Marketing Villains, How Philly Can Win, John Madden
Posted by jtbourne on June 2, 2010 · 26 Comments
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Happy Game Three morning, or something like that.
In yesterday’s Puck Daddy post, I elaborated on what we regularly talk about here in our comments section – sports hate. I figured it was fitting timing, since this year’s version of the Stanley Cup Finals is made far more interesting because of it’s hateable characters. (Also, when I read what I wrote about sports hate the first time, it was barely more than a sentence, and it’s a great topic.)
"Dude, best pre-game meal ever. Three orphan babies and a golden retriever puppy."
But, on the heels of that column, Ms. Conduct’s blog titled “You Love Carcillo. Admit it. (though I absolutely don’t), Greg Wyshynski’s post on Chris Pronger (WITH JUST UNDER TWO THOUSAND COMMENTS), and a couple of recent tweets/thoughts about “maybe the NHL should market it’s villains”, it’s worth asking….
Should the NHL market it’s villains?
Couldn’t you see a 30-second compilation of all Pronger’s suspension-worthy offenses strung together in one NHL commercial called “Nice Guys Finish Last”, with him hoisting the Cup at the end? And wouldn’t it set your insides to a rolling boil?
But he’d become a more recognizable figure, and we’d love to root for him to lose.
Not sure what the answer is here (and I think the NHL would have to get permission from the player to play up his “gritty” side, but hey, most of those guys make their money playing that role, so I bet they’d be pumped to up their evil image), but I know I’d eat it up if it ever happened.
{Tangent: The end of my “For the Love of Hatred” column on Pronger snapping his stick and falling on it etc. is actually a tribute to a couple friends I used to play “worst case scenario” with before each hockey game. Basically, it was a reverse jinx – surely if we say it, this stuff won’t happen. The “broken stick” part actually is stolen from “today you’re going to take a face-off, your stick will snap, and you’ll fall and impale yourself on the bottom half. Then when you skate towards medical attention, your skate is gonna catch a rut and snap your ankle.” Good times.}
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“Crushasaurus” posed this question yesterday “Game one was wide open, Philly lost. Game two was vacuum tight, Philly lost. If you’re Laviolette, what do you say?”
"Pronger's kinda good, huh?" "...Uh, ya"
Philly can win if….
Philly can win if Pronger and Carle can continue to shut down the Toews/Kane line.
They need some puck possession time. Between Seabrook and Keith’s ability to come up with the puck in the d-zone and transition their forwards, and Hossa (and crew’s) ability to rag it at the other end, they’ve rarely had the even-strength sustained pressure to wear down Chicago’s D-corps and centers.
They benefit from a stupid, slogging, facewashing battle. You don’t want to go run-n-gun with Chicago, so keep it more like Game Two, and hope this time it’s Darroll Powe that gets the winner, not Ben Eager.
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I love watching a baseball “brawl” (90% of the time it’s a couple people jawing) and focusing on the stragglers loping out to the field out of obligation, when there’s already 80 people in the mix not fighting. They’ve got warm-up jackets on, a mouth full of Spitz and just took off the “my eyes are open” glasses they were wearing for their nap.
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"Red, white and black forever!"
John Madden must have one of the best perspective’s on what it takes for a team to win a Stanley Cup.
Pretty sure he has two cups going on three, and none of them were back to back (’01, ’03, …’10?) In that way, I would think he’d be able to connect the dots to see what make-up it takes to get it done, right? Maybe he’d say it was having a few dominant d-men, or young, quick forwards. Who knows. Maybe he’d say it’s him.
But he’s been a top six guy, a bottom six guy, young, old, on a defensive-first team, an offense first team…. I just think he’d be a really great interview about the common threads amongst his Cup winning teams.
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Okay, I’m over the Tiger Woods grace period for “getting back into it”. I need the divorce finalized, and his focus back on entertaining me. He’s playing this weekend in the Memorial, defending his win from last year. I don’t know him, or care to further discuss his now-obvious horrible-humanness. Tiger, it’s time to be good again, for the sake of Sundays.
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Game Three, folks. Thoughts, questions, statements, links….?
I'm a hockey player turned writer. After playing for Alaska Anchorage in the WCHA (NCAA), I carried on with an NHL tryout (New York Islanders in 2007) before spending a couple seasons in the AHL/ECHL (last year was 2008-09). My father, Bob Bourne, won four Stanley Cups with the Islanders in the '80's, as did my fiancee's dad, Clark Gillies. I'm now the web editor for theScore's hockey blog "Backhand Shelf."
This is one those moments where I start raving and ranting about how I’VE BEEN SAYING THIS FOR BLOODY AGES AND NO ONE LISTENED TO ME ABOUT VILLAINS AND HOW FRIGGIN COOL THEY ARE.
I hate Carcillo, but I love hating him, and so does everyone else. Wise up Bettman.
On the other hand, if you constantly play up the villians and show clips of their “gritty” moments, you’re not going to attract any new fans to the game. I know plenty of people who refuse to watch hockey because it’s “too violent,” even though I have seen exactly two fights in these playoffs, and those were both in the same game.
