Canucks and Beyond

The Joys of PPV (and Other Canucks Fan Injustices)

10/29/2007 at 10:33pm EDT

An email from a friend today is rather illuminating about what it’s like to be a Canucks fan lately. Hard to know whether to laugh or cry. (well, not really—“crying” is pretty much where it’s at…)

Michael (who, incidentally, happens to be the author of this great hockey book) writes:

Last night, while channel surfing during a World Series commercial break, I stumbled across the Canucks’ pay per view game against the perfidious Red Wings, apparently being aired gratis on Shaw Cable, channel 4 here in Vancouver. I called a couple of friends to let them know about this apparent pay per view promotion—of which I had heard nary an inkling—and we all settled in to watch the rest of the game, as it was now late in the first period.

Right on cue, the Canucks bungled a play in the Wings’ zone when Kevin Bieksa pinched in to whiff at a puck (to be fair, a couple of his teammates had also missed the puck) and before you can say “elite hockey team” two Wings were racing back the other way with only Willie Mitchell to stop them by stopping the pass. He didn’t, and Roberto Luongo had committed to the shooter and just like that, the puck was in the net with less than a minute to play in the period.

Oh, well, lots of game left I thought. But nope, the good people at Shaw pulled the plug seconds later, at the end of the first period, with the blue screen now telling us to go order the rest of the game on the pay per view site.

As a rule of thumb, it’s not good commercial practice to raise the price, as it were, when you’ve just had such a stunning display of product inferiority.

Indeed. Not to mention, there’s something about forking out money for specific matches on PPV that makes me exponentially more annoyed about everything to do with the game.

For instance, aside from what unfolded on the ice, it didn’t help that that my own PPV purchase didn’t start actually showing the game till about 6 minutes into the first period. Instead I was treated to a post-game broadcast of the Edmonton-Anaheim game during that time.

Without audio. Sweet geezus.

And for annoying bonus points today, NHL.com was linking this photo from the front page of their site as today’s “Frozen Moment.” It was taken at last night’s game.

image

At this point, I’m rethinking whether it’s wise to admit publicly that I even am a Canucks’ fan. (Or I suppose I could just start drinking more. That might not be a bad plan, either…)

Let’s just hope the two games coming up soon against Colorado provide some redemption for this Detroit fiasco.

I’m getting sort of desperate to make fun of someone else besides my own favorite team.
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*minor update to the post at 8pm PT

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