In order to keep up the fiction that he still works at the Washington Post, future Monday Night Football color man Tony Kornheiser has another "mailing it in" column for the readers of the nation's capital. And surprise, we've got some NHL bashing for the paper's resident hockey genius:
Hockey is so dead in America, the players may as well still be locked out. You can't find hockey anywhere on television unless you're looking for the Bicycle Race network. The biggest NHL story all season was the accusation that Wayne Gretzky's once-hot actress wife was betting with Gretzky's bookmaking assistant coach. The games pass unnoticed.
The Caps have the rookie of the year -- maybe the rookie of the last 10 years. And when was the last time somebody walked up to you and said, "How 'bout that Ovechkin?" That only happened, oh, 30 times a few weeks ago when the Redskins signed Randle El. Even with Ovechkin, the Caps haven't made a dent this season. Stories about them are rarely on the front page of the sports section; they're usually buried inside, in what I like to call "MLS Hell."
Here's a question for Kornheiser: Does being exiled to "MLS Hell" really matter?
Somehow, someway, hockey fans find the information and stories they need, even if the NHL isn't a hot topic of discussion at the Kornheiser home. We blog, we share video, and we argue over details that folks like you just don't care too much about.
Boy do we watch video. Like the better than 45,000 people who have watched this one:
No matter how many times I watch, it never gets old. 45,000 viewers around the world for a homemade video.
The world of sports is awfully crowded, and everybody has to compete harder for attention these days. So, if Kornheiser's old buddies at the Post want to exile the Caps to "MLS Hell" it doesn't matter. We'll find what we need without your help.
And Tony, remember: Both John Madden and Al Michaels left Monday Night Football because ESPN wasn't a big enough stage for them. Guess everybody is learning to live a little more simply these days.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Kornheiser also complains about the fact that the Caps and the Hurricanes are in the midst of playing each other five times over the course of two weeks. But while all of us have our complaints about the NHL schedule, Kornheiser neglects to mention that Carolina is one of the best teams in the league, yet the Caps have won five out of a possible six points from Carolina through the first three games of this set, and took the 'Canes to OT last night.
Toss in a 1-0 win over Eastern Conference-leading Ottawa that was also sanwiched in there, and the Caps are actually playing some good hockey. Not that Kornheiser would notice. Check out some interesting reaction at Kukla's Korner.
UPDATE: Ted Leonsis takes note of Kornheiser's shot, and points folks elsewhere. JP has his own take, take time to read it. And then check out the Caps message board.
POSTSCRIPT: Here's another shot from Kornheiser I couldn't help but notice:
In one big game tonight, more people will root for and care about the Maryland women's basketball team than have cared about the Capitals in 74 games.
Well, with the Caps coming to the finish of a season near the bottom of the NHL, I'm not terribly surprised. As far as I'm concerned, the Terps have earned all the attention they're getting right now.
Then again, many of their fans are pretty late to the party. I took a closer look at the attendance numbers for Maryland Women's Basketball, which I found inside the the UMd. boxscores for the season. Click here to see them yourself.
In 15 home games this season (I didn't count one home exhibition game), the Terps averaged a respectable 4,527 fans per game. But if you subtract their one home game against Duke where they drew nearly 16,100 fans, that average drops to 3,701.
Meanwhile, the Caps, have reported average paid home attendance of 13,745 over 38 home games. And, as Tarik El-Bashir of the Post has noted multiple times, many of those paying customers often come disguised as empty seats. Still, folks paid for those seats, and it's rather reasonable to assume more will line up to pay next year as word about the works of Ovechkin keeps spreading. It already has on the road, where the Caps draw about 3,000 additional fans per game than they do at home.
Is this an unfair comparison? Yes it is. But I'm not making it to bash the women's basketball, just to remind folks that as tough as times are for the NHL, and they are, the league is still a whole lot more popular than media people like Kornheiser want to admit.
Note to my friends in "MLS Hell": Get ready for a similar column from Kornheiser around the time the World Cup begins. The man is pretty busy these days, and only has so many ideas. I mean, heck, he's gotta file a column once a week. That's heavy lifting after all.
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