Welcome to The Contrarian, a new column idea that I’m very excited about.
Or am I?
You see what I did there. And there’s more where that came from because the concept here is simple: You send me some NHL-related statements that you believe to be true. It can be something that seems obvious, maybe even inarguable. Then I argue it anyway and try to convince you that you’re wrong.
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I get to flex my contrarian muscles, which will come in handy if I ever get invited to be on one of those TV shows where sportswriters just yell at each other about stuff they don’t actually believe. You get some (hopefully) fun contrarian content to challenge your cherished assumptions and/or roll your eyes at. It will be fun.
At least, that’s what I thought before I started reading through your submissions. You people are messed up. You couldn’t let me ease into this, could you? Nope, you went right to the top shelf with just about the most slam-dunk statements you could find.
But I said I’d give this a try, and I’m a man of my word. Let’s do this. You’re wrong about everything, and I’m going to prove it to you. (And as an added bonus, try to figure out which of these I actually believe.)
Note: Submissions have been edited for clarity and style.
The Mark Messier era in Vancouver was an unmitigated disaster. – Olivier C.
On the contrary, Olivier, you fool.
The Mark Messier signing is universally reviled in Vancouver, I’ll grant you that. He’s probably the most hated player in franchise history, to the extent that the team itself likes to pretend he was never there. That’s the kind of retconning that fans get to do when they’re not letting inconvenient facts get in the way.
Here are those facts. First, by that fateful 1997 offseason, the Canucks were clearly a team in decline. The 1994 run to the Stanley Cup Final was inspiring, but they’d gone out in the second round the next season, gone out in the first the year after that, and then missed the playoffs entirely. The 1996-97 team finished under .500, had Martin Gelinas as their second-leading scorer, a 23-year-old Markus Naslund spinning his wheels as a 40-point depth piece, and a so-called franchise player in Pavel Bure who was so broken down and ineffective that he already looked like he was finished as a star at 25.
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Then Messier arrived. Granted, this wasn’t the 1990 version of Messier, but nobody should have expected that. Instead, the Canucks got a 37-year-old who still put up 162 points over three years, just three back of Naslund for the team lead over that time. Yes, the same Naslund who was no good until Messier arrived, at which point he pretty much immediately began the transformation into the elite winger he’d become. Bure immediately rediscovered his game too, scoring 51 goals in his first year with Messier, more than he’d had in the previous three seasons combined. Gosh, it’s almost as if Messier made everyone around him better.
And I know, I hear you Canucks fans: But what about Trevor Linden? Our precious hero and team captain, who was cruelly shoved aside so that Messier could have the “C” and the spotlight. And yes, that happened. But when it was finally time to send Linden out to a nice farm upstate, do you remember what you got for him? Just a couple of kids named Todd Bertuzzi and Bryan McCabe. Bertuzzi blossomed in Vancouver, going on to become one of the best power forwards in the league before eventually being traded for Roberto Luongo. And McCabe was a key piece in the draft floor wheeling and dealing that Brian Burke pulled off in 1999 to land the Sedins. Not bad for an aging Linden, who you got back for next to nothing just a few years later. And it never would have happened if Messier hadn’t arrived to push Linden out.
Messier was the key turning point in the Canucks going from late-90s laughingstock to 2000s contender. He fixed Bure, flipped the switch for Naslund, and forced the Linden trade that led directly to the Luongo/Sedins era. And he did it all while very nearly leading the team in scoring, boosting the franchise’s sagging public profile, and never losing so much as a single playoff game. Hate him if you want, but he was one of the smartest additions in franchise history.
Higher scoring in the NHL leads to more entertaining games. – Mike H.
On the contrary, Mike, you imbecile. I’ll give you credit for getting close to the right answer here, but you’re making a common mistake that a lot of fans fall into. What makes an NHL game entertaining is offense, and offense and goal-scoring are not the same thing.
