Magazine Review: The Hockey News Vol. 75 No. 4

 

This is the kind of magazine I wouldn’t normally review.  There’s little point to reviewing sports magazines.  Either you’re interested in the sport or not.  Certainly some magazines are better than others though.  I had a subscription to Sports Illustrated a couple of years ago which mostly sucked, but occasionally they’d do a good article or feature.  (Their baseball and college football preview issues were good, along with a memorable article on bullfighting.) 

 

In 2019, dad got me a Hockey News Yearbook for Christmas.  That was actually a thoughtful gift, since I like hockey though I seldom get to see it.  The St. Louis Blues had won the Stanley Cup and there was some coverage of it.  I don’t have a favorite hockey team, but I was very pleased that the Blues had won the championship. 

 

 

The rest of the magazine was very straight-forward in covering the sport and each team’s prospects for the season.  If anything, like the baseball previews I buy, it’s a bit of a slog to read the whole thing.  I referred back to this magazine during the season frequently and whenever I wrote about hockey (though it became out-of-date quickly, just like a baseball preview).   

 

I never usually look at the hockey magazines on the newsstand.  I saw a Top 75 Players and Teams special recently, but I’m not enough of a hockey historian to really appreciate it.  (Also, compared to previewing 31 teams, going through a listing of 75 greats, seemed excessively tedious.) 

However, I noticed this regular issue of the Hockey News with the Seattle Kraken cover.  I have to admit that I love the name of the new franchise.  It’s clever.  Their mascots are a Hentai tentacle monster named Kracky and his “friend,” a Japanese schoolgirl named Nani . . . or they should be.  (You couldn’t keep that merchandise from flying off the shelves.)  I bought the magazine.  It seemed like a harmless enough purchase.  Little did I realize what I was about to subject myself to.  Hence, this minor trauma was the impetus for this post.  Let’s subtitle it: Studies in Woke Periodical Trash.    

 

The cover is wrong to begin with.  “Hello Seattle.”  Really?  Even a trite, “Release the Kraken” would have been expected.  You could even be more adventurous with, “Clash of the Titans!  The Seattle Kraken prepares to battle the NHL!”  I call your attention to the rear of the cover image, which is hard to miss.  The Kraken will play in Climate Pledge Arena.  Yeah, that should have clued me in to the contents inside.

 

Starting up front, there was an opinion piece on NHL expansion.  Where to expand to?  Why women’s professional hockey, of course.  Did you know that there are two professional women’s hockey leagues?  Frankly, I doubt the players in the leagues know that there are two leagues, much less the fans, who have no idea either exists.  Look at the WNBA.  There’s a model for growth . .  . as a tax write-off. 

 

Here’s a quote from the article, “But corporations are looking for that, especially equity, equality, gender inclusion, diversity.  And you may say, ‘That’s a pure money-loser,’ and I would agree with you.”  I’ll stop the quote there, just to be nice, because the argument goes downhill from there.  The piece also recommends selling out to China, like the NBA, and going into that heretofore unknown hotbed of hockey, Africa.  NBA Africa, apparently a real thing, boosts having Obama as a “strategic partner.”  Oh, pardon me, if he’s involved, it’s just a grift.

 

Going forward, we have more coverage of women’s hockey.  The NWHL is changing their name to the Premier Hockey Federation.  To quote again, “Among the guiding principles behind the rebrand was the removal of any reference to gender from the league’s name, not only in an effort to support gender equity and inclusivity, but also to reshape the way athletes in the league are seen.”  I think this means they want to recruit trannies into the league.  Is this an outright admission by a women’s league that men play the sport better?

The next item of interest was an article on the Danbury Trashers.  It was a minor league hockey team purchased by a mafia boss for his 17-year-old son to run as the GM.  Surprisingly, they did well, though they were pretty much a goon squad.  An FBI investigation into the mob through the franchise, including wiretapping the team mascot, ended the Trashers.  This would be a great article, except it’s basically a book report on an episode of the Netflix’s series Untold called Crime and Penalties.  Somehow, women’s hockey comes up in the article.

