Thursday, January 12, 2006

 

What a Mess

As superstud Sturgeon County native Colby Cosh (aka: "Dude-With-A-Huge-Penis") notes, the hottest ticket around is for tonight's Oilers-Rangers Game/Moose Retirement Ceremony.

Sadly, most Oilers fans will be forced to read about it in the papers because it is only on Pay-Per-View. Obviously from an economic point of view I understand why the Powers would try to make us pay extra to watch this game--there is, afterall, quite a bit of incentive for us in Edmonton to crack open the pocketbook; but, from a fan-friendly perspective I despise it.

Messier definitely had a special relationship with New York and with Ranger fans, but hell, he did win 5 cups in Edmonton. To force those Edmonton fans to pay extra kinda pisses me off. It especially pisses me off because I don't even have the option given that I have a regular old tee-vee without a digital cable box.

Anyway, during his highly emotional press conference I was hoping he was going to say, "I promised Gretz I wouldn't do this" when he started crying. That would have made me laugh.

Given that I became an Oilers fan long after he had bolted from Edmonton, I'll leave it to others to reminisce fondly. Instead, I'll just cheer for the other NY team against the other Alberta team in the game that actually is televised.

The Festivities start at 5:00 Mountain Time for both games.

Comments:

I'll save the reminiscences for when his jersey is retired at home. Lots of hilarious stuff being recounted on local sportsquawk radio though.
 


I've been noticing more and more of this too. I have Starchoice, and often see games on other Sportsnet channels that are always blacked out. The only way to see those games is Centre Ice (which isn't available on StarChoice). So there is no way I can see those games, and they are blacked out. How "fan friendly" is that?
I'm starting to get into tinfoil hat territory now, but Pay-Per-View games are starting to worry me as well. It seems to create an incentive for teams to go the PPV route as opposed to looking for other avenues. Why can't the Oilers or Flames teams make it reasonable for each cities A-Channel to carry a few games locally? A-Channel Ottawa has Thursday night Senators games, and incidentally that is the only way I can see Sens games other than HNIC or maybe TSN.
And since I am on a roll, why would TSN show a game featuring 2 american teams, like they so frequently do, instead of picking up a game that has a Canadian team involved?

It just seems that for all the "Fan Friendly" things being done there are other obvious measures that are either being overlooked or actively avoided for short-sighted bottom line reasons. [/rant]
 


It's impossible to guess what the future is going to look like. I wouldn't be surprised if, in ten years, sports teams took over some real estate from dying cinema chains and Oiler games were being broadcast free to the public in movie theatres (...with the revenues from exorbitant concessions and cold beer sales going to the team).

Did I mention that the players will all be wearing transparent full-head helmets and Suncor logos on their jerseys by then?

And that the games will be played downtown?

(...Possibly in Ft. McMurray?)
 


It sounds like the PPV decision for tonight's game was less nefarious than I thought.

What it really demonstrates is that TSN and SN have very little foresight. I mean really, they didn't even consider that Messier might retire this year?
 


The Oilers do deliver a pretty good Pay-Per-View though if you get to see it!

We'll get our own number retirement ceremony too, so not all is lost.
 


I'm ordering the game, not only do I have 11 bucks burning a hole in my pocket, but I have nothing else to do! But I swear to god that if Anne McClellan's campaign office calls again, (they called during the World Junior game) then all hell will break loose.
 


Ahhh -- good to see you weren't really out of touch on your trip, MC.
 

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