Losing its Luster...

Okay, so I’ve figured out my role here at Say Something Funny, Mike: I’m the NHL apologist. Mike hates the Yankees, Mr. Shin is contrarian for contrarian’s sake(I love Contrarian Shin, bee-tee-dubs), and I’m the guy who wants the NHL to be as rampantly popular as hockey is in Canada….or as popular as watching vapid imbeciles on television is in the United States.

This past week, Rick Rypien of the Vancouver Canucks was involved in a scuffle during play at the Minnesota Wild and subsequently ejected from the game. On his way off the ice to the locker room, he attacked a Minnesota fan who was doing nothing more than clapping.

Rypien got ejected, was walking to the locker room, and roughed up the first Minnesota fan he saw. The guy in the stands was not shouting at Rypien, he wasn’t gesturing towards Rypien, and he certainly wasn’t provoking Rypien in any way, shape, or form. By no means is this a Ron Artest sort of incident, but I think that for the NHL, it’s a very big deal.

I already wrote about how the league has an opportunity within the next year to really boost their visibility on the American sports landscape. I honestly feel that if handled carefully, the NHL can grab a huge portion of the sports fans who are craving good athletic competition and hang onto them for years.

Let it also be known that I can’t stand the way Gary Bettman has mis-managed the NHL as his time as commissioner, but that’s another blog post for another day. Here, the NHL had a chance to cover up what could be a HUGE black eye for the sport. Instead of ensuring that something like this rarely happens again, the league dropped the ball. Rypien was suspended for six games.

If you’ve been to an NHL game recently, you know that it is incredibly expensive just to buy tickets. In fact, the NHL locked out in the 2004-2005 season in order to put into place a salary cap and stop the financial bleeding that NHL owners claimed was going on with their clubs. Clearly, that didn’t work.

Regardless, no matter how much I pay to go sit and watch an NHL game, I…in no way shape or form…should be subject to being physically attacked by some knuckle-dragging meathead. I know that some fans feel entitled when they attend a sporting event. They feel that since they pay the players’ salaries with their ticket purchase, that they can say and do whatever they want. Heck, I’m guilty of flipping off Corey Schwab during the Devils 2003 Cup run (really, Corey Schwab was terrible). But there’s a world of difference between acting like a total jerk at a game and just being an innocent bystander to someone who’s incredibly upset that his NHL career is nothing more than a joke as a $500,000 “enforcer”.

The fact of the matter is this: if a guest complains about the meal they were served at a restaurant, the cook would never come out from the kitchen and rough them up. If a woman makes a comment about the haircut she receives at a salon, she doesn’t get scalded with a straightening iron by the stylist. Any good business knows that the customer is ALWAYS right. Try physically assaulting a customer at the place you work and see how quickly you get FIRED.

Rypien shoving a fan was absolutely uncalled for. He should be suspended, for at the very least, half the season. The league wouldn’t miss him, and nobody else would dare try to do this again. But rest assured, the NHL did the right thing here. I mean, Commissioner Bettman called the fan up, apologized over the phone, and sent him tickets to a game and an offer for a free dinner. Problem solved, right?

The NHL’s Golden Opportunity is already losing its luster.