1) You begin your reply by ridiculing my comment, then you ask where is the ridicule in the Canes' post-win celebration...I guess common sense as to what constitutes dismissive behaviour in hockey is a completely unknown concept to you? Running up the score and taunting a bench or celebrating in front of a bench is akin to the post-game celebration. Sure, a team can do it. That type of behavior has typically been held in contempt by hockey traditionalists. Perhaps now, it's also entirely acceptable?
2)Forgive me. There hasn't been constant speculation that Carolina amongst a couple of other teams in the league isn't an organization primed for relocation? That increase in attendance...The one that still can't average 14,000 fans per game? That one? As for "fan interaction"...I'm a Leafs fan, as to what "fan interaction" means concretely at a hockey game apart from attendance and applause, I'm at a loss. Fan interaction...Is that some new fandangled euphemism for audience dancing after a win along with your NHL hockey club that has to double as an improv troop in order to sustain your loyalty and interest? Mea culpa.
3) When a team celebrates The Cup, it's an entirely different celebration. For one, it's not contrived. It doesn't seek to equivocate winning the toughest trophy in team sports to win, with a talent show. It is an authentic, plainly understood, time-honored tradition that arose naturally and with respect for the other team's efforts. It's dignified. It's not frivolous. There's an obvious distinction between those two types of celebration.
As for justifying it because it involves the fans...It's a non-sequitur for me. The "entertainment" is the sport. If the realities are such that certain markets need a glowing puck, or wacky fan involved celebrations at the end of a game, or anthems performed in rap or interpretive dance, I view that as excessive and obscure to what I've come to understand the game of hockey to entail. And obviously, others who understand the game and it's traditions see the same cause for criticism.
CC from 2019:
When fans elect to throw hats on the ice to celebrate their team's goals, that's not the same as an organization needing to find ways to otherwise entertain it's nontraditional hockey market paying public by having it's team celebrate as knocked down bowling pins or lightning struck frost giants in order to incentivize the fans' return to the arena for the next home game.
Cringeworthy celebrations by one struggling franchise in the NHL isn't the metric by which traditional hockey fans are worried that the Stanley Cup is all of a sudden going to be named The Caitlyn Jenner Cup. This isn't a social issue within hockey. It's a minor irritant that deserves address given it's plainly outlier nature. It took up the amount of time it should have on Coach's Corner and it's garnered the amount of time due to it on social media.
Athletes are firstly, athletes. Sport entertains, but sport isn't theatre. Theatricality is contrived. Entertainment as is plainly understood is artificial. When sport becomes indivisible with entertainment, we typically call it professional wrestling because it's artificial in it's outcome. It's genuine in it's artificiality, but it doesn't exclude manipulating a contrived outcome the way an authentic sport like hockey requires.
The purpose of hockey is to win hockey games. The entertainment of hockey is found in the authentic competition. I think what Don Cherry and others have honed in on is the artificiality with which secondary entertainment measures are suddenly required in order to draw interest to the primary utility of the sport of hockey played at it's highest level.
You said: "No team should be feeling ridiculed because it is completely detached from who they are playing. Ridiculing would be Elias Lindholm's reaction after winning in Carolina."
Or perhaps Lindholm is simply reciprocating in kind? That's the plain inference from many who watched him mock Carolina's new "tradition". If the opposing team feels that it's ridicule then that's their problem, you say? You mean like running up a score and having a player celebrate in an excessive fashion? I'd say no...It's not the opposing team's problem. It's the club or player who has been informed about customary hockey norms who chooses to impose his/their singular abstract behavior on to the opposition with an unreasonable expectation that they must accommodate him.
"What would be the motivation for a team that is already successful in terms of marketing? Why would they try a new strategy to gain new fans if they already have a strong market? The Carolina Hurricanes are averaging higher crowds since the 2013-14 season, so I dare say that it is helping engage their market."
Carolina has a strong market? Short of 14,000 fans on average is a strong market? Engaging their market and demonstrating increased attendance is one thing. Still not being able to fill an arena is another. By all means, provide the top five and the bottom five attendance figures (percentage) to prove your point. Am I wrong in saying that Carolina is a bottom five club with respect to attendance ? Optimism and hope aside, am I missing something from the way in which you're using the word "strong"?
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