2023 Vancouver sports media thread.

[MaxVerstappen33]

I cant find the old media threads. 

 

Anyway Sir Dan Russell was on a podcast recently.  These shows Dan are doing are pretty good if you are 30 or older. So many memories. Here's part one https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubXlwcmluY2VnZW9yZ2Vub3cuY29tL2ZlZWQv/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubXlwcmluY2VnZW9yZ2Vub3cuY29tLz9wb3N0X3R5cGU9cG9kY2FzdCZwPTE3MDM2MA?sa=X&ved=0CAcQkfYCahcKEwiwx-Cx-4j8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNA

 

I believe it is part one where Dan says that the Pauser was at a Canucks game. And he was giving it to a Canucks player. "You are nothing but a fringe player!" Who was it ? None other than future GM Jim Benning. 

 

Dan says that he might consider a podcast in the new year  He has some old material that he will release on the air and stuff. Mixed in with current content. 

 

One more thing about sports media now. It blows my mind that we cant get Sportsnet 650 in Abbotsford or Mission. Dan Russels Sportstalk was province wide. So was the play by play. You could get it in Prince George. But now, we cant get play by play in freaking Abbotsford. So when youre driving or something in the lower mainland , you cant get the game. You have to use data to listen to a broadcast 35 minutes away. That is just unacceptable. 

 

 

 

 

[goalie13]

I never realized Dan Russell had been knighted.  

 

Back in the day, living in Kelowna, I used to be able to set my stereo to record Sportstalk every night, then I would take the tape with me to work the next day.

 

I agree on the 650 thing.  It's hit or miss whether you can pick it up here on the Island, so I resort to podcasts most of the time, or Donnie & Dahli on Chek.

[Gurn]

so many people went to bed with Dan Russell; I'm surprised he didn't get some kind of disease.

[Crabcakes]

It depends where you are in Abby.  Some places you can hear it, others are a wash out.  I think there is interference either from the airport or from Bellingham which is closer than Vancouver.  But you're right, CKNW has a way stronger signal.

 

In my opinion, 650 is very much a budget station.  1 guest an hour if you're lucky and it's almost always a Sportsnet employee so they're free.  The quality is getting better but the shows are all based around some schnooks opinion.  

[awalk]

2 hours ago, MaxVerstappen33 said:

I cant find the old media threads. 

 

Anyway Sir Dan Russell was on a podcast recently.  These shows Dan are doing are pretty good if you are 30 or older. So many memories. Here's part one https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubXlwcmluY2VnZW9yZ2Vub3cuY29tL2ZlZWQv/episode/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cubXlwcmluY2VnZW9yZ2Vub3cuY29tLz9wb3N0X3R5cGU9cG9kY2FzdCZwPTE3MDM2MA?sa=X&ved=0CAcQkfYCahcKEwiwx-Cx-4j8AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQNA

 

I believe it is part one where Dan says that the Pauser was at a Canucks game. And he was giving it to a Canucks player. "You are nothing but a fringe player!" Who was it ? None other than future GM Jim Benning. 

 

Dan says that he might consider a podcast in the new year  He has some old material that he will release on the air and stuff. Mixed in with current content. 

 

One more thing about sports media now. It blows my mind that we cant get Sportsnet 650 in Abbotsford or Mission. Dan Russels Sportstalk was province wide. So was the play by play. You could get it in Prince George. But now, we cant get play by play in freaking Abbotsford. So when youre driving or something in the lower mainland , you cant get the game. You have to use data to listen to a broadcast 35 minutes away. That is just unacceptable. 

 

 

 

 

The Pauser, wow ... that is a name I have not heard in a while! 

[Ghostsof1915]

Does The Pauser qualify as the first Troll?

[MaxVerstappen33]

15 minutes ago, Ghostsof1915 said:

Does The Pauser qualify as the first Troll?

I think so. The first troll. He got his start in the analog era. Sadly he passed away about 8 years ago. 

 

Speaking of trolls , there's this oddball on Youtube that uploaded a bunch of prank calls to Vancouver media through the years. 

 

 

[MaxVerstappen33]

Niel Macrae (RIP) channeling 2022. The rain, lack of effort from the players. Nothing changes

 

 

[Barnstorm]

Dan Russell was great. Knowledgeable and pulled no punches for anyone. I remember him and Brian Burke getting into it a few times. Funny how radio dropped off so far and so quickly. 

[Westcoasting]

19 minutes ago, MaxVerstappen33 said:

Niel Macrae (RIP) channeling 2022. The rain, lack of effort from the players. Nothing changes

 

 

One funny thought about Neil… Canucks had just switched to the Orca jersey and he said something like this “ I don’t care for the whale on the jersey it looks like he is reaching up to nip your wallet out of more dollars to watch hockey” lmao

[Alflives]

1 hour ago, Ghostsof1915 said:

Does The Pauser qualify as the first Troll?

I don’t know about Troll.  That suggests he was trying to get people to react.  I think he loved our team and wanted us t build a winner.  Kind of like many of us here.  We are frustrated with our owner’s insisted upon direction.  The Pauser would have been fantastic talking about the Aquilini ownership and the Benning era.  

[Baratheon]

1 hour ago, MaxVerstappen33 said:

I think so. The first troll. He got his start in the analog era. Sadly he passed away about 8 years ago. 

 

Speaking of trolls , there's this oddball on Youtube that uploaded a bunch of prank calls to Vancouver media through the years. 

 

 

Who is the host with Tony?  Kinda reminds me of a Simpsons character.

[Locke Lamora]

1 hour ago, Barnstorm said:

Dan Russell was great. Knowledgeable and pulled no punches for anyone. I remember him and Brian Burke getting into it a few times. Funny how radio dropped off so far and so quickly. 

