A source close to the negotiations has told me that the NHL and NHLPA are ________.
You can complete that sentence with just about anything and you’d essentially be mimicking the entire NHL lockout. There hasn’t been a source that hasn’t said X, felt Y, or heard Z. To quote Bob Cole, “Everything is happening!”
Ironically, though, nothing’s happened. A hundred sources have been wrong, and the go-to source has been the one that shoots optimism down. Why? Simple: It’s infinitely easier to be right about nothing happening than it is to go out on a limb to say ‘Hey, I’m being told that this is going to happen soon’ only to be ripped to the shreds by the internet’s brave army of tweeting warriors when it doesn’t.
It's not an exceedingly difficult concept to grasp, as most writers have been duped one too many times, opting to now play the "Look, I told you that nothing was going to happen" card rather than say anything of substance.
At its core, the whole concept is incredibly silly, but it’s the world we live in. A world that’s welcomed Boston-area sportscaster Steve Burton to it with venom and bemoaning mere hours into a report that can’t be proven true or false until Wednesday night at the earliest.
Burton, as you have probably heard by now, is the local sportscaster for Channel 4 here in Boston, also known as WBZ-TV, and has been for over 18 years now.
Seemingly always the second fiddle of the CBS affiliate’s sports programming to the now semi-retired Bob Lobel, who hasn’t been a full-time fixture on the network since the Bruins’ first round bow-out to the Montreal Canadiens in ‘08, Burton’s seldom seen around the confines of the TD Garden for Bruins home games. He was even referred to as a “[expletive] vulture” by the Bruins’
Shawn Thornton for beginning to cover the team during their run to the Stanley Cup in 2011.
This, above all else, is why Burton’s report that the NHL lockout could be over ‘as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday night’ has come under intense fire.
Before you could even finish listening to Burton’s report on the six p.m. newscast, a source-war erupted between every hockey writer from here to Timbuktu, all citing Burton’s report as “completely false.” He was thrown to the wolves, dubbed an ‘idiot that doesn’t know anything about hockey’’, and everything in between.
Burton’s report, the subject of incredible ridicule, is such simply because Burton’s career hasn’t revolved around the happenings of a league that’s been locked out three times since Burton’s hiring in 1994.
What a sucker.
It took all of ten minutes for the forever unwelcoming hockey fans and writers alike to discredit everything Steve Burton’s ever said in his journalistic career. That’s not right, but it’s become all the norm in the media's war of attrition.
Who’s going to get the first scoop? The last scoop? The best scoop?
Honestly, who gives a damn?
The NHL lockout, slated to turn three months old in just nine days, hasn’t been short on bad news. Whether it’s come from your favorite player signing with a European club on an all-too-common ‘lockout deal’, a round of frustrating negotiating sessions that go nowhere, or a series of oh-please-shut-up moments from players and owners alike, there’s been ample time to roll your eyes and scoff at your screen.
Perhaps most annoying of all, however, has been the media’s constant desire to outwit the competition. Beat guys wanna outmuscle the bloggers. TV races against radio. There's a lot of posturing and self-important chest-puffing. Your sources suck (and may not exist at all), but MY sources have the real info.
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
For those of us with jobs, and for those of us who do not care who reports the bad news about our favorite sport, myself included, it’s become a begrudging pastime of ours to sit here and wonder when the hell it’s going to be reported that the National Hockey League is going to be back.
So long as it’s done by one of the good ole’ boys, it seems.
Since day one, I’ve loved this game. Probably too much, in fact.
I can’t help but smile when I see fans in Florida throw rats on the ice, cry when I watch
Ray Bourque lift the Cup twenty-one years into his career, and look on in awe when a diving poke-check prevents a one would-be breakaway. Make no mistake about it, I love this damn game. It’s embedded itself into my soul, and it’ll never go away, nor will I, not even after the third lockout of my life. Yet, like anything you love in life, it has flaws. Flaws that go far beyond work stoppages and contract disputes, too.
I'm of course talking about the attitude of most involved in hockey in some capacity or another. Deemed OK under the guise of being a ‘niche sport’, hockey fans and reporters are some of the most miserable people you’ll ever meet in your life, and I’m really not sure where it all came from. Sure, they’re pissed that an Ovechkin goal is canceled out by a Blake Griffin slam dunk on Sportscenter every night, and they wish that their game was at the top of the ratings chart every weekend, but it hits a point where you really wonder if that’s what they truly, honestly want.
They crave eyeballs, but ridicule those new to the game. They want viewership, but whine when certain reporters “that weren’t there two years ago” are covering games. My point here? Hockey fans are jerks to anybody they’re unfamiliar with, and I’ve yet to hear a good case to support such a defensive position towards new and interested people. The only possible comparable dynamic: You’re in high school, tell everybody why Theater 7 is the best theater at the local movie theater, and then berate people for checking it out or showing interest in it.
Sound stupid? That’s because it is.
In the world of Twitter updates and confirmation from TSN and beyond, where everything is hearsay unless it’s reported by Bob McKenzie or Darren Dreger, the hockey world has seemingly protected itself from all outsiders like Woodbury in a zombie apocalypse, shunning the masses because their takes are foreign and therefore a risk to the belief system you’ve become so accustomed to.
Who’s this outsider’s source? How reliable are they? Can we trust them? You know what, let’s not even bother, he’s wrong! Ring the bells, he’s wrong! Let’s not acknowledge the fact that Burton broke the
Phil Kessel cancer story in 2006, because that doesn’t line up with what beat writer A and B are saying! Disregard the incredibly plausible thought that Burton’s met at least one good hockey ‘source’ in almost two decades of working in Boston, because that’s not possible when you’re too busy ignoring the Bruins and focusing on the more popular teams in town, namely the Celtics, Patriots, and Red Sox!
I’m the hockey guy, and I’m gonna be real mad ‘bout some stuff!
To the writers that seemed to go out of their way to shoot down Burton’s ‘source’ within minutes of the newscast and even take jabs at his credibility? Grow up. To the fans that don’t wanna hear this story because it’s not coming from a TSN ‘insider’ and just some local TV anchor? Grow up. To hockey fans around the world that refuse to let anybody without a full-season press pass chime in with their info or hunches, please, for the love of Orr, grow up.
There’s a good chance that both Tuesday and Wednesday come and go with nothing to make Burton’s “source” valid, rendering it to be another was-not in this 80-day debacle, but what’s the harm in his reporting? What has Steve Burton, a truly nice guy, whose only crime in my book is calling hockey ‘ice capades’ to one of the B’s in a locker room interview, done that every other reporter hasn’t done during this arduous fiasco that’s left us with nothing here on Dec. 4 that's just
so egregiously wrong?
The answer is nothing. Not a damn thing, in fact.
To just about every NHL writer, just remember that your sources have been wrong at least once (Actually more like six times, if you go back to August and September) throughout this process, so at least let this guy be you for a day, at midnight on Wednesday to be exact, before you pile on with your vitriol for a way of reporting that you’ve become too afraid to commit to for fear of the scorn it comes with. So, why not let the dude take a stab in the dark at breaking something nobody else has been able to?
It’s the least you can do.
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