PLAYOFF BEARD: RED WINGS PAINT THE TOWN BEIGE

by Neate Sager, Out Of Left Field

All tedious, drawn-out overly long processes for selecting a winner must come to an end, but enough about the Democratic primary.

Neither Sidney Crosby nor some curious officiating calls that seemed influenced by a desire to please the heavy-hitters at HQ -- "guess the guys in New York wanted a Game 7," griped Detroit's Chris Osgood, and he was the Stanley Cup-winning goalie -- could stop the Detroit Red Wings from wrapping up the Cup in six games with a 3-2 win in Pittsburgh. They assumed their rightful place in the annals of sports' most boring champions, right in there with the San Antonio Spurs, Larry Holmes and Ivan Lendl.

The last two months have revealed one painful truth about being a hockey fan -- the Stanley Cup playoffs, once you get past the first-round upsets, can often add up to being brain-bashingly boring across the two-month playoff tournament. Universally loathed NHL commissioner Gary Bettman is not to blame, although it might help if the league only had teams in cities where people care about the sport. No, actually, it's Canadians who are to blame. Heavens knows hockey is not boring to watch -- think Bruins-Canadiens in the '70s, Flames-Oilers in the '80s, Game 6 of the Rangers and Devils in the 1994 Eastern final, not to mention any number of examples from international play, like Canada-USSR in 1972 or '87, or the 1980 Miracle on Ice. Of all the team sports that you play while wearing pants, it might be the most fun, since nothing beats gliding around on ice, stopping on a dime (in your own mind, at least), battling for the puck, throwing your weight around.

The NHL, which is an American-run league, is not going to adopt a more compact playoff format any time soon (the playoffs are where teams make big profits). That's the reality. The concept of the long haul only gets exacerbated since the people who have the job of selling Canada to Canadians -- this means you, Hockey Night in Canada -- seem bent on turning coverage of an athletic contest featuring brute force, grace and speed into a coast-to-coast hokefest. By and large, we put up with it. Meantime, no American network can present the game differently lest it get accused of crimes against nature. That must make it hard for Americans to get into it -- who can excited about sport that clings to a past you don't share?

This is how hokey NHL coverage gets in Canada. Last night's post-game coverage on the CBC, for chrissakes, actually included a recorded feature where each Red Wing listed his hometown and his childhood hockey hero.

(Granted, the groaning was cut short when Detroit winger Aaron Downey said his favourite player while growing up was former Toronto Maple Leafs captain Wendel Clark -- he was my favourite, too -- and I exclaimed, in true hoser fashion, "F---ing rights!")

Point being, the media up here are too wrapped up in tradition and trying to appeal to Canadian bathos to play with the template. It's like everyone thinks it's 1968 and there aren't 1,000 other ways to amuse yourself besides watch hockey deep into spring.

It just becomes more obvious during a Red Wings' run to the Cup. Detroit plays their stifling shutdown defence and only presses as hard as it has to during the first couple rounds, when they're facing a team that is much more error-prone in their defensive zone. This Cup run, much like their previous three in 1997, '98 and 2002, more or less followed along the same pattern. The Wings scarcely ever had to come from more than one goal down to win a game (although they did erase a 2-0 deficit in Game 5 on Monday, before Pittsburgh scored late in regulation and went on to win), instead simply getting the two or three goals it needed and choking the life out of the other teams. That style doesn't completely guard them against running into a hot goalie (Anaheim, first round, 2003) or one that plays with more outward emotion (Edmonton, first round, 2006), but 60% of the time, it works every time.

The Red Wings' dullness -- it's easy to imagine that on their days off, the team's seven Swedes climb into Volvos and Saabs and see who can drive the closest to the speed limit -- and the length of the playoffs make this a tough slog. No wonder it seems to be the experience of many U.S. fans to become enthralled with the playoffs for a couple seasons, but lose interest over time. It can get uneventful by times, especially since hockey treats any whiff of controversy like the ebola virus. NHL coaches, who are mostly Canadian, almost get off on being boring.

Meantime, the media likes to go very soft-focus and select a couple players whom everyone should be rooting for. This season, Detroit forward Dan Cleary, the first Newfoundlander to get his name on the Stanley Cup, was designated as Canada's national next-door neighbour.

It also didn't help that the Red Wings' on-ice celebration was about as riveting as watching a video of the graduation ceremony from a high school you didn't attend. One Out of Left Field commenter said, "It was like watching a movie about hockey, with the Red Wings being played by Hayden Christenson, Ben Stein and David Caruso. 'We won . . .yay.' ... 'I just cannot believe it. This is amazing ... truly ... truly ... amazing.' ... 'I would really like to thank my wife, she worked so hard for this.' "

Long story short, thank god it's over. It's awesome that Detroit's Nicklas Lidström became the first European to captain a Cup winner and man, did playoff MVP Henrik Zetterberg ever make Sidney Crosby look sick in the last two games. Overall, though, the NHL season is way too long to derive all the joy one should derive from it, but fat chance that will change any time soon, especially since it's only three months until the start of training camp.

Arrrrrrgh.