Reprint | George Matthews: True Blue

A busy holiday schedule has precluded me from updating the site with fresh content. Until things settle down a bit, I'll leave you with this classic piece that originally appeared on Full Mental Jackets last season. It remains one of the most popular articles to ever appear on this site. Happy New Year everyone! ~Greg

As George Matthews tells it, he only occasionally dreamt of being an NHL broadcaster. The 57 year old native of Summerside, Prince Edward Island, a town of 15,000 residents on the eastern coast of Canada, is entering his 10th year as the radio play-by-play voice of the Columbus Blue Jackets. After spending a quarter of a century as a part-timer in the minor leagues of hockey broadcasting, and doing it mostly for the fun of it, he thought he already was living a dream.

Matthews recalls that on occasion, during the long four hour drives he made across eastern Canada in the wee hours of the morning as he returned from calling a junior league game, he allowed himself to fantasize about what it would be like to call a hockey game in the NHL. But those fantasies were quickly doused with the cold reality that awaited him at the end of his trek – two to three hours of sleep followed by a full day of teaching seventh, eighth and ninth graders at a local middle school. “But, I mean, I’m the only guy from my province to ever call a game in the NHL,” he says. “No one had ever done it from my neck of the woods.” So that’s all it really was to Matthews. A fantasy. A way to kill time on the mind-numbing drives through the Canadian darkness to and from the next hockey rink.

“A lot of people think that teaching middle-schoolers might be the graveyard shift of teaching,” says Matthews. “And probably it is. But if you enjoy it, then it isn’t. And I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the energy level of the kids I had. I enjoyed the interaction.”

Matthews talks a lot about passion. It’s part of his DNA. It’s his modus operandi. And if there is only one word to describe how George Matthews calls a hockey game, it is "passionately". Every loose puck, every hit along the boards, every deke and every “glove save made”, they all get the same treatment – like it’s the last minute of the third period, all tied up, in the seventh game of the Stanley Cup Finals. Matthews gives his listeners a mental workout.

“Broadcasting hockey is something that I just love to do. I love the excitement. And I love entertaining the fans. To me it's all about around the crease, and about the excitement and potential of a goal. “

Matthews gets so excited over goals that if you’re not paying attention you might find it difficult to discern whether it was the Blue Jackets or the opposing team that just scored. And he makes no apologies for that. “The goal is so big in the NHL. There's not many of them. There’s only four or five of them in the game, okay?” he pleads.  From start to finish, a typical Matthews broadcast packs more energy than a case of Red Bull. But when the biscuit goes in the basket for Columbus, you can literally feel Matthews jump out of his seat as he generates a seemingly inhuman decibel level, bellowing “Bluuuuuuuuuuuuue Jackets!!!”, or unleashing one of his signature rhymes, such as “Jumpin’ Jack Flash! RICK NASH!”

And once in his presence, it doesn’t take long to figure out that there isn’t anything fake about it. His enthusiasm is genuine to the core.  And he feels a responsibility to include it in his broadcasts.

“It's an old-style of broadcasting," says Matthews. "It's a little bit different than perhaps what some of the younger guys do today. I'm a guy that wants to name every player that touches the puck. I want to keep you in tune with whoever's got the puck. I might not tell you the way in which a puck was given up. I might just say there's a turnover. It's so fast and there are so many turnovers in just 20 seconds, you just have to believe what I'm saying. I try to include the energy and I try to be accurate.”

He also takes great pride in mixing up the phrases he uses to describe the action during a broadcast in order to avoid being repetitive.  So, as part of his game day preparation, in addition to his usual study of the opponent’s lineup and tendencies, Matthews reviews his “terminology notebook,” a journal he has compiled that contains over 2000 words and phrases that he uses to describe certain things that happen in a hockey game. “It might be a giveaway, taken away, turned over, errant, astray, doesn't click, doesn't materialize, cut off, broken up, picked off, intercepted, incomplete, doesn't hit the intended receiver, no one on the receiving end of that one.” Matthews rattles them off with ease and that signature old-school delivery. “There are fifteen terms right there,” he says with perfect accuracy. “That's the neat thing about radio. You don't just describe who's got the puck, but you have to set the table and describe things differently all the time. So at the end of the night, my energy is gone.”

