Kukla’s Korner’s resident Sens blogger SENShobo has a post this morning entitled “Senators Improving as Losing Streak Reaches 5.” Geez, you know things are bad when.

Trade rumours continue to swirl: the Sun reports that Vancouver GM Mike Gillis and Minnesota GM Doug Risebrough were both at the game last night, along with scouts from Columbus and Los Angeles. Rumours involving the Blue Jackets make me nervous due to the slight chance that they could result in Jason Spezza leaving town: I know how much Bethany and her people covet Mr. Giggles, and I feel the CBJ would do almost anything to pry him away from us. Personally, I’m in favour of clinging to him for dear life until his no trade clause kicks in and all this nonsense can stop. Meanwhile, Yahoo is reporting that the Sens are stepping up their efforts to acquire Canucks defenseman Mattias “Ohuld,” and the Citizen has them looking at getting Jay Bouwmeester from the Florida Marlins, because apparently Bouwmeester is playing baseball now.

Okay, people. I know reporting rumours isn’t the same as reporting truth, but that doesn’t mean you can’t fact-check your story before going to press.

Reader Appreciation Note

To a reader named Jim who left me a nice comment earlier: I’m sorry, I seem to have accidentally deleted your comment. It may have been a rage reflex induced by your calling Buffy “the worst show ever.” Despite your clearly awful taste in TV shows and hockey teams (he’s a Leafs fan), you can rest assured that I read and appreciated your comment, and only deleted it due to my own idiocy.

To everyone else who’s ever commented here, I appreciate you too. Except the spammers.

The TV schedules for national NHL broadcasters in Canada and the US (that would be CBC, TSN, and Versus) were released yesterday. For Sens fans living in the Ottawa area, this isn’t such a big deal: you can be pretty sure you’re going to get local coverage of most of the games from Sportsnet or whatever CHRO/The New RO/A Channel is calling itself these days. For people like me, though, who live in faraway places where other NHL teams get all the local broadcasting attention and where they only have access to Sportsnet Pacific, this makes a difference. I learn exactly how often I’ll be able to watch the games comfortably from my bed, and how often I’ll be getting eyestrain and back pain from trying to watch them on a tiny streaming video window on my computer while sitting in my desk chair.

I have browsed the schedules, and I’ve learned a few things. For one, no matter how many times the CBC claims it’s going to show fewer Leafs games, this will never actually happen. If the Leafs finished dead last in the NHL every season from now until 2017-2018, the CBC would still show their games cross-Canada every Saturday night in the 2018-2019 season, and they’d probably bill the Leafs’ quest to set a record for incompetence that might never be broken as the most exciting thing to happen in hockey since 1967. I’m not too sure where they get the impression that people in the west are interested in the Leafs. I suppose there are probably Leafs fans out there, but I haven’t met them. Most people in Vancouver appear to view the Leafs the same way I do, that is, with a mix of violent hatred and complete derision. On the other hand, they react to the Sens mostly with a big "eh." I guess the second thing I’ve learned from the broadcast schedule, then, is that a violent reaction is better than no reaction, and that’s why the Sens won’t be coming to my TV via Hockey Night in Canada very much this year (unless they’re playing the Leafs, or maybe Sidney Crosby’s team). Could it be that Western Canada’s giant collective shrug towards the Sens has something to do with a lack of coverage of the team in the west by the nation’s official broadcaster? Maybe, but I guess we’ll never know.

CBC’S Confirmed Nationally Broadcast Sens Games for 2008-2009
Oct. 4: Pittsburgh at Ottawa (Stockholm, Sweden) (2:30pm Eastern)
Oct. 5: Ottawa at Pittsburgh (Stockholm, Sweden) (2:30pm Eastern)
Oct. 25: Ottawa at Toronto (7:00pm Eastern)
Nov. 22: N.Y. Rangers at Ottawa (This game is part of "Original Six Saturday.") (3:00pm Eastern)
Dec. 6: Pittsburgh at Ottawa (2:00pm Eastern)
Dec. 27: Ottawa at Calgary (A birthday gift? For me? How thoughtful!) (10:00pm Eastern)
Jan. 3: Ottawa at Toronto (7:00pm Eastern)
Jan. 17: Montreal at Ottawa (7:00pm Eastern)
Feb. 21: Ottawa at Montreal (Hockey Day in Canada) (3:00pm Eastern)
Feb. 28: Toronto at Ottawa (7:00pm Eastern)
Mar. 14: Ottawa at Pittsburgh (3:00pm Eastern)
Mar. 29: Ottawa at Tampa Bay (a Sunday game, for some reason) (6:00pm Eastern)
Apr. 11: Ottawa at Toronto (7:00pm Eastern)

Good thing for afternoon games against Pittsburgh, eh? The Sens will be featured nationally in the primetime Saturday slot only five times this season (the CBC will also broadcast other Saturday night Sens games regionally in the Ottawa area), and each time they’re playing either Montreal or Toronto. Looking at the Sens’ remaining Saturday games, I actually can’t blame the CBC for not showing them more often. The Leafs generally do have more appealing matchups. The only problem is that the other team in those matchups is, of course, the Leafs.

Which brings me to lesson #3 learned from the broadcast schedule: TSN only gets to pick its Sens games after all the other networks are done. How else can we explain a slate that features matchups against mostly teams that are either mediocre (Florida and Atlanta — twice!), boring (Boston and New Jer-zzzz), or Nashville? They’ve thrown a couple of good looking matchups — one game each against Montreal and Washington — to make it a bit more palatable, plus meetings with Buffalo and Tampa Bay which should at least be entertaining. I don’t want to complain too much because really, I’m always glad to see the Sens on my actual TV, but these are games it’s going to be a little hard to get psyched up for.

