the 4th star

On Friday, the day before the Calder Cup championship gets underway at MTS Centre, a certain player with the Manitoba Moose will be celebrating a birthday.

Mike Keane will be 42-years-old.

Normally, this wouldn’t be much of a story. The guy continues to strap on the gear year after year, so what would another candle on the birthday cake mean for the Winnipeg hockey legend? But these aren’t normal circumstances for Keane or for the Moose. As alluded to off the top, the club is still on the ice at this late spring juncture, readying to take on the Hershey Bears for all the American Hockey League marbles this weekend. In his Moose career, it will be the first time Keane will take the ‘old man’ barbs from teammates in the room. And it will be the first time he’ll have the opportunity to fire a comment back regarding the timeliness of his birth certificate.

In his career, there has probably been only three or four times when Keane’s birthday has come around and he’s still enjoying a season. Three of those have been Stanley Cup runs. Bet you can’t name a better way for a Prairie kid to celebrate a birthday.

So the question is: If the Moose do go on to beat the Bears and claim Winnipeg’s first professional hockey title in 30 years, will a Calder Cup championship be Mike Keane’s swan song?

The Moose have always said that it’s up to the captain to decide how long he wants to keep playing in his hometown. Keane has always said he’ll decide when it’s time, even hinting that he’ll be good (or effective, at least) for another five years or so. Who knows what the future holds, but there’s something to be said for winning your last hand before pulling back from the table and cashing in your chips.

Other than having three of the first four games decided by two points or less and having both LaBron James and Dwight Howard living up to the hype, I can’t think of one good reason to tune into the incredibly entertaining Eastern Conference final between the Orlando Magic and the Cleveland Cavaliers, can you? The Magic lead the series 3-1, with Game 5 going tomorrow night in Ohio. Do yourself a favour and tune in — I sense a monster comeback of Washington Capitals proportions coming to a TV screen near you. Oh yeah, Hump Day doesn’t know if there are any cowboys in Orlando and it doesn’t really care, either.

Last night, when Michael Grabner gave the Manitoba Moose a third-period lead that would carry the franchise to its first-ever American Hockey League Western Conference final championship and ensure that Winnipeg hockey fans would get to see live ice in June for the first time ever, the crowd went nuts.

And what about that crowd? Seems to be growing, doesn’t it? Thanks to some number hunting by the beautiful CC at True North, here’s a look at the Moose attendance this season.

Regular season average: 7,769 (second overall in the league)
Post season average: 8,919 (eight home dates)
Largest post season gate: 10, 227 (April 25)
Smallest post season gate: 5,923 (April 15)

The announced attendance for Monday’s game was 9,279, the third straight semifinal game where people were into the second deck. The last three games have the Moose averaging just a shade over 9,200 people per.

So if it’s such a bad product, then why are people going? Considering the MTS Centre holds 15,000, the anti-Moose crowd will certainly point to the some 6,000 empty seats and declare Winnipeg fans, swept up in all the ‘Return of the Jets’ fantasy that has dominated the local media over the last month, are voicing their displeasure with the hockey product being offered to them by not supporting the AHL. I like to look at all angles and that’s certainly one way to look at it.

Another way to look at it is to look at the bottom line, which as we all know, is what makes or breaks things like going to hockey games for most of us. For most, passion don’t pay the bills. Don’t know about you, but I’m pretty impressed that a club which had a 3-0 series lead and probably never thought things would get to a Game 6 at home managed to sell 9,279 seats for a Monday night affair in what amounts to the span of two and a half days — one of those being a warm, sunny Sunday where hockey was probably nowhere near anyone’s mind.

Is that because the people buying the tickets are rabid Moose fans, or it is because the cost of the ticket amounts to what a trip to the video store and some cheap take-out is? Whatever the reason, people are going — with tickets for Game 1 of Saturday’s Calder Cup final being gobbled up quick.

A friend of mine went to the game last night. I believe he went strictly on a whim-basis. No real plan in place, no line of credit needed to attend. Wanna go to the game, tonight? Sure. Row 6, right behind the Houston bench. Price of the ticket was about $40, give or take an agency fee. If memory serves, that’s the top end ticket to go see the Moose. Oh, and that’s Row 6, lower bowl, by the way.

Though the club has been here for 13 years, it’s long been thought that the team would need an extended playoff run to help capture some real interest and build the brand in this town. That’s why this Moose run is so interesting, the fact Average Joes are going to games and after seeing what the product it, might think about going again. Like it or not, that’s happening right now.

“Our team has caught hold with a lot of people,” Moose owner Mark Chipman told The Soleil yesterday.