Humility is another character trait that Matthews obviously buys into. “I've called somewhere between 2000 and 2500 games,” Matthews says matter-of-factly. “I've never called a perfect game, and I never will. Whether its radio or TV, there's too much happening in three hours of coast-to-coast action to get it right 100% right every time. There's the odd mistake. You try to keep it to a minimum.”

Most of those 2000+ games were racked up for a small local radio station, CJRW-AM 1240 in Summerside. After playing two years of college hockey at the University of Prince Edward Island, he came to the realization that he wasn’t good enough to play at the pro level – there’s not much of a market for 5-foot-5 goalies in the pro game – so he decided to concentrate on earning his degree and embark on a teaching career. He got married to his wife, Debbie, and decided that he needed to do something to “help pay some bills.” He approached CJRW and, parlaying his notoriety as a college player, asked if they might have an opening as a color analyst for their coverage of local junior hockey games. “I thought I might dabble in it,” Matthews remembers, “and if I could make a little money doing that, even better.” When he graduated three years later he was determined to focus on his career as a teacher. He figured his broadcasting career was over and resigned from CJRW. After a month, the radio station called him and asked him to consider coming back on a part-time basis. “I went from there to be their longest serving part-time broadcaster. I worked there 25 years. I covered everything from junior hockey to college hockey and the American Hockey League,” Matthews recalls.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy, With a Side of Stats

It's Christmas and it's hockey season. I'm pretty sure that's why they call it the most wonderful time of the year. And despite all the worry and despair over the recent struggles of the team, it's actually a wonderful time to be a Blue Jackets fan. In fact, there's never been a better time to be a Blue Jackets fan at this point in the season.

Need proof? First, take a look at this chart that comes compliments of michaelwass.com. Sometimes, a picture says it all.

Some will look at the graph and say we're right where we were three years ago. And two years ago. And last year as well. Which is to say, nothing has changed. However, I m unabashedly a glass-half-full guy and I see much to be happy about. The team changed it's coach. It's trying to change it's culture. Both of these things can gut a team. Sometimes these types of major changes require a few steps backwards before being able to move forward. And yet here we are no worse than before. In fact, things are better than ever.

Still not rejoicing? Then it's time to take a deeper dive.

The folks at a website called PowerScout Hockey have developed three new statistics to measure both individual player and team performance. The three new stats are:

New Player Stats

PS:    PS stands for Point Shares, which tracks how many points in the standings a player contributed to his team through his own performance and ice time. Click here to learn more.
MAX:    MAX stands for Maximum Point Shares, which measures a player's current performance level, and provides a common base by which to compare players regardless of position, role, or era. Click here to learn more.

New Team Stat

INT:    INT stands for team Intensity which tracks how hard each team is working and the resulting momentum changes in real-time during games. Click here to learn more.

Here's the lowdown. Some people that are a lot smarter than you and me, and who have a lot more time to concern themselves with these things than we do, have been tracking traditional stats like blocked shots, giveaways, takeaways, hits "and, most importantly, ice time." Using a "complex linear multiple regression model," the brainiacs at PowerScout did extensive analysis on all aspects of hockey. From that, they determined the most important player and team statistics that contribute to the most important metric of them all: team wins. Every day they punch all the data into a computer bigger than the State of Vermont, go out for coffee and when they come back they've got lists of the top players and teams in the NHL all organized on a slick-looking web site. If I get a ballot in the mail I will nominate them for the Nobel Peace Prize.

So how is all this supposed to have you feeling merry and singing, "Ding, dong, ding?" According to PowerScouts current numbers: 1) the Blue Jackets are the 14th Hardest Working Team in the NHL (and trending up), and 2) Matthieu Garon is presently the 10th best player in the NHL. There. If that doesn't fill you with yuletide cheer then your last name must be Grinch or you're on the wagon.

If you are a stat geek like me, you will find plenty to chew on at PowerScout Hockey, including the ability to track a team's INT level during a game in real time. In the video clip below, PowerScout's Marc Appleby shows how the two fights that occurred in the first period of the Blue Jackets game against the Flames last night impacted each team:

 

Fascinating, isn't it? And perhaps even a little overdue. Sabremetrics, defined as the analysis of baseball through objective evidence, has been around for decades. But the same type of geek-like approach has yet to really grab hold of the hockey world. That's beginning to change. If you are more of a traditionalist and find this stuff akin to an assault on all that is sacred about hockey, blame it on the multitudes of fantasy sports geeks that are the reason that IT is the only department that is hiring at the company where you work.