Firstly, I played with a guy who leaned on his stick, had it snap, fell on the bottom half which broke his sternum. Worst case scenario realized. He was in far too much pain to skate towards medical attention, catch a rut and break his ankle though.
Secondly, Tiger is playing this WEEK at the Memorial, we don’t know if he’s playing this WEEKEND there yet, LOL.
Trevor – wait, what, that ACTUALLY happened to somebody? That’s flippin’ INSANE.
And as for Tiger, as I wrote the word “weekend” I called myself out on that too, out loud. But I figured hey, he’s missed like eight cuts in 12 years, I like his odds even with his dogmeat play lately!
Yep, said it was the most painful thing he’s ever gone through. I think of it every time I flex my stick hard to check it.
I hate him, but you are probably pretty safe on the Tiger thing.
“Game one was wide open, Philly lost. Game two was vacuum tight, Philly lost. If you’re Laviolette, what do you say?”
“Oh, dude. We are SO. F**ked. I wish we could surrender like a bad blackjack hand.”
i think you summed it up in your last blog…LOL…(love the cut and paste function!)
I automatically dismiss, out of hand, anyone who says they don’t watch hockey “because of the violence”. They either don’t watch it because they don’t care to, or they don’t watch it because they tried to and just didn’t understand what they were seeing.
Feel free to call out friends/relatives/neighbors who lean on this tired old excuse as a crutch.
My brother has lived in alaska for 13 years now and had never gone to a hockey game. He finally went to the college game and thought it was ok, and then i drug him and his family to the Aces game (ECHL) where there was a fight during warm ups, a fight at opening puck, and two or three more during the game. They LOVED it, and are now asking me how much season tickets are.
Their reasoning for never attending games before? “its too violent”……
I love seeing peoples reactions over here when I tell them I play ice hockey. Their eyes open wide and go ‘isnt it all violent and stuff’
“Game one was wide open, Philly lost. Game two was vacuum tight, Philly lost. If you’re Laviolette, what do you say?”
Keep it tight that was a lucky bounce on the first one and if Leights sivs it up again by not playing his angles right and giving up a short side goal again we are going to BOUCHER!!!!
Anyone who summarily dismisses hockey because of the “too violent” nonsense is too stupid to ever appreciate the game anyway. One of the things I love about hockey is a lot (but not all) of the stupid get filtered out because you need to have a pretty good level of understanding the game to really love it. I just listened to the two clowns that have the afternoon shift on a Chicago radio station blather on about how nonsensical they believe it is that people actually believe fighting, emotion, and momentum have an impact in hockey (Chicago media coverage of hockey is embarassing). If you don’t like it, ignore it and stay away. I don’t care if there’s a thousand hockey fans or millions, I’ll still love the game.
I’ll second the comments already made regarding violence and hockey (Joe G, JDP).
That being said, I’ve been to hockey games (mostly WHL) where there is so much fighting I start feeling awful for everyone involved, including the screaming fans. I don’t mind watching two people square off and one of them getting whooped, or a guy getting absolutely leveled by a good hit, but my stomach turns when I see a guy turtling on the ice while some 17-year-old punches him in the back of the head for 2.5 minutes because the refs are too busy dealing with the other 4 fights. It makes me feel dirty for being there.
Aren’t baseball brawls the saddest example of “fighting” in major sports? If you’re gonna come flying out of the dug-out like it’s gonna be a brawl, maybe at least make it look like you’re remotely interested in going near a person on the other team? I get the impression from the way most of those guys look that they’re plenty tough, but man, what a waste of time it is having them constantly pretend they’re willing to throw anything other than their glove, from 20 feet away.
Until Americans can get over their ADD, hockey will never be really popular in the states. It’s obviously popular in Canada and in many European countries, but American culture has come to be such that everyone expects a “7 second sound bite.” Think about it. Why are baseball, football, and basketball so popular? Because people have a chance to talk about/process what just happened in each play. It’s the same reason soccer will never be popular in the states. You can’t stop watching because the play never stops. It does in all the other sports.
Think about this: In an NFL broadcast totalling 3 hours, there are something like 14 minutes of actual football plays during the real game. In basebal it’s probably worse. The rest of the time is replays, commercials, and breaks between plays. In an NHL broadcast totalling 2.5 hours, there are at least 60 minute of hockey plays. And in soccer games there are at least 90 minutes of soccer plays. People just can’t handle staying focused for an entire hockey game.
I thought your “ideal scenario” yesterday was probably the funniest thing I’d seen all playoffs. Especially Eager passing him the towel to mop his tears.
I live in Europe. Soccer is THE no1 sport here. I find a soccer very boring to watch. You can literally take a half hour nap and not miss any chances or defensive plays. But that might be because of the sub par level of play in the belgian competition.
In Hockey, every second something develops, a hit, a pass, a break out play, a rush, a save a shot anything… And that’s why I love it.