The NHL on TSN’s Sens Games for 2008-2009
Oct. 22: Florida at Ottawa (7:00pm Eastern)
Nov. 11: Ottawa at Montreal (7:00pm Eastern)
Dec. 3: Atlanta at Ottawa (7:00pm Eastern)
Jan. 4: Ottawa at New Jersey (5:00pm Eastern)
Jan. 14: Ottawa at Atlanta (7:30pm Eastern)
Jan. 20: Washington at Ottawa (7:30pm Eastern)
Feb. 5: Boston at Ottawa 7:00pm (Eastern)
Feb. 11: Ottawa at Buffalo (7:30pm Eastern)
Feb. 16: Ottawa at Nashville (8:00pm Eastern)
Mar. 11: Tampa Bay at Ottawa (7:00pm Eastern)

So, all in all, that’s 23 Sens games on TV in Vancouver this season. Not bad, but also not enough to satisfy my bottomless appetite for Sens coverage. The final thing I have learned from the schedule is thus that I will be subscribing to NHL Center Ice Online as soon as I get back to my west coast home. This will allow me not only to watch about 60 more Sens games (unless there are pay-per-view games) but also to watch any other televised NHL game. Like Spider-Man’s amazing abilities, this will, I’m sure, be both a gift and a curse. The eyestrain and backaches will get worse and worse the more hockey I watch, and my grades will suffer, and I’ll have no life. But at the same time, I will become an encyclopedia of hockey knowledge, able to comment intelligently on that questionable penalty in the Columbus/Dallas game the other night and the reasons for the Ducks’ 18-game winless streak. It will be awesome.

Man, I am really tired of this no hockey thing August has going on, know what I mean? It just sucks. Could there be any less to do? Could I be any more bored? Hmm … well, probably, yes. But still, things would seem much less lame if there were a Sens game on TV tonight.

When I’m bored and there’s no hockey in sight, I read lots of different hockey blogs. A few of them have come up with some good ways to make this nightmarish hockeyless month pass more quickly. Sherry at Scarlett Ice, who like me is feeling the pain of no hockey, has started working on a 100 things about me meme, which makes for very interesting reading. I had no idea Sherry was so multi-talented! Meanwhile, Puck Daddy has announced the winners of the “Gary Bettman: Portraits in Heroism” contest. If you have some time to kill (and who doesn’t?), I strongly suggest checking out the Flickr gallery of all 231 entries, which not only is hilarious, but also serves as a great demonstration of just how overdone the whole Dark Knight “Why So Serious?” thing has become.

Puck Daddy has also got a series going called “5 Ways I’d Change the NHL,” in which they ask various people to describe, you guessed it, five changes they’d make to the NHL. My personal favourite suggestion comes from Will Leitch:

1. Hockey players should no longer be allowed to wear helmets. As all casual observers of the sport know, hockey players are impervious to pain. But their faces are still able to be damaged; teeth destroyed, eyes knocked out of their socket, noses flattened. And yet they will keep coming. This will help us train our master class of human to take on the Terminators during the upcoming cyborg apocalypse.

Yes! Anything that will give humanity a chance to survive the inevitable conflict with artificially intelligent beings (which all the science fiction movies and TV shows I watch assure me is coming any day now) gets my vote.

Inspired partly by Puck Daddy, I’ve come up with my own take on this concept. It happens to be something I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about. You see, I am a daydreamer, and when I’ve finished reading hockey blogs and there’s still no hockey in sight, that is when I start to drift off into my own imaginary land. When I daydream, I sometimes create elaborate scenarios that place myself at the centre of the universe in some way. Elaborate scenarios such as …

If I Ran the NHL

Picture a world where Gary Bettman is no longer NHL commissioner and the board of governors has, for some reason, decided that I, Meaghan, humble blogger and huge hockey fan, shall be appointed Supreme Ruler over the league. All my decisions will become law without any debate. I have total control and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Luckily, I’m a pretty benevolent dictator on the whole, even if I do show a disgusting amount of bias towards a certain team, and it’s generally agreed that my changes make the league much better. I am also invulnerable, which means Anton Volchenkov and I will likely be humanity’s last hope when the machines attack. (He’ll be like a Russian John Connor, and I’ll be like Neo from The Matrix.) It also means that even if there were disgruntled owners and GMs they couldn’t assassinate me, so I really am Supreme Ruler for Life. The National Hockey League changes its name to Meaghan’s Hockey League and I am given my choice of season ticket seats in every league arena. It’s awesome. (Bettman is now working as the home team’s penalty box door opening guy in Anaheim.)

“How did this come to pass?” you might ask. That is a story for another time. For now, here is the first major change I would make in taking the shoddy, somewhat run-down NHL, polishing it up, and turning it into the wonderful, wildly successful, crowd-pleasing MHL.

First Order of Business: Contraction and Re-realignment

I don’t think anyone could argue that the NHL’s current divisional and conference setup makes any sense. The Northwest division covers a vast geographic area and has teams in three different timezones. Detroit and Columbus are the only two Eastern timezone teams stuck in the Western Conference, where they play all their roadgames — except the ones against each other — in timezones different than their own. Dallas, despite being nowhere near the west coast, finds itself in the Pacific Division, while Vancouver, which is in fact right on the west coast, is not in the Pacific Division. It is bizarre.

The problem is the lack of teams in the western US. 21 of the NHL’s 30 teams are east of Dallas. One solution might be to expand into more western markets, but the MHL’s most glorious leader feels that the league already has too many teams, some of which are not very good, and some of which always seem to play in half-empty arenas.