Bill James, a pioneer and long-time advocate of sabremetrics, said that the concept behind it was attempt to answer objective questions about baseball, such as which player on a given team contributed the most to the team's offense? Or how many home runs will Player X hit next year? Finding the answers to such questions is like mining for gold to the average fantasy sports nerd and general manager alike.

PowerScout is an attempt to bring this same highly analytical approach to hockey. According to the web site, it is the most comprehensive and definitive player evaluation system created to date. One might discount such talk as proprietary exuberance, but apparently TSN's Bob McKenzie is a fan. That's saying something.

So, the next time somebody asks you who was the greatest hockey player of all time, look them in the eye with confidence and say, "Mario Lemiuex. And Gretzky isn't even second."

So What Now? (A Reader's Call to Arms)

The following email was sent to FMJ this morning at 2:49AM by a reader named Joe. I thought it was worth sharing.

It is 2:30 in the morning and I just woke up, stared at the ceiling and asked, "So what now?"

We have played 32 games so far. We came out of the gate strong and had a little "pep in our step". Our 3rd and 4th lines were contributing and keeping us in games. We blocked shots. Our goaltending tandem was hot and the team had confidence. What has happened recently? The back to back losses to Detroit derailed us in every aspect of the game. For the last 12 games we haven't done anything the same way we did it for the first 18 games. 

I have heard enough of  the "same old Jackets". I have heard enough of Scott Howson telling us we have to fix it from within. I have heard enough of time zones and travel time excuses. I have heard enough of our own fans making fun of Boomer because his real name should be Richard. As a season ticket holder for the past 10 years I have heard enough of the song "You've Got That Losing Feeling" that has been playing in our collective head.

The best thing about last night was I finally saw the Jackets get mad and start to stand up for themselves. It was great to see Nash give it back! It was great to see Garon to give it back and for the kids to stand up against a team that was trying to take advantage of the fact that we don't stand up for ourselves. Do we need a "fighter"? I don't know, but I do know this: our players need to start standing up for themselves like they did last night.

We need to get a little FIRED UP! Everyone should watch this if they need a little help getting fired up.

Thank you for letting me vent.

Sincerely,

Joe

I share your frustration, Joe. Great video link as well. I'm tired of getting steak knives. I want the Cadillac this year!

Will the Real Steve Mason Please Stand Up?

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to another edition of . . . . To Tell the Truth.

[Curtain rises, revealing three young men dressed up in Columbus Blue Jackets goaltender gear]

ANNOUNCER: Number 1, what is your name please?

NUMBER 1: My name is Steve Mason.

ANNOUNCER: Number 2, what is your name please?

NUMBER 2: My name is Steve Mason.

ANNOUNCER: Number 3, what is your name?

NUMBER 3: My name is Steve Mason.

ANNOUNCER: Follow along once again, panelists, if you will. I, Steve Mason, am a Canadian professional hockey player for the Columbus Blue Jackets in the NHL. I was selected 69th overall in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft by the Blue Jackets.I spent three season playing major junior hockey in the Ontario Hockey League for the London Knights and the Kitcher Rangers. In 2007 I was named OHL Goaltender of the Year. I won a gold medal with Team Canada at the 2008 World Junior Championships and was named tournament MVP and Best Goaltender. Lately, I've been an enigma, shutting teams down in some games like a Stone Wall - the nickname I earned in 2008-09 - while in others looking like a drunk bullfighter without a red cape.

OK panel, all three of these men claim to be Steve Mason. Obviously, only one of them can be the real Steve Mason. Your job is to figure out which one it is.  Let's start with our first panelist, Boomer.

BOOMER: Well, I'm afraid I am going to have to disqualify myself.

ANNOUNCER: Why?

BOOMER: Well, since you asked, my status as an official mascot for the Blue Jackets is "up in the air" shall we say, and I have been instructed to keep as low a profile as possible. As you can see, I am a tall, inflatable cannon and, quite honestly, it's somewhat difficult to keep a low profile. So I think it would be best if I just "hung" out off stage at this point.

[Laugh track]

ANNOUNCER: Very well. Let's proceed to our second panelist, Stinger.

STINGER: Number 1: On Monday night in Calgary, you were pulled 4 minutes and 25 seconds into the game after after giving up 2 goals on 4 shots. What happened?

NUMBER 1: Well, I don't like throwing my teammates under the bus, but generally when I play badly everyone else says that the defense didn't play very well in front of me.

