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Down Goes Brown's Grab Bag: Let's Stop Telling Athletes What Moments Are worth Celebrating

The outrage over players and teams celebrating non-championship wins needs to end. They can spray their champagne and do whatever the hell they want.
Photo by Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports

(Editor's note: Welcome to Sean McIndoe's weekly grab bag, where he writes on a variety of NHL topics. You can follow him on Twitter.)

Three stars of comedy

With the regular season almost here, it's time to bring back the three stars for another year. Or for another few weeks, at which point I'll forget and they'll disappear forever. Definitely one of those things.

The third star: This adorable child—Look at that innocent young face just lighting up over being so close to Steve Ott. It's almost inspiring. Everything just seems so much more exciting when you're growing up.

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Lylah was hit with the classic Ott, Larkin penalty box photobomb! — Detroit Red Wings (@DetroitRedWings)October 3, 2016

Also, the little girl in front is cute, too.

The second star: The return of the white-out—Uh, hey Florida and Dallas… you're doing it wrong.

Panthers and Stars both wore their white jerseys. I thought it only happened at Pee Wee level. Have fun with that goalies! pic.twitter.com/Y7lQ9QCl5b
— Mathieu Garon (@OuiOui_32) October 4, 2016

An explanation of what happened, which will not make you feel any better about anyone involved, can be found here.

The first star: The KHL's new team does not understand how faceoffs work—In fairness, I suppose these things can be tricky.

I realize it looks like the guy in the suit doesn't know what he's doing, but I prefer to think he's just really busy and doesn't have time for this crap. "Drop the puck? Sure, there you go, dropped. Where's the door, I've got stuff to do." Somebody put this guy in charge of pregame ceremonies in Montreal.

Outrage of the week

The issue: Some baseball teams won big games this week, then celebrated with on-field pileups and locker room champagne.

The outrage: Hockey players don't do that. Hockey players celebrate when they win the Stanley Cup and that's it. The rest of the time they're stoic and miserable, as the sports gods intended.

Is it justified: I get where hockey fans are coming from here. I really do. Even a few years ago, I kind of rolled my eyes at baseball players celebrating when they're still three rounds away from a World Series. Don't they realize that championships are all that matter?

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But maybe I'm mellowing with age, because I'm getting kind of tired of this. Over the years, the NHL has slowly but surely been morphing into a league where you're only allowed to be happy when you win the Stanley Cup, and no other time. It's this pervasive attitude across the league that somehow, nothing else that can happen over the course of a season is supposed to matter unless it leads to a title.

READ MORE: If Any Team in This Era Is Going to Repeat as Stanley Cup Champs, It's the Penguins

Sure, there's something to be said about keeping your eyes on the prize, striving to be the best, and all that stuff. But over the years, all this "Cup or bust" talk has gone from a nice sentiment to some sort of forced mantra that nobody's allowed to deviate from. We chant it like cultists, because we know that if we don't we look like we're not steely-eyed winners.

You see it in every rookie who scores his first goal and isn't sure if he's allowed to look happy. Or in every player who has a big game, then has to act like it didn't happen because their team lost. Or from every GM who justifies standing pat because "only one team wins the Stanley Cup every year," as if everyone else was just wasting their time. Or from every retiring superstar who spent their career racking up awards and honors, but has to tearfully pretend like it was all some sort of failure because they never won the big one.

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This is the Baltimore Orioles celebrating after clinching a wild-card spot. Seriously, why does anyone care what they do? Photo by Danny Wild-USA TODAY Sports

Yes, the NHL is about winning the Stanley Cup, but that can't be all it's about. If that's how we're going to think, then we're basically saying that 97 percent of the league has to feel miserable about the outcome of every season. What kind of entertainment product is that? How do you sell that as a fun hobby that people should devote their spare time and dollars to?