 

Finally we get to the feature pieces on the Kraken.  It’s a bunch of puff pieces on some not-so-great players, who will hopefully play better together in a new city.  I’ve long since stopped caring about such coverage of professional athletes.  You can almost see the strain of the article writers trying to make sh*t shine.  More interesting was the historical article on the History of Hockey in Seattle.  The Seattle Metropolitans became the first US-based team to win the Stanley Cup in 1917.  They might have won the 1919 championship, but it was called because of the Spanish Flu, which actually killed a player. 

 

On that note, in the team updates section, there’s the story of newcomer, Marco Rossi.  He was “diagnosed” with the cold.  (It doesn’t say he was sick.  He was described as being “sluggish” and “wasn’t feeling his absolute best.”)  A couple of months later, during medical testing, he was found to have myocarditis and had to take time off to recuperate.  The article doesn’t explicitly draw a connection between the cold and the heart condition in spite of some obvious allusions to it.  I question if Rossi took the shot in between his diagnosis and his exam, because heart problems from the vaxx in young men is an established side effect of it.  That question is unanswered because this is a piece of vaxx propaganda. 

 

There’s another player puff piece on a pair of brothers joining the Chicago Blackhawks.  Neither player seems to be a star in the making (I could be wrong), but with a black father from the NBA and white blonde mother, a couple straight out of seemingly every TV commercial on the air now, they are worthy of promotion.  (Even Biden has commented on this constant mixed TV couple phenomenon.)  To the credit of the writer, no mention is made of race in the article. 

 

Oh, but out-of-nowhere, let’s go after the Blackhawks in this player hype piece.  Somehow, the video editor for the team is accused of sexually assaulting a couple of players.  This guy has got to be the biggest, strongest A/V Club nerd ever if this is true.  Ah, you know what’s coming next!  Wait for it!  “It was a bad look for a franchise already alienating a portion of its fan base by not changing its logo even though many other sports teams with crests inspired by Indigenous people have recently done so.” 

 

What is with this crush of Indian hatred by the media?  These people, with their anti-Indian agenda, are acting like their relatives have just gotten massacred on the Oregon Trail.  I, for one, support our nation’s proud Native American heritage and various sports teams’ names and logos as tribute.  You racists should be ashamed of yourselves with your efforts to erase them from society.            

 

Later, there’s a regular column by a retired black player.  I think he’s French Canadian, judging by the name, Georges Laraque.  Also, he played for the Habs.  As a former enforcer, he was writing about the demise of the goon on NHL teams.  He was glad the position of a designated brawler was gone, since it was unduly dangerous.  Laraque estimates about 20 fights for the typical goon in 70 games over a seven-month season . . . with bare knuckles . . . on ice.  However, the purpose of enforcers was to make sure that star players and goalies (and the rest of the team) didn’t have a worry as much about taking cheap shots.  “Having guys like that gives all players in the lineup more confidence; every player feels a couple of inches taller and a few pounds heavier.”  So, the position is still necessary in some form.  It was a very nuanced piece from an admitted goon.  

 

In the back, we have four more pages on women’s hockey.  Not enough going on in the NHL to fill the magazine apparently.  At least it was about the World Championship.  Just looking at the side of this blog at the tags, I’ve been a big supporter of women’s sports at New Mexico State.  But if I’m buying a national hockey magazine, I’m expecting mostly NHL coverage and maybe some minor league hockey talk, not six pages on women’s hockey.  I could see giving it a page.         

 

Then it gets worse.  There’s an article about an Indian player (dot Indian, not feather Indian), who was starting his own racist youth hockey league.  Since he “tired of the racism” from playing in youth hockey and didn’t pursue a professional career, as an adult, he decided to start a youth league for “South Asians” and exclude other races.  I’m sure he was the only child ever picked on in youth hockey and then quit.  “I didn’t want other kids to go through what I went through.  We should all be there for the next generation of South Asian hockey players.”  I’m sure kids coming out of an exclusionary league will only generate respect from other children.    

