NHL: While The Men Watch, These Women Do Their Thing

A group of guys get together to watch the hockey game, while the women gather in another part of the house or bar to talk about fashion and families. At least, that’s the stereotype at play for While The Men Watch, an optional audio commentary which will accompany the Stanley Cup final on CBC-TV starting with Game 1 on May 30.

Jules Mancuso and Lena Sutherland are the distaff duo responsible for WTMW: they and the CBC have a lot of people riled at them. Facebook and the Twitterverse have exploded in rage over this tempest in a tank top; “patronizing” is the adjective most often used to describe this effort. The ones who appear to be most upset are female hockey fans, who feel that WTMW is making them into figures of fun. Male fans seem angry for the same reason, because of a perception that they and the sport are also being denigrated.

I’ve been watching hockey since the Chief, George Armstrong, held the Stanley Cup at center ice at Maple Leaf Gardens. That was in 1967, so yup, I’m old. Personally, I say “let them do it” — which is not the same thing as saying “I’m all for it.”

You have to choose the feed to hear it, and for that you have to make an effort. You don’t have to tune it in and listen, and I probably won’t. It’s also easy to see the point of one blogger who thinks the CBC should have gone in another direction and done something a little more serious than this.

One of the knocks against WTMW is their criticism of the styles of the coaches, analysts and others who happen to be shown onscreen and lined up in their catty crosshairs. The irony here is that even as the slob I am in real life, I have often pointed and laughed at the stripes-checkers-dots combinations and color clashes of some of the analysts employed by CBC and the sports networks (here’s a hint to the jabbering puppets: your sartorial splendor is in desperate need of a rethink if it makes Bob MacKenzie or Don Cherry look good).

Having said that, we don’t watch the games to judge bingo-callers on their haberdashery; ultimately, we want to see great plays made (or not made) by some of the most highly skilled athletes in existence. Well, I’d like to think that’s the case with almost all of us, which is why I feel it shouldn’t take long for WTMW to show how much merit it has.

Mancuso and Sutherland are doing this for the laughs and to see how far they can run with it. Bad comedies get cancelled from TV schedules all the time; after checking out their website, this has “horrible comedy” written all over it. It will be up to Mancuso and Sutherland to see if they can pull it off, but the hockey fan in me hopes this gets knocked off its high heels quickly.