The Workrate Newsletter — Beta Edition
- A quick welcome
- Evander Kane returns to the NHL
- Taping Out Hate
- Taxi Squad
- Revisiting “Benson”
A quick welcome
Hey y’all.
I’ve been generally blogging for a long time, whether it be on my own website or various sports and pop culture websites (and the two times an actual print newspaper let me write for them — suckers), but in the last year or two I’ve fallen off for one reason or another. I still write on Twitter, and sometimes find myself making these multiple-tweet threads which no one has the patience to read because Twitter isn’t for that.
Then, I was inspired. I’ve been following Craig Calcaterra for a very long Twitter time, and more recently he’s been putting out a newsletter called “Cup Of Coffee” which hits on baseball along with various other things he wants to talk about. Craig’s a great writer and while reading his newsletter one day, I thought “that’s it — that’s the format that might work for me.”
I’m not a sportswriter, so I’m not going to be breaking any kind of news or anything like that, and I don’t have the ability to commit the time to a daily format, so we’re going to try for once a week #fornow. This is very much a work in progress, but I don’t want to use the term “beta” because that’s been overdone, so consider this a “pilot” — like a television show. Characters will get dropped or recast, ideas will get scrapped or retooled, and there will be a lot of notes, including some from you. Yes, I want feedback, so if something’s not working or you have an idea how something could be better, let me know, either on Twitter or through this somehow (I’m still getting used to Medium and its format, which also might get scrapped or retooled.)
Anyway, it’s worth a shot, so allons-y!
Evander Kane returns to the NHL
Evander Kane made his 2021–22 NHL debut Saturday night as a member of the Edmonton Oilers, two days after signing a one-year deal with the team as an unrestricted free agent after seeing his contract with the San Jose Sharks terminated for breach of contract, which included violating COVID-19 protocols while he was in the AHL. Kane, who forfeited $22.8 million when his contract was terminated, will make around $975,000 this season, though his cap hit will be slightly more than $2.1 million due to his contract being signed at this advanced point of the season.
To say that Kane is a controversial figure in the league is an understatement. Last year, Kane declared bankruptcy claiming over $26 million in debt, which included a great deal of gambling debt. Kane has been accused of physical abuse by his ex-wife in a divorce filing, as well as gambling on NHL games, including games that he played in, however an NHL investigation could not substantiate either claim. On his own (previous) team, the Sharks informed Kane coming into the season that he was not to report to training camp. Kane served a 21-game suspension for submitting a fake vaccination card, then was assigned to the Sharks AHL affiliate, where he played in five games before having his contract terminated.
All that said, Kane is an obviously talented player — a top line winger who has scored at least 20 goals the last seven seasons and blends scoring with physicality, often appearing near the league leaders in hits. Being able to pick up a player like that on a budget contract is a tempting proposition for a desperate team, and Edmonton is a desperate team. Once sitting atop the Pacific Division with an 16–5–0 record going into December, the Oilers lost 13 of 15 and currently sit in 6th, outside of the playoffs. Among calls for a new head coach (and potentially a new general manager), the Oilers signed Kane to bolster a scoring threat that has two of the best players in the game in Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl and a sharp dropoff after. Kane already scored a goal in his first game with the Oilers, a 7–2 thrashing of the Montreal Canadiens.
The lack of pause from the Oilers in signing a player like Kane with the amount of red flags surrounding him shouldn’t be surprising to anyone — Kane is still a top 6 NHL winger and reportedly selected the Oilers from several interested teams (though this could be “agent-speak”.) As much as we might like to think that the players on our favorite teams would be people that we’d like to hang out with in “real life”, the reality is that the majority of fans want to see their team win, and winning puts butts in seats, which puts money in owners’ pockets. A team like the Carolina Hurricanes faced a lot of criticism when they signed controversial defenseman Tony DeAngelo this past offseason, but attendance continues to stay strong, mainly due to the second best record in the league piggybacking off of three seasons in the playoffs as DeAngelo ranks third on the team in points while at the same time staying relatively quiet in the media.