Let’s take an extreme and admittedly silly example. The NHL hires me as a high-priced consultant, with the task of increasing scoring rates. After months of studies and expensive lunches, I come back to them with my brilliant idea: Make every goal worth two. Boom. Scoring rates double overnight, to the highest in league history. And, it goes without saying, the game doesn’t get one iota more entertaining because nothing is changing beyond the numbers on the scoreboard.
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It’s not goals that are exciting — it’s scoring chances. Those two are correlated, obviously, and more of one almost always means more of the other. But the point is that if you want to make the game more fun, you have to focus on the chances — those moments in any game where you think a goal is going to happen, where you’re leaning forward in your seat anticipating the red light coming on.
You know that thing that happens whenever fans start talking about increased offense, and some weirdo shows up to lecture you about a 0-0 game they once saw that they thought was great? They’re usually lying, but yes, there really are low-scoring games that are amazingly entertaining. Two teams going end to end, trading big-time chances, while goalies make highlight reel saves to keep the game scoreless? I’ll take that over a sloppy 6-3 game any day, and so would you.
This all might sound pedantic, but there’s a practical takeaway here. Whenever we have the offense debate, you’ll hear fans and media offer up solutions that focus on power plays. Make them last a full two minutes, ban icing, you know the drill. And those would absolutely lead to more goals. But they wouldn’t increase scoring chances, at least at five-on-five, which is how the vast majority of the game is played. They’re just less ridiculous versions of the “make goals count double” solutions — ideas that increase goals without a matching increase in the excitement of games. You’re just training your audience to tune out until there’s a power play, and that’s bad marketing.
Goals are good. Scoring chances are better, especially at even strength. Focus on that, and we’ll get the improved product we deserve.
How dare Steven Stamkos stay in Tampa and win two Stanley Cups. (Mike Ehrmann / Getty Images)No tax states give teams an advantage when signing free agents. – Matt G.
On the contrary, Matt, you moron. You’re falling into the same well-worn trap that fans have been repeating for years now, ever since Steven Stamkos committed the unpardonable sin of deciding to stay in Tampa rather than jump to the Maple Leafs or Canadiens. A good Canadian boy choosing to stay with the only franchise he’d ever known, one that had treated him well and already built the foundation of future championships, instead of giving it all up to get yelled at in a big hockey market? There had to be something nefarious at play. And after flailing about for a bit, Canadian fans found their villain: tax rates.
It’s not true.
First of all, the difference in taxes can be largely mitigated by proper financial planning. (Don’t take my word for it — here’s an NHL agent saying the same thing.) So already, those charts you see about how much more money a player makes in a zero-tax state are wrong because they’re assuming everyone just shrugs and hands over half their paycheck without doing anything to protect it. That isn’t how it works.
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But beyond that, what does an NHL player want when he negotiates a new contract? Financial security, sure, but for a lot of guys that’s already been long taken care of. So why ask for $7 million or $9 million or $11 million if you could easily live your dream life on half of that? The answer isn’t greed. It’s that these guys want to feel like they’re getting what they’re worth, compared to their peers. If I believe in my heart that I’m a top-five player at my position, I don’t want to be 10th or 15th on the list of highest-paid players there. It’s a pride thing.
Well, when was the last time you saw one of those highest-paid lists that factored in tax rates? You don’t.
A different tax rate might ultimately mean a few more bucks in the player’s pocket — with an emphasis on “a few” — and that can be a factor. But so could the weather. Or geography. Or the market size. Or nightlife. Or proximity to family. A star player in Toronto might see more of his game check go to the tax man, but he can also make far more in endorsements than somebody in Tampa probably can, not to mention the lucrative post-career schmoozing circuit. There’s a balance to deciding where to sign, and tax rates are a small enough part of it that you can probably safely ignore them. And ignore the fans who keep whining about it.
The loser point is bad. – Jonny S.
On the contrary, Jonny, you dimwit.
The loser point is terrible.
The puck-over-the-glass minor penalty is stupid and should be abolished immediately. – Tom K.
