Jayne Kamin-Oncea-USA TODAY Sports
Three stars of comedy
Advertisement
Not bad, guys! But be careful, you're going after the Golden Knights and lately they've been kind of feisty so you might want to watch out for…
Good lord, guys. This was basically the Twitter equivalent of that timeSlava Fetisov came after Wendel Clark. It's not even preseason, maybe hold off on the kill shots until camp open.The first star: Artemi Panarin's bread shoes—Absolutely no idea what's happening here, but what the hell.
The NHL actually got something right
As listeners to the Biscuits hockey podcast already know, this is the solution I've been suggesting all season. It just makes too much sense. The offside review might be fine in concept, but there are way too many of them. Coaches were calling for reviews on anything remotely close, and rightly so, since the reward for being right dwarfed the cost of being wrong.The reward still dwarfs the cost—taking a goal off the board is such a big deal in a low-scoring league that there's really no way to change that—and if coaches were purely rational then this might not change much. But pro sports coaches aren't purely rational. If they were, they'd pull goalies earlier, bunt less, and go for it on fourth down more. Coaches like to cover their own behinds, and now they know that if they're wrong on an offisde challenge and it costs their team a power play goal, they'll take the blame. The NHL has basically found a way to turn a league full of conservative coaches' risk-aversion against them. It's beautiful.
Advertisement
Obscure former player of the week
Advertisement
Advertisement
Outrage of the week
Advertisement
Classic YouTube clip breakdown
- So it's January 21, 1982, and there's big news in the hockey world. Wayne Gretzky has just torn up his contract with Peter Pocklington and the Edmonton Oilers to sign a brand new deal, and it's a doozy. Gretzky has just become the highest-paid player in NHL history, thanks to a 21-year contract that will pay him more than $20 million. With bonus clauses, he could make that much in just the first 15 years of the deal.
- Yes, that's right, Wayne Gretzky is going to make a little over $1 million a year, and we're not sure he's worth it. He's in the middle of a 92-goal, 212-point season, in case you're wondering. Hockey economics were a little bit different in the early 80s.
- We're watching the CBC nightly news, and we get a truncated introduction to the story, at which point we cut to the debate portion of the program. Our clip features three giants of Canadian media: CBC newscaster Barbara Frum, journalist Peter Gzowski, and the undisputed star of the piece: legendary curmudgeon Dick Beddoes.
- I'm not sure how widely known Beddoes was outside of Ontario, so let me try to prepare you for what you're about to see. OK, imagine Don Cherry. Now imagine he was better dressed, crankier, and the sort of newspaper veteran who did all his interviews next to an old typewriter. That's Dick Beddoes. He was the best.
- Frum introduces our two debaters, and we're off to the races. Beddoes comes out strong, playing the "every modern player is terrible" card. It's a strong old-guy opinion, especially when he calls Gretzky a "hairy-legged hockey player from Brantford, Ontario." Let's see how Gzowski responds.
- "His legs aren't very hairy, Dick." OK, that's a sentence I didn't think I'd have to type today, but here we are.
- Gzowski, playing the role of the bearded voice of reason, makes the seemingly uncontroversial point that Gretzky is the best hockey player in the world, at which point Beddoes interrupts to disagree, throwing some shade at Gzowski's book in the process. So who is the best player? None other than Russian winger Sergei Shepelev, who's coming off a 28-goal season with Moscow Spartak and had recently starred at the 1981 Canada Cup. For what it's worth, Shepelev never made it over to the NHL, but he was good. Not Gretzky-good, but he was fine.
- Also, he's currently a coach in the KHL, and I feel pretty safe assuming that he's better than Gretzky was at coaching. Maybe that's what Beddoes meant.
- I'm 100 percent going to spend the rest of the day practicing Beddoes's deadpan "You're joking, of course" comeback in the mirror.
- Gzowski hasn't exactly shown up to this fight without any ammo, and he calls Beddoes "a well-dressed sourpuss in Hamilton, Ontario.. Man, that phrase started off as kind of a compliment and then got progressively meaner as it went.
- Beddoes makes it clear that he just needs to see a little more from Gretzky. How much more? Oh, maybe "15 or 30 years like Gordie Howe". That seems reasonable. What's next, a Phantom Joe Malone take?
- Beddoes calls this "a diluted era of hockey", which makes him sounds pretty reasonable, and then mentions being a part-owner of the 1980s Maple Leafs, which does not.
- Frum cuts in to try to get things back on track. And yes, if the name sounds familiar to you Americans, she is the mother of that guy you currently have deeply conflicted feelings about on Twitter. She wants to know how the finances are going to work for Peter Pocklington and the Oilers.
- Gzowski's answer doesn't include the phrase "Pocklington will just sell him in seven years so none of this will matter," so his answer was wrong. But Beddoes quickly jumps in anyway, pointing out that Gretzky "has got more money than Poland." Is that offensive? I feel like that might have been offensive in 1982, but I'm going to need to go to the replay review to be sure.
- We briefly get to the small matter of this whole contract being nonsense, which is why you've never heard of it until just now. Back then, NHL contracts could be renegotiated at any time, and that happened with Gretzky several times over his career. This 21-year deal lasted a few seasons and that was it.
- Gzowski lays out the argument for Gretzky's drawing power, including a nice little shot at Detroit as a hockey market. Then we move on to Frum pointing out that Gretzky has just recently scored his infamous 50 goals in 39 games. Surely even Beddoes has to admit that's impressive, right?
- "What I want from him, if we're going to make comparisons, is that he might score some year 44 goals in 20 games, like the late Phantom Joe Malone did in 1918…He hasn't done that." I love Dick Beddoes so much.
- We close out with Beddoes arguing that Gretzky—who again, is in the middle of a 212-point season—couldn't make third-string center on the 1947 Maple Leafs. Gzowski tries to respond with a quote from Rocket Richard, but Beddoes fires back with a fake French accent that causes Frum to put an end to things with the same "OK you two" rejoinder of a mom who's just walked in on her two children setting the basement on fire.
- And that does it for our clip. As it turns out, Gretzky was indeed worth the money, as seven more Hart Trophies and four Stanley Cups would attest. Will McDavid and Draisaitl be able to do the same? It's still early, and old-school Beddoes types won't like to hear it, but there's every indication that the modern Oilers could end up being just as good if not better than they were in Gretzky's years.
- I'm joking, of course.