An Open Letter to Gary Bettman & Donald Fehr

As a more-than-casual yet less-than-avid fan of hockey, I am vaguely aware of the kerfuffle between the National Hockey League (NHL) and the NHL Players Association (the union) over the proposed realignment of the current six divisions into four division/conferences.  Apparently, the NHL tried to rush a plan for realignment through the approval process, and the union, as led by Donald Fehr, objected.  The story goes that the union requested more time to study the issue, and the NHL responded by figuratively throwing up its hands in exasperated defeat, postponing and possibly canceling the plan.

The issue of realignment revolves around two concepts on which the NHL and players seem to agree.  The NHL and its team’s owners want to lessen travel costs for teams that have to cross time zones to play road games, especially teams in the current Western Conference, where teams are located in cities that geographically further apart than those in the Eastern Conference.  The players in the union want to ease the burdens of time involved in traveling, frequency of travel, and the physical & emotional wear and tear from frequent travel.  Therefore, both sides agree that, in theory, realignment is a good idea.

Unfortunately, both sides seem to have forgotten how to discuss the logistics of how to make realignment happen without a lot of hand waving, posturing, and shouting.  All of this sound and fury, signifying nothing, seems to be the early stages of the long, arduous process of renegotiating the soon-to-expire Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NHL and the union signed after the lockout in 2004 which cost the teams, the players, and especially the fans the pleasure of the entire 2004-2005 season.

As a fan who has no interest in enduring another frustrating and pointless lockout, I gave this issue approximately fifteen minutes of serious thought, and came up with a compromise.  This plan is obviously not without flaws, but should solve the vast majority of the travel and expense concerns of the interested parties, while avoiding the awkwardness of placing the two Florida teams in a conference with a bunch of teams north of Interstate 90, while there is whole separate conference in between.

West	North	South	East
Anaheim	Chicago	Carolina	Boston
Calgary	Columbus	Dallas	Buffalo
Colorado	Detroit	Florida	New Jersey
Edmonton	Minnesota	Nashville	New York Islanders
Los Angeles	Montreal	St. Louis	New York Rangers
San Jose	Ottawa	Tampa Bay	Philadelphia
Vancouver	Toronto	Washington	Pittsburgh
	Winnipeg

There are a few points about my plan that need to be addressed:

First, the NHL’s original plan is for each team to play a pair of games, home & away, with all the teams outside their conference.  This would account for 42-46 games on each team’s schedule, leaving 36-40 games to be played against conference rivals.  The point of this is to give less financially successful teams guaranteed home games hosting extremely popular teams like Detroit, Toronto, Pittsburgh, etc., which will drive revenues for those less financially secure teams.  On the other hand, a guaranteed six games annually against conference rivals should enhance those rivalries, while overall, reducing travel time & frequency out of a team’s home time zone.

Second, the plan for the playoffs involves a tournament amongst the top four teams in each conference, followed by a “Final Four” of the four conference playoff survivors, with the last team standing hoisting the coveted Stanley Cup.  So far, everything I have read states that, in principal, the two sides agree on these first two points.  Apparently, the sticking point is that the union has concerns regarding the placement of certain teams in certain conferences.  The NHL placed older, more established teams in certain conferences to maintain older, more established rivalries.

Third, some rivalries may have to be sacrificed to salvage the plan.  In my plan, the entire Atlantic division stays together in the East Conference, joined by two geographically close teams from the Northeast division.  Bye-bye Boston/Montreal rivalry.  On the other hand, the rivalries between Boston and the teams from New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia will get really good really fast.  Montreal, conversely, will get to continue long-standing rivalries with Toronto and Ottawa while rekindling ancient rivalries with mutual enemies Detroit and Chicago.  Some rivalries get sacrificing so that others may thrive.

Fourth, some may have noticed that I did not include the Phoenix Coyotes in my realignment plan.  This is because every sports writer I have read agrees that the owner of the team, the NHL, is likely to sell the team shortly to a new owner who is likely to move the team, probably to Quebec City, although possibly to Hamilton, Ontario or Kansas City (will never happen).  In the unlikely event that the team stays in Arizona, just slot the team in the West Conference snugly in the empty space below Vancouver.  Once the team moves to Quebec City, place the team carefully in the empty space below Pittsburgh in the East Conference.  If the team moves somewhere else, that may require more thought.  My instincts tell me it’s going to be Quebec City residents participating in a team naming contest hosted by a local radio station in the near future.

In conclusion, most, but not all, historical rivalries are maintained, the Canadian teams are shared amongst three conferences, and the Florida teams (and their fans) are treated with a little respect by placing them in a conference that makes sense geographically while maintaining current rivalries against Carolina and Washington.  It all makes sense.  Perhaps too much sense.  Which is why it will probably never go down this way.  On the other hand, if the NHL and the union like my plan, all I ask in payment is their thanks.  Their thanks, and a complimentary pair of tickets to one New Jersey Devils home game annually in perpetuity.  Go Devils.

Confession Tuesday

In honor of the delightfully talented January O’Neil of Poet Mom, who posts a weekly Tuesday confession, I am offering this confession, although with an ulterior motive.

