Quote:
Originally Posted by ComixZone
It's doing a hell of a job of pointing out how poorly we market our players, even inside of this City.
So yeah - you get a lot of criticism while you play here, but guess what? You get almost none of the public benefits that you do while playing in Florida. You'll get all the public scrutiny, and none of the brand growth! What a deal!
|
I think it is more about how the Canadian media in general markets players. When he was in Calgary, third party media pushed him as a villain who was trying to spoil the McDavid party. Even if Tkachuk was still in Calgary doing what his is doing, the narrative would be much different. The Canadian media is so fixated on McDavid and Toronto, that there isn't much room left to promote other players.
The Flames have always had the short end of the stick going all the way back to the Gretzky era. The Flames built a perennial contender and exciting team, but even the year they won the Cup, most of the media outside of Calgary were talking about it like it was a travesty that the Oilers didn't win it that year.
The same mentality was on display when the media pushed the idea that a star player like Tkachuk should have to fight Edmonton's goon after making a clean hit, to show respect to the Oilers. In no other market would that be a reasonable expectation.
There was a short period of time where Iginla was the player in the national spotlight, but even then, I don't think the national media promoted him as hard as they should have. Just imagine if he played in an American market where there is less promotional bias, he would have been a global celebrity.
Honestly though, the Flames always being treated as a villain is one of the things that drew me to being a Flames fan in the first place. For the most part, I grew up in the Winnipeg media market when the old Jets were there, but gravitated to the Flames mainly out of my hate for the Oilers and their golden boy image that dominated the media. I started as an Oilers anti-fan before becoming fully entangled with the Flames.