LIGHT IN THE DARK
NHL Network does wonderful job addressing terrible tragedy
WE CAN go with the renowned early 20th Century American landscape photographer Ansel Adams. Or we can select the mid-20th Century baseball team constructionist Branch Rickey.
Adams explained his ability to be in the right place at the right moment as a matter of “Chance favors the prepared.” Rickey’s postulate for forming winning teams was, “Luck is the residue of design.”
In other words, paying attention is an inexpensive cost of success. And that certainly applies to live sports television, which now seems too busy and too cluttered to pay attention to what we were encouraged to watch.
That brings us to the NHL Network, Thursday night. From its Secaucus, N.J., headquarters, it plugged into the live FOX Sports Florida feed of on-ice ceremonies prior to the Capitals-Panthers game.
The Panthers play in Sunrise, Fla., a 10-minute drive from Parkland — where the latest unfathomable school massacre left 17, mostly high school kids, murdered.
Thus, the network’s “NHL Tonight” was able to show us a pregame that clearly left spectators, several players and who knows how many TV viewers in tears.
Just the ice, alone, could’ve done it. With the arena in darkness, 17 spot-lighted circles, each carrying the superimposed name of the murdered, appeared — then were slowly extinguished, one by one.
Next, Martin Florez, just a kid, stood on the ice and beautifully sang “God Bless America.” He sang it straight, no neo-cool check-meout affectations.
After that, Florida’s 38-year-old goalie Roberto Luongo, who’d been seen sobbing throughout, came over the boards, took the microphone and spoke of how for the last 12 years he has lived in Parkland, near where his wife was raised and now where their two kids go to school.
“When I’m done playing hockey,” said Luongo, born in Montreal and drafted by the Islanders, “I want to spend the rest of my life in Parkland ...
“To the teachers at the school: You guys are heroes, protecting our children — and some of them didn’t make it, trying to protect our children ...”
Then a high school choir sang the national anthem and with the game about to begin — a game NHL Network didn’t have live rights to — the audio was returned to the studio, where host Jamison Coyle applied the right, as in perfect, final touch:
“Somehow they will try to play a hockey game.”
Nothing maudlin, no mawkish, trite, “Our thoughts and prayers” solemnities, just, “Somehow they will try to play a hockey game.”
And so we were there, live, for the worst of reasons, but I’m glad we were there. And we were there because good live TV, under any circumstances, favors the prepared.