Blue Jackets Marketing: No Way But the Hard Way

It's difficult to find fault with Aaron Portzline's premise that poor hockey adds up to poor attendance. That's common sense, especially during times when cents are uncommon. But to suggest that it is the only factor in the Blue Jackets attendance woes this season would be selling the efforts of the team's marketing and promotions people short.

When it comes to trying to put butts in seats, the Blue Jackets marketing team is struggling almost as much as the Blue Jackets' special teams. Consider what's happened over the last several weeks.

The Rise and Fall of Boomer

In one of the biggest professional sports mascot debacles in recent memory, the Blue Jackets unveiled a second, "kid-friendly" mascot at the same time they lifted the shroud of secrecy on their new third jerseys. In fact, the details of the jersey launch were so closely guarded by team personnel that no mention of a new mascot was ever uttered. In other words, nobody saw Boomer coming. Billed as a cushy cannon character with a friendly face and a fluffy moustache, Boomer immediately became an internet sensation for all the wrong reasons.

Boomer was standing tall at the unveiling of the third jersey.

Things have gotten somewhat prickly in a hurry. Just two weeks in, the Dispatch reported that Blue Jackets executives were saying Boomer's role would be "shrinking" and that the new mascot could be retired completely in the summer. True to their word, Boomer was nowhere to be seen Saturday night during the home game against the Rangers.

John Browne, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales for the Blue Jackets, says nobody ever considered that Boomer looked phallic. Really? Then again, Browne said the only test marketing that was done was with elementary-aged children. That is hard to believe. I mean, testing the mascot with young children is fathomable. But anyone with young kids of their own might find it hard to imagine  that some snot-nosed wisenheimer didn't raise his hand and say "Boomer looks like a wiener." Heck, my 5th grade daughter overheard me telling my wife that Boomer was being phased out for looking too phallic. "It does," my daughter offered.

The Hostile Takeover

It was embarrassing enough that Penguins fans essentially took over Nationwide Arena on December 4th and essentially made themselves feel right at home. Given how well the Pens travel and their proximity to Columbus, it wasn't all that shocking. What did shock a lot of Blue Jackets faithful in attendance was the site of two Penguins fans in full regalia being ushered around the Nationwide ice on the Zambonies. Once again, an internet firestorm ensued and the Blue Jackets were quickly forced to take emergency egg/face removal measures.

"To have Penguins fans up there was a mistake," said Larry Hoepfner, the Jackets vice president of business operations. "We are not going to hide from it. It will not happen again."

No plausible explanation for the gaffe was offered. Maybe that's because there isn't one.

Friendly Fire 

Already being shelled by "heavy artillery" from fans, the traditional media, the blogosphere and fifth grade schoolchildren for Boomergate and The Hostile Takeover, the last thing the Blue Jackets marketing and promotions troops needed was a friendly fire incident. But that's exactly what happened last night when the team decided not to wear the new third jerseys against the New York Rangers despite the fact that they were scheduled to do so.

Four times the Blue Jackets had donned their sporty new threads, and four times they had suffered defeat in them, including two disappointing losses to Detroit. Needing a win badly against the Rangers, the team elected to ditch the new jerseys and wear their traditional home uniforms instead. And then they proceeded to win, the first time they had done so at Nationwide on a weekend night all year.

After the game, both the players and coaches were coy in addressing questions about the move. Nobody would say who made the decision, but they weren't apologizing for it. 

On Friday, during an interview, Kyle Wilson was asked about the jerseys and whether it was a hot topic in the locker room. "Oh yeah," he replied. "What are we, like 0 and 4 in them? There are a lot of very superstitious people in this locker room. Very superstitious," he explained. When asked what the guys thought should be done to break the jinx, Wilson deadpanned, "Burn 'em." He then said he was joking and that things would take care of themselves once they went out and won a bunch of games in them. That must have been Plan B. It looks like they went with Plan A.

Consider this an evolving situation. The team has removed the third jersey schedule from their website.

Better Find a New Way

Nobody is saying that the marketing and promotions people are to blame for the low attendance figures. Portzline is right. Years of bad hockey and unfulfilled expectations are the root of the problem. As he points out, in 2003-04, before Sydney Crosby descended from the hockey heavens as the second coming of Mario Lemieux, the Penguins finished last in the NHL in attendance with an average of 11,877. Now their fans  want to watch the Penguins so badly they invade opposing venues and stage take-overs. People pay to see winners. Plain and simple.

