TURIN, Italy – A rock named Peter Forsberg, in a very hard place, suited up for Team Sweden twice this weekend in spite of groin problems that have cost the Flyers 16 games, leading to a public rebuke from team Chairman Ed Snider.
Forsberg dressed, but didn’t play in yesterday’s 2-1 win against the Americans as a planned precaution. He will take a regular shift tomorrow to make both his homeland and himself happy, while the people who are paying him $5.5 million this season cringe.
“I want to win another gold medal,” Forsberg, who was close to his second return from the problem this season anyway, told Flyers GM Bob Clarke. Tied by a collective bargaining agreement to their best player’s desires, Flyers front office people then asked each other: “Didn’t Peter say he wanted to win another Stanley Cup?”
Truth is, Forsberg wants to win both. Problem is, they currently seem mutually exclusive, as they did to the Rangers Saturday night when Jaromir Jagr went down bleeding from the head, fortunately without a concussion.
Bill Daly, Gary Bettman’s right-hand-man, says the NHL may take its toys and go home after Vancouver in 2010. Of course, we heard this after Nagano, when neither Canada nor the U.S. appeared in the gold medal game and much less after Salt Lake City, when they both did.
If Canada wins again, we’ll see where it goes from here, hopefully to 2014, over the squeals of the ostriches. The risk to NHL teams remains worth the gain for the game, even if the last people to know this would be the same owners who, to guarantee profitability, made their league go away for a full season.
These are many of the same marketing masters who have gone to a schedule in which the biggest stars play cities in the other conference only once every three years. So don’t tell us they always know what’s best for them, even though, having negotiated a CBA with a cap but no revenue sharing, practically all they think about are themselves.
It’s all about the business, not about the game, which never shines to the degree it does during an Olympics or World Cup. The millionaires give up vacations to play for nothing, some because they feel pressure back home, more of them because an eight-hour flight to eight games in 12 days is an ordeal they’ll gladly suffer for an honor
and experience they treasure.
Guys get hurt in NHL games because there are too many of them in too few days, because 82 games of revenue are deemed necessary. And only the Olympics put the risk over the top?
Just start the 2010 season another week early and end it another week late. Do whatever makes the Olympics more workable for the NHL, and do it without fear that a league congratulating itself for increasing revenues after an entirely dark year will be damaged by suffering dark February weeks while its best gate draws are on television practically every day.
However disappointing NBC’s ratings have been for all the Olympics, not just hockey, more people still are watching NHL players than do on OLN.
Mario Lemieux came to Salt Lake with a bad hip, played through it, and then not another game that season for Pittsburgh. But Steve Yzerman hobbled to the medal, took time off and still led Detroit to another Stanley Cup.
Jagr didn’t protect himself on that hit, which could have occurred in an NHL game, too. Stuff happens to players during offseasons, in home accidents, in ways we’ll never know and against which teams can’t insure.
Four years ago, the heart of Lemieux, the Penguins player, won over the entrepreneurial interests of Lemieux, the Penguins owner. There is something pure and wonderful about that, the reason why they play and the reason why we watch. But Mario not only brought home gold, even common sense: What’s good for the game ultimately will prove good for the business.