By the time you read this, I may be dead. The newspaper industry’s taboo against openly discussing the scriptwriters who create the elaborate soap operas we call “professional sports” is a strong one, and viciously enforced. The money we make from pretending that sports aren’t fake is too important to our bottom line. Good people who have tried to write articles like this have found their careers and lives cut short.
Unfortunately, the NHL, its creative staff increasingly laden with third- and fourth-generation mediocrities, started to spin its wheels as any monopolistic institution does in the end. It became the CBC of sports. Head showrunner Gary Bettman adopted an ambitious strategy of colonizing new American markets, but failed to bring new blood into the writing room.
According to my sources, the NBA planned to have the Raptors story arc peak around 2022, but the “league” realized last fall that it had to act fast when the conservative, sluggish NHL showed disturbing signs of devising a Maple Leafs Stanley Cup storyline. This was the thing everyone had feared: that the NHL’s writers would finally play the trump card they had clung to for a half-century.
colbycosh This is really great