CEO sees no problem with sorry Grizzlies and Canucks
By JIM TAYLOR
Calgary Sun
VANCOUVER -- To the interchangeable suits who run Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment, hockey fans are not fans, they are "guests" with "guest expectations."
Never mind that the hockey Canucks have gone into the tank like newly-purchased guppies and the basketball Grizzlies' team cheer is "H-I-B! N-E-R! A-T-E! WHY WAIT? LET'S HIBERNATE!" Never mind that the Canucks headed into last night's game against the Calgary Flames needing a win to stay within range of ninth place, let alone eighth and a playoff spot.
According to surveys, says chief suit and CEO John Chapple, 97% of those who attend events at GM Place are "satisfied or had their service levels exceeded."
Wow! And we thought there was a problem.
You see what happens when teams are owned by corporations and play in arenas named after automobiles and airlines and insurance companies and cartoon characters?
"Hey, we may not have a centre who can make a pass or a defenceman who isn't embedded on the blue line -- but did you see how the usher smiled as he took you to your seat? And how about the quick service on that beer? Sorry about missing the playoffs, but y'all come back now, y'hear?"
Hockey isn't hockey to the Orcapus. Basketball isn't basketball. Every game is an event, an entertainment, a spectacle. It isn't that they're selling the sizzle because they've got no steak. It's the sizzle that matters. Ask not whether the team won or lost, but who won the scoreboard trivia contest. How about that fiddler! Look, Fred's proposing to Martha up in the blues! Ain't it grand?
I have a problem with this "guest" business.
Guests come to my house, they don't pay $10 for parking and $60 to walk in the front door. They don't have to buy dinner, and the beer is free.
Fans come to a hockey game knowing they're going to get stiffed on the parking, pay too much for the cheeseburgers, and maybe have a beer poured over their lap by the guy leaping out of the next seat when the Canucks get a goal. Or a shot.
They accept this. They're fans, and fan is short for fanatic, from the Latin fanaticus maximus meaning "Jezz, Caesar, are these guys gullible, or what?"
What they want is a hockey team that works all season, and doesn't simply wake up with a month to go and kick into infobabble like "There's a lot of pride in this room," and "It's time to get serious," a team that doesn't show them just enough on rare occasions to drive them crazy.
Give them a contending team, an entertaining team, and the cheeseburgers can be styrofoam served with skunky beer.
They'd bitch about it, and maybe concession sales would drop, but you'd have taken care of first things first. They come to see hockey, not to chow down and do the macarena.
I suspect that, no matter how this sorry season trickles down, they will be back next season. They came last night to see not one but two teams slogging along through the muck of the NHL subbasement in search of a playoff spot neither really deserves. Hockey is in the Canadian bloodstream, bred into the gene pool. Sign a player or two, give them grounds for hope, and they will come back with scorn on their tongues, hope in their hearts, and money in their outstretched hands.
Guests would never do that. Treat a guest the way this team has treated its customers and he'd stomp out of your living room in disgust, kicking the cat on the way by and saying rude things about the way your wife did the carrots.
Last night's 3-3 tie only postponed the inevitable. All they want is a hockey team. Winning is its own entertainment. Find a centre, Mr. Chapple, and you can stuff the fiddler in the Zamboni.
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