The real losers of the NHL lockout

I’ve read a lot of lockout stories the last few weeks, especially ones about those most affected by the lockout.

Scotiabank Place was always a great place for fundraisers.

The stories either focus on players overseas, those who can’t get a job playing overseas, or the guy who works in the arenas/restaurants/bars who will see fewer hours and less tips because of the lockout. Some even say the fans are the main losers of the lockout.

But there’s an even more important group that will be missing out because of the lockout that no one is focussing on.

Charities and the people they serve.

Yes, some charities will see a decrease in money raised this year if there is no NHL season.

As I live in Ottawa, I’m more familiar with the Senators, so I’ll use them as an example, but this could be applied to almost any team across the continent.

50-50 draws

When you go to a game, what’s do you constantly see as you go to your seat? Volunteers selling 50/50 tickets. Money raised goes to the Ottawa Sens Foundation. In turn, they send that money out to various groups in the community, whether it be Roger’s House, CHEO, the Project S.T.E.P. campaign and others. According the Sens website, “the 50/50 draw is a fund-raising program for the Ottawa Senators Foundation, which is a registered Canadian charity that provides funding and gifts-in-kind to other charities with a focus on disadvantaged youth.”

Last year, in three home playoff games, they raised $60,000. In 41 regular season games, they raised more than $600,000. Throw in the preseason games, and one unclaimed prize (so the money goes back to the Foundation), and the 50-50 draw raised more than $700,000 last season.

If there is no hockey this year, that’s a big chunk of change that won’t be going back into the community. That’s money lost for those charities and non-for-profits.

Players in the community

While some players have chosen to stay in Ottawa (Daniel Alfredsson, Chris Phillips), the majority of them are off playing hockey elsewhere. The young guys (Jared Cowen, Jakob Silfverberg, Mika Zibanejad) are playing for Binghamton in the AHL. Older guys (Jason Spezza, Sergei Gonchar, Erik Karlsson) are playing in various leagues overseas.

That takes away from all the charity work these guys do in the community. Spezza, for example, is involved with Ronald McDonald House charities. He also has a program called Spelling with Spezza. Spezza goes to classrooms to talk about the importance of spelling. Winners get a signed poster and a pair of tickets to a Sens game.

Players like Colin Greening, Kyle Turris and Peter Regin are also playing overseas. In short, with these players not in the community, it takes away from all the charity work these guys do in Ottawa. Groups that would count on Sens players in the past will have to come up with new ways to get the public to donate money.

Team fundraisers

Last year, the Ottawa Senators participated in many team-led charity work.

There were games with a focus to raise awareness of youth mental health through Do It For Daren.

There’s the team’s casino blackjack night, where players run the games at a casino fundraiser (last year called the Ferguslea Sens Soirée) for “youth mental health and addictions, pediatric healthcare programs and outdoor community rink construction projects.” So far, that event has raised more than $3 million. Last year, it brought in $250,000.

Then there’s the annual telethon run on Sportsnet for Roger’s House, which takes place during a Sens game. Last year, it raised  $116,425.

No, I’m not 100% positive, but if there’s no season, I’m guessing many of these events don’t go ahead. Or if they do, it won’t be with as many players, since they’re currently spread throughout the world.

Food Bank

The Sens do a lot of work with the Ottawa Food Bank. On Dec. 16 of last year, hockey fans attending the Penguins-Senators game were encouraged to bring canned food for donation to the food bank. The game this year to raise food was scheduled to be Dec. 15 against the Stanley Cup champions Los Angeles Kings.

Then there was Game seven against the New York Rangers in the first round of the playoffs. Taking place in New York, the Sens decided to have fans watch the game at Scotiabank. The admission was a donation to the food bank.

On Oct. 1, 2011, the Sens hosted a Puck Drop event, where fans could see the Sens’ new heritage jersey, watch an open practice, and participate in events like inflatable games, face painting and what not. Again, admission was free, but the Sens were asking for donations to the Food Bank and the Kanata Food Cupboard.

Just last week, it was announced that the amount of people, especially kids, using the food banks were at an all-time high throughout Canada. Now, they’ll have to find new ways to collect the items they would normally get through hockey programs.

Miscellaneous

Apart from the players participation, there would obviously be a decrease in the amount of prizes donated to local groups to use for prizes. Ever go to a fundraiser and have a chance to win tickets for a Sens hockey game? Or game-worn memorabilia? Or signed hockey merchandise?

Plus, there are player visits to schools, charities and public events.

The Sens have a fundraising program where a group can sell tickets for Sens games and make money for their fundraiser.

