Montreal Gazette

PersonA - (John Smith)

Member since December 20, 2011

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Recent Comments

  • Comment on Canadiens got tougher late in the season
    The irony of that article is that Van could do with blocking a few more shots a game as they are 22nd in the league in shots against a game.
  • Comment on Canadiens got tougher late in the season
    That's what I mean. It also doesn't preclude Gorges being a bad defense man. In all likelihood, different players operate in different ways with some playing a more cerebral positional game leading to blocked shots versus a pressure style which reduces the shots blocked as they are not in position to do such a thing.
  • Comment on Canadiens got tougher late in the season
    I think they just got really peeved that the bracelets didn't work as advertised and started swingin'. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Balance
  • Comment on Canadiens got tougher late in the season
    In response to HF72 b/c i cant reply for some reason. Way to selectively choose statistics to support your theories. Your stats aren't even correct with Detroit at 26th in the league. Interestingly though, Columbus is 25th in the league in blocked shots and the Rangers are 4th. I guess that shows Columbus as one of the most competent teams in the league. Blocked shots are of course important at any time. It is not a predictor of a teams ability though. I would say that it works better as an individual stat gauging a player's willingness and skill at stopping a speeding puck.
  • Comment on On to Chicago
    This is a response to the earlier post about other teams that represent populations and the opinion that none have coaches that don't speak the national language. How about Japan? Pretty much the most culturally homogenous country in the entire world. Very closed group, with elements of xenophobia embedded in their culture. Japanese national football team coach: Alberto Zaccheroni. Italian born. Little English, no Japanese. Ya it's not one of the teams you listed, but it is parallel to the Habs coaching issue. Japan chose the best coach regardless of language to represent their country.. Montreal should do the same with a hockey team whose fans speak a multitude of languages. Now, I also noticed your response to another poster saying that soccer isn’t actually as big in Japan and Sumo coaches are what we should be looking at. First, Sumo is an extremely diluted sport. There are 53 “sumo stables” across Japan with the largest representing as many as 30 wrestlers (1). This means that allegiance is diluted across the entire country with different people supporting different wrestlers. A national team is something entirely different; national teams galvanize and represent a people in a similar way that the Canadiens do Quebec. It is also interesting to note the average attendance at J league games. This simply shows a general interest in soccer which would be magnified when the national team plays. The J league attendance average is 15,797 per game while the NHL attendance average is 17,126 (2). Now I know what you’re thinking, soccer has bigger stadiums, what about the sunbelt teams dragging down the NHL. While recently the blame for attendance reductions is the sunbelt, it must be noted that even as recently as 2003-4, Bell Center attendance was not perfect (3). Add to this the fact that incomes in Canada are higher on average at 74,700 among all 2 person plus households(4) while in Japan the average income among the highest 10% is 60,000 on average(5). Ticket prices are within the same range except with regards to high end hockey tickets. Soccer tickets in Tokyo range from 26$ to 158$CDN (6). Furthermore, while some of the stadiums are larger than the Bell, some are smaller in the 15-18k range(7), but this is beside the point. The main argument is that the Japanese national team having a non-Japanese speaking coach is similar to the Canadiens having a non-French speaking coach. Sumo wrestling is by no means comparable to national soccer because of the dispersion of “teams”. Japanese soccer has risen to become an extremely popular sport in the country, the 2006 world cup had 70,000 Japanese travelling to Germany to view the games. When combined with a new influx of youth into domestic Japanese leagues(8), saying that Japanese do not find their soccer extremely important is simply ignorant. When one combines this interest in the game with the inherent aversion to foreigners and foreign influence in Japan, it provides an apt comparison for our Habs. The Japanese chose to forgo their bigotry in order to field a team that wins soccer games. Why can’t we do the same? 1. http://factsanddetails.com/japan.php?itemid=754&catid=21&subcatid=138#02 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_attendance_figures_at_domestic_professional_sports_leagues 3. http://espn.go.com/nhl/attendance/_/year/2004 4. http://www40.statcan.ca/l01/cst01/famil21a-eng.htm 5. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/45/57/41527303.pdf 6. http://www.j-league.or.jp/eng/jomocup/ticket.html 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._League_Division_1 8. http://www.tjf.or.jp/takarabako/PDF/TB09_JCN.pdf