I know that I have a tendency to overreact sometimes. This is not one of those times. I offer that as a disclaimer, before continuing.
Friday, the NHL released the schedule for the 2013-2014 regular season, and with it the names of the new divisions. As I read the announcement, I had to do a double take. Three out of the four names make sense, although I’m not sure how Detroit is associated with the Atlantic Ocean, but I can forgive that.
What I can’t forgive is the name of what essentially the old Patrick division. Creating a case of one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other, someone in the NHL front office thought that it was a good idea to name the remodeled Patrick the METROPOLITAN DIVISION.
I can’t print my initial reaction, because it included language not appropriate for this platform. I decided that it might be a better idea if I waited to write this rant, just in case I was overreacting, and being resistant to change. I woke up this morning, and over my morning tea, attempted to read the announcement again, with my mind opened.
My reaction was pretty much the same.
As someone who primarily writes about the teams within this unfortunately named division, I would like to lodge a formal complaint. Dear Gary Bettman, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? Did you reassemble that brilliant focus group that led you to try and put a positive spin on the lockout? This is a pretty embarrassing move for a league that can ill afford any more embarrassing moves.
How is this good from a marketing stand point? I don’t know one person who thinks that name is a good idea. I know that no matter how many times I type it or say it, it keeps grating on my last good nerve. And that nerve was just healing up from a lockout shortened season, and a pretty futile effort by my New York Rangers.
There were many other options to choose from. They could have reached back into hockey lore, and restored the division names I grew up with. I used to love the old division names, because it taught me something about the history of the game. I remember asking my dad what the names meant. It made the sport stand out from all the others, which had generic names. If the league didn’t want to revert in the face of so-called progress, they could have given nods to the legendary players that raised this league upon their shoulders.
How did this idea even get out of the boardroom? How did it get from being a scribble on some cubical rat’s pad of post-its to being the most viable option? I mean, the other possibilities could not have been that bad, could they? What was another option, the honey boo boo division? Or, how about the ambiguously effeminate division? And, let’s just get this out of all of our systems right now – the metro-sexual division.
With that said, I doubt that we will have to tolerate this name for more than a few years, and it will go down in hockey history as just another misstep by a league that has a few. Remember the glowing puck? This is honestly worse than that, but even then, someone in the NHL’s NYC offices will realize they’ve made a terrible error, and move quickly to correct it. But, for now, I will have to get used to typing the Metropolitan division, or the Metro, as I have shortened to in my head already, and you, loyal reader, will have to get used to reading it for the foreseeable future.
Whether we like it or not, Metropolitan is the LAST EFFIN’ WORD.
Thanks for reading – as always feel free to leave comments below and follow me on twitter @BigMick99. Give the rest of the hockey department a follow while you’re at it – @lastwordBKerr, @IswearGaa and @LastWordOnNHL, and follow the site @lastwordonsport.
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Main photo credit: Robert Kowal via photopin cc
