PHILADELPHIA — It was an hour snap shot of the Capitals through a losing streak, no more than that, but if the first episode of HBO’s “Road to the Winter Classic” is any indication, Bruce Boudreau sure seems to do a whole lot more cussing than he does teaching.
Or maybe the teaching and coaching have been edited out. Maybe the fine folks at HBO think we’re all adolescents, hanging on and counting every four-letter word, uninterested in eavesdropping on constructive dialogue.
Which raises this point as well about the Caps and the editing process: Either there is no locker-room interaction between the athletes, no leading by the veteran leaders in the midst of a losing streak, or all evidence of that, too, has been consigned to the digital wasteland.
All credit is due Washington and Pittsburgh for the access the organizations are granting HBO. All credit to the NHL for striking this deal, though, as commissioner Gary Bettman and his legal department were recently reminded by the NHLPA, the league does need the union’s sign-off before agreeing to endeavors such as this, and will be expected to get it the next time.
HBO’s “Hard Knocks” football series focuses on one team in training camp, so viewers having very little knowledge of, say, the Jets, were able to get to know one cheeseburger from another pretty well by the end of the series.
This is different, however, with the network trailing two teams through a couple of weeks of the season, focusing more on games than internal issues, at least in the opening episode. An hour in, we know little if anything more about either team or any individual player than we did before watching the episode.
It was, by the way, pretty disappointing to see Matt Cooke featured early in the hour without the network providing the back-story on the serial headhunter. If the idea is to educate as well as entertain, the portrayal of Cooke only served to leave the audience ignorant.
Oh wait. Someone has found e-mails from Colin Campbell to HBO?
And the way HBO lit that scene in Ted Leonsis’ office, the Caps’ owner eerily resembled the New York Knights’ owner, The Judge, in “The Natural,” didn’t he?
Again, though, this was merely the first hour of the undertaking. And maybe the focus will change over the course of the series. Maybe we’ll get an idea what kind of captains Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin are. Maybe we’ll get an idea if Boudreau can coach.
There’s much chatter from people who should know that Brian Rolston, universally acknowledged by his peers as one of the best people in the game, learned he’d been placed on waivers by the Devils at the same time every one else did.
The same pipeline informs us the move — that ultimately became a non-move when the veteran cleared waivers — followed a team meeting in which general manager Lou Lamoriello issued threats to players with no-trade clauses such as Rolston.
The team emerged from that meeting at the beginning of the week, by the way, convinced John MacLean will remain behind the bench for the rest of the season, according to people who know. Though after last night’s shameful effort in Atlanta, all bets would seem to be off.
And we’re not buying the tale that owner Jeff Vanderbeek invested $100 million in Ilya Kovalchuk on the chance he could interest Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov, who has never given the impression he’s much of a hockey guy, in buying the NHL team.
Don Fehr, formally introduced yesterday as NHLPA executive director, had better brush up on checkers, because negotiations with Bettman, Bill Daly, Bob Batterman and the Board may well turn into a game of jump and double jump following the NBA’s labor talks.
Bettman got a 24-percent rollback from the NHLPA last time — offered in December 2004 by PA leader Bob Goodenow without input from or consultation with union members, and then inexplicably left on the table through the canceled season — so NBA chief David Stern is seeking at least a 30-percent rollback now from the basketball players.
If Stern gets it and thus jumps the NHL, Bettman is likely to attempt to double-jump him the next time around by requesting a larger rollback in anticipation of comprehensive claw-backs that would include reducing the percentage of the players’ take, among other restrictions.
Fehr no doubt will attempt to present a hybrid plan, featuring a soft cap plus a payroll tax and enhanced revenue sharing, that would directly benefit small-market teams that do not and cannot produce enough revenue to come close to turning a profit when obligated to meet the payroll floor in this phony percentage-of-the gross system now in place.
Remember this, however: Fehr will only be able to make as good a deal and take as hard-line a stance as his constituency allows.
And despite the mandate from the rank-and-file in a nearly unanimous vote, there is no indication the membership is at all militant, or even particularly educated on the issues.
This just in. Islanders fans will be traveling en masse by bus to a game in Montreal to demonstrate and demand that the Board of Governors bring an NHL team back to Long Island.