Bird Droppings

There were worse things on TV

2012-01-27T06:34:00.003-05:00

Say what you will about NHL All Star Weekend, but the league and its broadcast partners have done a more than respectable job of making the event about something more than 60 minutes of glorified shinny.
The idea of getting back to the game's roots and choosing sides old school was a minor stroke of genius, and represents part of a steady formatic evolution from All Stars versus Stanley Cup champions to East versus West to North America against the World. Even in the absence of the NHL's two most prominent players - Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin - last night's All Star fantasy draft in Ottawa had something for everyone, including just the right amount of hockey hokum, whether it was the yahoos in the live audience booing the Leafs or a social media segment used to showcase the physical attributes and marginal broadcasting skills of Hall of Famer Igor Larionov's daughter, Alyonka. TSN host James Duthie, who got his job on merit, did a terrific job of sustaining the show's momentum and injected just the right amount of humour to keep the event fun without compromising credibility.
Steven Stamkos might have wanted to wash his hair and Scott Hartnell looked like Bernadette Peters on steroids, but there's only so much the producers can control, and overall, the fantasy draft was at least as watchable as most mid-season NHL games.

Tim Thomas: patriot or poser?

2012-01-24T08:50:00.006-05:00

(photoshopping by Josie Gold)
There's a time and a place for everything, and yesterday at the White House was neither the time nor the place for Tim Thomas to be conspicuous by his absence.
The reigning NHL playoff MVP declined to join his Boston teammates on a visit to Executive Mansion at the invitation of US President Barack Obama, who honored the Bruins for their 2011 Stanley Cup championship. Thomas released a statement saying his decision to skip the White House visit had nothing to do with politics or party, but was an individual choice by a free citizen concerned that the American federal government is out of control to the point of threatening fundamental rights and liberties.
As an avowed right wing patriot, it's disingenuous of Thomas to say that a deliberate snub of Obama, who's a Democrat, was not politically-motivated. Thomas doesn't have to respect the man, but as an American citizen, he should respect the office, because it still represents everything Thomas claims to hold dear about his country. And how does he reconcile representing the US at the Olympics but declining to visit the White House if his motives were not political?
Politics aside, yesterday was a team function, and Thomas disrespected and embarrassed his teammates on an international stage. He was selfish, immature and hypocritical in a scenario that called for common decency, decorum and solidarity.
President Obama's got bigger fish to fry. He's probably already over the snub, if it bothered him in the first place. It might linger a little longer among the Bruins, who had what should have been a happy, once-in-a-lifetime experience tainted by someone who put himself ahead of the team.

For Evans' sake (and other Monday morning musings)

2012-01-23T05:29:00.007-05:00

Baltimore kicker Billy Cundiff joined the unfortunate Scott Norwood in the annals of catastrophic football lore yesterday, but the AFC championship game should never have come down to Cundiff's missed 32 yard field goal attempt. Ravens receiver Lee Evans couldn't hold on to what should have been the game-winning touchdown pass from Joe Flacco two plays earlier. New England defensive back Sterling Moore deserves some credit for stripping the ball but it was a perfect throw from the much-maligned Flacco, who was better than Tom Brady but came out on the short end through no fault of his own...Like Flacco in New England, San Francisco's defence deserved better than the outcome of the NFC championship game. The 49ers shut down the Giants running game and sacked Eli Manning six times, but the San Francisco offence was an atrocious 1 for 13 on third down conversions and the game turned on two turnovers by the Niners special teams...Patriots fans are touting Super Bowl 46 February 5th in Indianapolis as a revenge match, but take it from a Giants fan: nothing can erase the joy and satisfaction of ruining New England's bid for a perfect season in Super Bowl 42. The inescapable reality for the Patriots and their supporters is that that Super Bowl meant more to them than this one, and they lost it...Disgraced former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno, who passed away over the weekend, is being remembered as a great but flawed man. If Paterno's worst flaw was that he proceeded by the book in reporting allegations of sexual misconduct to his superiors and they didn't do anything about it, that's not a bad legacy. Paterno is a textbook example of how the only thing our celebrity-obsessed culture relishes more than building someone up is tearing them down...Anyone who mocks Mike Komisarek for turning down Travis Moen's invitation to dance during Saturday's Canadiens-Leafs game in Toronto is missing the point. If Moen can't take a clean hit and continue to play the game without assuaging his wounded pride by picking a fight, that's his problem, not Komisarek's...And why not Scott Gomez in a shootout? It's not like anything else is working.

