jimmfo
Ohio's Best!
(just imagine how bad
the others are!)
USA
Posts: 675
(9/23/03 12:14 pm)
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BRETT HULL, HERB BROOKS AND HOCKEYS FUTURE
the following is an article that a fellow CBJ fan passed on to me....thought some might find it an interesting read.
This Country
Signs of hockey's apocalypse are as clear as the number Brett
Hull wears on his back
ROY MacGREGOR It's just a number, but such a statement it makes.
80.
It is the number National Hockey League star Brett Hull has chosen to wear on
his back during exhibition games and for at least two regular scheduled matches
in what may be the last NHL season for some time. Hull, who usually wears No.
17 for the Detroit Red Wings, is doing this to honour a coach, the late Herb
Brooks, who led the United States to its "Miracle On Ice" Olympic gold medal at
Lake Placid in 1980.
But that is only the most obvious part of Hull's statement.
Brett Hull has been dismissed through most of his remarkable career as a coach
killer. He may have scored more goals than his famous father, Bobby; he may
have once scored 86 times in a single season and been awarded the Hart Trophy
as the league's best player; but his mouth has always been as quick as his shot
and has, much to the regret of the league, long been the part of his game that
gets the most notice.
Hull likes to call himself the smartest player in hockey. Actually, he once
said: "I'm 10 times smarter than everybody in this game, beyond a shadow of a
doubt." He has also publicly criticized such tyrannical coaches as Mike Keenan
and openly argued with such control-obsessed coaches as Ken Hitchcock.
Herb Brooks, however, Hull openly adored -- even though he played for Brooks
for only two weeks during the 2002 Winter Games, when the United States lost
the gold-medal final to Canada.
Brooks -- who died in early August at age 66 when he fell asleep behind the
wheel of his minivan and ran off the road in Minnesota -- was an iconoclast
among modern hockey coaches, an eccentric motivator who dared, in the 21st
century, to suggest that hockey was a fun game meant to be enjoyed by player
and spectator alike.
The time is upon us, the man they called Herbie liked to say, "to give the game
back to the players."
He believed the Canadian game -- which was originally based on risk, mistake
and opportunism -- had become hopelessly overcoached by technicians who believe
the game can be broken down into its component parts in such a way that risk is
all but eliminated, mistakes prevented and opportunity reduced to a bare
minimum of goals, usually scored in a manner unrecognizable to those who
worship the game the way it once was played by the likes of the Edmonton Oilers
and Russian Red Army.
Brooks argued that a coach must trust players to use their own instincts and
allow them their natural creativity on the ice.
The coach as support staff, rather than programmer.
For years, Brett Hull has argued the same point.
"It's just not entertaining," the Detroit star told Hockey Night In Canada this
past winter. "It's boring. It's a bunch of robots out there doing the same
thing."
Hull was the first of a handful of courageous players to declare last fall's
much-vaunted crackdown on obstruction a complete failure by the new year.
By the time the Stanley Cup final rolled around, the game had become so
unwatchable that it produced the first seventh game of a Stanley Cup final in
history where the highlight turned out to be skipping the third period in
favour of bed.
The National Hockey League can ill afford such a product. Less than a decade
after the cover of Sports Illustrated grandly announced that hockey was the new
"hot" sport of North America, the game has chilled significantly.
One year from now, the current collective bargaining agreement runs out, with
rumours abounding that the owners, claiming $300-million in losses last year,
are willing to shut the league down for as much as two years to get a grip on
player costs, which owners say eat up 76 per cent of revenue.
In this one, Hull is at least partly on the owners' side, outraging many of his
player colleagues by suggesting "75 per cent of the league is overpaid."
Where he might upset a few owners is in insisting that "the game cannot survive
without Canada."
The reality of hockey, regardless of financial woes, regardless of location, is
that it has become too fragile in two areas -- television ratings and the
"southern footprint" that expansion brought to the game in the 1990s -- to
survive one year, let alone two, of lockout.
The first obvious key to survival lies in finding agreement between the owners
and players.
The emphasis of that formal agreement, of course, will be all about numbers --
suggesting a worthy second agreement.
That Herb Brooks had it right all along.
And that the rest of hockey should follow Brett Hull's lead and honour Herb
Brooks's memory by giving the game back to those who play it -- as well as
those who would like to watch it.
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dunsel252
There is nothing to fear,
but life itself
SP is FINALLY GONE!
USA
Posts: 958
(9/23/03 12:13 pm)
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Re: BRETT HULL, HERB BROOKS AND HOCKEYS FUTURE
I'm speechless. SOMEONE ELSE OUT THERE KNOWS BESIDES ME!!!!!!! YES! EVERY FUCKING WORD IS THE GOSPEL TRUTH. I wish to christ I could've said it as well.
Come out to Shea, and catch the RISING stars
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