Globe and Mail article equates hockey on outs with Strombo

 #nhl #hnic #cbc #oilers
John Doyle from the Globe and Mail writes a seemingly convincing article that hockey is on the outs where baseball, basketball, and soccer are in because no one at the bar he was at was watching the Stanley Cup final between Pittsburgh and San Jose.

Ron mclean and george stromboulopoulos
(CHRIS YOUNG / THE CANADIAN PRESS)  

He further equates the demise of hockey with Hockey Night In Canada's host George Stromboulopoulos, assumingly hired because he could appeal to a younger crowd, getting re-replaced with elder hockey statesmen Ron MacLean who Doyle implies apparently doesn't appeal to a younger crowd, although everyone knows MacLean knows 10000% more about the people and players in the sport than everyone else combined.

He even makes the reach and blames Harper's Conservative government for latching hockey to Canadian patriotism and because conservatism is old and on the outs with the kids, so is our national winter sport.  How Liberal of him!

Nevermind the Olympic hockey gold medals.

Nevermind that all the Canadian NHL arenas (except Vancouver obviously) continually sellout their games.

Nevermind that no Canadian teams made the playoffs for the first time in a long time.

Nevermind that the drop in the Canadian dollar and sluggish economy has had an effect on Canadian small market teams like Winnipeg and Ottawa being able to afford to pay top free agents.

Nevermind that maybe a lot of hockey fans just stayed home to watch it.  I did.

While I'm not saying that baseball, basketball, and soccer are not "in"--they are more so in the bubbly centre-of-the-universe that Doyle further exemplifies for the T Dot world, where these teams reside, but maybe, just maybe Doyle should branch out to other parts of this great country, away from a couple big city Toronto bars and thinking that award shows matter for most fans who haven't really cared about anyway, to see that hockey is most definitely alive and well in every other town, small and medium-sized, in every nook and cranny, and more importantly, in the hearts of the majority of Canadians.

And if he bothered to mention or perhaps watch Rogers Hometown Hockey, he'd see that its lovable host, one Ron MacLean, is doing just that.

This article was written without even having mentioned Connor McDavid.