Ladies only

The Washington Capitals have started the (apparently) first female NHL fan club.

One question: what the hell took so long for something like this to happen?

I really hope this is successful and will mark a shift in the perceived notions of female hockey fans. Personally, I think the attempt to get more female fans by offering pink jerseys was deplorable. I’m a fan and I wear my team’s colours with pride. I think any self-respecting female hockey fan would NEVER bastardize her team by wearing baby pink and no self-respecting male hockey fan would allow his girlfriend/wife/sister/mother to wear such a jersey. But they must be doing well because the awful pink things are still around.

But I digress.

As a female fan, I find most (if not all) of my male friends are impressed by my knowledge, ask me questions, don’t take offense when I know more than them and enjoy engaging in debates with me. But outside of my group of friends, it’s hard to find any real respect for the female fan. In the media, it’s still men who call the games, appear on the sports talk shows, write the sports columns and are heard on the radio. When women do appear, it’s as the token eye candy and often in a lesser role, like reading the news from the teleprompter rather than offering insight and opinion on the game. (The Globe and Mail had an excellent article on female sportscasters and the sexism that is still rampant and likely won’t go away any time soon.)

Cassie Campbell has proved to be an exception, but she’s not a consistent enough presence with the CBC to really indicate a changing of the guard, if you will. But that’s not to knock what she’s done for the game since retiring as a player. She’s pretty damn cool and has my utmost respect.

But now that a team has an official female fan club, maybe this will mark the change that is sorely needed in the game. There’s so much talk about the “new NHL”, with the new rules and the salary cap and teams going bankrupt – oh, wait, that’s not really happening. My bad. But with this “new NHL” (ugh, hate that term), new sportscasters should follow. Women can bring a lot to the analysis of the game and I’m sure can more than hold their own with the Bobs McKenzie and Cowan and with any hockey broadcast team assembled by TSN or SportsNet or CBC Sports or The Fan 590 or The Globe & Mail or The Toronto Star or…well, you get the picture.

First, a fan club; tomorrow, THE (NHL) WORLD!

There's nothing new about it

I have an irrational hate-on for the term "new NHL". Ever since the lock-out ended, everyone and their uncle has been referring to the NHL as the "new NHL".

It is not new.

Just because every member of the hockey media is 40+ and associates the name Crosby first with Still & Nash and then with Sydney doesn't mean the game became "new" for the 05/06 season. It's a salary cap people. Believe it or not, hockey was not the first sport to come up with this astounding idea nor will it be the last. There is nothing "new" about setting a limit on what teams can spend on players. It's not like they decided to put eleven guys on per side, switch the game to a field, have them run instead of skate, then have them use their feet to kick a ball and call the game the most common-sense name they could think of (soccer, of course).

It's still hockey. Okay, maybe finally making Bryan McCabe irrelevant is deserving of new, but really now. What else changed since the lock-out? There are still plenty of big contracts (see Ovechkin, Alex; Lecavalier, Vincent; DiPietro, Rick), Martin Brodeur is still stopping not only the puck but the little flecks of ice that also fly up with the puck, Gary Bettman is still a moron and the Leafs still suck.

So enough with this "new NHL" nonsense. The only thing that would make it new would be to get rid of all the tired old hockey media and replace them with me.