With these considerations in mind, the MHL will make the following changes to its roster of teams:

• Six teams from the former National Hockey League will be shut down, effective immediately. These six teams are the Atlanta Thrashers, Carolina Hurricanes, Florida Panthers, Nashville Predators, New York Islanders, and Tampa Bay Lightning. The remaining teams will have the option of taking on players from these teams at their current salaries in the MHL’s Contraction Draft (format to be announced). Southeast Division teams, it’s nothing personal. You simply don’t fit in with my vision. Nashville, we all know you weren’t going to last anyway. New York, in your case, it is personal. You annoy me, and I see no point to your continued existence.
• The Phoenix Coyotes will return to the city of Winnipeg and resume playing as the Jets. All Phoenix players and personnel will move with the team. Pack your bags and get ready for that prairie winter, boys!

The remaining 24 teams will be divided, as in the old NHL, into a Western Conference and an Eastern Conference, each of which has three divisions. The Western Conference divisions have been arranged in an attempt to minimize the amount of time teams spend travelling to different timezones:

Pacific Division
Anaheim Ducks
Los Angeles Kings
San Jose Sharks
Vancouver Canucks

Mountain Division
Calgary Flames
Colorado Avalanche
Edmonton Oilers
Winnipeg Jets (I know, there are no mountains in Winnipeg. But it’s the best I could do.)

Central Division
Chicago Blackhawks
Dallas Stars
Minnesota Wild
St. Louis Blues

The Eastern Conference divisions are based mostly on geography:

Northeast Division
Buffalo Sabres
Montreal Canadiens
Ottawa Senators
Toronto Maple Leafs

Atlantic Division
Boston Bruins
New Jersey Devils
New York Rangers
Washington Capitals

Midwest Division
Columbus Blue Jackets
Detroit Red Wings
Philadelphia Flyers
Pittsburgh Penguins

I expect to receive an effusive thank you letter and possibly a large gift of some kind from the Red Wings’ and Blue Jackets’ owners later today.

MHL teams will play a 74 game schedule. Each team will meet each other team in its division 3 times at home and 3 times on the road (18 games). Each team will also play each team from the other divisions in its conference twice at home and twice on the road (32 games). Finally, every team will play each team in the other conference twice a season, once each at home and on the road (24 games).

At the conclusion of the 74 game regular season, the top eight teams in each conference will advance to the playoffs, which will use the same format as the NHL playoffs: four rounds of best-of-seven series. Division winners are guaranteed to make the playoffs as they were in the NHL; however, they will not automatically be ranked 1-2-3 in the conference. Instead, the division winners and the other top five point-getting teams will be ranked 1-8 according to their point totals.*

Wow. I feel better already just looking at the new lineup! Big changes, I know, but there are so many benefits to this new setup. No more Southleast jokes. More in-timezone road games for Western teams should mean higher TV ratings, which might translate to more media attention and increased fan support for teams like Chicago and Columbus. Having Sidney Crosby in town three times a season can also only help the Blue Jackets’ attendance numbers. The two most boring teams in the league are now hidden away in the same division, which, okay, is painful for Rangers and Caps fans, but really good for the rest of us. There will be a lot of pressure on Alex Ovechkin to offset the dull, but I think he can handle it. Best of all, Winnipeg has its team back and we can all stop worrying about that Jets megafan friend we have who’s been verging on suicidal since 1996. Newly suicidal obsessive Coyotes fans, we haven’t forgotten you! An employee of the Anaheim Ducks will personally pay to relocate you all to Winnipeg with the team if you so choose. That’s what things are like in the MHL. We care about hockey fans.**

*The lone exception to this rule is the Ottawa Senators who, should they win the Northeast Division, will have the option of choosing their own position within the top 4 in order to secure the most favourable first round opponent (or mess with another top 4 team).

**Except Thrashers, Canes, Panthers, Preds, Lightning, and Isles fans. Sorry.

I know how to drive. Actually, I’ve known how to drive for a long time, having learned this important life skill when I was but a teenager. I have never owned my own car, however, because I’ve always had access to a family car: my mother’s or my grandfather’s. While I’m home in Ottawa for the summer, I am living with my father. Here too, I have access to a car. Unfortunately, the car in question is a standard shift and because I only ever learned to drive an automatic, having full access to said car and full permission to drive it does me exactly no good. And so, I am dependent on the good people at OC Transpo and Société de transport de l’Outaouais to carry me around the region.

Because of the fact that I work somewhere deep in the middle of Gatineau — I have no idea where it is; the bus takes me there and that’s all I know — and live near the Civic Centre, I ended up spending just about as much time in transit going to and from the Draft this weekend as I did watching people get drafted. This made for a long and tiring weekend: I left for work at 6:40am on Friday, went straight to Scotiabank Place from work, and didn’t get home until about 1:00am on Saturday; then I was out the door by 8:00am to get back to the Bank, and arrived home pretty much exhausted at about 4:45pm that afternoon.

Luckily for me, the Draft was a lot of fun, and it was totally worth getting tired! Luckily for you, I have composed an account of my two days spent in Kanata watching 18-year-old hockey players become Hockey Players. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

June 20, 2008: Draft Day I - The First Round

2:00pm: I leave my place of work in Gatineau to catch the bus back over to Ottawa, where I will catch another bus, which will take me to the place I can catch a third bus, which will drop me off somewhere vaguely near Scotiabank Place.

3:37pm (approximate): After what seems like an extremely long and complex bus ride, I get off the bus along with about five other hockey fans who are also headed to Scotiabank Place, though I don’t actually speak to any of these people. Together, but separately, we head off on the 15-20 minute walk down Palladium Drive to the arena. Scenery along this road includes … fields. And also, lampposts decorated with banners featuring Sens players. Really, there should be more places which feature Sens paraphernalia as their decorating motif.

Around 3:45pm: My iPod begins to play “Fireworks” by The Tragically Hip just as Scotiabank Place comes into view. Oh, iPod! You have such a sense of the occasion! I feel very happy when I see the building. It’s weird to say, especially considering the fact that I spent barely any time there in the last few years before I left Ottawa, but I was homesick for the place.