Indeed. The team has caught hold with people. People are starting to care. They speak about the club not as an afterthought but as a legitimate place to spend their entertainment dollars. Not just once in a while, but as repeat customers. Finally, after 13 years, real interest is starting to build, and as the local media outlets pour on the coverage this week, the city might dream of a new hockey reality.

The one where it witnesses its first professional championship in 30 years.

(thx to moosehockey.com for the pic)

Disclaimer: I am an NHL fan. I miss watching the games. I’m not saying the Jets won’t come back. As I’ve said on television and on this blog, I think the NHL will return to our city in the next five to fifty years — give or take a generation — and I would love to see it happen. Probably more so than any of the vocal minority out there, no matter how loud they get.*

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I was wondering when the Return of the Jets choir was going to sing ‘We Told You So’ regarding the the NHL coming back to Winnipeg and right on cue, the earnest vocal masses have put their collective voice into the fingertips of their intrepid leader.

This little pat on the back (the May 24th post) has probably been sitting on the desktop for a while now and with so much ink devoted to the topic in Saturday’s Freep, the self-anointed man who speaks for all Jets fans (not this one) decided the next day was as good a time as ever to trot it out and tell everyone what he had done.

Which is…what exactly again?

So apparently a victory in the campaign is to have a complete rehash of what everyone already knows regarding the events of the last five years in the local paper and not an actual NHL team or an ownership group announcing they have purchased a franchise for Winnipeg. WAY TO GO! You did it (by doing nothing but selling an NHL dream to NHL hockey fans). And before you send me the YouTube link of Mark Chipman, don’t. I’ve seen it and I hate to break the news to you, but it’s been up on the shelf for a while now.

Maybe things HAVE really changed. Maybe the risk-reward scenario is the scary part? But that’s another  topic for another day. Yes, congratulations are in order Jets fanatics. Congrats on…this great line:

So start saving your money, if you haven’t already. There is one major step to go. Finding and landing our team.

Oh, that’s all that’s left? No problem. It’s practically a slam dunk then. Let us pray.

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*I feel like I should include this at the top of all ‘Return of the Jets’ posts from now on, as people seem to want to fire off personal emails without knowing anything about me. I’m not negative towards the Jets coming back, I just choose to look at some of the issues and some of the bullshit the never-ending topic seems to generate. Pom-poms are for football. We all like hockey. Yay for us!

My economic doctor, Prof. Ian Hudson of University of Manitoba and Crescentwood Saturday fame, was once again front and centre in the business of sports business yesterday. His thoughts in the National Post spilled over to the breakfast table Saturday morning, the subject of community ownership in the National Hockey League popping up before our clubhouses were up. Yes, we eat clubhouses for breakfast. Sometimes we get breakfast at breakfast, too.

There is no Winnipeg billionaire, at least not one that Prof. Hudson is aware of, standing at the corner of Portage and Main with a US$212.5-million-plus cheque in his pocket looking to pluck the Coyotes out of bankruptcy protection.

But maybe there is another way. Winnipeg is a Prairie town, and neighbours help their neighbours on the Prairies. Canadian social democracy was born in the West, where the collective matters, and if Manitobans from Flin Flon to Neepawa to Brandon to Winnipeg, population 703,900, were to pass around a hockey helmet and pool their money together, perhaps all the nickels and dimes would add up to a few hundred million and a homecoming parade for the Winnipeg Jets.

“I would throw into the giant helmet,” Hudson says, without pause. “The giant helmet could work in the short term. I think you could drum up enough enthusiasm for a large number of people to make small contributions.”

I never did get my $50 bucks back from the failed Save Our Jets campaign 14 years ago, but that painful memory wouldn’t dissuade me from dumping in some cash for a public slice of the Jets pie. Lots of people would probably make that commitment out of excitement and media frenzy. Unfortunately, good intentions don’t always lead to NHL hockey teams and as Hudson points out, the need for a singular owner with deep pockets and long arms is needed to cover any potential bumps in the road.

Alas, even if the group did reach its goal and win over some bigger investors and come up with a bank balance large enough to lure the Jets home, Hudson, the economics professor, says the community ownership model is rife with potential pitfalls.

“What happens if the team comes back here and is losing money hand over fist?” Hudson says. “Who is going to absorb those losses? Is it going to be absorbed by the very small owners? Well, they probably do not have the money to afford that. Is the government going to be asked to step in and try and keep them here? That is where things get problematic.”

Hello, Interim Operating Agreement. Nice to see you again.

