I watched maybe ten minutes total coverage of the NHL All Star festivities last weekend. My feeling is, if you’ve seen one All Star game, you’ve seen them all. Don’t get me wrong, all the 2009 NHL All Stars deserve “mad props” for their wicked hot skills, but that doesn’t mean I want to watch them float around on the ice for two and a half hours.
All Star games offer three things: high scoring, low to no penalties (Komisarek’s hooking penalty was the first penalty called in an ASG in nine years!), and massive egos. Maybe I’m just an all around horrible person and detest seeing other people happy, but there is something deeply unattractive about grown men skating around with their noses turned up and pompous ha-ha-ha, country club smiles on their faces. Where’s the passion?! Where’s the intensity?! I want more Testosterone – am I right, ladies?
It’s not JUST All Star players that turn me off, it’s pretty much any type of special event teams that make me wish that I was cleaning gutters, doing calculus, or having unnecessary surgery instead of sitting in my seat. This past summer, the Kitchener Rangers were hosting the 2008 Memorial Cup. Part of the celebrations included a Mem Cup Alumni Game (all the alumni from Rangers squads that have made it to the Cup were invited). My friend and I thought it would be fun to check out this game for nostalgic reasons, and relive our days of hanging out at Tim’s and cruising up and down King street to the likes of Nelly, 50, and even a few NSYNC slow jams. After all, we were there front row centre when Kitch made it to the Mem Cup in 2003.
The novelty of the Rangers Alumni game wore off about five minutes into the warm up. After that it was a lot of country club “ha,ha,has,” “My name is David Clarkson and I just missed that shot …silly me!,” “Mike Richards, you turkey, you poked me with your stick,” “Oh, pardon me, Derek Roy, ha, ha, ha!,” and the nauseating like. Thank God, they never stopped the clock at any point in the game. I couldn’t have taken much more of that. Plus, the Aud smells like threatened virginity, and I was finding it unsettling to be in there *shudders.* However, the major highlight of the afternoon was the group of forty-something cougs sitting in the same row as us. They were clearly the product of the Rangers’ 1982 Mem Cup wave. As I watched them hoot and holler like a bunch of horny fifteen year olds on birth control pills, I wondered if I was seeing my future twenty years down the road. Let’s hope not, I’m not such a fan of the Croc Rock scene!
Maybe for some, attending the ASG festivities is exciting, but I have attended one All Star weekend and I didn’t find it anymore thrilling. Once was enough. It almost seems unfair that the league’s crème de la crème are forced to spend their break at the ASG. If you ask me, the real reason for the All Star Break is to give the players a chance to warm up and take the sluttiest, fake tittiest “girlfriend” they can find to some tropical island for a little “R and R.” Seems to me like the All Stars are being punished while the mediocrity are basking in the glow of fake boobs and fake tans. That’s justice for you.
You said “tittiest”. HA!
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[...] As a hockey fan, understanding the business side of the sport is essential to enjoying the sport. If you just don’t understand that there is a bottom line, then I can’t even imagine the bitterness you might feel with your team or with the NHL. I hear it all the time from fans complaining about how the owners of their teams don’t care about the fans. Well…it happens. I’m not saying it’s right. The fans are the reason the League is as successful as it is, and they do very little in terms of giving thanks. However, it’s that business side of the game that I love. I love to see how these major league organizations are dealing with attendance issues, on ice problems, and even scandal. And I guess that’s one of the things that make the Olympics so unattractive to me. You don’t see much of that business side other than when they make their roster selection over the months leading up to the tournament. But, of course, it’s not just the Olympics that make me sad…All Star Games and things too! [...]