Hockey Ping!
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Posted on 01/03/2021 7:57:49 AM PST by airborne
It's only hockey. Then again, it's more than hockey.
It's Jan. 3, 2021, and the NHL is back. The seven teams that didn't play in the 2020 postseason opened training camp Thursday; the rest open camp Sunday.
The regular season begins in a matter of days, on Jan. 13, when the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins renew their rivalry at Wells Fargo Center to open a five-game slate (5:30 p.m. ET; NBCSN).
The coronavirus pandemic affecting life around the world has not ended. It disrupted the 2019-20 season in unprecedented ways. It will impact this season in many ways too.
But there will be a season, restoring a part of life for all who love the game.
"We're all going through some real tough times here, from having to stay inside, having to quarantine, not being able to see families during Christmas or during the holidays or respective gatherings that are traditional to everybody," Winnipeg Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff said.
"Hopefully we can provide [people] an opportunity to maybe get some joy and some enjoyment with respect to something that makes them hopefully feel good or hopefully feel passionate about.
"Having sports is more than just, I think, about the wins and the losses. I think it's about a mental psyche of a community and a mental psyche of a society in a lot of respects."
Training camp will be even more critical than it is in a normal season.
(Excerpt) Read more at nhl.com ...
That means each game will mean even more than usual in a league already defined by parity, and that means everyone better be ready right away.
Teams have scheduled scrimmages in camp to replicate preseason games.
"It's not like a normal season," Anaheim Ducks GM Bob Murray said. "This is a sprint. The earlier you can get in front, the better."
Teams will have to navigate a unique set of challenges, from strict safety and travel protocols to taxi squads and reserve lists.
The NHL is not using bubbles like it did in Toronto and Edmonton for the 2020 postseason, when it had zero positives out of 33,174 COVID-19 tests to team personnel, so teams must make contingency plans for positive tests and close contacts.
That will start in camp, on top of the usual roster decisions.
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The author writes hockey books. “It’s about the mental psyche of community and society” seems overblown but if I wrote hockey books I would be trying to hype it as well.
While the NHL has been better than the other professional leagues regarding SJW issues, many have come to the conclusion that it is a waste of time to watch a game. They have concluded it is better to spend your time and money on gardening, raising chickens, or some other skill or just take a walk. To each their own.
I assume the NHL will dismiss the tired “upper body injury” or “lower body injury” when issuing Covid reports. Part sarcasm.
About the only ‘Canadian snowbirds’ this Christmas season were POLITICIANS. The same pols who told the peasant class, to stay at home and don’t visit with ANYONE other than those you live with. YET so many of these pols vacationed in WARM CLIMES over the holidays. Two week isolation on traveling to a foreign destination? SURE, I believe you hypocrites! A POX ON ALL THEIR HOUSES! (Or maybe a BAD case of CCP-Coronavirus on their houses!)
While covid is out of control, and regular people are enduring draconian restrictions in the cause of safety, wouldn’t it make sense to wait a little while longer before starting up pro sports again? Maybe start up again in the fall if the vaccines work out, it’s not too much to ask.
A bunch of multi-millionaires who got rich playing a kids game. It’s simply not that important under the circumstances.
Nobody (but some of the goalies) work helmets or masks.
It was a much more wide-open game without every potential good play getting waved offsides.
Fights. Yes, there were the fights.
“It is not terribly overblown for Canadians, where hockey is as big as the NFL here, if not bigger.”
That was then for the NFL, but I don’t think it is true now and don’t think it is coming back. A lot a people have gotten a taste that there is something better. Be interesting to see what happens to hockey, particularly Canada.
In the UK, at a soccer match, some fans booed the BLM protest and the team identified them and either took their seats away or required attending diversity training. If I lived in the UK, I would walk away from professional soccer. Be interesting to see what happens there as well.
Crowds. Yes, they had crowds.
That's starting to change, in the new "Multicultural" Canada, where more and more hockey is dismissed as the sport of "White Rednecks", as opposed to more inclusive basketball, especially with the recent success of the Raptors.
I think it’s true that even though the Celtics were winning all those titles in the 60s, the Bruins were still way more popular in Boston than the Celtics.
The Patriots played to half-empty crowds, if you can believe.
Well the Patriots were pretty bad in the 70s.
And in the 70s the Flyers ruled Philadelphia as well, even the blacks became fans of The Broad Street Bullies.
It was a different time.
Doesn’t help that no Canadian team has won the Cup in... what close to 30 years now. And I think only 3 or 4 trips to the finals in that stretch. Hard to have success in the seats without success on the ice.
But at least their national teams do have success in the Olympics and other competitions.
It says a lot when the Canadian players playing for a Canadian team demand to be paid in US dollars. Money before country may be one of the reasons the Cup has alluded them for so long.
So now MLB,the NFL,the NBA,the NHL...among others...are on my permanent "pay no mind" list.
The NHL that featured fewer helmets and more fights was the more polite NHL. Nowadays, the players wear suits of armour and the head and back and neck injuries have been at an appallingly bad rate for the last generation or so. You might have had nasty incidents like the stickfights between Ted Green and Wayne Maki or Larry Zeidel and Eddie Shack, but at least then players fought and died by the sword for themselves.
A lot of that going around.Just a week or so ago some western Governor (or Mayor) was spotted at a Mexican resort a day or two after having told his subjects to stay home and hide under the bed. And there was another one (from the west) who was spotted at his childhood home in Mississippi a day or two after having issued similar orders.
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