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December 01, 2005
Meeker still
Poor Howie Meeker — still clinging to the only relevance he's had in the last decade, namely, his now outrageously dated claims that Canadian hockey is vastly, hopelessly inferior to the European product:
Meeker said the new NHL has opened the door even wider to European content.
"Three of the top four point producers are European [Jaromir Jagr, Daniel Alfredsson and Peter Forsberg]," he said. "And 11 of the top 16 goal scorers. The reason the New York Rangers are in first place in their division is because [general manager Glen] Sather went for skill and has 11 Europeans.
"Now, a second-class European is better than most of our Canadians. You're going to see more and more Europeans over here…"
And who printed this drivel? Who else but William "Canadian Hockey Sucks — A 24-Part Series" Houston, who will obviously go to great lengths to edify his epic post-Nagano doomsayery, which looks pretty stupid now that Gretzky and Co. are preparing to assemble what will certainly, on paper, be history's greatest ice hockey team.
I'm sure it's not even worth going after Meeker's arguments, but hey, I'm bored. You don't often hear film critics giving you their year-end top-four or top-16 lists, do you? No, you don't. Indeed, scanning the league leaders in a statistical category and then stopping just before the one that damages your hypothesis is a time-honoured sports journalism tradition, and Meeker has it down pat. So yes, Alfredsson, Jagr and Forsberg are three of the top four, but Spezza (Canadian) is the leader. And then there's Heatley (Canadian), Gagne (Canadian), Savard (Canadian) and Staal (Canadian). Why, that's five of the top eight! No, I don't know who comes ninth — I always use top-eight lists. As for goal scoring, Meeker's 11 of 16 figure still holds true, though again it conveniently omits the fact that Simon Gagne is in first place. (In fact, three of the top five scorers are Canadian, so there.) Oh, and for the record, by my count the Rangers finished last season with ten Europeans.
(Somewhat aside, the skeptics always seem to forget that Team Canada (with 12 of the top 30 point scorers) doesn't play "Europe" in international competition. It plays Russia (with four), and the Czech Republic (with two), and Sweden (with four), and the United States (with two), none of whose Turin entries would be a prohibitive favourite to beat Canada's B team, if such a thing existed. This debate was won by Canada years ago, except in the March 1996-dated sarcophagi in which Houston and Meeker apparently spend most of their days.)
Posted by Chris Selley at December 1, 2005 10:11 PM
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Comments
Canada never did play against "Europe", but we did once have to play against a "Russia" that included players from a dozen different nations, and against something called "Czechoslovakia" (gaw, that was really the actual name of a country). The interesting question is whether "Canada" is a permanently unified sporting entity--cf. your morning paper--and how we'd fare against those Warsaw Pact agglomerations today.
Posted by: Colby Cosh at December 1, 2005 10:58 PM
I can still hear Howie Meeker's voice in my worst nightmares. I thought he had gone away forever. Sadly, I was wrong.
Posted by: Carmi at December 1, 2005 11:16 PM
Nice use of 'sarcophagi'!
Posted by: wsam at December 2, 2005 10:38 AM