Cherry still knocking Europeans; CFL audiences way up
November 8, 2009 · 13 Comments
Obviously, things have been kind of dull in Don Cherry’s world, because he decided to light a firecracker — or was it a stink bomb? – on Hockey Night In Canada.
When host Ron MacLean asked him on Saturday why the New Jersey Devils were the only undefeated NHL team on the road this season, Cherry said, “Check how many Europeans are on the team.”
Knowing how much Cherry admires Europeans, we went to the NHL Guide expecting to find 10 or 12 them playing for the Devils, hence Cherry’s alluding to the positive European influence on the road warriors from New Jersey.
We’re kidding, of course. There are only four or five Europeans on the Devils. This was Cherry’s way of ridiculing them by saying the fewer number you have on your roster the better the team will do in the enemy territory of the other team’s arena. It’s a subtle way of saying Europeans lack courage and toughness, but, of course, we’ve heard that before from Cherry.
As for MacLean, he knew what Cherry was going to say, which is why he raised the subject – to hear Cherry put down Europeans and then be able to snicker about it, because it was Don doing the talking and sticking his neck out, and not him. It was silly and juvenile, but that’s a big part of MacLean’s stock and trade.
I don’t know how European players feel about MacLean. I know many, perhaps most, dislike Cherry. They have no reason to feel differently about MacLean.
By the way, the Detroit Red Wings are loaded with Europeans. The Wings have about 10 right now, and they’ve done very well on the road. Remember, the Wings play outside their time zone in every Western Conference arena but two. They travel great distances, unlike the Devils, which play in a bus loop. In the past two years, the Wings have made two trips to the Stanley Cup final, winning one championship, and they had the best regular season record in 2007-08.
Shish Boom blah!
Two wins in a row is a mighty powerful tonic for what ails a homer in the Toronto media.
Nothing like two consecutive wins by the Toronto Maple Leafs to put a bounce in your step, get the juices flowing and give you all the ammunition you need to fire back at those dirty skeptics.
After all, this Leaf winning streak proves that GM Brian Burke’s blueprint is golden. It also means the Leafs could — probably will — make the playoffs. And once they get to the playoffs, anything can happen, right? They could win the first round. That’s not impossible. And, then they take it one game at a time. They get a few breaks, they the ride the Monster and count on Phil, who’s a big part of The Blueprint, and before you can say, “Brian Knows Best,” they’re in the final and the other team’s plane goes down, and, well, jeepers, it’s a parade on Bay Street in June!
That said, Toronto Star columnist Damien Cox’s excitement over the Leafs’ progress is understandable. With Phil Kessel and the rookie goalie, Jonas Gustavsson, the Monster, in the lineup together, the team has greatly improved. If the two continue to perform at Saturday’s level, the Leafs do have a shot at the playoffs. That, of course, is a significant if. The team still suffers from big defensive problems and, absent Kessel, the forwards are very average.
But Cox, in his Sunday column, was way too enthusiastic about the talent in the Leafs’ development system. Nazem Kadri, who’s back in junior hockey, played well at training camp and may be a star in the NHL someday. As for Viktor Stalberg, Tyler Bozak and Christian Hanson, they’re not kids. They’re 23, are not good enough to make the team, and, only one, Stalberg, looks to be a potential first line player.
- Don’t know where MLSE found the woman who sang the anthems at the Air Canada Centre on Saturday night, but, just so she knows, the word Canada is not pronounced Cane-e-a-duh.
- When Rogers Sportsnet anchor Sean McCormick reported on Toronto winning the 2015 Pan American Games, he pronounced the losing city of Bogota as Ba-go-da, like the Pagoda at the Beijing Olympics.
- Bad news at The Toronto Star: It’s asking employees to accept buyouts in lieu of layoffs. Apparently, the plan is to outsource copy editing to a company in Australia. Will the Aussie editors know all the terminology pretaining to say, hockey? Not likely.
CFL viewership jumps
TSN’s Canadian Football League audiences increased a huge 51 per cent this season.
The sports cable channel, which is the sole CFL rights holder, averaged 600,000 viewers a game over the 72 game schedule, compared with last season’s 397,000.
The rise is attributable largely to new Portable People Meter measurement system that was introduced by BBM Canada in September. The more accurate PPM has pushed up sports audiences across the board. Nevertheless, football audiences on TSN have grown steadily season to season.
Five games had audiences of more than one million viewers. B.C. Lions-Saskatchewan Roughriders, Oct. 24 (O.T.), 1.2 million. Edmonton Eskimos-Roughriders, Sept. 20, 1.1 million. Eskimos-Calgary Stampeders, Sept. 7, Labour Day, 1.09 million. Stampeders-Roughriders, Nov. 7, 1.08 million. Roughriders-Lions, Oct. 2, 1.04 million.
Demographically, the 18-34 group, which is the advertisers’ target, made up 18 per cent of the total audience, up 38 per cent from last season; 36 per cent of the audience consisted of women, up 12 per cent.