 

There was more on the Kraken in the business section in an interview with the club CEO, Tod Leiweke, and part-owner, successful Hollywood producer, Jerry Bruckheimer.  Let’s grab a couple of quotes.  “They’ve been getting a lot of press, a lot of focus and attention about the diversity angle of the team itself.  We’re proud of it, but I think that our front office, all that it does reflect the community we serve.  We’re right now 45% gender-diverse, around 25% BIPOC, faces of color.  Don’t we want young kids who represent to someday dream of playing in the NHL?  And if we don’t, we’re losing some great athletes . . . We want every great athlete, no matter their race or where they’re from . . . ”  This sounds like a team trying to explain why their team is currently pretty much all white to the sports media.  No one else cares. 

 

Ah, nothing like two old, rich white men mandating an exclusion of white men from their organization.  What is a BIPOC?  The NHL is apparently making a big social agenda push in hopes of sucking up to the sports media for more and better publicity.  I’ve said about soccer, it’ll never be considered a major sport in this country until it is a sport dominated by large black men.  I guess hockey perceives itself in the same way.  (Baseball has plenty of black players, but they’re the wrong blacks.  They’re not African-American.) 

 

Climate Pledge Arena was the name chosen by sponsor Amazon.  There’s a large eco-shaming display inside to carefully explain to the fans that they’re destroying the planet.  Starbucks bought the naming rights to the next door practice facility, but also wouldn’t put their name on it, and instead called it the Kraken Iceplex.  It feels strange that neither of these large companies would prominently associate themselves with the club.  The Kraken’s push for diversity and for climate awareness has relegated them to the bottom of the standings to this point.  The Vegas Golden Knights did much better as an expansion club right out of the box a couple of years ago.

Lastly, there was some real hockey reporting in the magazine.  In the team reports section, there’s an article on Cam Anderson going to the Philadelphia Flyers.  From the pictures, the kid is bringing a great smile and tremendous hair to the team, but he knows what he’s getting into.  “I scored a hat trick [for the Blue Jackets] a few years ago at Wells Fargo around Christmastime, and they showed Santa on the Jumbotron.  They booed Santa Claus.” 

In the history column, there was a story about the Maple Leafs losing the 1933 championship because of elephants.  Game 5 of the conference series went six overtimes and finished at 1:50am.  The Stanley Cup was scheduled to start the same day in New York City at Madison Square Garden.  The venue owner refused to postpone the game because the circus coming to town for a show.  The exhausted Maple Leafs lost the game and the series.  Then they found out the event could have easily been rescheduled, but chose not to.  Well, during the marathon game, the Leaf’s coach had argued with the other team’s coach and league president just to give his team a ten-minute break.

 

I never watch the intermission reports during games, except for that Hockeyville announcement last year when El Paso won.  One time that I’d watched, the network did a whole segment on the NHL supporting the gay Agenda.  Some players were interviewed, though none came out.  It was very cringe.  This magazine may have beaten that social justice display.  I wouldn’t have been so offended, but for having read that very meat-and-potatoes Yearbook. 

 

National NHL TV coverage in the US has transferred over to ABC/ESPN.  I was surprised to actually see a game on Black Friday on ABC.  I thought I’d never see another hockey game again given that ESPN is still covering the NBA at the same time of the year.  I think I heard that they relegated most of their hockey coverage to ESPN+.  I feel that this change in broadcasters is affecting this Canadian magazine’s coverage.  ESPN covers sports in a “distinctive” way and all mainstream hockey coverage is following in lockstep.

 

What a terrible purchase.  I had no idea that hockey coverage could be so woke.  At least I got some blog mileage out of it, but that’s all I got.  I gave away those Captain America and Peanuts tributes for their woke attitude.  I’ll do the same here.  I’m going to have to be extra careful in buying any more magazines.