I grew up as a Blue Jays fan. Last year, I watched Jose Bautista hit his famous bat flip home run against the Texas Rangers that they still haven't stopped crying about. That came in Game 5 of the ALDS, and the Jays went on to lose in the next round. They didn't even make it to the World Series, let alone win it all. So in hindsight, was the Bautista homer all for nothing?

Hell no. It was probably one of the best five moments of my sports fan life. If you're not supposed to enjoy something like that just because it didn't ultimately result in a championship, then being a fan is pretty much destined to suck. And being a player would, too.

So go ahead and spray that champagne, baseball. It's OK to acknowledge that some moments are worth celebrating, even if they're not the very last moment of the season.

Obscure former player of the week

This week's obscure player is Ilkka Sinisalo. I don't really have a reason, I've just wanted to use him for a while now.

Sinisalo was a winger who was never drafted, but found his way to the Flyers in 1981, making him one of the first Finnish players to establish himself in North America. He developed into a 30-goal scorer with Philadelphia, and stayed there until 1990. He concluded his career with brief stints in Minnesota and Los Angeles before heading back to Europe in 1992. He ended up with a respectable 204 goals in 582 NHL games.

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Here are three things I know about Ilkka Sinisalo. One, his name was super fun to say. Two, his first goal came on a penalty shot, making him one of five NHL players to claim that distinction. (Obscure player alumni Reggie Savage was another). And three, he may be the owner of the single saddest fan-made video on YouTube.

When your YouTube fan video doesn't contain any actual footage of you playing hockey, I'm going to go ahead and say that you may not have had the most exciting career. Sweet turtleneck, though.

Sinisalo finished his career with Finnish team Kiekko-Espoo. He later became the GM of Kiekko-Espoo. He's since gone on to become an NHL scout, which required him to leave his job with Kiekko-Espoo.

Honestly, I just really like typing "Kiekko-Espoo."

Be It Resolved

NHL training camps are wrapping up, meaning it's the time of year when every second story seems to be about another player being released from a PTO. That would be a Professional Try Out, the contract that allows teams to bring players to camp without committing to them. It's a last resort for veterans who haven't been able to find a home, and while they rarely result in a regular season contract, they've become more common in recent years.

That's been especially true this year, as it seemed like every day brought news of another team filling up its camp roster with PTOs. And that's fine—some of that was because of the World Cup, and besides, it's hard not to root for some of these guys as they try to earn one last shot at the NHL. Sometimes, in the rare cases where a guy actually gets a deal, they can even make for nice stories.

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Kris Versteeg is one veteran on a PTO, hoping to crack the Oilers' roster. Photo by Perry Nelson-USA TODAY Sports

But mixed in with the feel-good angle is one minor problem with PTOs, and it's one that the league could fix fairly easily. During the preseason, NHL rules require teams to dress eight veteran players for every game, with "veteran" status being based on games played. It's a good rule, since fans don't want to pay big money just to watch a roster full of minor leaguers and no-names. But PTOs count toward the veteran limit, which has created a perception over the years that some of these signings are really just teams finding a loophole and papering their preseason rosters with players they have no interest in, all to satisfy an obscure league rule.

It's not the worst thing in the world. Teams get to tiptoe around a rule, established veterans get some extra rest, and a handful of on-the-bubble veterans get a lottery ticket to a full-time job. Everyone wins… except for the fans, which was supposed to be the whole point of the rule in the first place. So be it resolved that the NHL should tweak the rule by specifying that players on PTOs can't count as veterans for exhibition games. It would be a relatively simple change, and it would be appreciated by fans being forced to shell out big bucks to see names they don't recognize.

Classic YouTube clip breakdown

The NHL season gets started on Wednesday, and the marquee game of opening night takes place in Edmonton, where the Oilers will host the Flames in the first ever regular-season game at Rogers Place. The new arena has been in the works for years, and it's only fitting that the Oilers would debut it against their longtime provincial rivals.

You'd have to think that Edmonton has something special planned for the evening. But be warned: The bar has been set high, as we'll be reminded in this clip from the last time an Alberta-based team welcomed the world to its brand new arena.

