If only...
Now they're destined for wherever they sent that 2010 Flyers merchandise, or the 2009 Red Wings stuff.
Tag Archives: NHL
Flyers win Stanley Cup
... or not.
On second thought, maybe it's cruel to throw in the faces of these poor players and fans that they came so tantalizingly close to winning the Stanley Cup and their dreams have been irreconcilably crushed, yet again.
But then, these are the Flyers we're talking about.
NHL can make history by opening up
This video is one of many, many parodies of the National Hockey League's History Will Be Made ad campaign for the 2010 playoffs.
Some are hilarious. Some are awesome to watch. Some are head-scratchers. Some talk about the history that wasn't made. Some are bitter (with reason). Some look like they'll be killer until a monumental letdown at the punchline.
Some make fun of officiating. Some make fun of journalists. Some just make fun of Ryan O'Byrne.
As the playoffs come to an end, the NHL is tooting its own horn about the campaign, and specifically about the fan-produced videos, which are made possible mainly by the simplicity of the ads' creation - just a piece of video with cheap old-movie-style effects, played backwards in slow-motion with a piece of instrumental music.
It's a case study for the power of viral marketing, and how giving people the power to make their own media can be better than making it yourself.
But while these videos are all over the place, the NHL didn't make it easy for people to use the source material, and the thing executives are heralding now could soon become illegal.
Digital locks
The Canadian government recently introduced a bill, Bill C-32, which would update the Copyright Act to reflect changes in the digital age. I won't go too much into the details (feel free to read Michael Geist if you want to learn way too much about it), but there are two provisions that are pertinent here. One makes it legal to do mashups under certain circumstances (one being that it's not done for profit), which is certainly welcome.
The other is a much-criticized provision that, put simply, says that you can't circumvent a digital protection measure or "digital lock" on copyrighted content. That program you use to download DVDs to your hard drive? Illegal. That program or website that allows you to download YouTube videos? Illegal. It doesn't matter how easy it is to circumvent the lock, as long as the copyright holder tries to lock something down, you're not allowed to have access to it. And you can't have access to the tool that circumvents that measure either.
Among the most protective copyright holders are sports leagues. Before live broadcasts, many of them include a reminder that videos, photos or even descriptions of the game (by this they usually mean radio play-by-play) cannot be retransmitted or republished without the express written permission of the league. Though the NHL isn't as bad as Major League Baseball of the National Football League, those same conditions apply.
Except for recording off a TV, there is no easy, legal way of downloading video of these iconic (or just funny) NHL moments of history in order to create these mashups. Even buying a DVD wouldn't make it legal under this new law because those DVDs have digital locks. Creators have to first get access to the videos through some grey or black market - or find a way to circumvent or break the digital lock - before they can create their mashup. Some methods are really low-tech (like pointing a video camera at a TV screen), while others are the result of what might be considered hacking.
Let the people create
Here's a radical idea: The NHL should post short video clips of the greatest moments in hockey history in open formats and without any copy or access controls (UPDATE: They've already done this with the music used). Let them import the video directly into iMovie or Final Cut or Windows Movie Maker and have fun with them. Don't force your fans to jump through hoops to participate in your marketing campaign.
Rather than cut into their profits, this could instead drive interest in the NHL. Seeing a 30-second clip of Bobby Orr scoring a Stanley Cup-winning overtime goal and flying through the air could lead to people wanting to watch the whole game, or at least wanting to buy tickets to the next Bruins match. Seeing a three-minute montage of great Orr moments would have a similar effect.
The same could be done for recent highlights. Thanks to Yahoo Sports, bloggers and others can post highlights of the previous night's game and discuss them. But while those videos are embeddable - and that's a pretty big step already -they're not downloadable.
Where the NHL will make money is in ticket sales, merchandising, and exclusive broadcast deals for live games. It's not in 30-second highlights of history that everyone can see on YouTube already anyway. It's not like you're getting compensation when those highlights appear on the nightly news.
Put it out there. Let your fans play with your golden moments. Like with the History Will Be Made campaign, you might be surprised how creative they can get with them.
What’s black and white while red’s all over?
Congrats, kids. You surprised everyone. Now go buy the DVD.
Red Wings merch is 20% off. That's gotta hurt.
If you're still in denial, feel free to order a Detroit Red Wings 2009 Stanley Cup Champions souvenir puck, or baseball cap, or T-shirt (also in red), or shot glass, or flag, or mouse pad, or license plate...
Kovalev is better than Ovechkin
At least that's what NHL all-star ballot stuffers think. Because of rampant stuffing from Canadiens fans, and then counter-stuffing from Pittsburgh Penguins fans, the Eastern Conference starting lineup has four Canadiens players (Alex Kovalev, Andrei Markov, Carey Price and Mike Komisarek) and two Penguins players (Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin).
Though Habs and Penguins fans should be embarrassed by this, the fault lies in the National Hockey League, which setup a system of unverified voting for its all-star lineup and even encouraged people to vote as many times as they wanted.
Maybe it's time to realize that online voting isn't a proper way to poll the public on anything.
Declining sports coverage
The Globe and Mail has a piece about how U.S. newspapers, facing budget and staff cuts, are reducing the amount of coverage they are giving to NHL teams (via Habs Inside/Out). Some are only covering home games, some aren't covering their own NHL teams at all. Instead, they focus on baseball, basketball and football, which are much more popular and sell more newspapers.
