Kucherov's Bluster Is Osaka's Reluctance. What Price Media Access?

In the annals of athletic bad-assery you’ll have to go a long way to surpass the bare-chested, profanity-laden media performance of Stanley Cup champion Nikita Kucherov after his Tampa Bay Lightning dusted off Montreal in five games.

(Maybe his testiness was he’d heard that the NHL ESPY went to Patrick Kane from a team that is currently trying to bury a sex scandal. That might take a Twofer of Bud Light to wash down. )

As we all know, these events— staged at a dais strewn with sponsors’ product— are typically a good cure for insomnia. Reporters trying to get a few quotes for a story they’ve already written lob softballs at the athlete. The subject gargles platitudes like they were Listerine. Everyone goes home happy— if not exactly enlightened.

Not for Kucherov the blank-eyed stare. The Lightning star ripped Montreal fans for celebrating a single win, Marc-André Fleury, the Vezina Trophy voters, the number of questions he was getting and also the Bud Light he was swilling as he talked. The clincher was that Kucherov wasn’t angry (despite ESPN awarding its NHL player of the year to Patrick Kane from a team battling a sex scandal).

He just seemed a little bemused, like guy who’d hammered down a few Bud Lights quickly after a game. “It’s a lot of questions, eh?” he offered as the session stretched out. Bud Light apparently didn’t take offence at Kucherov preferring champagne to their product. “He may not have a shirt, but he’s got a contract with us. Welcome to the team  @86Kucherov! There will be no press conferences for this announcement.” Brewer Anheuser Busch is promising to supply all the Bud Light to the Lighting’s Stanley Cup parade. 

This is all in stark contrast to WTF No. 1 player Naomi Osaka who pulled out of the French Open and Wimbledon because her depression is reportedly exacerbated by an “irresponsible” media. Saturday night, the virtue-signalling ESPYs gave her female athlete of the year— for not playing sports. 

(Let us know when they give one of their precious statues to the forgotten women athletes who are losing gold medals and world titles to trans athletes. That would make a social statement. But the World Wide Bleeder is too busy playing Woke politics to recognize the sacrifice those woman are making to the network’s vanity.)

Considering how pliant the sports media is the Osaka “I Won’t Talk, Don’t Ask Me” fiasco at the French Open back in June seems a little surreal. Here’s what we wrote at the time:

“Osaka is hardly the first athlete to deal with the tremendous pressure of expectations. It reminded us of the mental-health issues in the Original Six players whose fight for their NHL pensions I chronicled in my book The Defense Never Rests. For those who can’t recall beyond Taylor Swift’s last release, stars such as Carl Brewer, Frank Mahovlich and Ron Ellis dealt with crippling depressions and took time away from the game in the 1960s and 70s as a result. 

The toxic blend of pressure to win combined with media expectations breaks many athletes. “Am I worth the money? Am I liked for who I am or for what I am?” In Osaka’s case there is only herself and the media to please. (Enough on its own.) In team sports there is the added weight of peer judgement within teams added to the rest. 

The meagre salaries of the former NHLers kept most from going public with their issues. They had no latitude for complaining. Osaka now has enough money, and thus has the ability, to do what she did in Paris: tell the French Open organizers to stuff it. 

(As an aside, why Osaka hasn’t employed the Nuke LaLoosh cliché strategy is curious. There’s no demand to empty your soul. Many interview subjects go blank-eyed and impassive. As Crash Davis told Nuke in Bull Durham, take ten answers, jumble them and feed them back to the press. Then stop reading social media.)

The contentious issue for Osaka was the attitude of the French Open which mocked her media boycott by showing her peers doing interviews. Were they being insensitive? Perhaps. Was she exercising her privilege? Somewhat. But the organizers cynically know that in ten years no one will give a fig about Osaka’s deep thoughts, and if they give one star a pass on stoking the press machine then the whole apparatus falls apart.

They point out, rightly, that they and Osaka benefit enormously from the free publicity of the media. The cost in advertising column inches or broadcast minutes compared with what is freely given by the press? Naomi’s hundreds of millions would be back to Billie Jean King’s tens of thousands if the media declared you irrelevant. Her bold fashion styles would be just another kid trying too hard. In other words, you take the cheque, you do the interviews.”

Or, in the case of Kucherov, you do the interviews and you get the sponsorship. Pretty simple, really. But in the new world of safe spaces young people care far too much what strangers think. A generation brought up on participation prizes and group approval finds it hard to process anything less than complete flattery from people they’ll never meet again.

As our mother reminded us, the number of people who really matter in your life could safely fit into a nine-seat SUV. It was good advice then. It’s good advice now. Just ask Nikita.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author of Cap In Hand is also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, his new book Personal Account with Tony Comper is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx