Is It Hockey or Me?

Today’s column from Damien Cox hits the nail on the head – something big is up:

Those who cling to strains of discredited orthodoxy, suggesting that the NHL doesn’t need to change one single thing about its game, are now clearly the minority. The voices calling out for a faster, more offensive NHL are becoming deafening. In addition, the NHL faces a strike this fall that most think will kill at least one season and sweep away more than a few teams.

All in all, there is a very good chance that what will be played in the NHL in 2005 or 2006 will be a very different game than we see today. That would be a good thing. There are too many clubs, too many games, too few stars and too many grinders. It is now difficult to associate with a sport – even in a market like mine that boasts two top teams within two hours drive – when the games devolve into roller derby tactics along the boards, debates whether eye protection is for sissies and the thrilling spectacle of yet another dump into the corner. For years, I watched at least a full game on the TV once a week, listened to a couple on radio, bought the kids souveniers and caught at least one game live a year. I was a pretty good customer, I would have thought. No more. I’m bored. My remedies?

  • Ditch centres. Five a side all game.

  • Big ice. Watching NHL after a good soccer game on Fox Sports World (with its 22 players in play on a big field) is like watching dogs brawl in a closet.

  • Even smaller goal pads. It is insane how in recent years goalies have started to look like leviathans with shoulders as wide as the crease. Leave something significant to aim the puck at.

  • Five games for any fight minimum. I won’t put a game on the TV these days for fear the kids will watch it. Not because of checking or hammering a guy into the boards. The fights. I would turn any TV show off that regularly shows grown men battering each others faces with their fists until one falls down. With NHL, I can’t be bothered turning it on, if the three and five year old are around.

  • Start the season in late October and finish by the end of April.

None of these things will happen, of course, because the NHL fears change. Bigger ice surface and short seasons means fewer tickets sold. Fights attract a core audience of NASCAR crash droolers. Five on five is too familiar a pattern of play. So, until the strike, I’ll watch the odd game. When the strike is on, I won’t care that much. And when it is back with 2/3’s of the teams, I’ll probably watch the odd game.

More on Sphere of Autonomy

I found this passage on the sphere of autonomy from a recently reported Ontario Divisional Court appeal ruling from last July called Polewsky v. Home Hardware about court filing fees and poverty:

[50] As noted above, at para. 6, Gillese J. considered s.7 in obiter and found that the protection of s. 7 is limited to a person’s physical and mental integrity and does not protect civil and economic rights. However, where it is established that the fees are a barrier to justice, the issue becomes an access to justice issue, rather than one of economic rights.

[51] The appellants argued that for a poor person, “security of the person” must include the right to access the civil justice system, particularly the Small Claims court. The appellant cites Pleau v Nova Scotia (1998), 186 N.S.R. (2d) 1 (S.C., Prothonotary) [Pleau] for this proposition. Having considered Supreme Court of Canada jurisprudence on this issue, we are not convinced that the denial of access to the Small Claims Court is properly characterized as a breach of security of the person.

[52] The right to security of the person covers the right to personal autonomy, involving control over one’s bodily integrity and freedom from state imposed psychological and emotional stress (R v Morgentaler [1988] 1 S.C.R. 30, Rodriguez v. British Columbia (Attorney General) [1993] 3 S.C.R. 519).

[53] Although the right extends beyond the criminal law and can be engaged in other proceedings, such as child protection proceedings ((New Brunswick (Minister of Health and Community Services) v. G.(J.), [1999] 3 S.C.R. 46) [G.(J).]), not all state interference with psychological integrity will engage s.7. Where the psychological integrity of a person is at issue, the right to security of the person is restricted to protection from serious state imposed psychological stress. For a breach of security of the person to be made out, the state action must have a serious and profound effect on the person’s psychological integrity. Not all forms of psychological prejudice will lead to a section 7 violation (G.(J.), Blencoe v. British Columbia (Human Rights Commission), [2000] 2 S.C.R. 307.

[54] We are not persuaded that the type of harm experienced by individuals who cannot pay Small Claims Court fees is appropriately construed as causing sufficiently serious or profound psychological harm to be in violation of s.7 of the Charter.

