I dunno. I kind of liked the long periods of dead air, missed calls, and barn-door openings Mr. Cole left for Cassie to charge through ... that she completely ignored.

Ha ha.

Go Mats.

I dunno. I kind of liked the long periods of dead air, missed calls, and barn-door openings Mr. Cole left for Cassie to charge through ... that she completely ignored.

Ha ha.

Go Mats.

Boo, hiss, Chris.

I happen to have liked Cassie Campbell's work on the show. She noticed and talked about things from a player's perspective, which is far from what most hockey colour commentators do.

Besides, if you or I were to get tossed into an entirely different job description on a few hours notice in a very public profession where your thoughts and words are carried live to thousands of households across the country, I'm not sure either of us could do any better at all.

Cut her some slack - she's earned it.

I'm with Damian. I can't imagine the stress she was under given the circumstances. In all, I think she performed admirably. Certainly well enough to merit future work.

On Cole, well, I have to kind of agree. His best days (and there were many) seem to be behind him.

It is probably a little unfair to pick on Campbell for a poor performance as a last-minute emergency replacement. But it's true that she was bad enough to make me miss Harry Neale. Which is pretty damn bad.

As for the "player's perspective," I'd rather watch an NHL game with someone who had played Junior B or men's intercollegiate, thanks. Women's hockey may be worth watching on its merits, but it has about as much to do with the NHL as donkey baseball does to the World Series.

Bob is, of course, well past his best days, although perhaps he is just a ploy by the CBC to ease western alienation by allowing us to pity the poor easterners who have Bob doing all their games.

I thought Campbell was fairly good, especially considering she's hardly experienced at the job. The first few minutes were awful, but after that there was definitely less wincing when she was talking than when Bob was (a low standard, admittedly). I doubt Harry (Neale) would have recommended we watch for the down low pass from Wellwood to Tucker 60 seconds before they scored with that exact play.

Having said that, I look forward to some miraculous technological/sociological breakthrough that allows me to watch the game with the full audio from the rink and the ice, without having to listen to two people, whose opinions I'm not interested in, babble on uselessly. I mean, if television had come before radio, would we even have commentators? Aren't they just a crutch left over for people who grew up listening to radio and can't let go of having somebody else tell them what is going on?

Imagine being at a hockey game and having Bob and Harry come along and take the two seats right in front of you and yap all through the game like they do in their broadcast. I don't know about you but it would drive me insane. Is it really so different watching a game on TV?

OK, maybe they could have somebody around to explain the odd confusing situation (mysterious stoppages, time being put back on the clock, that sort of thing) but otherwise keep silent. That would be nice, although with the rink sound at full volume you can pretty much pick everything up from the announcements (I especially love it when the commentators talk over the P.A. announcer when they are announcing goals and assists). I guess there's not much hope for a labour dispute at any of the networks this year, huh?

Women's hockey may be worth watching on its merits, but it has about as much to do with the NHL as donkey baseball does to the World Series.

Which goes to show, Colby, that even your sagacity has its limits.

Campbell is smart, articulate, and she's forgotten more about hockey - not women's hockey, HOCKEY - than most Jr. B players will ever know. Certainly more than you'll ever know.

Damian,

How, exactly, has Cassie Campbell "earned" some slack? I am of course a cynical bastard, but much of the support I'm hearing for her sounds to me like a long-distance butt-pinch on her way back to the kitchen — "That's pretty good for a first try, love." It wasn't nearly good enough, full stop. I see no reason not to point it out.

Campbell's merits as a commentator aside, women's hockey is non-contact, so I'd have to agree with CC's statement on its face.

women's hockey is non-contact

Chris, your statement is just plain wrong. Women's hockey is without body-checking, it is most emphatically not non-contact.

As far as your insinuation that I'm simply a patronizing chauvinist...project much, Chris? Full disclosure: I'm married to a lady who was a hell of a hockey player, and remains a keen student of the game. So I've been hearing fantastic colour commentary on men's hockey from a woman for more than fifteen years now - I just happen to be sitting beside the commentator on the couch, sharing a bowl of popcorn and clinking beer bottles with her after a particularly nice play.

So if I'm being too easy on Campbell, it's not because she's a chick. I think Cassie's earned some slack by pushing women's hockey forward, by bringing great credit to her country as a representative athlete for years and years, and by getting little to show for it other than a couple of shiny baubles and some minor endorsement deals until now. Call me sentimental, but I'm pulling for her to make it in this new career of hers.

As far as her performance is concerned, I think if any darts are to be thrown, they should be tossed at her bosses at CBC. Putting sex aside, when they found out Neale couldn't make it to the gig, they should have looked at who on their team had some experience calling colour. If Cassie was the most seasoned person on that team, they really need to work on depth.

Was she less polished than you'd expect on HNIC? Sure. Did she offer solid analysis? Absolutely. On balance, irregardless of which set of private parts she happens to have, as a new sports journalist standing in on short notice for a broadcasting legend on the most prestigious hockey telecast on the planet, she did a hell of a job.

I hope the twits at CBC sports give her the opportunity to practice her craft off-air and then let her call some more games.

If your wife is truly such a keen student of the game, she'd presumably be the first to point out that a good Junior B team would mop the ice with the women's national side. Dismissing the intensity of play in junior and college leagues that have many future pros in their ranks is the sign of an uxorious hockey fan, not an informed one.

But I don't dismiss the intensity of play, nor contest the ability of men to beat women in a hockey game. I just don't see how the physical size, speed, and strength that would allow that men's team to beat the women would also make a man a better commentator.