Around 3:50pm: I arrive in front of Scotiabank Place. There’s a carnival type thing going on out front, with games for kids (including a big inflatable slide with Spartacat on it) and a long line of people waiting to meet some of the top prospects. I stop to take a few pictures of the gigantic images of Dany Heatley, Chris Phillips, Daniel Alfredsson, Wade Redden, and Mike Fisher, all doing their best to look intimidating, which adorn the front of the building. These were put up after I moved, so this is the first time I’ve seen them up close. I have to say that they fascinate me. Can you imagine if the building you worked in had a massive image of you mounted above the front door? Freaky.

3:55pm: I go into Sensations to have a look around, but don’t buy anything. I do note that they have a red Spezza jersey in size small (my Heatley jersey, which I am wearing, is white, due to a Christmas shopping error by my father), and file this information away for possible later use.

4:00pm: The festivities upstairs are now open, so I go in. I’m handed a red Draft pom-pom to match the red playoff pom-pom I was given last May. I see Stanley sitting on a table, waiting to pose for photos with his admirers. I walk around a bit looking at the various NHL trophies, all of which are present in glass cases. The Prince of Wales Trophy, which is given to the NHL Eastern Conference Champion each year, attracts my interest due to one notable team which won it recently. At some point, I get in line to have my picture taken with Stanley. When it’s my turn, I go up and give him a big hug. It is awesome. The security guy says “You gave the Cup a big hug!” as I leave. Yes, I did.

4:44pm: My phone rings. It’s the guy to whom I’ve promised my extra draft pass. I go outside to meet him. I then check in with the three friends I’ll be watching the Draft with, who are in line to meet the top prospects. They are: Heata, a fellow Sens fan; Stajanna, a Leafs fan; and Carbonita, another Sens fan with a perhaps unhealthy Guy Carbonneau obsession. (Names have been changed to protect the innocent.) I quickly say hi to Heata and Stajanna, then head off for more wandering.

5:04pm: I decide to call my mom. You see, about six years ago, there was an incident involving Stanley showing up in our front yard and me not being able to get dressed in time to get out and have my picture taken with him. My mom, however, did get her picture taken with him, and never hesitates to rub it in. When I tell her I’ve now also had my picture taken with him, she sounds disappointed.

5:16pm: I go back outside and talk to Heata and Stajanna again. They tell me Carbonita is further back in the line so I decide to go say hello. Foolishly, I ask what she’s wearing: they tell me she’s in a Carbo shirt. Duh! When I get to the back of the line I have no trouble finding her and we chat for a while. The prospects are late for their autograph session (stuck in traffic).

5:30 or so: To avoid looking as though I’m trying to cut in the autograph line, I go find Stajanna and Heata, who’ve got their autographs and are now waiting for Carbonita. They also get autographs from a few other prospects who are randomly walking around, including Josh Bailey of the Windsor Spitfires — TSN’s mock draft had the Sens picking him with their 18th overall pick. Some guy comes up and offers us a pass to get priority seating. Heata takes it, and I go in to grab seats for the four of us. The 200 level is just about full, and I get us seats in section 306, row B. The draft floor reminds me of a stock market.

About 6:10pm: Possible legendary hockey person sighting! Is that Scotty Bowman I see on the floor? I think it is, but I’m not sure. I definitely see Gord Miller, Pierre McGuire, and Bob McKenzie from the TSN hockey panel in TSN’s broadcast area.

6:15pm or so: The man who has sat down next to me taps me on the shoulder and asks “So who do you cheer for, then?” I turn to show him the name Heatley on the back of my jersey. We start chatting, and it turns out this man is a relative of none other than Josh Bailey. Mr. Bailey is extremely nice, and I will continue chatting with him throughout the evening.

6:30pm: Heata, Stajanna, and Carbonita arrive.

6:40pm: Heata uses the super effective zoom lens on her camera to confirm that the man I spotted earlier is, in fact, Scotty Bowman. Nice!

6:45pm: Some dude tells everyone on the floor to sit down at their tables because it’s almost time to get with the drafting.

6:50pm: The same person — obviously an official with the NHL, but he never introduces himself so we have no idea who the heck he is — asks the teams to state the names of the peoeple who will be making their selections for them. He goes through the teams one by one in alphabetical order. The first team, Anaheim, gets a huge boo from the Scotiabank Place crowd, including me, because I hate them with the fire of thousand suns. Montreal, typically, gets about equal parts boo and cheer, while the Leafs get a very long boo. Ottawa, of course, gets the biggest cheer.

6:55pm: Sens owner Eugene Melnyk takes the stage to welcome us all to the Draft.

7:02pm: A TSN profile of certain #1 pick Steven Stamkos is shown on the big screen. This gets a huge cheer from the row behind us. I turn and ask them if they are Stamkoses. They say they are.

7:17pm: NHL commissioner Gary Bettman appears on stage to open the Draft. A rousing boo chorus from the crowd. Bettman, you suck, and you are really, really short. I long for a sniper rifle. (Disclaimer: I would never actually attempt to harm Mr. Bettman. I only fantasize about it.) In the midst of all the boos, Bettman thanks everyone in Ottawa for making the league feel so welcome. I grudgingly admit that this is pretty funny.

7:21pm: The Tampa Bay Lightning use the first pick in the Draft to take … suspense … wait for it … wait … you never know, they might do something unpredictable … nope, they take Steven Stamkos.

7:25pm: Stamkos is interviewed by James Duthie after being picked. Duthie says the player Stamkos is most often compared to is Steve Yzerman. After Duthie says this, I spot Yzerman himself sitting at the Red Wings’ table (so, so awesome) beside Mike Babcock. I have a knack for spotting famous Detroit Red Wings people on the floor. I can’t figure out who anyone else is, though.