But if there has ever been a time that the Blue Jackets need to put their best foot forward to promote the team and do whatever it takes to draw fans to Nationwide it is now. After complaining in the off-season about their lease and the manner in which it handcuffs them when it comes to making money, the Jackets can ill afford to be firing the cannon at their own feet as they have done on numerous occasions so far this year.

"There ain't no way but the hard way," or so goes the song that plays when the Blue Jackets take the ice. That song might be the new mantra for the players and coaches, but maybe the marketing and promotions people ought to find a different one for themselves.

Wilson and Filatov See a Reversal of Fortunes

Today was a memorable one. I attended the Blue Jackets practice at Nationwide, sat with the media folks and was granted an interview with Kyle Wilson (for the The Fourth Period). In fact, it was almost a perfect day.

Almost. The interview went great from what I recall. Unfortunately, my recall of the interview is all I have. I only hit the Record button on my digital recorder once instead of twice, which means the interview did not get recorded. (And bloggers wonder why they aren't taken seriously!) Luckily I had backup -- a good old-fashioned pen and notepad -- and was able to get most of what Kyle said committed to paper shortly after I left the locker room.

A reversal of fortunes: Wilson is up, Filatov is down.

Kyle Wilson is a very likable dude. He's warm, engaging and humble. His smile is genuine and infectious, the kind of smile one would expect to see on a rookie whose team just told him that he'll be staying for a while and to "get a place."

The AHL's Hershey Bears won back-to-back Calder Cup Championships the past two seasons and Wilson was a major contributor, averaging 26 goals and 56 points for each of those teams.  But when you play in the Washington Capitals organization, putting up consistent numbers and winning championships might get you all of 2 games with the big club like it did for Wilson. After spending four years in Hershey, he has finally earned an extended shot in the NHL and it is at once apparent that he is enjoying every minute of it.

Sitting right next to Wilson as I conducted the interview was Nikita Filatov. He smiled as I introduced myself  and joked that all questions for Wilson would have to go through him first. But his smile seemed tentative, much like his play on the ice of late. Just a few hours later, the Blue Jackets would announce that Filatov was being sent to Springfield.

According to Aaron Portzline of the Columbus Dispatch, GM Scott Howson had this to say about Filatov's demotion:

"Nikita's strength as a player are his speed and his ability to create offense and score goals," Blue Jackets GM Scott Howson said. "We haven't seen any of those things in the last two or three weeks. His confidence has suffered."

"It's time for him to get to a place where he can regain his confidence and rediscover the strengths of his game."

"The message was to play well and play consistently," Howson said. "He’s like a lot of young players, especially from Europe. He’s figuring out what the North American game is and what it isn’t.

"He hasn't been a hindrance defensively. But offensively he's really struggled, and he needs to get his confidence back."

The irony here is thicker than my grandmother's fruit cake. There I was interviewing a guy that had toiled in the AHL for four years, a guy that had played well and played consistently there, a guy who seemed to be happy with himself and confident in his abilities, yet a guy from whom so little is expected. Sitting next to him was a very young man upon whose shoulders sat the great expectations of a NHL city desperately in need of his talents, a player who has been rushed along in his development (by both himself and his team) and consequently seems light on confidence, a player who is about to spend some quality time in the AHL to learn how to "play well and to play consistently". Just like Kyle Wilson did.

The good news for Filatov is that he isn't in the Washington Capitals organization. He won't have to put up four years of solid numbers before he earns his next chance. He might only have to put up four weeks worth. At least we should all hope so. And when he does return, I hope he's wearing the kind of smile that Kyle Wilson is wearing, not a tentative one.

Wilson!!!!!!!

Those Blue Jackets fans that stuck around until the glorious end last night at Nationwide were somewhat surprised to see Kyle Wilson hop the board and skate out to take the Blue Jackets third shot in a shootout against the Dallas Stars that was tied 1-1 after two rounds. Wilson had never recorded a shootout goal in his young career and, in fact, had never even attempted one. So when Wilson buried it low on the stick side of Stars goaltender Kari Lehtonen for what proved to be the game-winner, many fans jumped to their feet and broke out into their best Tom Hanks impersonations. It sounded something like this (multiplied by a factor of several thousand).

Cast Away - Lost Wilson (The Movie)
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