHL’s building of a monopoly by the buying and selling of players from the age of ten, the business of hockey.TheNHL is singled out for several areas of grossness, the corrupting of/amateur hockey to develop NHL type players, \the killing of the community leagues and the selling out of the National Team.

Almost All Guilty

The book implicates most everyone who’s been involved with the game, the media not excluded. It also presents what the authors feel is the solution to the problem of the death of hockey as Canada’s national game. '

Too nationalistic to sell south of the border, the -

book is anti-Americaninth'at it is so pro-Canadian. It cried about the selling of the game south of the border and how the game has been watered

down to stretch a good product very thin to gather all available money.

It deplores the fact that the game is entertaining

rich American fans as opposed to working class Canadians, and that the whiskey has had to be

watered down so much that the taste hardly remains.

A lot of emphasis is put on the decline of “the fastest game on earth”. It treats hockey as an art form‘and relies on nationalistic feelings to arouse Canadians to the plight of what was once our national game. “We must save the game and return it to Canada” says the book; “let’s develop professional community leagues within the country and satisfy the players with $25,000 a year as opposed to the “100,000 he could be making in the NHL or the WHA. He’ll have the satisfaction of playing for his country.

By establishing a national hockey institute we will >

be able to, once again,,compete and rival the world‘s best by the resulting upgrading of our game. ”

The book presents no concrete solutions. The alternatives suggested by the authors follow a moderate socialist doctrine; they follow the concept of institutionalization as a solution. But the answers are in the problems and its sad that the authors c’ouldn’t pick them up.

In spite of this, the book is probably‘the best available because of its almost complete look at the situation. It puts things'in a proper historical perspective. .

Players Alienate

Rightly playing on people's sensibilities, the book points out the process of alienation which the hockey player faces from the time he reaches adolescence and throughout his search to play in the NHL. It shows how the players were(are) exploited and channelled intoa one-way street. Young boys were shipped around the country to learn a game the way the pros-want it played because it is more profitable

to run a Junior league in southern Ontario than in ‘

other parts of the country. Junior A hockey is the highest development stage for pro material.

There are more hockey’fans in that region because there are more people. There is little expensive travelling because all the teams are within a few hours bus time and it allows for quicker development of the few who show promise at the age of fifteen. It is makiig a profit off an unfinished product.

The athlete, on the other hand, is dragged from one part of the country, parachuted into a new locale at sixteen or younger, and told to fend for himself He has money, is a local hero and plays a lot of hockey

t

He also faces a 62 game schedule with a lot of long

- bus rides and-is quickly discouraged from continuing

his education.

The average junior hockey player has but one choice, make the big leagues or sink, because if he’s not NHL material by the time he’s twenty, his hockey career is over. He can toil in the minor professional leagues for poor money, or get a job in a factory or at whatever manual labor he‘ can\find because he’s halted his high school education and usually has little chance of getting back.

For the last few years of his teenage life, he’s drank a lot of beer, chased a lot of women, and, for a good many, faced the prospect of an early marriage because of a lack of a known alternative. Any kid who has-played in the junior ranks with the intention of making the pros, has been trained from the time he was thirteen, that his only purpose is to make the big time with the big money. He is, in short, a victim of the capitalist system. - e .'

There are many instances which point out th closed minded “profit at all costs” attitude of the owners. ‘

Press Fosters Myth

one chapter deals with the manipulating of the media, how the established press has walked hand in hand with the league for so long. Each needs the other, and each relies on the working relationship between the two.

“in the early days of professional hockey, newspapermen were poorly paid and easily bribed. Self-righteousness did not feed a family or buy a drink. Many a sportswriter was grateful for the little brbwn envelope a club owner slipped him on Fridays. All he had to do was write what he was

told ...Times have. changed. Journalists formed unions and today are wellpaid. They can afford respectability. A television set may occasionally change hands, but nobody picks up an envelope on Fridays...Years of payoffshave produced a climate in which the hockey press sees its interests and those of professional hockey as identical.”

The implications areinteresting, as seen through the book. Several writers are quoted as to how McLaren advertising, which owns “Hockey Night in

Canada’ ', the televised version of the game, controls-

all television production, and how any sports writer

or personality who knocks the game is quickly .

eliminated as regular material. Kidd and Macfarlane complain that the men who should have been public watchdogs have turned out to be bed partners with the thief who comesin the night. But while they corner the problem, there is little in the way of a real alternative suggested as a solution.

Kids Like Cattle

This following proposal is in keeping with the alternatives suggested by the book:

“Butaprofessional hockey league of our own is not enough. Hockey will notbeours as long as the NHL, or' any other privately owned professional league, controls amateur hockey in Canada. Kids will

never learn to play the game for fun,“to pursue hockey to any level they want-amateur, professional, or whatever until —we stop running minor‘hockey as if it were a farm system for the NHL

-.a.nd.the WHA-J'EMQAHA anus; be liberated iron; its, V . show them to do is W

financial dependence, on: the NHL. Only the

government, by provi' operate, cando it. we and arenas, so that hoc. for the very young and

While some of the .. steps should be taken, . and Macfarlane sugg-a hockey league consis' teams. The teams wou . opposed to the 78 in the earn between $25,000. advantage would be le

Their salaries, them in the top five perc them as removed as the which, is their reward v is suggested is that we «v to stay in the country.

While the players ": shorter schedule, a c possibility of playing l for paying high salries lt’d stillbe you and me new finanéial elite. $ ‘ remove a person from

The idea of community The idea of such teams paying them such huge I proposed is that those ' from hockey take a pay still navs exorbitant n

Boob 'l‘u

It would still be nec gate prices to pay for It amounts of revenue Iv expensive operation. 3' are cutting back on 1' from which most of ' sport is realized.

What you need is l purpose and goal. EXP1 or Bobby Hull. Tell the after having spent half the manon the street I‘ enjoy the sport in his " cost him.

The career of a hOCke who’s spent his life int years at the big money! ‘ can make in those liea ‘ pretty good reasons to was the same but whiCh care which side of the

Socialist The book’s proposal socialist perspectin nationalism, it still 6 ' system. If you expec ' community, you’ll. m. reorientate more than It doesn’t matter W” ‘ Hockey Association Fe “ ’. ortheWHA. Towrestle and using it as a 5” problem from the wild" ‘ youngsters play relies 'l as much a part of the p the‘CAHA. How ca“ '

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