Bill Walton of Hockey

Remember when the Bulls used to play some crap team like the Utah Jazz, and Michael Jordan would be lighting it up for 40 points, and Bill Walton would go off on a twenty-minute rant about how Jordan sucks because he's "new" and every "old" player Walton played with would whip his ass one-on-one?

Neither do I. My "mute" button works.

It turns out, hockey has a similar numbnuts commentator, albeit nobody has ever heard this guy speak, since zero Americans watch the games. His name is Darren Eliot, and he was once a mediocre NHL goalie.

Nowadays, he sometimes calls Florida Pantsers games and Sports Illustrated pays Eliot to muse about the sport he once sort of excelled at--and he's dropped one pearl after another from his hogjaws over the last few years. Who can forget two years ago, when he picked the Carolina Hurricanes to win the Stanley Cup? Oh, wait--he actually picked them to finish last. D'oh!

Or last year, when he predicted that the Buffalo Sabres, with their unrivaled speed and scoring ability, would steamroll to the championship? Closer than his 2006 prediction, surely, as Buffalo made it to the Eastern Finals. But, you'll find no mention of Buffalo or any other poor prediction in Darren Eliot's latest "column" (can a column be two paragraphs long?), in which he purports to compare the past 2 champions (the Canes and Ducks, for all you Americans out there) and then "determines" which team's style of play will be more emulated in the future.

The first key problem with the comparison is that the teams have few differences. Both are built on speedy puck movement, precise passing, and lots of scoring.

The next stumbling block for Eliot is that the Hurricanes are built around a core of players (Cole, Staal, Brind'Amour, Williams) who are long-term signees and will not be traded. The rest of the team is static from year-to-year. In other words, the Hurricanes never acquire anybody, with the exception of a trade deadline rental or two.

The Ducks' "style" is the result of trading last season for Chris Pronger and Rob Niedermayer, and assembling a cast of fast, big players in mercenary fashion.

And what do you know? Talk out of LA (sorry, the LA of Anaheim, or whatever) has it that the other Niedermayer (and team captain), Scott, is going to retire. Whoops. Not only that, but the Ducks stand to lose significant players in free agency--JS Giguere, Teemu Selanne, Brad May, Sean O'Donnell, among others.

Darren Eliot, though, boils the differences down to "hard-hitting" (Ducks) vs. "finesse" (Canes). Whatever, dude. But then, he has to make that extra leap--you'd think he'd be tired from jumping to all those conclusions--and declare that Old Tyme Hockey (TM) is back and here to stay, in the form of the Ducks' style. That is, everyone wants to copy the champs, so "everyone" (who?) is going to retool to be more like Anaheim.

I say: great! If this is actually how it works, then no wonder Carolina missed the playoffs the year after winning it all! Everyone copied them and, as a result, the Hurricanes played against a version of themselves every night. No wonder they struggled! That would be like a me-vs-me beauty contest...there has to be a winner, but both me's are awesome!

Or, the Hurricanes' problems could have something to do with losing a top forward, defenseman, and goalie to free agency. Has Darren Eliot heard of free agency? Does he still think players get paid in coal nuggets and whiskey? Stanley Cup = new shoes and a cigar?

If "physical play" (which, in Chris Pronger's terms, we might just call "head hunting") is the norm next year, then the Hurricanes and teams like them will thrive. Why? Simple: as Darren Eliot himself points out in his own article, the Hurricanes' strategy is to avoid stupid altercations and let the other teams take penalties. This would create scoring chances in the form of power plays. What seems smarter and more likely to succeed: bad penalties and rough play, or scoring chances and speed? Hmmm.....

Eliot, and many other dinosaurs, just want to see more fighting in hockey. Well, guess what? There's already enough. Chances are, you'll see a fight in any given game. Messages are sent; hits are avenged; players are protected. There is no extraneous activity, little intent to injure, and few grudges that last beyond the game itself. One suspects Darren Eliot--maybe because he was a goalie--thinks that all-out brawling was good for the game, or that eye-gouging with sticks or stalking a player throughout the season are essential parts of the game that need reviving.

The real leap he made, though, is to assume something normative about the way the Ducks, and Chris Pronger in particular, play the game. Pronger is a 6'6" monster who has always had a petty mean streak. He was suspended twice in the playoffs this year for dirty hits that took another player out of the game. He hits people in the head when they aren't looking, and that makes Pronger a Darren Eliot extraordinaire.

Let's not forget that Pronger was going to wrap his career in Edmonton, until he knocked that girl up, and Mrs. Pronger (different woman) decided she wanted to be in LA-Anaheim (probably to be closer to the heart of the US porn industry) and made her big, tough husband beg for a trade. I'm guessing Pronger won't be a Duck forever, either. Wherever he goes, that style of cheap-shot play goes with him--it was St. Louis' M.O. (St. Louis, MO--I kill!) for ten years.

One also begins to suspect that the NHL has different rules for the Finals. One of them must involve being generous to old wankers like Pronger, who haven't yet won a championship. Now that that's taken care of, we can probably look forward to a crackdown on rough play next season--precisely what happened coming out of the lockout in 2006. After all the hand-wringing this off season about dirty hits and double standards, Darren Eliot, as usual, is a step behind in calling for more of the same.