We can poo-poo them, as we live in the hockey capital of the universe where each paper has about a half-dozen people covering every home game and at least one on the road for every away game. But while our hockey coverage remains strong, other sports like NBA, soccer, NFL football and others have fallen off the radar, and coverage of major-league baseball has virtually disappeared since the Expos left town.
And sports, like cars and movie listings and crosswords, are supposed to sell newspapers, generating the revenue to offset the cost of investigative reporting, arts coverage and editorials. When even they are getting cut, you know there's something seriously wrong.
I'm still, to a large extent, a rookie in this business. I have no recollection of the good ol' days when newspapers spent like drunken sailors, had hundreds of reporters and essentially controlled the news.
Instead, I live in a world of increasing cutbacks, threats of more cutbacks (or worse), rising prices, fewer voices, more wire service copy and newspapers struggling to get by with their massive bureaucracies and middle-age staff, their future extinction seemingly a foregone conclusion.
And, like hundreds of newspaper managers across the developed world, I have no clue how to fix it. Or even if that's possible. (Though if I did know, I could make millions...)
Kind of a sobering thought.
But then again, I'm an eternal optimist. And I'm naive enough to think that I can help them get through this slow crisis, so that's what I'll do in my own little way.
NHL free agency explained (I hope)
The Bluffer's Guide this week, courtesy once again of yours truly, is about NHL free agency, which began on July 1 as it does every year. Our beloved Canadiens got its star power-play quarterback snatched away, but have acquired a thug enforcer to toughen the team up.
Because NHL contracts are complicated, I figured some training might be useful for us less-than-insane fans and well-wishers. In order to do that, of course, I had to read the collective agreement that was signed in 2005 after the lockout.
Unfortunately, I failed to realize that the agreement is over 450 pages long (PDF).
Didn't get a lot of sleep that night. And I'm sure I still got a bunch of things wrong.
Not that I'm worried. If I fail at journalism here, I can always sign in Russia, right?
Salaries in perspective
As the NHL free-agency period began yesterday, and players' contracts expired allowing any team to sign deals with them, some pretty wacky numbers started to appear:
- $8.7 million/year for Evgeni Malkin
- $7.45 million for one year for Marian Hossa
- $7.1 million/year for Brian Campbell
- $4.1 million/year for Mark Streit
- $4.5 million/year for former Canadiens goaltender José Theodore
- $5 million/year for former Canadiens goaltender Cristobal Huet
And yet, someone is going to make more next year than all of these people put together: Rush Limbaugh. And that's not even including his $100 million signing bonus.
TSN gets 15 Habs games a season
TSN and the NHL have reached a contract extension through 2014, which provides the network with 70 regular-season games, of which 15 involve the Canadiens. That puts us second behind the Leafs (no surprise there). The remaining Canadian teams get 10 games each. (We're assuming, of course, that there will be some overlap as the teams face each other)
The deal also opens a (slight) possibility of TSN covering a Canadian team during the playoffs. Basically if all three teams in one conference (Leafs/Sens/Habs or Oilers/Flames/Canucks) make it three teams make it to the playoffs, the CBC will pick two and TSN will get the third. If it's four, CBC gets the fourth pick, then TSN, then CBC, then the last two go to TSN. Previously, CBC had rights to all playoff games involving Canadian teams, as well as the entire Stanley Cup final.
The Globe has details (thanks Josh)
The deal also gives TSN "broadband rights," which might mean being able to watch some games online. But the media release doesn't go into detail about that.
UPDATE: The NHL has also renewed its agreement with its "official beer sponsor" Bud Light, which will see crappy American beer marketed all across the league.
TWIM: Violence in the NHL
For those wondering, today's paper has another Bluffer's Guide from yours truly (Page B5, but not online) about violence in the NHL. It deals mainly with Chris Simon, who was suspended for 30 games (the longest suspension the NHL has ever given for an on-ice event) for stepping on another player's foot with his skate. This, after he had just come back from a 25-game suspension (which itself had set a record) for a deliberate slash to the face.
The debate over the level of acceptable violence in the NHL is going to continue forever, and probably only get worse, until the seemingly inevitable point where someone dies on the ice as a result of a slash, a collision or a fight. Players (at least those who speak out publicly) tend to be in favour of fighting because they think it regulates tempers and protects star players. That is, until they themselves become the victims of violence.
Others, like Gazette columnist Pat Hickey, say this is all nonsense. Football doesn't allow fighting, and it's a much more physical sport.
UPDATE (Dec. 25): The Toronto Star says the NHL only pretends to hate fighting, while Dave Stubbs reminds everyone of Billy Coutu, who was banned for life in 1927 for attacking a linesman off the ice (though he was reinstated 5 years later to play in minor leagues -- he never played an NHL game again). This is why we hear the term "on-ice" in most explanations.
At least the Habs logo is Number 1
According to the very scientific method of a poll on a blog, the Canadiens logo beat out the 29 other NHL teams logos in a head-to-head competition to win the title of NHL's best current team logo. (I guess there really is a website for everything online, even one devoted to NHL team logos.)
Also be sure to check out this gallery of Habs logo and uniform concepts, including some disturbingly sacrilegious massacres of our dear CH.