7:28pm: Bettman announces that Los Angeles has one minute left to make their pick. I had no idea there was a time limit! What happens if they don’t make it? Do they forfeit the pick? Within a few seconds, LA has used its pick to take Drew Doughty, so we don’t find out the answer to that question.

7:33pm: The first trade of the evening is announced! Florida has traded Olli Jokinen to Phoenix for former Ottawa 67 Nick Boynton, Keith Ballard, and a pick. Excitement!

7:37pm: For the second time, Bettman utters what will become his mantra this evening — “I have a trade to announce” — and we find out that Los Angeles has sent Mike Cammalleri to Calgary for two picks. It had been rumoured that the Sens would send Spezza to LA for Cammalleri and a pick. That was a ridiculous rumour; still, I’m extremely relieved that it seems it definitely won’t happen. Anaheim and LA then trade a few more picks.

7:43pm: After Atlanta makes its selection, Bettman announces another trade. This time, the Flames have sent Alex Tanguay and a pick to Montreal for two picks! This must be why the Flames wanted Cammalleri. Tanguay is a pretty big salary for Montreal to take on, especially considering that we’ve heard the Leafs have given the Habs permission to negotiate with Mats Sundin.

7:55pm: Bettman tells the New York Islanders they have one minute to make their pick.

7:57pm: Clearly, Bettman is doing jack to enforce this one minute thing. Imagine — the NHL being lax with discipline.

7:58pm: Leafs’ GM Cliff Fletcher is shown on the big screen in the arena. This elicits a massive boo from the crowd. Fletcher looks up to see what’s making everyone boo, sees that it is actually himself, and smiles a little. I’m very amused. On an unrelated note, Fletcher appears to be about 100 years old.

8:00pm: Another trade, something involving the Islanders’ pick going to Toronto, and there are options and other picks, and it’s all very complicated. I have no idea what just happened, but the end result is that Toronto will pick 5th instead of the Islanders.

8:01pm: The Leafs’ crew comes up to make their pick. Mass booing ensues.

8:03pm: The Leafs take Luke Schenn. DAMMIT! I wanted the Sens to trade up and get Luke Schenn because of his resemblance to Peter from Narnia! Screw you, Leafs. The booing continues as Schenn comes up to put on his new Leafs jersey. Poor guy, being booed on his draft day. It doesn’t seem to faze him though. I will be charitable and assume the booing fans gave him this greeting to make him feel truly a part of the Leafs’ organization.

8:05pm: A Leafs fan shown on the big screen is booed. We really hate the Leafs.

8:06pm: We hear via text message from a friend of Stajanna’s that Philadelphia has sent R.J. Umberger and a pick to Columbus for two picks. I guess this means we won’t be hearing those Meszaros for Umberger rumours anymore. Lucky Umberger — he gets to go to Columbus and play with The Amazing Rick Nash! Interestingly, I’ve seen lots of people wandering around wearing Columbus jerseys today.

8:08pm: Bettman confirms the Philly-Columbus trade. At some point, we decide that Columbus is a team of the future, and we should start watching their games. My love of Rick Nash compels me to do so.

8:19pm: The Islanders trade the 7th overall pick, which they had just got about 20 minutes ago from Toronto for the 5th overall pick, to Nashville for the 9th overall pick.

8:26pm: It’s time for Phoenix to make its pick, and it’s Wayne Gretzky himself who will be doing the talking. Gretzky gets the kind of reaction Bettman doesn’t even get in his wildest dreams: a huge, long ovation, and a chant of “Gret-zky! Gret-zky!” It is always very cool to see Wayne, even if it is from a vast distance. I like his glasses.

8:28pm: Phoenix’s pick, a guy named Boedker, has a hilarious 80’s style mullet. Fantastic!

8:29pm: Now it’s the New York Islanders’ turn to pick, but as they’ve already traded their pick twice the crowd is highly dubious about the chances of them actually picking this time. I hear chants of “Trade! Trade!” As the perpetually mediocre Islanders mortgage their future, we all laugh and cheer.

8:33pm: But wait, they are actually picking this time, and they’ve picked Josh Bailey! The members of the Bailey family sitting near us give a huge cheer, as do we, since we’ve now befriended them. The man next to me looks extremely proud, and it’s a really nice moment to be part of. Josh was expected to be selected in the 15-20 range, so to see him go in the top ten is a pretty big deal. I take a picture of Josh putting on the Isles’ jersey to remember the occasion.

8:43pm: A couple of minutes after the Canucks use the tenth overall pick to select Cody Hodgson, we see a Canucks fan with Roberto Luongo’s exact haircut on the big screen. It’s uncanny.

8:53pm: Los Angeles trades the 12th overall pick to Buffalo for the 13th overall pick. Monumental.

9:05pm: We get to see another hockey legend, as Ron Francis shows up to make Carolina’s pick.

9:12pm: Bettman has another trade to announce and, he says, “you’re going to like this one.” Turns out the Sens have traded their pick, 18th overall, along with their third round pick in 2009 to Nashville for the 15th overall pick. Bettman is right: we do like that one. “Beautiful Day” begins to play and they show an Alfie montage on the big screen.

9:14pm: Time for the Sens to pick, and it’s Alfie who will be announcing the name of their selection. Alfie comes to the microphone to the biggest ovation of the night, and we get the “Al-fie! Al-fie! Al-fie!” chant going. He names Erik Karlsson, a fellow Swede, as our pick. Who? Turns out Karlsson is a defenceman — much needed in the Ottawa organization — but is a bit on the small side. I’m somewhat perplexed as to why we would draft a small player. Still, welcome to the Sens, tiny Swedish guy.