On the contrary, Tom, you simpleton. While the rule has been criticized by plenty of similarly dumb observers over the years, it’s actually good.
First things first: Ask any old-time hockey fan, and they’ll tell you that the game used to be plagued by defensive players intentionally shooting pucks over the glass. Happened all the time! If you want to see a clip, you can just … well, there aren’t any clips, you just have to trust us. Jamie Macoun did it once in like 1983 and that was enough to change the rulebook 20-plus years later, just go with it.
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Besides, even if you don’t like the rule, you have to admit that at least it’s an objective, black-and-white call, unlike hooking or holding or all those other penalties we get mad about. It’s nice to have a rule in the book where there’s never any debate. So nice, in fact, that every time the puck gets shot over the glass, all four officials huddle together for five minutes to talk about how black-and-white the rule is.
But the key here is that the puck-over-glass rule forces defensemen to make a skilled play instead of an easy one, which is something every fan should want. In the old days, before the rule, defensemen were taught to just chip the puck off the glass and out of the zone whenever they were pressured. Boring! But ever since the rule, defensemen are now told to … uh, chip it off the glass and out, and try not to get a penalty for it. The strategy hasn’t changed in the slightest. But now there are essentially random penalties for it, so that’s good. I think that’s good. It is good!
In fact, the rule is so good that there’s no reasonable argument against expanding it to cover all the other delay-of-game calls that are still based on the referee’s judgment. Knocking the net off, freezing the puck, adjusting equipment … these should all be automatic penalties too, with no regard to circumstance or common sense. If we work hard enough, we can probably find a delay of game penalty on every play.
Man, this contrarian stuff is easy. OK, I’m feeling it, let’s do one more.
Kerry Fraser made an egregious error when he missed a high stick by Wayne Gretzky on Doug Gilmour in Game 6 of the 1993 Western Conference Final. – Dustin K.
(Live look at my internal monologue right now.)
OK, fine.
On the contrary, Dustin, you … honestly pretty reasonable-sounding person. I actually do have a take on this, and it might get some people mad at me. I didn’t always feel this way, but it’s something I’ve been slowly but surely talking myself into over the years.
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I think we’re too hard on Kerry Fraser about the Gretzky high stick.
Let’s be clear: It was a high stick. It was a blown call. It was inexcusable. It probably did cost the Maple Leafs the series, and quite possibly the Stanley Cup. It robbed Canada of our last chance at the greatest final imaginable. It definitely ruined my youth. All of this is undeniable.
And Fraser was the ref who blew it. But — and this is the part that gets overlooked — he wasn’t the only official on the ice who could have called it. The high stick drew blood, which means under the rules of the time, either linesman could have called it too. And if you go back and watch the clip, Fraser does check with them. Twice, in fact — an initial conversation with Ron Finn, after which Fraser shoos the players away and calls a huddle that also includes Kevin Collins.
What was said in that conference? We don’t know. But in that moment, either Finn or Collins could have bailed Fraser out. It’s a tough call, one that would mean tossing out the most famous player in the world with his team facing elimination on home ice, and nobody wants to make it in that moment. Human psychology being what it is, one official needed to step forward and say, “Look guys, that was a high stick, I had a clear view of it, and the rulebook doesn’t leave us any choice here.”
Maybe Finn or Collins did say that, and Fraser overruled them, in which case he deserves all the scorn he’s received for three decades and counting. But it’s also possible that this was a case where a referee needed some help, and he didn’t get it from the guys who were supposed to have his back. Dustin is almost right because Fraser did make an egregious error when he missed the high stick — but maybe he wasn’t the only one. Maybe Don Cherry was right. And if so, maybe Leafs fans should aim just a little less bile at Fraser and a little more at Collins and Finn.
OK, that wasn’t so bad. Convincing? Maybe not, but we tried. If you’d like to submit a statement for a future edition of The Contrarian, you can do that here.
(Top photo of Mark Messier: Michael Desjardins / Getty Images)
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