Redemption in sports will always come quickest to those who can contribute the most to a team, and Evander Kane — who saw his time in his three previous NHL organizations come to an end with the team seemingly happy to be rid of him — will test that theory this season in Edmonton.
Taping Out Hate
I guess we’ll call this a segue, but the Hockey Diversity Alliance, a group co-founded by Evander Kane with the mission of “[eradicating] systemic racism and intolerance in hockey”, recently launched a campaign in conjunction with Budweiser of Canada called the “#TapeOutHate Campaign.”
From the press release:
This official partnership launch champions the HDA’s mission to eradicate racism in hockey, with a specific and simple call to action to #TapeOutHate.
Canadians can join the movement by using the hashtag, sharing the campaign video or purchasing a roll of physical #TapeOutHate hockey tape, where $1 from each roll of tape directly supports the HDA.
The video is a jarring reminder of the racism still facing players of color in hockey, and while the players discussing it in the video have played in the top levels of hockey, this is by no means an issue that is only happening there, with players at the youth level facing it as well.
While hashtags and “special tape” are corny in their own way, I still wanted to back not only the message being sent by those things, but also support a major sponsor (in this case, Budweiser of Canada) in an effort for other major sponsors and corporations to get on board and give the HDA’s message a wider audience. So, I went to buy some tape.
Except I can’t, because America.
More specifically, since this is an effort backed by Budweiser OF CANADA, the tape can only be purchased through Budweiser of Canada’s merch site, where it stares you right in the face:
Meanwhile, the American version of that merch site would like you to buy special dog beer for reasons.
Yes, that’s $15 American for a 4-pack of Busch that won’t even get your dog drunk, but no anti-racism tape to be found. Many reached out to BudCanada’s social media to ask about availability in the United States (attempting to ship to the US through the Canadian site would give an error) and were met with a generic comment about how it’s something they’re working on, but really — what’s there to work on? If it were just a logistics issue, surely the American site could offer it on their page for US shipping and distribution.
However, that would imply a Budweiser of the United States endorsement, and while BudCanada is willing to take the leap by supporting an organization that is advocating for rights and support of non-white athletes, that may not be a step BudUS is willing to take. For whatever reason, fighting racism is an incredibly political take in the US, and Budweiser is a favorite of a certain demographic who misses the “good ol’ days” when you could “speak your mind” without people getting mad at you for the occasional slur or sexist comment.
While I wouldn’t be surprised if the anti-racism tape ended up being available in the US somehow, I find it highly doubtful that it’s going to be something that is highly promoted or easy to find because hey — the dog beer lobby is very strong.
Taxi Squad
I’m not always going to do NHL CBA stuff on here, but I feel like it’s almost expected so I’ll touch upon it once in a while. But for this I’m going to touch upon something not really CBA-related but close: the taxi squad.
During the Omicron surge of December, the league saw numerous postponements and in some cases teams playing with reduced rosters thanks to positive COVID cases, which led to an outcry for teams to go back to having “taxi squads” like the teams previously had for the 2020–21 season.
The problem is that these taxi squads, both last season and now this season, don’t help the issue several teams experienced which required the postponements in the first place.
What the taxi squad does is allow teams to carry an additional six players with them, allowing them to travel and practice with the NHL team, while still carrying an minor league cap hit. Then, if a player tests positive, a taxi squad player can be quickly recalled, hopefully allowing the team to face a minimal inconvenience and play games as scheduled. This was much more helpful to teams in the 2020–21 season, as players recalled from the AHL had to go through testing and isolation before being available to play, while taxi squad players were subject to the same protocols as the NHL players, so if they were recalled they could be made available immediately. This isn’t as much of a concern this season, as the protocols for players being called up from the AHL are a lot less stringent than they were the year previous.
