How the Carolina Hurricanes hit back against the NHL's war on fun

Among the unexpected victors emerging from the bizarre first-round of this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs were a bunch of “jerks” playing for the Carolina Hurricanes. On their way through, these jerks – members of a team that hasn’t seen the post-season since 2009 – upset the defending Stanley Cup champions, the Washington Capitals, and swept their next opponents, the New York Islanders, to move on to the conference final. These jerks are playing good hockey. The only problem? These jerks and their fans are apparently having too much fun.

Throughout the regular season, the Hurricanes (who squeezed into the first wildcard slot with a 46-29-7 record) turned their post-games into a rally. It started back in October, after a win against the New York Rangers. The team lined up along one blue line, then skated together the length of the ice and threw themselves into the glass – it was quickly dubbed the “storm surge.” Soon, it became a more elaborate carnival, with the team adding staged elements, like a game of duck-duck-goose, mock baseball and bowling, as well as, uh, Quidditch.

As Hurricanes captain Justin Williams told NHL.com in December, the point was to make it “a fun time to interact with us and our fans.” Yet, even by that point, the antics were causing concern. In November, former NHL coach-turned-commentator Brian Burke told a sports radio station in Toronto: “I don’t like it. I don’t think it belongs in our league… I think it’s absurdly amateurish pee-wee garbage stuff.”

But Burke’s personal annoyance was overshadowed weeks later, when another, more famous, former NHL coach-turned-broadcaster took aim at the fun.

“These guys, to me, are jerks!” Don Cherry, the longtime CBC commentator and human exclamation point, shouted during his regular Saturday night segment, Coach’s Corner, in February. “I know what I’m talking about! Never do anything like that! They’re still not drawing [a crowd], they’re a bunch of jerks as far as I’m concerned!”

The Hurricanes immediately saw an opportunity. The team coopted Cherry’s remarks to build the narrative of underdog pluck. It had the sneer emblazoned on t-shirts, and fans were equally swift to appropriate the derision as a badge of honour. It was they to whom Cherry addressed his latest comments this past weekend, dismissing ‘Canes supporters as “front-running fans” – in other words, band-wagoners.

In response, the Hurricanes duly updated their playoff t-shirts Monday:

That Cherry doesn’t like something new is unsurprising. The 85-year-old usually takes immediate umbrage at any variety beyond his own flamboyant wardrobe, which he shuffles constantly, showcasing a vast array of garish suits apparently cut from discarded reams of upholstery. But what Cherry often articulates, perhaps even without knowing it, isn’t just cantankerousness, but rather a kind of unintentional airing of the NHL’s core principles.

If Cherry does anything well, it’s broadcasting values hockey still holds dear – those of tradition and normalcy and, subsequently, opposition to (and bewilderment at) change beyond mere aesthetics.

These are the same values he projected in 2016, for instance, when the NHL faced a different kind of fan-pleasing spectacle – that of John Scott, the low-scoring career grinder who was elevated in a collective lark to the league’s All Star roster via an online public voting mechanism. In response, the NHL grumbled its recognition of the validity of the fan vote, but then seemed to disappear the actual vote totals from its website. After Scott reportedly refused the league’s request to bow out of the All Star Game, he quickly found himself suspiciously traded from Arizona to Montreal, where he was immediately tossed down to the AHL. At the time, Cherry again upbraided the fans, accusing them of ruining Scott’s career by denying him an NHL salary. “You jerks!” he shouted.

In the end, Scott played in the All Star Game and was unquestionably its hero. The collective joke turned into a genuine feelgood story. So, of course, when the game was all over, in lock-step with the spirit of Cherry’s rant, the NHL quickly disbanded the public voting tool altogether, lest the fans have any more of the same fun again.

The values Cherry transmits are also the same that coloured testimony NHL commissioner Gary Bettman gave last week to parliamentarians in Ottawa researching concussions in sport. Asked directly about the growing evidence of a link between CTE – a degenerative brain disorder that has been found in young, deceased hockey players – and concussions, Bettman characteristically demurred. “I’m not sure that the premise that the link is clear now is one that the scientific and medical community has embraced,” he remarked, echoing his previous comments on the topic.

Where braggadocio often hides timidity, frivolity can be a sign of deeper confidence. So it is in hockey. So it is with the NHL, a league that takes itself so seriously that it frequently can’t recognize, or simply dismisses, the seriousness of its own fans – whether it’s when they’re actually enjoying themselves, or when they’re simply asking for the league to live up to expectations. The NHL hasn’t stopped Carolina’s celebrations, and it likely won’t, presumably as long as they don’t spread; the NHL can’t really take a joke, after all. Which is maybe all the more reason to laugh at it sometimes, like a bunch of jerks.

source: theguardian.com