Baseball, again is boring to watch. Basketball (even NBA) is waaay to repetitive, it puts me to sleep, honestly… Football, I never even bothered about learning the rules, it’s 5 seconds of play, 2 minutes break… I’m NOT gonna sit through that much commercials.
Justin, stop with the random apostrophes!
OK, got that editing tic out of the way…
Big fat NO to marketing villans. Ugh. What makes the NHL unique, IMHO, is that there are so few jackasses when you compare it to other sports. Playing them up would be the worst possible thing.
It’s a violent game, yes. There’s a difference between good, hard, violence and jerkish plays. I like a solid, open-ice check. I don’t like a deliberate stick to the face. You can be a pest and not a punk. Carcillo is NOT a pest, he’s a punk. Market the pests. Ignore the punks.
Everyone hates Pronger…except when he’s on your team.
(…biggest mistake the Ducks have made in their short history.)
And then what? we start calling hockey…”Sports Entertainment” like WWE? No thanks. Bad idea.
So thennn, do you like the idea?
Madden’s first Cup was in ’00 against the Stars, he and the Devils lost in ’01 to the Avalanche… would love to see him hoist it again
Justin, fighting the Hawks fan in me’s urge to complain about Pronger. As a reality check, aren’t the D-men in San Jose and Vancouver going, “Really, we could have done that to neutralize Byfuglien (especially him), Kane, and Toews?” I know Pronger’s a future Hall of Famer and a helluva defenseman, but again, maybe it’s the Hawks fan in me speaking, but it does seem he gets a way with a lot more than other guys are. They really have no answer for him at this point in the series.
I did find it amusing watching Laviollete lose his mind on the Carcillo call. Not charging, but when he was watching the replay on the scoreboard he apparently missed the slash across the back. Carcillo really serves no purpose. The Flyers are tough enough without him in the lineup. If they weren’t playing the Hawks, I’d probably be rooting for them because of their style of play.
“Until Americans can get over their ADD, hockey will never be really popular in the states. It’s obviously popular in Canada and in many European countries…”
i desperately wish it was popular in MANY countries here in europe.
but it’s actually just the #1 sport in sweden, finland and slovakia. in some others (czech republic, switzerland, denmark, norway) it shares #1 status with football/soccer.
but pat’s got, sadly, a very good point with a lot of ppl having problems with “staying focused the whole game”.
you can booze throughout a football/soccer match and not miss any significant plays, but try that with a 6-5 stanley cup final …
guess hockey was, is and will always be way too complex, skilled and fast for a vast majority of ppl following/loving it. that’s of course just talking about countries where there first boots you wear in your life are skates.
dammit, it’s supposed to be “…AREN’T skates…”
I was at the Dodgers game when the “fight” broke out, and I’ve never been more excited in my life! Because next to hockey, baseball is like watching grass grow, so I’m glad they gave me SOMETHING to entertain me. And Russell Martin, the Dodgers catcher, if Canadian after all…..
can you imagine if Philly somehow ended up trading for Avery? What a hated squad that would be; even though the home crowd would love them (you know Philly’s loving Pronger and Carcillo already).
It’s an interesting discussion whether pro sports should play up these personnas; it definitely gets people talking and tuning in to see who said or did what last, or get someone’s take on what was said or done. The media certainly eats it up already.
Unfortunately, most hockey interviews are straight from the cookie cutter, and to get a player to admit to being bothered by pretty well anything is nearly impossible. “Well you know, they’re a good team, and he’s a good player, we just have to work a little harder, and be a little more responsible…. bla bla bla…”
As much as marketing pro sports as sports entertainment is not a popular idea, you have to admit that WWE is doing something right; nearly 20,000 paid every night ($50-$80 tickets), and an average of 3.0 in the Nielsen ratings those nights as well, and on the air regularly since the 80′s. Can the Coyotes, or any other struggling NHL franchise boast those kind of numbers?
You could argue it’s a different audience/demographic, or whatever, but pro sports and entertainment are both a businesses, and businesses are about the dollars and cents on their bottom lines. More fans means More tickets and merchandise sold, which means more money; more viewers mean more advertisers, which means better cable deals, which all mean more money…. if the dollars are rolling in, and franchises stop tanking because fans get a little more emotionally invested in hating a few players a lot more, and loving others a lot more because they want the ones they like to take out the ones they hate because the league played up the villain vs hero angle,would it be that bad for the game? The skill of the players in the league is not tarnished; they still have to be hella good to make it there. It’d just be now they put on a little more of a show to keep the elusive US fan interested enough not to change the channel to baseball.
By no means am I suggesting we start choreographing games or fixing endings, but taking a page out of Vince McMahon’s marketing strategy may not be that crazy.
@ Airborne Moose, did you take your brother to see the Aces this year? Just curious because my favorite rough and tumble player was there this year… Justin Johnson. He is one of the best fighters in the ECHL, IMO. But at the same time he is probably the nicest person in the world off the ice. He even came to my boyfriend’s daughter’s 7th birthday last year because she went up to him after a game and told him that he was her favorite player and would he come to her birthday!