Bidding Adieu to the Bozos
Welcoming the Maniacs

Alas, the trio that I nicknamed "Bozos the Clown," will not be returning to the NHL on NBC next season. Brett Hull will be in the front office of the Dallas Stars, Bill Clement will presumably continue to facilitate/analyze on Versus, and Ray Ferraro, well, the less said about Ray Ferraro, the better.

Truth told, I didn't really mind the Bozos last year. More often than not, I found their idiocy hysterically entertaining because, as previously noted during my live blogs of the Cup finals, I'm pretty easy to amuse when it comes to hockey commentating. But perhaps that's the problem: I've been a hockey fan since I was five years old (for twenty years now, so you do the math). I've played the game casually (not in an organized fashion, however), and as I grew up watching a sibling play the game in various extremely competitive organized fashions, I did learn the game. Add to that the advent of the Internet, and the end result is that I am a typical know-it-all hockey fan. I am pretentious. I do not need the Bozos to tell me how the momentum switched (I can pretty easily discern that for myself), or why the power play isn't working (when the other team is blocking your shooting lanes you tend to need to adjust rather than to continue to employ the usual tactics that are no longer working against this opponent). That said, I rely on the Bozos not so much for "help me understand what I'm seeing" but rather for "inside information that even I who spend far too much time reading about hockey on the Internet" don't know because I don't have the "proximity" that actual journalists do. (Sometimes it's better not to have that proximity, but sometimes proximity does reveal things that those who don't have it can't quite "get" in the exact same way.)

Considering what I'd like in a broadcast, then, entertainment + inside information provided by close proximity to the players and powers-that-be, I'm willing to give Pierre McGuire and Mike Milbury a shot. Pierre won me over by screaming how "unconscionable" it was for Alexei Cheraponav to drop at this year's entry draft. At least in terms of entertainment, McGuire fits the bill. And as for Mad Mike? Despite the fact that I'll forever remember Milbury for calling the late Badger Bob Johnson a "professor of goonism," I always loved Milbury's antics behind the bench. He entertained me, and additionally, his antics usually lessened his own cause and helped my team, so how could I not love Mad Mike?

Milbury and McGuire do know the game, Milbury's record as the general manager of the Islanders aside. So long as they actually stay true to their real personalities and don't get condescending (please: I know what off-sides is, and even if someone who is watching in the States doesn't, they're more likely to figure it out without being talked down to the way I wasn't talked down to when I was five years old and learning the rules of the game), Milbury and McGuire have the chance to be more effective than the trio of Bozos the Clown were this past season. Plus, I would hope that actual fireworks might start when Milbury and McGuire disagree. From past experience with both men, potential fireworks between the two has an actual shot at being entertaining. If there's one thing Mike Milbury knows how to do, it's put on a show. And, of course, Milbury and McGuire have been around long enough to have acquired endless stories with which to regale me.

But Bozos the Clown isn't going to work for next season. The team of double M? Mad Men? Oh, dear, the danger of thinking aloud, what about the Maniacs? Hmm. For now, at least until other suggestions appear, I'll have to go with looking forward to the first television appearance of the Maniacs.

And, in Pittsburgh, at least I have Bob Errey to entertain me endlessly. It's been too long since I've heard the phrase "long stick." Time to go to google video and find Errey fawning over Staal's long stick....will Errey have a catch phrase for Letang next season, or is that only reserved for players out of Peterborough?

First game is less than 70 days away, and in addition to looking forward to the progress of the kids, I must wonder: How will Errey entertain* me this season?


*Entertainment, for me, can and does often entail laughing at things that other people; e.g., for example, my hockey-playing sibling, just deem profoundly ingratiating.*