Interesting if only because it serves as another example of the courts shrinking from the monster it found in section 7 of The Charter which they now appears to want little to do with.

February

People moan about February but, as an undergrad pal said every year, it goes like a bat out of hell. Three weeks to March and the weather at a balmy -5 needs no hat or chin-zipped parka. We are closer to leaves coming out than falling and it will be in the twenties here someday within a few weeks if only for that freakish day every year that sees you get that sunburn under the chin and on the shins, sun reflected on snow as you walk around outside too long in shorts.

Grammy Show

I watched last night with half my attention elsewhere. Here is what I saw:

  • I like “Hey Ya” and was happy to see how the video was trasformed to a stage performance for live TV. Sooner or later I am going to be able to hire a high school marching band for some purpose in my life, too.
  • If you did not wait to the very end you missed Faith Hill, looking like a Republican’s dream of the girl to be met at the country club, squawking something into the mike to the effect of “the show is over” and walking away as 43 people (who were not going to be invited to that club) representing OutKast celebrated winning the final award for album of the year.
  • The Foo-Fighters appeared, perhaps uniquely, as a rock band playing things like instruments and singing in to microphones without dancers or lights or any other distractions. That was good.
  • The White Stripes were very good.
  • My world just about crumbled when Richard “Dicky” Marks won an award for best song co-written with the living human tribute of the night, Luther Vandross. The king of the mullet was shown and, though shorn at the rear of his head now and though his song is something of a thematic rip of that 80s “love my departed Dad” song by Genesis going by another name Mike and the Mechanics, at least it was not a loser rock song about going down to the river and offing oneself which Dicky Marks was the absolute king of twenty years ago.
  • Warren Zevon starred and won as the guy who recently smoked himself to death. [Ed.: error fixed in replies.]
  • No one got Yoko Ono when she said give peace a chance.
  • No one told Paul McCartney (who is really looking like a muppet who has sat too near the fire and melted a bit) that he was not speaking for all the Beatles as he followed taped Ringo and live Yoko and a nice also live lady who knew George (last year’s guy who won for smoking himself to death) thanking everybody for remembering they were on TV 40 years ago.
  • Christina A. and Beyonce Knowles were the only proponents of the porcine squealy decending decrecsendo pseudo-gospel thing done really well twenty years ago by Whitney Huston, destroyed by everyone ever since – especially the now disappeared Mariah Carey. Perhaps it will soon die.
  • Funk (the music Jesus loved) had its day with Parliament/Funkadelic and Earth, Wind and Fire.

If you take anything from the show, go buy funk.

President Kerry?

It would be facinating to watch if the wheels really came off the current US administration. This was slipped in the Toronto Star‘s article on Kerry’s wins yesterday:

One national poll yesterday put Kerry seven percentage points ahead of Bush as the president continued to be battered by the failure to find banned weapons in Iraq and his secretary of state seemed to express second thoughts about the decision to go to war. Perhaps more ominous for the sitting president, his approval rating had dropped to 48 per cent, the lowest of his presidency, according to the CNN-USA Today poll.

I would think that sending soldiers to a war which has had its primary ground – WMD – generally disproven is a biggie.  [Apparently Colin Powell thinks so, too.]   It feels like there was never a true buy-in to the Saddam-Osammy link. And the tighter security rules must discomfort – I don’t think this is a big thing at the border and security agencies will be security agencies but when you are checking up on what my kids take out from the library it gets a bit weird. But the main thing is the messed up budget. I don’t think you can have 20 years of being told that you must reduce government spending and reduce taxes only to have the shift to big spending and low taxes bought by the people. It used to be said of conservatives that they shifted the tax from rich to poor. This guy shifts it to no one…but money does not work that way. The loans from the Saudis and China mount. Who wants that dependency mounting?

The real question is, all in all, what has George Jr. done uniquely that another leader would not have done? I am not convinced the war on terror (remember that one?) would not have been taken on by anyone in the White House after 9/11. Others might have pursued it more diligently. Others soon might.