9:20pm: Bryan Murray is being interviewed by James Duthie on TSN, and they play the interview on the big screen for us. Duthie says something we don’t quite hear that draws a big cheer from the crowd. Heata is pretty sure he’s said the Sens have re-signed Chris Kelly. Duthie asks about whether Spezza will be traded. Murray says that Spezza’s no trade clause kicks in in July 09, and he will indeed still be a member of the team at that point. Another cheer from the crowd, with some jeers (no doubt from those crazy Spezza haters!) mixed in. I think I speak for Murray when I say — now, can the Spezza trade rumours please GO AWAY? Kthx.

9:23pm: Stajanna’s friend who is watching on TV has confirmed it for us: the Sens re-signed Chris Kelly to a four-year deal. Hooray!

9:28pm: Brian Burke takes the stage to make Anaheim’s pick. He is greeted with another large boo. “It’s great to be back in Ottawa,” he says. I laugh. I actually find Burke to be a pretty entertaining guy, but he works for the forces of pure evil so I can’t like him. The Ducks select Jake Gardiner. I hear later that Burke apparently wanted to take Karlsson, the Sens’ pick, and was frustrated when it didn’t happen. Nyah nyaaaaaah!

9:48pm: We get to see another hockey luminary: Glen Sather makes the New York Rangers’ pick.

9:52pm: New Jersey trades the 21st overall pick to Washington for the 23rd overall pick. Another blockbuster deal!

9:54pm: As the Caps go up to make their pick, some crazy Caps fans sitting two sections over from us start chanting “C.A.P.S. Caps! Caps! Caps!” These people are enthusiastic fans. I mean, really enthusiastic.

10:01pm: We see Bryan Murray come over to the media area in front of us to do a radio interview. What a busy day for him: waiving Emery, signing Kelly, trading picks, drafting a guy, doing interviews … he’s done a good job with it all. I’m feeling the love for BM the GM right now.

10:02pm: The Edmonton Oilers are on stage to make their pick, with Sam Gagner and His Mullet in tow.

10:06pm: The Devils are up next. This is, as Stajanna so beautifully put it, a team that has made boring an art form. Will their pick be boring, we wonder? Yes, actually: they trade pick 23 to Minnesota for pick 24 and a third rounder in 09. Woo hoo.

10:12pm: Minnesota thanks Ottawa for its hospitality, and then thanks Ottawa for helping it out with its pick, who is Tyler Cuma of the Ottawa 67’s! Yay!

10:17pm: The Devils finally actually make their pick. Huzzah!

10:25pm: The crazy Caps fans two sections over have been mysteriously replaced by crazy Buffalo Sabres fans, who go wild as the Sabres prepare to pick.

10:44pm: Phoenix has another pick so Gretzky is back. He uses the pick to take Viktor Tikhonov: not the famous Russian coach, but the famous Russian coach’s grandson. I imagine the famous Russian coach Viktor Tikhonov is a little old to play in the NHL at this point.

10:53pm: It’s time for the last pick of round 1, which belongs to the Stanley Cup Champion Detroit Red Wings. Steve Yzerman will make Detroit’s pick. Yzerman gets a great ovation from the crowd, and seems really flattered by it. Yzerman is also, it must be said, quite the hottie. I love you, Stevie Y! Detroit takes a goalie named Thomas McCollum, and with that — four hours, 30 picks, and a billion trades later — the first round is over.

11:00pm-11:23pm: The four of us are all taking the same bus back into the city so we walk to the stop together. Unfortunately, the bus we’re taking only comes every half hour, and we end up having to wait 20 minutes.

11:41pm-12:25am: The bus arrives. We sit together at the back. Heata and Stajanna get off first, then Carbonita a few minutes later. Finally, the bus gets to my stop. Sadly, the bus I need to take to get home from the bus stop is no longer running and I have to walk.

12:46am: I get home, make myself a Neo Citran to try to knock myself out as soon as possible, upload my pictures to my computer, and go to bed.

June 21, 2008: Draft Day II — Draft at Super-Speed (Rounds 2-7)

(I didn’t take detailed notes today as I did on Friday because I was too tired/lazy — take your pick — so this will be a bit less organized.)

- While I’m eating breakfast, I watch some of the highlights from round 1 on TSN. The guy says that there were 13 trades total, which is as many as had been made on the last three draft days combined! We thought it seemed like more than usual.

- I leave home at 7:55am to get my first bus. I only have to take two buses to get out there today. When I get off the bus near the Bank, I start talking to a Habs fan who was also on the bus. We make the walk to the arena together, and it turns out Habs Guy used to work in the same building where I now work. Spooky!

- I get a text from Stajanna telling me she and Heata and Carbonita are in section 225, row B today, so I go join them. Sitting next to us today is a French Canadian Habs fan in a Bob Gainey t-shirt. Bob Gainey seems to be this guy’s idol, so we name him Serge-Bob Gainey.

- Our seats are nearest to the Red Wings table, so I will spend much of the day keeping an eye on Steve Yzerman and Scotty Bowman. (Mike Babcock doesn’t appear to be there today.) Bowman is constantly up mingling with various people, including having a long chat with Bob McKenzie at one point (is this where McKenzie gets his inside info, we wonder). I imagine a lot of people want to talk to him and he seems like a pretty friendly guy. Yzerman spends more time seated at the table, presumably talking to the scouts, but he also gets up and chats sometimes. At one point he comes over near the boards and a big group of kids flocks over to get his autograph. He signs for them. Did I mention that I love Steve Yzerman?

- “Uncle Ben” Hartsburg is seated at the Sens’ table today. Apparently he was there on Friday too, but we didn’t spot him. I also find out after I get home that Chris Kelly showed up to sign his contract at the Draft table, but again, we didn’t see him.