Give me current, and ancient Dan Russell than the majority of what they call on-air “talent” these days on 650, lol.

 

Neil Macrae was a twit. 

[MaxVerstappen33]

30 minutes ago, Baratheon said:

Who is the host with Tony?  Kinda reminds me of a Simpsons character.

Yeah I didn't recognize him either. Maybe someone will remember

[MaxVerstappen33]

Burke on Tony G and the 1991 draft

 

 

Edited December 21, 2022 by MaxVerstappen33

[wildcam]

Dan Russell was the best always listed to him.. His shows were always entertaining and they started in the evening..

Best talk sport talk show in B.C.. Nobody has come close to him...

[skeena1]

This thread needs to be pinned.

Mods?

[MaxVerstappen33]

This Canucks podcast is a couple of unapologetic despair merchants. You gotta listen to the opening montage at least once.   

 

https://ihatethisteampod.podbean.com/

 

[ToTellTheTruth]

On 12/20/2022 at 3:57 PM, Westcoasting said:

One funny thought about Neil… Canucks had just switched to the Orca jersey and he said something like this “ I don’t care for the whale on the jersey it looks like he is reaching up to nip your wallet out of more dollars to watch hockey” lmao

Back then the NHL did not control the media, nor was the media rights held by a single company that could control the message.

 

You can see now how being honestly critical of poor play and expressing an opinion has been labelled "trolling" mostly because it isn't towing the company line.

 

The loser point was pandered as being a reward for trying hard, but to many media personalities saw through this for what it was, an artificial use of stats to make teams seem closer in talent than reality. I often would post a team could lose all 82 games and still have 82 points or that a team only had to win 11 games all year if they lost the rest in OT. Later I started noticing that teams that were out of the playoffs by the first week of December rarely ever made the playoffs at the end of the season. I posted this and got bombarded with attacks from the controlled marketing departments.

 

But it has become adopted and enough fools actually believed what is spoon fed them. So I started posting what the actual records were, wins vs losses period. No loser points and got much more accurate league standings. Of course this was ignored for years and again I was attacked and banned from forums.

 

I am still a little off with the new media mostly because the NHL and Rogers has inadvertently created a culture of fans that believe whatever is posted and the media started to project whatever message they wanted on what fans wanted. Fans were impatient, ignorant, uneducated, panicky whatever they wanted and it got really bad when this new power was used to create and fuel team support or disgust. The Sedins became thugs, cheaters, weak and divers. That was just an example during the cup run.

 

For years of the Benning era it was obvious where this team was going, that they had no idea of what to do but they controlled enough of the media that if those media shows didn't follow the team lead then they didn't get any interviews or were able to ask questions, refused credentials or invitations to fly with the team. 

 

Eventually fans got educated in the school of hard knocks, enough lies were told, Spend to the cap, the team must be good right? They spent all that money. Build through the draft by a scouting guru right? But there were no draft picks or not enough and then they were traded away because that made the team better, but it didn't. It was all Gillis's fault, everything for 8 years until Benning got exposed as totally incompetent with over paid contracts for marginal players with clauses, the shear number of traded away draft picks, the team strangled every year by self inflicted capping out so no work could be done so none was, finally capping it off with letting many FA walk for nothing instead of making trades even though the entire world could see there was no way to re-sign most of those, but there was surprise he let them all go and stated "we ran out of time".

 

Even then it took a flying banner, much booing and finally jersey's thrown on the ice to break the NHL's hold on misleading the market's angst.

 

Even now this new regime has started off with the standard, big contract signing because "He is a 99 point player", selling the contract and player points, followed quickly with the Mikheyev contract and the Kuzmenko signing spending to the cap so future trades are almost impossible but not addressing the team's deeper problems. Then comes the "The fans just want a playoff round" statements trying to make it sound like the fans are idiots, trying to create a false message from fans that didn't take hold this time. The result is once again the team was well out of a playoff spot by December and now is 10 points out. So the last 3 months of "playoff, playoffs, playoffs" hopefully should be put to bed, finally.

 

Now will come the scare tactics, "A rebuild will take a decade", " the team will lose more and not be interesting" but they forget the team hasn't been very interesting for almost a decade and they certainly have not been winning. Petey will not want to stay, something he has already mildly stated and it will take too long because Hughes, Demko and Petey's best years will be gone, used up rebuilding. Big deal, they are not the team, they are just on the team and over the last 50 years there have been lots of players just on the team. Maybe tht has been the problem, too much trying to emulate the original six teams where players play for most of their careers on one team. FA changed that or should have, but then there is the unwritten rule(s) still.

 

The truth of the matter is teams can be rebuilt in very short time, many teams have done that, some twice while the Canucks languished in Tier 4.

The cap restricts trades, true it does somewhat especially if the team is hell bent of winning NOW but that same cap problem is a boon for a rebuilding team through the use of retention, which is trading some cap space in a trade. For teams that are at that point of their "now" windows this is a huge extra value in any trade. Not many teams can waste money on retention but this team can afford to and has for a decade, wasted money to achieve nothing.

 

All of this would have been pointed by an independent media and now is with social media taking hold. How about more truth, if it looks like sheet and smells like sheet is it necessary to taste it?

 

As Macrae would say, "they should be playing better, harder so other teams will want them" or Botch, "Is there a plan? or is it another no plan, plan?"

 

 

[MaxVerstappen33]

He's just doing a hit. Not coming out of retirement or anything

 

Dave Pratt : It’s Official!!! I’m on Donnie and Dhali-The Team on Friday on CHEK!

 

https://twitter.com/DavePrattSports/status/1613759243655708673?s=20&t=FEzJEthAhNMDdBaci0Vucw

 

Edited January 13, 2023 by MaxVerstappen33