Thursday, December 4, 2008

Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Sean’s Sloppy Seconds Censorship Special

By Todd Maternowski

Good morning, hockey fans: here's hoping prompt medical attention was enough for you to survive your yearly overdose of deadly tryptophan. Last week, we eschewed another yawn-inducing What I'm Thankful For column, instead opting to bring a little bitterness and hatred into your cranberry-stained lives with another anti-goal scoring rant. This week, I was planning on releasing the results of my scientific study on Unwanted Turkey Leftovers and Their Effect on Players' Performance, when a certain soon-to-be-ex Dallas Star 'made the magic happen,' and put hockey directly on the forefront of the sports-talk world.

I'm talking, of course, of Marty Turco, who posted his best game of the year by far in a--wait, what? You say--hold on, Avery said what?!?

In case you just emerged from your lichen-infested hermit's cave, it seems Sean Avery went out of his way to use the Canadian media to royally diss on a former girlfriend, a supermodel currently dating Frankenstein-esque Dion Phaneuf of the Calgary Flames. The comment, which likely offended only people who have seen Titanic 17 times, nevertheless appears to have brought the Hammer of Bettman down on Avery, who was suspended indefinitely.

With the suspension, the NHL has made it pretty clear that illegal hits to the head = ok sometimes; oddly disparaging remarks about non-hockey celebrities in public = full extent of Bettman's boot up your Trebuchet (In light of the terrifying power of censorship, I've decided to cravenly cower to the squeaky wheels that run this society, and replace all possibly-vulgar terms with the names of medieval weapons).

This whole situation really frosts my grommets: while Bettman and his many Flameberges may puff out their chests and point to themselves for doing the right thing, it's pretty moronic to think of hockey as some sort of forum for a debate on morality and censorship. Hockey is entertainment, plain and simple, and the NHL ought to try and control what they can actually do something about --like marketing or officiating, for example-- rather than step into morally and ethically-ambiguous territory. Want a good ethical debate? Go help Monica Lewinsky genocide some unborn fetuses in Darfur. Want to improve the sport of professional hockey? Tell the Flyers to stop running the league's scoring leaders headfirst into the boards like a bunch of rampaging Polearms.

Really, the phrase Avery used isn't even all that bad: certainly, the fact that most media outlets broadcast it unedited should be proof enough that no one takes what he said seriously. I seem to recall the Stars' own announcer Darryl Reaugh (whom regular readers will know as a God Among Men) using it on several occasions to describe a rebound goal (although you probably won't hear him use the phrase anytime soon): but there's a class of person that only feels good about themselves when they're feeling offended for another group of people, and jump at any opportunity to angrily accuse, pound their fists on the podium and wag their fingers on behalf of a downtrodden or oppressed group they will never belong to (it would take a trip to Sweden to procur some major elective surgery for Bettman to belong to the gender he purports to chivalrously defend).

And if you're reading this and feeling extremely offended, do us all a favor: stop reading this, and go back to perusing that issue of Cat Fancy Magazine while spending your Saturday nights home alone sending angry emails to Walmart.com's spam folder regarding their degrading depiction of women's Falchions on the inflatable swimming pool boxes. Also, your collection of teddy bears would like you to know that your Ballista is showing.

Lost in all the hubbub, of course, is the simple question: did Avery's ploy work? The results are in, and the answer is a resounding Yes. The night of the comments, an Avery-less Stars team won their second regular season game in a row for the first time in ten months, using Turco's best game since the San Jose series and some solid neutral-zone defense to defeat the emotion-less Flames 3-1. More tellingly, Avery's intended target, all-world d-ogre Phaneuf, played like a big steaming pile of Quarterstaff: Phaneuf was on-ice for all three Stars goals, and his lackadaisical play directly led to at least two of them, especially the back-breaking rally-killer in the waning moments of the game when he didn't even bother to try and track down Loui Eriksson on the empty-netter.

Reportedly, when Avery's comment was made public to the Flames' locker room earlier in the day, many of Phaneuf's teammates "cackled"... it could be awhile before Dion fully trusts the room, and Flames fans can expect a few more lackluster games, and possibly a closed-door meeting, before Calgary will get back on-track. Either that, or a trade demand to Toronto at the end of the season, and another Brian Burke Stanley Cup shortly afterwards.

So perhaps Avery is an evil genius, sacrificing himself for the good of the team in much the same way Judas died for our sins some two-thousand years ago (offering yourself up as The Worst Sinner of All Time so that tens of billions of people can curse your name to feel good about themselves seems to me like a much bigger sacrifice than anything that Christ fellow did): what he did worked out for his team, although it's doubtful he will ever be invited back into the locker room.

Avery seems like a decent enough guy, and I probably wouldn't mind hanging out with him, but as far as a teammate goes? Now that's a subject of hockey debate. Being a team player means finding your role, and excelling in that role as efficiently as possible. Avery hasn't been able to do that, for whatever reason, and because of that has opted to go the route of the Morningstar. The best possible outcome for Avery would be for him to come back to the Stars, shut the Claymore up in the locker room and improve his pest-like abilities on the ice. It remains to be seen if the Stars players will give him that chance, though.

Of course, any fan who truly blames Avery for this team's pathetic start to the season is only kidding themselves. Avery's not this team's problem: that would be the complete and utter lack of physicality. Watch this team try and "defend", if by "defend" you mean "try listless poke checks through the neutral zone" -- this group has inexplicably become Team Reacharound. Turco cannot seem to track a puck to save his GAA, while the offense has completely eliminated their physical edge of last year's playoffs. Frankly, the Stars offense could use the highly-controversial phrase Sloppy Seconds as a rallying cry, as their forward crew refuses to follow up on rebound chances in the paint, instead opting to peel off and wait for a highlight-reel breakaway no-defenders-in-sight goal that will probably never come.

Perhaps Bettman can do Hicks another favor and indefinitely suspend the entire team for Unwatchable On-Ice Product? That's got to be a rule in the NHL by-laws somewhere.

That's it for this week's Cupcheck: tune in next week for my exclusive interview with Avery --perhaps the only mammal in history to be rejected by Paris Hilton-- as Avery discusses the notions of Tidy Thirds and 409'd Fourths.

Related stories

• Dallas Fort-Worth’s top off-field sports distractions of 2008 (Dec. 25, 2008)
• Thursday Morning Cupcheck - Sean Avery’s First Day at Hull-mart (Dec. 11, 2008)
• Pegasus News week in view: Sloppy Seconds edition (Dec. 4, 2008)

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• Hockey > NHL > Stars

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