Ecotality: Sports Illustrated Calls On Al Gore To Help Make The Stanley Cup Finals Greener
Editor's note: Ecotality's Steve Caratzas takes note of another idea to green the world of sports: reconfiguring the format of hockey's Stanley Cup finals. This post was originally published on May 30, 2007.
Sports Illustrated’s Michael Farber has written an open letter to Al Gore, pleading with the former Vice President to help green up the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup finals format.
Farber is concerned with the NHL’s current 2-2-1-1-1 system, wherein two games of the best-of-seven final series are played on one team’s home ice, followed by two games on their opponent’s home ice, returning back to the first team’s home ice, then to the opponent’s again, and finally – if seven games are required – one final game in the rink where the whole thing started. Confused? Perfect! Consider yourself a hockey fan.
Farber is seeking a more environment-friendly configuration:
You see, a 2-3-2 final would be a blessing for the environment. The NHL would be doing its patriotic best to be green — beyond its recycling of Anaheim Ducks defenseman Sean O’Donnell.
Lame jokes aside, Farber’s assessment is sound, and he has the math to support his supposition:
Under the current system, and if the series goes the full seven, you will fly to Anaheim for Game 1, back to Ottawa for Game 3, back to Anaheim for Game 5, back to Ottawa for Game 6, back to Anaheim for Game 7 and then, finally, home. That is six cross-continent flights, which is a lot of jet fuel…. But if this were an ecologically-sound 2-3-2 final, Ottawa would fly to Anaheim for Game 1, home for Game 3, back to California for Game 6 and then back to Canada’s capital when it’s over. Two trips would have been averted….
The NHL, Farber points out, used the 2-3-2 format exactly twice before in the mid-1980s, but abandoned it – as it tends to do with most innovations, stuck forever in an old-school mentality that hockey purists prefer. Farber believes Al Gore is the sport’s best hope for a green change.
Canada generally seems to get behind green initiatives, so perhaps the Stanley Cup finals could be the next step. Or at least one of the next steps, for as Farber reasons, there’s always room for environmental ingenuity:
My next thought: fuel-efficient Zambonis.
Tags: al+gore, Conservation, hockey, Recreation, sports, stanley+cup
June 2nd, 2007 at 8:25 pm
It’s definitely true that fewer flights would be more planet-friendly, but the 2-3-2 format has been seriously considered before and rejected.
The trouble is that if the team playing the three games at home manages to win one of the first two (let alone both of them), it gets a giant advantage by going on to play three home games in a row.
You only need to win four games to win the series, and the 2-2-1-1-1 format is itself a compromise on the 1-1-1-1-1-1-1 format that’d probably be fairest to both teams.
(I’m also, as a Canadian — living in Ottawa, at that — reluctant to take any kind of hockey suggestion from a guy who calls it the Stanley Cup “finals.” It’s the “final,” as in the “final series of the playoffs.)
Honestly, the real problem here isn’t 2-3-2 versus 2-2-1-1-1, it’s the whole wasteful absurdity of pro sports generally. I’m as big a fan as anybody, but really, we don’t need these guys flying around the continent all the time to chase pucks and balls and then go home again. It’s not exactly productive activity, even if they make a lot of money at it.
Maybe if they bought offsets, that’d at least help.
June 4th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
Why just professional hockey, basketball and baseball use the same format 2-2-1-1-1 the only major sport in the US that doesn’t is football. I have to agree with 2-3-1 being a bad idea, it’s set up the way it is so there is slight advantage the team with the better record because they start at home first. There are better ways of greening sports then this idea and who ever thought of it is not a sports fan.