Additionally, players who test positive for COVID become non-roster players to allow for callups, but their cap hit remains. For teams close to and at the cap limit, that means that they can’t call up a replacement player even if they’re short, or else they go over the cap. The taxi squad doesn’t help this, as the moment a player is called up from the taxi squad, their cap hit also gets called up, so if you couldn’t call up someone from the AHL for cap reasons, you can’t call them up from the taxi squad either.
The NHL did try to address this though by adding on a provision that allowed for immediate callup of players making $1 million or less if the team’s roster was below the minimum required. Previously, a team would have to wait a game (ie. play the game with a roster with less than minimum players) before they could make the emergency callup(s), and that the player(s) being called up needes to be making $800k or less. This additional provision — and not the taxi squad — is designed to help teams be able to avoid postponing games.
As it stands, taxi squad use is mixed, with teams less likely to use the squad (and in the process, screwing over their AHL affiliate who can’t use the player while he’s traveling with the NHL team) unless they’re entering a long road trip.
Revisiting “Benson”
As a kid who was raised on cartoons and syndicated sitcoms, I take ranking them very seriously, and last week I tried to rank the sitcoms:
WKRP and The Jeffersons get brought up a lot from that era (with good reason), but Benson gets slept on for whatever reason. Maybe it was because it’s a spinoff, but so was The Jeffersons, so whatever.
Benson starred Robert Guillaume, who had previously broken out on the show Soap as a wisecracking butler who was often the smartest one in the room. Benson moved that character to a role working for the Governor (who was related to Soap’s Jessica Tate) as the head of household affairs. His role would increase as seasons went on, with Benson eventually becoming Lieutenant Governor, then running for Governor during the final season.
Guillaume’s facial expressions, comic timing, and delivery made what wasn’t an entirely deep sitcom work. Guillaume did the heavy lifting, with his co-stars working as foils for him to work off of, whether it be the militant German chef Gretchen Kraus (played by Inga Swenson), which saw the two trading insults back and forth, or the bumbling (but well-meaning) Governor Gatling (played by James Noble), whose misunderstandings led to Guillaume nearly breaking the fourth wall at times.
I’m rewatching from the beginning and the pilot episode struck me. Pilots are generally awkward as they’re often filmed months before additional episodes are filmed, and actors are sometimes replaced (as was the case with the Governor’s chief of staff in this episode), but there was a line that stood out.
Benson enters the Governor’s mansion to meet with the Governor for the first time, and encounters Marcy Hill (played by future Mrs. Michael Keaton, Caroline McWilliams.) After some brief chatter, Marcy identifies Benson.
Marcy: You must be Benson.
Benson: Why must I be Benson?
Marcy: Because the only other black the Governor has scheduled is Jesse Jackson and everyone knows what he looks like.
So watching this in 2022, I hear the term “black” like it’s a noun, not an adjective, and it throws me for a loop. I rewound it twice just to make sure I was hearing it correctly. Marcy’s intent isn’t malicious (Marcy would be one of Benson’s closest friends during her two season run) but 1979 was still a long way from 2022. Of course, Marcy brings Benson in to see the Governor, who thinks he’s Jesse Jackson, and hilarity ensues.
Benson dealt with some racial issues, but never got as serious as shows like Good Times and even The Jeffersons got. After the first season, the Governor’s chief of staff switched from Lewis J. Stadlen’s John Taylor (who himself was a recast from the pilot’s David Hedison) to Rene Auberjonois’ Clayton Endicott III, replacing Taylor’s elitism with Endicott’s more over-the-top snobbery and keeping things a little more lighthearted for the conflict between he and Benson. Benson was never a ratings blockbuster but Guillaume received recognition from his peers, receiving five Emmy nominations for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series during the show’s seven seasons, winning in 1985.
That’s it — you made it this far. Look for something next week, and if you have any feedback (or ideas for talking points), shoot them over on Twitter @MrWorkrate or here. Thanks!