- Columbus coach Ken Hitchcock is sitting in a box on the 100 level below us. We can see him in there most of the day. Having decided that Columbus is a Team of the Future, we now decide we’ll all buy Blue Jackets t-shirts to wear. We don’t know where we could get some in Ottawa, though. At one point, Serge-Bob Gainey spots Actual Bob Gainey in the box talking to Hitchcock and borrows Heata’s Sharpie to go and try to get Gainey to sign his shirt. We all keep our eye on the box where Hitchcock and Gainey are to see what happens. Serge-Bob appears and manages to get Gainey’s attention. A few minutes later we see Gainey disappear — hopefully he’s with Serge-Bob! Gainey then re-appears in the box and proceeds to actually climb out of it, standing on the arm of a seat before reaching the ground again. He makes his way back to the Montreal table by acrobatically going over, rather than around, the Scotiabank Place seats and various other obstacles in his way. This is pretty impressive, and we christen him Indiana Jones Gainey for it. From now on, climbing over seats to get around people will now be known as going Gainey-style. Serge-Bob returns victorious: he has Gainey’s signature on the back of his shirt. We’re happy for him! He is very apologetic because he’s accidentally lost Heata’s Sharpie, and tries to give her a toonie to buy a new one.

- Every time it’s Phoenix’s turn to make a pick, there’s some kind of delay. We feel that the Coyotes are like that guy in line ahead of you who has to count out all his change before he can pay.

- Phoenix uses the second round pick it got from the Sens in the Oleg Saprykin trade to select Jared Staal, the fourth (and final) Staal brother. Sadly, the Staals are not in attendance. The Coyotes draft another player with NHL pedigree when they take Brett Hextall, son of Ron, in the sixth round. I wonder if the fact that Wayne’s brother Keith Gretzky is on the Coyotes’ staff has anything to do with this habit of selecting the relatives of famous hockey people. Meanwhile, David Toews, brother of Jonathan, is taken in the third round by the Islanders. The Toews family is also not in attendance.

- In the third round, Phoenix takes M. Brodeur. Okay, it’s Mathieu Brodeur and he’s a defenceman, but still — M. Brodeur! Carolina drafts Michal Jordan in the sixth round. This, of course, is an 18-year-old Czech defenceman, not a 45-year-old legendary American basketball player. That doesn’t stop us from joking that all he needs to do now is play football and he’ll have the complete set.

- Towards the end of the day, we see Julien Demers of the Ottawa 67’s, who’d been drafted by the Sharks in round 5 (yes, the Sharks drafted a 67’s player!! Imagine that!), wander in to the section of seats below us. He’s soon joined by Brian Kilrea and 67’s owner Jeff Hunt. Brian Kilrea is the man!

- After the Draft ends, we’re walking out to the exit when we stumble upon (not literally) Sens player Nick Foligno in the hallway. We say hello, and Stajanna, Leafs jersey and all, asks Foligno for a picture with him, telling him she and her mother are fans of his father. Nick points out that his father is in fact right over there, so Stajanna gets a picture with him too. Foligno was bigger than I thought he’d be, in terms of muscle. He looks absolutely nothing like his father.

- Other random interesting people we saw: Brett Hull, sitting at the Dallas table announcing the Stars’ picks with great enthusiasm and signing the back of a kid wearing a Red Wings jersey; Ted Nolan; Alain Vigneault, chatting with Pierre LeBrun — I figure Vigneault must get a bit lonely having not many people to speak French to in Vancouver; Nick Kypreos, who lent Serge-Bob his Sharpie after the loss of Heata’s; Ron Wilson, whose interview with one media person quickly turns into a large-ish media scrum — yes, Ron, this is what it’s going to be like for you from now on; and a guy from Hockey Night in Canada’s Hot Stove whose name we can’t remember.

- Interesting fact: Round 1 took four hours to complete. Rounds 2-7 also took four hours to complete.

Summary: The Overall Draft Experience

What I learned is that attending the Draft is not really about watching people get drafted. Oh no. It’s partly about that, sure, but what it’s really about is a more general kind of people watching. Some of the people there are getting drafted, and you are definitely watching them, but you are also watching the people who are doing the drafting, and the people watching the Draft, and probably those people are watching you, too. Know what I mean?

Basically, what I am trying to say is that going to the Draft turned out to be a great opportunity to meet and mingle with other hockey fans, to observe the people who run the NHL actually making the NHL run, and to be a part of what is probably the best day in some 18-year-old boys’ lives. I’m really glad I was able to go, because it’s not an opportunity that comes around that often.

Coming up in this space: a post which actually talks about the Sens’ various draft picks!

I have a love/hate relationship with Hockey Night in Canada. I love Ron MacLean and his terrible-yet-clever puns. I love the cheesy and dramatic game intros. I also find the CBC’s camerawork noticeably better than that of the other networks which cover hockey, including TSN. I even like Don Cherry … most of the time. Where else can I see a man dressed in a suit made from old curtains every week? But the best thing about Hockey Night in Canada is that it’s just always there. It’s a tradition. A constant in Canadian broadcasting. You know it’s on, and I know it’s on, and everyone else knows it’s on, and many of us are watching it.