The discussion about community ownership for any NHL team in Winnipeg is moot. The league is not interested in having any of its ownerships groups public. The consensus over breakfast was that the NHL has a rule in place to prohibit such a arrangement. I seem to remember a time when the Edmonton Oilers had some monetary/ownership issues after the Peter Puck flameout. Gary Bettman’s response to the proposed community model was quite tepid, if I recall correctly.

This seems to be the climate of all the major team sports leagues in North America. Even the National Football League, which has the celebrated Green Bay Packers community ownership model, frowns on the structure now. Frown is actually a polite way of saying it. They don’t allow it anymore, with GB allowed to proceed that way because fans owned the team well before the league transformed into what it is today.

Sorry ladies. No singular beef for the Man Sandwich this week. Instead, we go literal with the term and invite you into the Pittsburgh Penguins locker room. Notice a few things regarding the testosterone:

One. No one is standing on the logo. I remember when I found myself in the Winnipeg Blue Bombers room one summer. Not knowing the *rules* — of course — I was about to set foot on the big Bomber logo when an intrepid reporter named Kirk Penton grabbed me by the arm to halt my progress. A no-no, he indicated. Not willing to take his warning seriously, I proceeded to walk along the outline of the logo, begging for someone to push me in. That never happened, but the eye-roll from some of the other reporters was payback enough.

Two. A lot of guys just hanging out. The two in the front wearing white shirts. What the heck are you guys doing besides taking up valuable space? I’ll tell you what, nothing! Or the fat guy in the red shirt. Yeah, I’m talking to you. Just playing through, buddy? Can I get you a water or something?

Three. Some reporters want to be buddies with the players. This is my favourite thing in the whole world. It’s not enough that their text machine is constantly buzzing with inane ‘Wad up?’ commentary from players who have surrendered their digits, but some feel the need to show how physically relaxed they are in the room, like they’ve been there before and they are just one of the guys. Notice the specimen in the yellow shirt (dead centre). Please, get comfortable. Yeah, stretch it out. So not only does the player have to endure a repetitious line of questioning from the wannabe athlete, he also gets a Penguin-eye view of the reporter’s junk in the process.

“We just have to go out there and do the little things well.”

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda —”
George W. Bush, May 2005

In keeping with the tone of the last seven days, the above video isn’t exactly as it seems. Yes, it is an excerpt from The Battleship Potemkin, a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, but the music isn’t part of the equation. The song is the disturbingly powerful ‘Intervention’ as performed by Arcade Fire and thanks to some guy who enjoys both, the final result lands on the 4th Star doorstep this morning.

For those not in the know, the movie is widely regarded as one of the most influential propaganda films of all time. No doubt you’ve seen the Odessa massacre footage at some point in your life. Also powerful stuff. Even if you’re not a fan of the silent genre, I suggest finding a copy of this film. Until that happens, here’s a review — probably the only time Roger Ebert will be mentioned on this silly little thing called blog.

The Battleship Potemkin is conceived as class-conscious revolutionary propaganda, and Eisenstein deliberately avoids creating any three-dimensional individuals (even Vakulinchuk is seen largely as a symbol). Instead, masses of men move in unison, as in the many shots looking down at Potemkin’s foredeck. The people of Odessa, too, are seen as a mass made up of many briefly glimpsed but starkly seen faces. The dialogue (in title cards) is limited mostly to outrage and exhortation. There is no personal drama to counterbalance the larger political drama.

That’s three times we’ve heard the word propaganda in this post. Let’s jump over to the always trustworthy Wikipedia for a simple breakdown of what the term means.

Propaganda is the dissemination of information aimed at influencing the opinions or behaviors of people. As opposed to impartially providing information, propaganda in its most basic sense, often presents information primarily in order to influence its audience. Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or gives loaded messages in order to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political agenda.

Serious stuff.

Serious as the comments at the bottom of newspaper stories and blog posts this week.

Fine. I didn’t win, but is it too much to ask that my other wish, that Pierre McGuire find another job in hockey so he no longer will occupy the plasma space on my television? The Star-Tribune reports that David Conte Chuck Fletcher, son of Cliff, will be announced as the new Minnesota Wild general manager tomorrow. Thanks, Wild! Guess that 11th-hour PR job McGuire’s people tried to pull off came too late.

So what does this mean for you, the NHL hockey on television fan? Well, unless another team comes looking to the bright red lights of the TSN studio for a general manager, we’re going to be stuck with McGuire for not only the 2009-10 NHL season but the Vancouver Olympics. Oh goodie. I can just picture it: The roster lists, the yelling, the inane debate about whether Cam Ward and Dion Phaneuf should be on the team. What a treat Canadians are in for. Can’t wait. On the plus side, the Pittsburgh-Carolina game tonight is the last of the TSN Stanley Cup playoff broadcasts. Bring on the CBC!

