After hockey fans were pushed to their limits on Wednesday with the annual NHL Awards Show, the game returns to being about . . . well . . . the game, with tonight’s NHL Entry Draft.
Don’t get me wrong, Wednesday night had its moments. The skit about Anaheim Ducks teammates Ryan Getzlaf and Bobby Ryan having trouble reconciling after being on different ends of the ice for the historic Canada-U.S. Gold Medal Game was pretty funny:
So too was Dave Tippet’s remark, when he won the Jack Adams Award as the NHL’s Coach of the Year with the Phoenix Coyotes, that he’d like to thank the team’s owners but doesn’t know all 29 of them (i.e. the other 29 franchises that own the Coyotes because they still don’t have a real owner). But the evening on a whole had little to do with hockey and was far too caught up with Holywood celebrities, most of whom probably haven’t been to a hockey game in their lives. I didn’t see too many shots of Snoop Dog in the crowd during the Stanley Cup Playoffs, but come the NHL Awards Show I guess we’re all supposed to believe that he’s one of the game’s biggest fans:
Well, the time for make-believe is over and the time for real hockey stuff is back. The NHL Entry Draft is everything that the NHL Awards Show isn’t. When TSN and RDS sign on the air tonight at 7 o’clock with their draft coverage, it will all be about strategy instead of entertainment. Without being crude, if the NHL Awards Show is like a striptease (albeit with second and third rate strippers), then the NHL Entry Draft is like jury selection. Who will be the first pick? Who will move away from one of the “safe choices” to choose someone off the radar screen? Who will crack and make a deal to get a better spot? The actual trial – next season’s slate of games – is still months away. But a key variable in determining the trial’s outcome will be revealed tonight. I wonder if Snoop Dog will be watching.
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