In a way it’s been around too long, and it’s firmly entrenched in a very deep rut. Much like the Toronto Maple Leafs, HNIC’s favourite cash cow, the show has an assured audience of suckers hockey fans who will keep on watching no matter what, and so it has nothing to give it the kick in the pants it needs to move forward onto fresh ground. This leads to many of the things I hate about the show: continued wall-to-wall coverage of the aforementioned detestable hockey team; continued employment of commentators who are either idiotic (hi, Harry Neale and Greg Millen) or simply past their prime (sorry, Bob Cole — you are a great play-by-play man, but it’s time to retire); and a continued bias towards the past, which shows itself in a particularly objectionable way in the elevation of “veteran leaders” (read: over the hill players, mostly Canadians, whose glory days happened back when Sidney Crosby’s father was in diapers) like Gary Roberts to near godlike status while players who are living their glory days right now, like Henrik Zetterberg, are relegated to the background. Don Cherry was far from alone in heaping an absolutely ridiculous amount of worship — there is no other word for what was going on — on Roberts during the 2008 playoffs, but he was certainly one of the most egregious offenders, going so far as to say that anyone who failed to kneel at the altar of Gary was a “dummy” who didn’t understand hockey and should be watching golf.

You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t quite accept this. I do get that Roberts probably played a very important role in terms of leadership off the ice for the Penguins, but the fact remains that the man didn’t play in almost half the team’s playoff games and could not by any stretch of the imagination have been considered a major story in the Final. The CBC commentators drooled over him so much that I actually felt embarrassed for them. But I digress.

The point is that there are many things I would change about Hockey Night in Canada. (I would start by making them show more Sens games on the west coast, but I accept that that is my personal bias.) One thing I would not ever, in a million billion kazillion years, have changed is the damn theme music! Come on! It’s iconic! Even when the Leafs are on (as usual, and they’re probably losing) and I have to watch the Sens on the tiny little video stream on my computer (which hurts my back because I have to sit in my desk chair, not that the CBC cares), I still turn on the TV just to see the intro and the theme. Saturday night hockey is not Saturday night hockey without that music. You want to go in a “new direction,” CBC? How about you deal with some of the issues I pointed out above and leave the bloody music alone? Trust me, your themesong is the last thing holding you back.

The story of what happened here, which starts with a lawsuit and ends with CTV buying the rights to the song in perpetuity and using it for hockey coverage on its affiliated network, TSN, is so disturbing to me on so many levels that I hardly know where to begin. I’m not an expert, but it seems as though the CBC was, as the composer’s lawsuit contends, acting outside its license agreement in it use of the song, which I think speaks to very poor management. If the CBC loses this suit, the settlement will cost quite a bit of money, presumably taxpayer money, and probably the same amount of money it would have cost us just to buy the song outright, except now we’ll get no benefit from it. Well played! I know people would have been up in arms over spending so much public money on the song, but as someone who is training to be an archivist and who believes that the government has an important role to play in preserving culture and heritage, I feel it would have been a good investment.

I’m also a believer in the importance of a public broadcaster for Canada; I’m therefore alarmed that the CBC is having such difficulty competing with CTV, which was able to outbid it not only for “The Hockey Theme,” as I understand it’s now being called, but also for the rights to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Additionally, CTV recently purchased the rights to the Anne of Green Gables TV movies and Road to Avonlea. All these little pieces of Canadiana moving into the hands of a corporation which has absolutely no responsibility to anything but its bottom line … call me crazy, but it makes me a little uncomfortable.

Aside from that, I think losing its theme music is symbolic of a larger decline for Hockey Night in Canada, a subject we’ve been discussing at the SensNation forum. As has been pointed out at Five For Smiting, the song was a very important part of Hockey Night in Canada’s “brand” identity. We’ve all read No Logo, or at least some of us have read the first two chapters, so we know how important branding is these days. Hockey Night in Canada is (or was) basically the Coke of hockey in terms of brand identity: everyone recognizes it, and everyone knows what it means. Far from being “a constant commercial” for the CBC, use of the song during hockey coverage on TSN will in fact likely lessen the impact of the Hockey Night in Canada brand name. It’s like if Pepsi started selling itself in those old style glass bottles. You see the bottle, and you assume you’re getting Coke. Chances are you might not even look at the label. You drink the contents, and hey, it’s not Coke! But it’s not bad. Oh, it’s Pepsi! Well, maybe next time you’re in the store you’ll get Pepsi instead. And it’s all downhill from there for Coke.

I’m not saying that no song = immediate and total loss of audience, but it seems as though a reduced brand recognition among viewers could eventually be harmful to Hockey Night in Canada’s status as a premiere source of hockey coverage. When you combine this with the recent announcement of TSN’s new deal with the NHL, which will see it broadcast 70 games during the season, all featuring at least one Canadian team, and possibly even a playoff series featuring a Canadian team — something which has to this point been solely CBC territory, the CBC is looking less and less like the place you want to go for Canadian hockey coverage. Considering that its whole function is supposed to be to provide coverage of Canadian NHL teams, that’s not a good thing.

And the fact is that CBC just doesn’t need any more competition: its audience is already slipping gradually away. While NBC and Vs. in the US saw their ratings go up in the 2008 playoffs, it was reported that many Montreal fans, even anglophones, turned to French-language broadcaster RDS for the Habs games because they didn’t like CBC’s coverage of their team. Additionally, while the ratings for the Detroit-Pittsburgh Stanley Cup Final Series were up in the US, this year’s final was less-watched than last year’s on the CBC.

If, heaven forbid, Hockey Night in Canada should fail, the consequences for the CBC could be disastrous. We’ve already had a small taste of what can happen over there just because the Leafs miss the playoffs (again). Take away hockey entirely and the financial picture seems extremely bleak. Pretty soon they won’t have a budget to produce any new shows at all. Then CTV will hire Peter Mansbridge to replace Lloyd Robertson when he retires. When Rick Mercer inevitably bolts to the Comedy Network, they’ll be left with nothing to show but six month old episodes of Coronation Street and The Hour and, as much as I love George Stroumboulopoulos, one man does not a TV network make. Soon enough, the network will fold, and all we’ll have left to remind us of a once great tradition of public broadcasting is the Tickle Trunk.

Unless they’ve sold that too.