In short, the Sens do a lot in this community, and I doubt I touched on a lot of it.

Like I mentioned, I’m not picking on the Sens. I just happen to live in Ottawa, so I know more about their activities. I’m sure most of the other teams have similar initiatives.

But it’s a shame that with a lockout, a lot of these non-for-profit groups are going to see a decrease in fundraising. Millions of dollars to charity groups will be lost this year if an NHL season doesn’t go ahead.

The people who benefit from these groups are the ones most affected by the lockout. Maybe if the NHL and NHPLA see that, they’ll realize that their squabble between millionaires and billionaires are hurting a lot of people who have trouble putting food on the table.

Five hockey-related things to air and not air during the NHL lockout

So once again, we are in an NHL lockout.

Ales Hemsky at the 2001 entry draft. Old drafts would be fun to watch with no hockey on.

For some reason, I don’t seem to care as much this year as in years past. Not sure why.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t love to watch it. There are plenty of other options to watch on television, but I thought TSN/Sportsnet/CBC could use some help in filling out their programming.

So here are five hockey-related things to show and not show during the lockout.

To show: Old NHL drafts. I think this would be a fun way to kill a few hours, and I would watch some of them. For example, 2003 is seen as one of the greatest drafts in history (well, maybe not so much for the Habs). But wouldn’t it be great to watch it, just to see the reaction of the announcers at the time, not to mention the general managers justifying their picks? Wouldn’t you cringe when Columbus is about to announce they are going to draft Nikolai Zherdev, knowing that how much talent is still there?

Not show: Any draft from the last five years. It’s too early to sit and know how bad some of the mistakes were if it took place recently. Johansen versus Niederreiter wouldn’t have the same interest as watching the Rangers take Hugh Jessiman instead of Dustin Brown.

To show: Random games. Just throw a dart at a board, and go with that game. The Kings versus the Islanders in 1982 in a regular season tilt? Done. The Nordiques taking on the Whalers in 1987? Great. Flames and Oilers in 1992? Excellent choice. These games would be exciting to watch because you get to see different teams, old school players, and unusual matchups. Maybe even throw in a Colorado Rockies game when they were coached by Don Cherry (Cherry can even do a live Coach’s Corner during the game). There’s a million things to do. Best of all, because it’s just a random game, most of us won’t know the outcome. That makes them more exciting.

Not show: Games from the late 1990s, early 2000s. Remember the neutral zone trap? The 2-1 games? The matches where the final shots were 18-15? None of those please.

To show: Unusual matches that we never hear about that must exist. We all know the Red Army played Montreal on New Year’s Eve in 1975. It was a 3-3 tie. Montreal dominated, Tretiak was great, blah blah blah. It’s not that great a game to watch anymore, because there’s no uniqueness to it. We know what happened. But did you know the Red Army played against a bunch of NHL teams that year? Why not show the game against the Rangers or the Bruins? Or the Soviet Wings against the Sabres (Buffalo won in a 12-6 rout)? It would be new and thrilling to watch a game that happened 40 years ago where we don’t know the final score. We all know about the Miracle of Ice game. But how about when Russia played Canada during those Olympics? Who was on the Canadian team? How did we fare? Was it close?

But for all the times we see the Montreal-L.A. game 2 in 1993 (when McSorley got a penalty for the stick measurement), we never see the Game 5 when Montreal won the Cup. For as many time as we’ve seen the Bruins-Habs too many men on the ice game from 1979, we never see Game 7 when the Habs won the series.

Not show: All those games we’ve seen a dozen times. The ones mentioned above, plus the Gretzky-highsticking-Gilmour game, and countless others.

To show: Emotional games. These ones tug at the heart strings. And there are plenty. Saku Koivu’s first game back after fighting cancer. Mario Lemieux’s first game back from fighting cancer. Gretzky’s first game back after the trade (or his retirement game).

Not show: Fake emotional games. No banner raisings or retired jersey inductions allowed.

To show: The Wayne Gretzky trade. Maybe three hours that include the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, the whole Edmonton press conference, and the whole L.A. press conference. And I would love to see if the announcers at the time praised Bruce McNall.

Not show: Any TSN trade deadline show. They’re dull enough when watching it live. I couldn’t sit through it again. Ugh.

How hockey pools could benefit the NHL next season

Now that the NHL season is over, most fans can start to look forward to next year (except for Boston Bruins fans, as they will undoubtably want to savour the Stanley Cup victory).

Not quite the hockey pool I had in mind.