The truth of the matter is that elite men in many sports often get away with sloppier technical play because of sheer athleticism (think Shaq in basketball, Hasek in hockey, Deon Sanders in football, etc). In my experience, women's athletics is often more cerebral than men's because it has to be - they can't make up for poor technique or positioning with raw power the way men can, so they have to be more sound on the fundamentals.

All of which is why I refuse to disqualify Cassie Campbell as a commentator on hockey simply because she played on a women's team.

Does anyone here (by anyone, I mean those that are suggesting Campbell is not qualified because she was merely a female Olympian) really think that Harry Neale (or Greg Millen or Jim Ralph) provides insight that is that astoundingly deep? And that this supposed depth is a function of their great careers in the sport? How many times have you sat in your living room critisizing a "qualified" colour man for spouting something moronic?

I happen to like Harry Neale and think that his coaching backround is useful (or at least is was - he hasn't coached since any of us was in grade school and, by the way, he sucked at it), but anyone who thinks that a career in the pro game is required to provide the grade 7 level insight that is the current industry standard only has to listen to the tape of Joe Theismann last evening.

"much of the support I'm hearing for her sounds to me like a long-distance butt-pinch on her way back to the kitchen — "That's pretty good for a first try, love."

Yikes. As Damien says, this sounds like projection to me. All the people who disagreed, did so on the basis of you being over-critical, especially of a first time performance. But you didn't address that at all, instead bringing gender into it where nobody else had.

Have you ever read 'Blink' by Malcolm Gladwell?
In particular I am thinking of the section which talks about blind auditions for orchestras. Prior to blind auditions it was very rare for women to be hired because their playing didn't sound as good to the judges. But once they started doing blind auditions women started to be hired in significant numbers. The point being that even when the judges weren't consciously discriminating, their senses were discriminating for them, based on their preconceived notions. Food for thought, anyway.

Oh yeah? Well maybe I accuse Damian and Declan of double-reverse projection. Let's recap:

1. In my opinion, Cassie Campbell was horrible.
2. Blaming it on CBC is certainly appropriate and surely implied, since it was the CBC who aired the commentary I believed to be so terrible.

Damian replied that he liked Campbell's commentary. Fine. Then he says he doubts he or I could do any better if we were chucked in with hours' notice, which is fair enough, but wasn't really what I was talking about. (It also suggests he has low standards for hockey commentary, since he so enjoyed something he's making so many excuses for.)

Declan's idea that I brought gender into it when no one else had is good for a larf, at least, but the conversation was already veering into a tangential discussion about the relative merits of women's hockey. Imagine if Drew Remenda had said "I like crime shows" or traded inane compliments with Jim Hughson for a minute and a half. Long story short, for one reason or another, Campbell is being treated with kid gloves. In a seven-sentence post I didn't have time to go into it. I just thought she sucked (as did Cole) and left it at that.

As for the butt-pinching analogy, I don't even know what it was supposed to mean at this point. I think she's being condescended to, but no one was metaphorically pinching her butt and I have no idea how the kitchen factors into it. No offence was intended.

You sure are purty when you shuffle your feet like that, Chris!

*pinching your butt*

Now get back to the kitchen...or..y'know...wherever it is you go to when you're not doing the bloggy thing. :P

You wrote, "much of the support I'm hearing for her sounds to me like..."

But if you go back and read the 4 comments that were written in support (Damien's, mine, Colby's and Mike's), there is nothing in those 4 comments to suggest that people were only writing in support because she was a woman. In fact if you hadn't known, you couldn't have guessed the gender from those comments (leaving aside pronouns of course).

The only exception was Colby's remark about the relevance of her experience as a player due to the differences in the women's game - a topic which he introduced as a separate issue.

Imagine for a second that Mario Lemieux had been the guest commentator. We could have had the whole same scenario. You hating his performance, other people disagreeing and saying he did alright for a first timer, the CBC folks treating him with kid gloves, etc. But what we wouldn't have had, I suspect, was your comment that "the support I'm hearing for him sounds to me like a long-distance butt-pinch on his way back to the kitchen — "That's pretty good for a first try, love."

Anyway, I'll drop it, I just wanted to clarify what I meant by 'bringing gender into it where nobody else had.'

Mark Spector pretty much got it right in Tuesday's Post.

Mark Spector pretty much got it right in Tuesday's Post.

Or, uh, not.

I'd say Chris Zelkovitch in the Star and Martine Gaillard at Sportsnet (on her blog) were closer to the mark. We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one, folks.

Mark Spector did indeed have the best analysis. Campbell sucked, CBC had plenty of opportunity to get someone more qualified to fill in for Neale (for that night and every other night Neale makes it to the game), and the CBC is a bush-league sports broadcaster for a major professional sport. The only comments I didn't appreciate were those on Drew Remenda working in secondary venues, and this was for the sole reason that if he did get a Toronto Saturday night game, Toronto fans might want to have him full time, leaving those of us out west lacking a one of the game's best.

The most controversial comments by Spector have to do with a woman calling a men's game. Perhaps a woman could do colour for HNIC someday, but Campbell is currently at a disadvantage because of the differences between the level of hockey with which she is experienced and that of the NHL. There is no way as of now that she could have the insight of, say, Kelly Hrudy, a man who knows what it is like in the dressing room and who has first-hand knowledge of the finer points of the world's best hockey league.

Spector is bang-on in his summary: "Campbell could win those men (who believe that women's hockey lacks credibility) over, eventually. But like any ground-breaker in any walk of life, she won't just have to be as good as the men she's pasing, or work just as hard.

"She'll have to do it better, and she'll have to work harder.

"Right now she's not close on the former. And she'll never get credit for the latter, as long as the CBC keeps handing it to Campbell on a silver platter."

Like it or not, this is the way it is at the moment, and the CBC should recognize this.

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