Sunday, November 21, 2004
Maybe a lockout is a good thing for hockey
In hockey news, Kansas City's Outlaws finish up a six-week "road trip" (I'm sure they came home in between weekends) just in time for a Turkey Day game, 8:30 start to avoid football and tryptophan comas (as if the Cowboys wouldn't do it for you this year). We can go downtown to watch the lighting of the Big Tree at the Crown Center, then catch the game. Brittany is thrilled, of course, with the prospect of staying up till midnight watching hockey players shower ice in her direction and wave during warm-ups. I think we might take a pass on the "traditional" Outlaw Thanksgiving game and check things out Friday instead. Either way, I'll get to see the Kalamazoo Wings for the first time since I left Michigan in '95.
In light of Nicollette dropping her towel for T.O. and tv viewers and a few basketball players dropping fans in Detroit, maybe the best thing for hockey is to just stay dormant on the ML level for awhile. How can I not think this is like the major sports battering themselves into nuclear oblivion. The NHL can just emerge from the fallout shelter next year and clean up, right? Or is this just wishful thinking on my part? Tell me the truth. Remember now, it's been ten years since the benches cleared in the NHL. Baseball has a hard time going a week without some needful act of machismo rousing guys from rally cap land into an imitation of Slap Shot. Anyway, if hockey can't resurrect itself in the current environment of sports thuggery and sex, then they'll be worse than the Democrats running against W.
Local sportswriter Jason Whitlock nails the issue of the day here: http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/10235219.htm. I tune in to his afternoon sports show (Did I mention KC has two sports stations? Don't know how they survive in a market this size, but I like the variety.) and generally like what he has to say.
Oh, and the Bills won today.