Yes, it’s always darkest before the dawn.

Now that it’s been established that the mere mention of Winnipeg by the National Hockey League head honcho is reason enough to cast aside our antlers and cash in our RRSPs in preparation for a new version of the Jets, let’s put down both newspapers and see how much all of this great NHL hockey is going to cost us, shall we?

Until an potential local owner steps forward (never let that get in the way of a *good* story), let’s call this post an attempt to put the horse back in front of the cart. Things just seem to work better when organized that way. So here’s a link to get us started. It’s the average ticket price for each of the 30 NHL clubs last season. Included are the beer and food hit. Note that luxury suites and premium ticket prices (third column) are EXCLUDED from the average.

Thirteen teams are above the $49.66 average. Oh would you look at that! Five of the six Canadian clubs are found here. The lone exception is Ottawa, which is less than a dollar off the mark. The message here: If you live in Canada and you want to watch NHL hockey live, be hopeful there’s an ATM or buried treasure on the way to the rink.

Look at the premium ticket column again. Premium tickets are counted as ducats that come with some sort of amenity — like wet naps or bar-to-seat service. Things usually associated with the lower bowl. Those are some lofty numbers for one ticket for one game, aren’t they? Keep in mind, those are average prices.

Speaking of average, I keep hearing how the NHL experience, should it ever come back to our fair city, would compare to that of our blue collar brother in Edmonton. Back in October, I had the fortunate experience of attending a live NHL game between the Oilers and Calgary Flames in the City of Champions. It was so much better than my previous trip to Northlands, when I got to take in a spirited match between the Edmonton RoadRunners and the Manitoba Moose. Different kind of atmosphere, as you can imagine. The Battle of Alberta didn’t come cheap, though. Seats in the lower bowl, 15 rows up on the blue-line were a cool $160 a pop. That was for one ticket.

I don’t even want to tell you how much pop was!

(you can look it up on the chart)

Finally, the next to last column on the chart is the Fan Cost Index. You can read the fine print on the bottom, but what it basically says is the average price for a family of four is $288.23 per game. That’s in US currency, by the way, and remember — that’s without factoring in the premium ticket price. So, three bills a game multiplied by 41 games gives you a grand total of $12,300 spent on NHL hockey for you and your family. Might want to cut the number of meals to two a day and pray for a mild winter.

As for little Billy playing hockey, forget it. His dad says he’d much rather watch hockey.

Maybe 41 games is too many. Why not just take your family to 20 games? That will only set you back $6,000 for the winter. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? And just think, if you pull in another thousand bucks and you lived in Northern Alberta, you could purchase one lower bowl, between the blue-lines season ticket. Just one, though.

Honey, I’m going out to watch the game (in Edmonton). Don’t wait up!

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RELATED: Nice column on NHL attendance here by one of the Kurtenbloggers. Great pictures.

Does anyone else think it’s like-a-free-ride-when-you’ve-already-paid-kind-of-ironic that the latest wave of Winnipeg Jets/Bring Back the National Hockey League comes at a time when the Manitoba Moose are poised to take this town to its first professional hockey championship in three decades?

On that subject, should we be concerned that a voice of reason in this latest wave is no other than Victory Grant? Agree with him or not (and please look past his International Hockey League leanings and the fact that CJOB is a broadcast partner of the Moose for a second), but he does give Jet-wetters something to think about in Tuesday’s commentary when discussing the celebrated reputation of ourselves, the collective Winnipeg hockey fan:

Our Moose are putting together an incredible streak, 10 consecutive victories as they stampede toward the Turner Cup (ed. note: whoops) championship series. But we should be embarrassed over our lack of support.

We talk big about Winnipeg being a hockey city, we smirk at those southern hockey franchises which are nothing more than pretenders when compared to our town, and we like to brag about how easy it would be for us to fill our arena. Excuse me? We can’t even get 10,000 fans together to celebrate this highly entertaining and successful team we have in our possession.

It used to be as far back as the Winnipeg Warriors that 10,000 hockey fans in a nine thousand seat arena for a playoff game was a given.  There’s been no need for playoff ticket scalpers during Moose games but go figure, because there’s no hesitation in promising sell outs for a team which is only a figment of our imagination.

Last question: Is it possible that Alanis Morrisette is getting hotter as she gets older? The Hump Day judges are asking that you figure it all out through some sort of mediation before we meet again next week.