Weekend numbers
Hockey: The surprise was the CBC’s 1.014 million for Scotiabank Hockey Night. That’s a big number for a pre-game show, aided, of course, by the new PPM measurement system. Still, the Hall of Fame content pulled them in.
Game 1, Detroit Red Wings-Toronto Maple Leafs, nationally, (Tampa Bay-Montreal Canadiens, New Jersey Devils-Ottawa Senators regionally) drew 1.964 million.
Game 2 (New York Rangers-Calgary Flames) was watched by 877,000.
Regional games: Vancouver Canucks-Dallas Stars, Friday, Sportsnet Pacific, 365,000.
Edmonton Oilers-Colorado Avalanche, Sunday, Sportsnet West, 245,000.
CFL: Esks-Lions, Friday, TSN, 610,000.
Stamps-Roughriders, TSN, Saturday, 1.087 million.
Montreal Alouettes-Toronto Argonauts, Saturday, TSN, 434,000
Hamilton Tiger-Cats-Winnipeg Blue Bombers, Sunday, TSN, 712,000.
NFL: Sunday 1 p.m., CTV, regional telecast, 579,000
Sunday prime time, Dallas Cowboys-Philadelphia Eagles, TSN, 598,000.
Basketball: Toronto Raptors-New Orleans Hornets, Friday, TSN, 380,000. A good Raptors audience.
Auto racing: NASCAR Dickies 500, 383,000.
Breeders’ Cup: Saturday, TSN, 326,000.
Figure skating: Grand Prix Japan, 2 p.m. ET Saturday, CBC, 249,000; Sunday, 314,000.
Speed skating: Short track World Cup, 5 p.m. ET, CBC, Saturday: 240,000; Sunday, 214,000.
Soccer: Aston Villa-Bolton, Sportsnet nationally, Saturday morning, 76,000.
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Houston, get some consistency. Sometimes you refer to Maclean as “first-rate” and others as “silly and juvenile”. Do you like the guy or not?
At times Cherry does make sense. However if we follow your logic regarding say Detroit, it assumes that you have a reasonably capable scouting system that just doesn’t rely on the “NHL scouting network”. I will offer that most NHL teams don’t draft so wisely including the beloved Maple Leafs.
The Maple Leafs seemed to follow the “network” from 2005 to 2007 inclusive when they went out of their way avoiding Canadian junior players. They picked all of 3 Canadian junior players out of 30 picks in three consecutive years. With most of Canadian junior players within a 5 hour flight and several hours plus drive of Toronto, Leafs could have operated a scouting team out of a Toronto base and still had access to a fair amount of Canadian talent.
The Red Wings despite having an overall winning record for say the last 10 years, have continued to pick smartly in the later rounds of the draft although I have not analyzed their picks in the 2005-2007 era which would be the fairest.
Thankfully, Burke is drafting more “homegrown” Canadian juniors although many of us are still smarting from his trade of two first rounders(and a second pick) for Phil Kessel.
I suppose we will get a “showing” of Canadian talent this February in Vancouver at the Olympics. My guess is that the “rest of the world” has caught up with Canadian talent for good and we may not be seeing a Canadian team in the finals for the gold medal. I suppose this is not necessarily a platform to fairly gauge NHL Canadian talent but there will be howls if Canada doesn’t make it to the medal round.
…like the old saying….” a little bit of MacLean goes a LONG way”…….doesn’t anyone else get tired of the sappy puns and attenpts to insert salacious language into as many comments as he is able??
one would have thought that it would be MacLean’s job to bring facts to Cherry’s racist fomentations. perhaps this is too much to expect, but it’s also a good reason for choosing not to watch.
Not a great time to say that the Red Wings are great on the road. Losing @ Toronto is what I consider a great road team…
I used to really like MacLean, but he just keeps getting worse and worse. He wasn’t too bad at the Olympics last year, but on HNIC hes just annoying now. I’ve started watching Hockey Central instead of CBC’s pregame show on most Saturday nights.
Mr. Houston, I’m happy to have you back, but the expression is “stock in trade” not “stock and trade”. You should have given the column an extra read if you were going to make a point about potential copy-editing issues at the Star. (I’ll let you off the hook with regard to the “pertaining” typo.
CFL Viewership Jumps – you have a typo in your numbers. You have “Demographically, the 18-34 group, which is the advertisers’ target, made up 18 per cent of the total audience, up 38 per cent from last season;”. Shouldn’t that be “made up 38 per cent …, up 18 per cent …”
Nope, it’s right the way it is.
http://www.ctvmedia.ca/tsn/releases/release.asp?id=11799&yyyy=2009
When quoting the ratings for Sunday Night Football, you should be noting that the rating you list does not include Canadian viewers who chose to watch the game on NBC. This is also true for other sports programming that is not simulcast because the Canadian rights-holder is a cable network rather than an over-the-air broadcaster. This is a fundamental flaw of the BBM rating system, and should be noted.