This is the time of year when all teams have a chance next season. There’s a draft coming up, so bad teams can get top-end prospects. There’s the free agency period, where middle-of-the-pack teams can go after top free agents. As well with free agency, top teams can round out their teams the same way.

There’s also the tweaking teams can do via trades with one another.

So fans have something to look forward to leading into next season, and everyone is a contender (well, maybe except for the Sens).

But for the NHL, they should be looking past this summer, and into next season. Never before has there been such an opening to grow the game. If both the NFL and NBA have lockouts next year, then the NHL will be the only professional sport once the World Series ends.

That’s a huge opportunity for the league to go after people who may not normally follow hockey. It’s also a chance to make new hockey fans and increase revenue at the same time.

But it’s not going to be easy. But there is one specific thing the league can do to help accomplish this.

Promote the bejebbers out of fantasy hockey.

There are going to be a lot of fantasy junkies next year looking for a fix, especially when it comes to the NFL. They say 29 million North Americans play fantasy football each year.

This is more like the hockey pool I was thinking of.

That means there will be a lot of people looking for a new fantasy sport next year, and hockey lends itself better to fantasy than any other sport because you could go into detail and include categories such as penalty minutes, plus/minus and blocked shots. Or you could keep it simple and have a straight-forward points pool.

And if you keep it to its simplest form and have only points, then you don’t need to be a die-hard fan and follow the sport religiously. You can just keep track of the leaderboard and that’s it.

My wife, for example, knows who the big stars are in all the sports, but she would never join a football pool, because she doesn’t know if Peyton Manning throwing for 3,000 yards, 32 touchdowns, 10 interceptions and being sacked 12 times is better than Drew Brees throwing for 3,400 yards, 39 touchdowns, 16 interceptions and being sacked 19 times. And she definitely doesn’t know why that could be worse than Adrian Peterson running for 1,800 yards and 18 touchdowns, but fumbling the ball away 11 times. And that’s not including wide receivers, kickers and defensive teams. And for most of those statistics, the numbers are multiplied by an X factor (such as: every 50 yards a quarterback throws in worth an extra point, but every 20 yards a runningback runs is worth an extra point).

In short, fantasy football is too complicated for the casual fan.

Basketball is like this as well. Too many complicated categories. Try seeing if the casual fan would want to try to figure out how a field goal percentage of your fantasy team could be impacted by a 6-for-24 shooting night from Kobe Bryant even though he may have finished with 23 points thanks to free throws.

(Baseball is also very complicated, with WHIP, OBP, GIDP, and the like. But baseball is the only sport in the summer, so they don’t need to worry about competing against other sports. Also, because of the length of a 162-game baseball season, a lot of people don’t bother to play because of the daily lineup changes, which is a hassle in the summer). 

But my wife will do a hockey league where she knows that 98 points by Corey Perry is better than 85 points by Alexander Ovechkin. It’s simple. The more points your players get, the better the chances you’ll win the pool. No trades. No moving players in and out of a lineup. You pick your players in a draft, you get them for the year, and the team with the most points wins.

In fact, the first hockey pool she ever did was a playoff pool the year after we started dating in 2003. She took both Sedins in consecutive rounds, mispronounced their name each time, and when corrected, she looked at her last two picks and asked “Oh, are they related?”

My wife then became obsessed with the pool. She would check the pool each morning when she got work. And then again on her break. And then at lunch. And then again before she left work. She was always checking out players (their stats, not the players themselves… I think).

Now, keep in mind that there were no hockey games on the go during the day, so there were no changes each time she checked. But she was bitten by the hockey pool bug.

She wanted to watch all the games, even the late ones on the west coast. She paid attention to when the announcers were explaining about deep down puck possession, and eventually learned what it actually meant.

One night, I was pretty tired after a long day at work, and we just finished watching the first game of a doubleheader when I told her I was ready for bed. She pretty much called me a wuss for not wanting to stay up and watch the second game.

She would call me at work and we would have the following conversation:

Her: What do you want to do tonight?

Me: I don’t know. Want to see a movie?

Her: Nah. Let’s stay in and watch the hockey games.

Is there any doubt about why I married this girl?

*As a side note, my wife didn’t win that year, but did go on to win the next three pools she was in, a remarkable feat.

Of course, hockey pools can get more complicated, but it can also be the easiest pool you’ll ever play.

Plus, and I don’t know why the NHL doesn’t take advantage of this, it’s the only professional sport where you can have a successful postseason fantasy sport as well.

It’s the perfect sport for guys who are into fantasy. And the NHL needs to take advantage of it before their window of opportunity closes.