So your favourite team is playing a key game against one of those teams that the NHL media has been raving about – be it because they happen to be one of the better teams in the league with a chance to win the Cup, or because a certain superstar player is the face of that franchise – and you know that this game is important because of either of the aforementioned reasons, or something more important to you as a fan of your team. You know this game must be won; your favourite team must have those two points. No, they will win this game because your team actually happens to be better. They are statistically a superior team to the rivals, higher up in the standings, and have scored far more goals than them during this season…
But then, wham! Out of nowhere, the team you are rooting for has somehow been scored on three times in only the first period. To make matters worse, they start racking up penalties later on in the game, allowing Mr. Superstar to score a hat trick, thus putting the icing on the cake for his team, and his ever-inflating ego. But how could this happen? Your team was supposed to be better than this; you were superior in every way! Something just doesn’t seem right…
And that’s just an example situation which could simply be bias from that fan’s point of view. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that they are wrong. Of course, the fans of that other team will see things the exact opposite way, saying that their team deserved to win, they played with more heart, they played fair, etc, etc…
Only The Simpsons can provide an answer…
But yeah, sometimes you can’t help but feel these certain suspicions after a game has taken place. And neither can I. There’s just something about some of the results I’ve seen in recent years that do seem very convenient for the team that has won, almost as if someone has been paid a sweet amount of money behind the scenes to make the convenient losses happen. I won’t go into too much detail, but I’ll just point out three recent examples which I personally feel are quite notable for their apparent (and possible) riggings:
Example A: The 2007-08 NHL Premiere in London, between the Los Angeles Kings and the Anaheim Ducks. In the first game on the Saturday, the Kings were designated the home team, and beat their SoCal rivals in a fairly lopsided 4-1 win. But then on the Sunday, the Ducks were made the home team instead, even having their own goal horn replace that of the Kings, and guess what: they won 4-1, the exact same score of the previous game, but this time in their favour instead. Yes, even as a Ducks fan I can quite comfortably say that at least one of these games, if not both, was probably rigged to keep the fans entertained.
Example B: The 2008-09 Stanley Cup Final. In the previous year, the Detroit Red Wings went all the way and beat the NHL’s apparent favourites, Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins, in their own city in game 6, winning the Stanley Cup. Strangely enough, a year later, these exact same teams played each other again in the Final, but this time with the Pens winning game 7 at Detroit, thus seeing the NHL’s favourite player winning the Stanley Cup for the first time.
Example C: The entire 2009-10 Phoenix Coyotes season. Throughout the franchise’s tenure in Arizona, the team has been seen by some as irrelevant, bleeding money for years while maintaining a “national footprint” that the NHL, or rather Gary Bettman, apparently wants. The team has been mediocre at best for most of their time in the Southwest, and in 2009 filed for bankruptcy, thus making their future in Arizona uncertain. But then, after a lot of things involving legal stuff and Jim Balsille that I can’t be bothered to go into, the NHL bought the team, dead set on keeping them in Phoenix for at least another year. And suddenly, in time for the 2009-10 season after not making many, if any apparent changes, the Coyotes were much better than they had ever been, and would go on to earn their best regular season record in franchise history. They then made it as far as game seven in the first round of the playoffs against the Red Wings… it’s highly possible that the Coyotes’ conveniently miraculous turnaround year was an attempt to draw more fans in (come on, they are owned by the league!), but this apparent plan failed, as the Coyotes finished with the league’s worst overall attendance, and continued to bleed money.
Now I’m not saying that these events were actually rigged, but it’s just speculation on my behalf. I have nothing to prove that these games could have been manipulated in any way… in fact, it’s very hard to determine if and how a hockey game could even be rigged in the first place. With it being such a fast paced sport, there’s no way that the players would be going by a script that has been given to them by the league. And even if the players on one team were being offered money to lose, there’s not even the slightest chance that they’d want to. The only thing left to blame now is the on-ice officials: maybe they’re being paid to give unfair calls during games to one team, thus giving the other team a better chance of winning? Of course, one could also argue that the officials are being paid to do their jobs, nothing more or nothing less.
But how would an unbiased article such as this be complete without suggesting proof of the opposite point of view: that hockey is just unpredictable and thus just cannot really be rigged?
Let’s take a look at the 2010 playoffs: although Phoenix did make it to game seven, they lost to Detroit in a very one-sided 6-1 game. Then over in the East, we had the Philadelphia Flyers, down 3-0 in their second round series against the Boston Bruins. History wasn’t exactly on their side, but the Flyers basically said “F**k history” and won four straight games, being only the third team in NHL history to achieve such a feat. And how could I forget to mention the Montreal Canadiens, and their surprising upset against the NHL best Washington Capitals, as well as their victory over the NHL’s favourite team, Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins, in the second round? Surely if the latter series was rigged, the NHL wouldn’t have allowed their beloved poster boy to lose such an embarrassing defeat.
So what is my overall conclusion based on this speculation? Well, it’s hard to say whether or not it’s true. It must be difficult to actually rig a game as, like I said earlier, hockey is such a fast-paced game that the players couldn’t possibly be following a set “script” of any kind. If anything, the only possible way that a game could be rigged is if the officials were being paid to officiate in favour of a certain team. Whether or not this actually happens is something we’ll probably never know, but sometimes we just can’t help but wonder.
I’m Wildwing64, and this has been a One Timer at PowerPlayGoal.com