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Thursday, December 23, 1999
Rivalries fall into slumber
Confession: If my life depended upon it and my family's future was hanging in the balance, I could not list the NHL's 28 teams by conference, let alone by divisions.
The reason is simple: I don't care.
It's kind of like being asked to name America's 50 states.
You know that Alaska's up north and Hawaii's in the Pacific and there are 48 of them sort of squinched up underneath Canada and every one of them has at least one city or town called Columbus.
But how many of them are you ever going to visit? And the ones you do -- hey, you get on a plane, you go to sleep, you land, and you're there. Who needs to know what other states you're sitting between?
When I was a kid, placing the teams by conference was easy. There weren't any. No conferences, no divisions. Just the NHL, and for years I figured they only played on Saturdays because that's when we flopped on the couch, my Dad and me, and listened to them. The only paper was local and weekly (I had the only route and thus all 12 customers), so who knew?
But I could recite the lineups for all six teams and hate the Rangers and Bruins with the best of 'em. And when the Canadiens played the Leafs, the house could fall down and we'd never have noticed.
Which brings us circuitously to the Battle of Alberta, Edmonton Oilers vs. Calgary Flames, finally coming to a rink near you tonight.
'Fess up, now, is it still a battle, or just six skirmishes out of 82 scattered indiscriminately among the Nashvilles and the Buffalos and a bunch of other teams from places so far south that the skate blades are sewn on Hush Puppies and the logos feature magnolias?
It's a battle in football, but maybe that's because the Stamps and Eskimos play only 18 games and four of them are against each other.
You can build loathing on a foundation like that. You can look at the schedule, mark the dates on the calendar and spend hours in front of the mirror getting just the right look and volume to "(Insert name) SUCK!"
But the hockey season is 34 games old, 41% finished, before the schedule makers finally pour Flame on Oil tonight? They don't meet again until Jan. 19 in Edmonton? Then it's twice in February, once in March and once in April? Boy, feel that tension building.
It's also tough to work up a decent heat when the Oilers and Flames represent 50% of the (gimme a second ... ah, here it is) Northwest Division of the Western Conference.
Who can remember that? And when you consider that the divisions don't matter a hoot unless you win them and then almost everybody gets to start over anyway, who'd want to?
The NHL knows all this. It knows the value of traditional rivalries and has even tried to invent a few between the newer franchises. ("Hot damn, Garth. T'nite our Preda ... Preda ... hockey guys play them traditional rivals from Chicagee! Whyncha whup up a song or two about it? Y'say nuthin' rhymes with hockey? Damned shame, that ...")
But, perhaps fearing a western uprising at losing the annual visit by the Maple Leafs and Canadiens, it won't move on the idea of limiting competition to within the Conferences until playoffs so people can see more games where they know both teams.
So here we are, all geared up for the first installment of the latest Battle of Alberta, knowing installment two won't arrive for a month.
But don't despair. Two days after the Flames go to Edmonton, Calgary fans get to see the Preda ... Preda ... the Nashville guys. Whoever they are. YA-hoo!
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