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  • It's Oct. 15, 1983, and the Flames are hosting the Oilers in the first-ever event at the "smashing new Saddledome," as our Hockey Night in Canada host calls it. I miss those baby blue jackets. Those things were sharp.

  • We head to the opening ceremony. We've missed the first few minutes, and arrive just as they're doing some weird thing where figure skaters hold up signs honoring… well, nobody really seems sure. The only one that gets a cheer from the crowd is, not surprisingly, the Flames themselves. Personally, I cheered for the Calgary Olympics Coliseum Society.

  • Next up are "The Young Canadians," who disappointingly turn out not to be a new WWF tag team. Instead, they're dancing cowboys. Admit it, this took a lot longer to get to dancing cowboys than you thought it would.

  • Oh, the cowboys sing, too. I can't make out much in the way of the lyrics, although I think I did catch something about "a party going on here in the west" and "just build a better mousetrap and you'll see" and "we're going to get royally spanked by the Gretzky-era Oilers in every series that they don't score into their own net." They kind of whispered that last one but it was in there.

  • By the way, I don't know if you've ever met anyone from Calgary, but trust me when I tell you that they all dress exactly like this.

  • The dancing cowboys make way for some sparkly showgirls, who are of course also wearing cowboy hats. We're also introduced to some Canadian Olympic hopefuls, including boxer Willie De Wit, just a few months away from getting blatantly screwed out of a gold medal. Was anyone else deeply disappointed that the two synchronized swimmers didn't wave at the same time? That may have been just me.

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  • By the way, just a quick reminder: This is all in good fun, but Toronto sports fans don't get to point and laugh. You're a few years away from unleashing something far worse.

  • Next up, we get a patriotic speech from our PA guy, which sets up another song. One of our cowboys strides to the microphone, smiles broadly, and launches into… um… wait, what the hell is this?

  • Did they really take the national anthem and change just enough words to make it a different song? That's not how this works, Calgary. Which one of The Tenors do I have to blame for this monstrosity?

  • "The crown of North America." Ooh, snap. Are you just going to sit there and take that, USA?

  • Wait, now they've shifted into ripping off the tune of "God Bless America." This is like if you took all the patriotic songs from an entire continent, threw them in a blender with some Christmas carols, and hit frappe. This is terrible. Somebody call Burton Cummings.

  • Thankfully, Hockey Night in Canada steps in and saves us from any more of this travesty. They stop pretending to care about the Flames and Oilers and throw it back to Toronto for a Maple Leafs game, because even though it's 1983, this is still Hockey Night in Canada.

  • We're not done yet, as Dave Hodge arrives to introduce a Gary Arthur report about how the Flames got here. It's an interesting history lesson, including the failed WHA franchise and Atlanta's surprise move to Calgary in 1980. And yes, the Flames really did play their first few seasons in a tiny arena that held 6,000 people. It was the early 80s NHL, just be glad the place had a roof and indoor plumbing.

  • "The construction team decided on the fast-track method. That meant construction started even before the design was complete." Sure, that sounds like a great idea. It's not like they're going to forget anything crucial, like a rickety press box that isn't hung from the ceiling with rubber bands and dental floss.

  • "The hockey fan didn't really care about the labor pains, he just wanted to see the baby." The hockey fan sounds like kind of a jerk.

  • Arthur runs down all of the new building's state-of-the-art features, including just 33 suites, a single lavish restaurant, and a massive budget overrun that everyone got mad about. Only one of those things is still the standard in new arenas built today.

  • Hodge throws out a half-hearted pun, and we're done. The Flames went on to lose to the Oilers, because it was the 80s. Roughly 33 years later, the Saddledome is now the oldest arena in Canada by over a decade, and is expected to finally be replaced within the next few years. To this day, it is still not a dome.

Have a question, suggestion, old YouTube clip, or anything else you'd like to see included in this column? Email Sean at nhlgrabbag@gmail.com.