A Great Save And The Formula To Save Best-on-Best

What a great story to start the New Year. A Seattle Kraken fan watching Vancouver from behind the Canucks’ bench on Nov. 23 noticed something on the neck of the team’s equipment manager. Pre-med student Nadia Popovici was concerned with a mole on Brian “Red” Hamilton’s neck.

“It had irregular borders, and it was discoloured and fairly large,” Popovici, 22, told Postmedia Saturday. She caught his attention, but Hamilton at first dismissed the idea. After showing the mole to his wife Hamilton had a biopsy done. Which revealed a dangerous malignant melanoma—one removed by doctors.

On Saturday Hamilton and Popovici were re-united as the Canucks trainer announced he’s arranged for a $10,000 scholarship to the woman who might have saved his life. Popovici was shown on the big screen and the Hockey Night in Canada cameras focused on her.

A cynic might say watching the back of a trainer’s neck instead of the game is symbolic of a hockey season tortured by the insanity of Covid constrictions. On a nightly basis we see half a roster playing three-quarters of a roster. In many cases the players not allowed to play are asymptomatic and no threat to others. But, whatever.

The other hockey casualties of Covid craziness are the Olympics and the recently cancelled mens WJC and women WC. As we wrote earlier the uncertainty of Covid quarantines in China is welded to the possibilities of athletes, journalists and officials being scooped and incarcerated by the CPP. Do the names The Two Michaels ring a bell?

So the NHL said, sensibly, it wasn’t going to go to Beijing for the men’s hockey tournament without guarantees that Connor McDavid might not be quarantined for five weeks or some club official tossed in jail for saying that maybe Hong Kong needs better treatment. Those assurances weren’t forthcoming in any sincere manner.

Certainly NHL owners won’t weep if their players aren’t exposed to sickness and Beijing’s bad air in February. The current plan for filling Olympic mens hockey is rosters of Who Dat’? and Is He Still Alive? The women’s hockey tournament is said to be unchanged, but as long as the U.S. and Canada get there who cares?

Which allows us to re-visit a solution to the Olympic mens hockey riddle. To wit, how does the NHL play a tournament each fourth February that fits its schedule, doesn’t exhaust its players and gives the Olympics the chance to hand out medals? Because the current formula is only working for the IOC. They can choose to hold a Games in an autocratic communist dictatorship looking for a PR triumph, and everyone is supposed to adapt to their caprice.

But with the NHL backing out on them for Beijing— after avoiding the 2018 Games in South Korea— even the IOC is probably thinking this system is broke. Everyone wants these best-on-best showcases, so how to make it work?

The IDLM formula— which we’ve endorsed for over a decade— is to have the NHL schedule a mid-February tournament every four years in either North America or Europe— where, coincidentally, all the players and fans are. It can run concurrent with the Winter Games that year. The IOC can hand out their medals to the winners.

The TV audience— the real prize— doesn’t have to watch the best live hockey showcased at 3 A.M. The advertisers get a captive live audience. The tournament can be staged in Toronto, NYC, L.A. or Frankfort. The NHL players aren’t obliged to fly 14 hours to Asia in the middle of the season and then return two weeks later. As a cherry on top, stage a World Cup same time, same locations in the intervening two years.

Best on best guaranteed. Imagine.

If all that common sense is just too much for the suits of the IOC then tell them that the mens Olympic hockey tournament will be the WJC for that season. Send the best U20 players— who’d otherwise be playing the annual tournament in December/ January— in February to the locale the IOC has been bribed… er, has chosen to stage the Winter Olympics.

There is precedent. Mens Olympic soccer faced a similar dilemma of getting the best to the Games. Now they stage a U23 tournament as the Olympic event. Great young athletes, word class skill, a riveting TV spectacle. And bragging rights. If it isn’t ideal it’s workable. And who the hell says anyone has to please the IOC?

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster (http://www.notthepublicbroadcaster.com). The best-selling author was nominated for the BBN Business Book award of 2020 for Personal Account with Tony Comper. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster, he’s also a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book with his son Evan Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History is now available on http://brucedowbigginbooks.ca/book-personalaccount.aspx