I have a confession to make, and it may embarrass me or change the way you think about me, but I need to get it out.  I watch a TV show called Switched at Birth, a show as overwrought and emotionally manipulative as Hollywood can devise.  I discovered the program when ABC Family Channel posted the first two episodes for free on iTunes last year.  The show was cheesy, but intriguing, and once I showed the episodes to my wife, we decided to follow the show.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t find it on ABC Family’s schedule.  I suspect that the show’s time slot conflicted with one of the few other shows we follow, so we missed the next several episodes.  After a few weeks, we decided to catch up on the show by watching the episodes we had missed by accessing it on Comcast Cable’s OnDemand service.  No such luck.  We turned to Hulu, but only the most recent episode, number 7, was posted there.  This left me with three choices: watch the most recent episode and hope I can catch on to what is happening despite missing five episodes, buy the missing episodes on iTunes despite the fact that I know I don’t like the show enough to want to own those episodes, or stop watching the show.

I chose to stop watching.  Hollywood’s bizarre obsession with controlling how and when I can watch what I want instead of letting me stream it (with commercials, mind you) convinced a willing viewer to give up on a show.  Rather than treating streaming as an option of equal value as timed presentations on television, Hollywood sees it as a barely tolerable evil, apparently.  Just as I suspect they see iTunes sales as a barely tolerable alternative to DVD sales.

There are those who might argue that I had a fourth choice.  I could pirate the show from a torrent site.  So far, I have avoided doing this for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that both my wife, a member of SAG, and I are artists, and I am well aware of the fact that actors, writers, directors live off the residuals provided by legitimate movie and TV show streaming and purchases.  While most people think of screwing the industry moguls before getting screwed by them, I think of the little guy.    The Oatmeal presents a sad yet reasonable argument for this option for a show that is not available anywhere but cable, even iTunes, but that doesn’t work for me.  Also, I worry about downloading infected files.

The story of my obsession with Switched at Birth does have a happy middle, though.  Shortly before the second season was scheduled to premiere this past January, the network released the first season to Netflix.  My wife and I streamed the eight episodes we missed and/or skipped over three days during the week between Christmas and New Year, and were happily caught up.  This is the best of all worlds.  We can watch whatever show we want whenever we want it, and usually turn it into a marathon event.  Not that this should be perceived as an endorsement of Netflix.  They’ve got plenty of issues of their own, but at least they want to make money by giving me, the consumer what I want, even if the selection available is spotty at best.

This season, however, Switched at Birth is on TV at the same time as Glee.  And yes, I am a married, heterosexual man who watches both Switched at Birth and Glee.  Sue me.  The choice has now become which one to watch on the night the networks picked, and which one to try to catch later in the week on Hulu or OnDemand.  We chose to watch Switched at Birth on Tuesday nights due to the difficulty we had last season finding legitimate alternate methods of watching the show, and the fact that we had had success catching up on Hulu on the odd Glee episode missed due to stuff going on in our lives over the first two seasons.  So what happens?  Fox suddenly changes the rules for Glee and institutes an eight day waiting period before episodes are available on Hulu without a Hulu Plus subscription, which still has commercials by the way.  Thanks, Fox.  I now have to wait longer to stream an episode of Glee (with commercials) than I would have to wait to buy a gun.  Of course, then I might need to post a confession of a different kind.

Drive-by Tweeting

I received my first negative response to anything I’ve ever written and published to the internet.  Of all things, it was a tweet.  In response to Governor Chris Christie’s veto of the marriage rights law passed the other day by the New Jersey legislature, I tweeted, “Gov. Christie is an embarrassment to New Jerseyans everywhere.  Override that veto!” In response, I received this tweet from an obviously ill-informed (and very angry) individual:

Leaving aside the rudeness of this response, I was more surprised by the poor fact-checking displayed by this individual than anything else.  According to a CNN article by David Ariosto, “Fifty-two percent of state voters approve the measure, the first time the figures have crossed the 50% threshold, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll.”  In fact, it was reading that article which inspired my tweet.  Luckily, I was far more amused than upset by the tweet I received from @PCtypesCanSukit, a person who happily describes himself as a young military veteran sick of America being destroyed by Liberals, Muslims, Gays, and illegal Mexicans whose solution is to fix America one ass kicking at a time.  I suspect that Mr. CanSukit is used to baiting and browbeating those with whom he disagrees.

Initially, I wondered how to respond to his personal and scurrilous attack (I am a smartass, not a dumbass): whether to tweet back or ignore him.  I decided not to reply back to his tweet because I was confident that directly confronting this person would not engender constructive debate.  Besides, anyone whose Twitter handle ends in “CanSukit”, and is obsessed with gay issues, seems to need a little time for private introspection.

On the other hand, I decided to write this post because ignoring him felt equivalent to condoning his remarks.  Furthermore, I believe that engaging in a polite and respectful discussion of the issues of marriage rights or internet etiquette with fellow bloggers and interested readers can hopefully encourage others to express their opinions free from the fear of anonymous reprisals.

Civil Rights in New Jersey

The state senate in New Jersey has passed a bill guaranteeing marriage equality, but clownish Governor Chris Christie has vowed to veto it, despite the fact that there are enough votes to overturn his veto.  This image is for him.

The winter that wasn't...

It was supposed to snow today, but instead it was sunny and in the mid-40s.  Here is a picture from the only appreciable snow storm we have had in New England this season.  The summer chairs were unprepared for the storm.

Good Poems

Blue, with many wise
Words, a beacon to light the
Way to brighter dreams

The other side of writing, part 1

In light of my recent time away from any significant writing due to directing two shows simultaneously, I wanted to share my first short film with you.

I wrote & directed this film, The Audition Process, in 1996 while living in New Jersey, and shot it in New York City with the help of several friends I met at the Maine Photographic Workshop tim program and some amazing actors.  While working on this film, I had the amazing experience of walking the streets of New York carrying a very provocative prop from the prop house to the studio.  Watch the film, and I am sure you will know what I am talking about.

I hope you enjoy!