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6 - Orono Weekly Times 1937 - 2012 · Celebrating 75 Years Wednesday, October 24, 2012 Basic Black by Arthur Black The good old hawking game As I type these words the NHL lockout/strike/labour action/five-on-five power play is entering its umpty-seventh consecutive week. A nation yawns. It is hard to work up enthusiasm over a back-alley donnybrook in which millionaires face off against billionaires. Vincent Lecavalier, captain of the Lightning, a team which plays out of that hockey hotbed, Tampa Bay, isn't getting paid during the lockout but he's probably got enough stuffed under the mattress to get by. Vincent has an eightyfive million dollar ­ yes, you read right ­ an $85,000,000 contract to chase a rubber disc in various arenas for the Lightning until 2019. He's by far the best-paid NHL-er but the rest of the players aren't living on table scraps. The average salary tops out at just under 2.5 million simoleons a year. I stopped seriously following NHL hockey about four decades ago when the average salary was $25,000 a year. Star players like Bobby Hull and Gordie Howe did better ­ they were up in the hundred thousand-a-year range -- but tears must cascade down their heavily-scarred cheeks when they hear that today the most tangle-footed, knuckle-dragging bench-sitting goon in the league makes 25 times as much as they ever did. How can NHL owners shovel out that kind of money for salaries and still manage to be rolling in dough? The answer's a simple one: advertising. In 1972 all teams in the NHL played on a rink surrounded by blank white boards and the single sponsor was Imperial Oil. Check those boards now. They are festooned and bespackled with ads for insurance companies, hockey gear manufacturers, banks, mortgage firms, department stores, beer, deodorants and cough medications. Likewise, the telecasts are splattered with ads for everything from tires to potato chips. That's why each year media moguls go into vicious feeding frenzies trying to outbid each other for the privilege of putting hockey on TV ­ and by extension into the living rooms of millions of hockey fans, AKA consumers. The fans pay the ultimate price and not just for the blitz of blurbs, plugs, jingles and 30-second spots that plague the at-home viewer ­ those ads dictate the pace of the game. First-time attendees at a live NHL game are often stunned at how often the on-ice action is unexpectedly halted for several minutes during which the players from both teams skate around in aimless figureeights, waiting for a daisy chain of TV commercials to cycle through the broadcast. The NHL holds no monopoly on hockey advertising. A photo in the sports section of my newspaper shows Boston's Joe Thornton streaking up the ice, but not in a Bruins uniform. Instead he's wearing the colours of HC Davos, a European pro team based in Switzerland. Thornton, along with dozens of other locked-out NHL-ers, is trying to stay in shape by playing overseas for the duration of the lockout. But it's not Thornton's uniform that caught my eye ­ it's what's plastered all over Thornton's uniform. Advertisements. I can decipher ads on his skates, on his hockey stockings, his hockey pants and gloves. There are at least a dozen ad patches on his hockey sweater and undoubtedly more on the back side of it. His helmet carries a banner flogging Skoda automobiles. Thornton looks like he just skated through a garbage bin full of advertising flyers. Ironically, in the same issue there's a picture of Paul Henderson holding up the hockey jersey he was wearing when he scored the most famous goal ever ­ the one that gave Team Canada it's triumph over the Russians back in 1972. The jersey features a large red abstract leaf, Henderson's number, 19, the word CANADA ­ and that's it. No ads, not even Henderson's name. But that was four decades ago. Back when hockey, not advertising, was the name of the game. CHURCH DIRECTORY Orono United Church with Reverend Ceri Rees 111 Church Street N., Orono 905-485-5502 orono.uc@rogers.com Sunday October 28th, 10:30 a.m. service with Sunday School Presentation Sunday School Program Everyone welcome Wheelchair accessible Anglican Churches The Rev. Canon Tim Foley St. Saviour's Orono 23 Mill Street 905-885-0730 9:30 a.m.- Holy Communion Sunday School Youth Group Coffee and Fellowship to follow. www.stsavioursorono.ca St. George's Newcastle 250 Mill St. S. · 905-885-0730 8 a.m. - Communion 11:00 a.m. - Worship , Sunday School · Holy Communion 1st & 3rd Sunday · Morning Prayer 2nd & 4th Sunday Coffee and Fellowship to follow. 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