The best defence is a good defence (and other Monday morning musings)

2012-01-16T05:33:00.005-05:00

The hackneyed football expression about the best defence being a good offence was exposed again yesterday at Lambeau Field, where Green Bay's NFL-leading offence was smothered by a resolute New York Giants defence, while the Packers' league-worst D got lit up by Eli Manning. The Giants sacked Aaron Rodgers four times, forced four fumbles - one of which was inexplicably overruled despite conclusive video replay evidence - and executed a masterful defensive game plan that disrupted Rodgers' rhythm all day long. High-powered offensive football is fun to watch, but it's still a game of fundamentals, and the best defence is still a good defence...New Orleans and San Francisco provided by far the most riveting finish of the NFL weekend. With four minutes left in Saturday's game, I was sure the Saints were going to win. Then I was sure the 49ers would win. Then I was sure the Saints were going to win. Then the 49ers won...Unlike most social media, there's actually some redeeming value to Twitter. If you're fussy about who you follow, it can be a steady source of hilarious one-liners, and increasingly, it's become a platform for breaking news. Unfortunately, Twitter isn't restricted to professional journalists, so agenda-driven claptrap sometimes slips through the cracks and becomes mainstream news. The allegation that PK Subban of the Canadiens deliberately spit at the Rangers' Mike del Zotto last night at the Bell Center was a Twitter creation, and continues to have legs even though the evidence is shaky at best, and both del Zotto and Subban said after the game that it's news to them. In the internet age more than ever, people aren't letting facts get in the way of a good story...Hockey Night in Canada dingbat Cassie Campbell is the heir apparent to Bob Cole as English Canada's Saturday night court jester. Prior to Saturday's Senators-Canadiens game at the Bell Center, Campbell informed a national television audience that Ottawa goalie Craig Anderson would be playing in his "forty-oneth" game of the season. She also referred to Canadiens coach Randy Cunneyworth as "Cunningworth" and called CBC colleague Elliotte Friedman "Eric." In Campbell's defence, it was only her eleventy-twoth broadcast.

Raines robbed again

2012-01-10T06:16:00.000-05:00

I've never been a regular at the annual How Come Tim Raines Isn't In The Baseball Hall of Fame Whine Festival, but the argument is starting to resonate - not so much because of Raines' credentials, but because of some of the other players being honored while Raines is rebuffed.
The longtime Expos left fielder is a borderline candidate for Cooperstown, but so were the overwhelming majority of inductees from the past 10 years - a list that includes Roberto Alomar, Bert Blyleven, Andre Dawson, Rich Gossage, Wade Boggs, Ryne Sandberg, Jim Rice, Dennis Eckersley, Paul Molitor and now Barry Larkin. Fine ballplayers all, but a cut below true baseball legends like Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Ted Williams, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and Nolan Ryan, to name but a few of the indisputable giants of the game. More to the point, there's nothing tangible - statistically or otherwise - that separates Raines from most of the 21st century Hall of Fame inductees. Raines had drug issues early in his career, but Alomar spit in an umpire's face and Boggs is a famously admitted adulterer, so apparently character is not an issue.
I'm not saying the rest of them aren't worthy of Cooperstown, but if they belong, so does Tim Raines.

Protest fizzles as Habs win

2012-01-09T06:04:00.002-05:00

As much racket as the relative handful of anti-English demonstrators made before Saturday's Canadiens game (and let's not kid ourselves - they're as anti-English as they are pro-French), no one was complaining after the Canadiens beat Tampa Bay 3-1 with an English coach, an English goaltender and three English goal scorers. The sentiments of the vast majority of Bell Center fans were reflected in the garbage cans full of Quebec flags that were ditched almost as soon as they were handed out by protest organizers...It was nice testament to modern hockey's cultural diversity when 1972 Canada-Russia Summit Series heroes Vladislav Tretiak, Yvan Cournoyer and Paul Henderson were honored before the opening faceoff. Three hockey legends, all from different ethnic and even political backgrounds, united by history and forever friends. Stick that dans ta pipe et fume ca...Stand by for the most over-hyped game of the season tomorrow night when Jaroslav Halak and the Blues visit the Bell Center. The jury on the Halak trade came in over a year ago, but the St. Louis game is still being built up as if Halak and Carey Price both have something to proof. If anything, the Canadiens should start Peter Budaj tomorrow and give Price another two day's rest before Thursday's game in Boston...What if God really is a sports fan and takes weekends off from war, famine and pestilence to watch football with His son and cheer for Tim Tebow and the Broncos? The Tebow haters really need to live and let live, get over their own fear of faith and just enjoy the show.

Canadian fans check their dignity at the door (again)

2012-01-04T06:12:00.003-05:00

If you're looking for a gushing tribute to Canadian heart, grit and resolve in the wake of last night's near-miracle comeback at the World Junior Hockey Championships in Calgary, you're going to have to look someplace else. This is going to be about the darker side of the Canadian character, which almost invariably reveals itself in hockey arenas, as it did last night at the Saddledome, where a sellout crowd booed Russian captain Evgeny Kuznetsov after he was named Russia's player of the game for racking up a hat trick in a 6-5 semi-final win over Canada.
Kuznetsov's transgression, apparently, was two-fold: 1. he put his money where his mouth was by backing up his pre-game boasts about beating Canada, and 2. his celebrations crossed the line into showboating, although he was no more exuberant than Czech goaltender Peter Mrazek, whose celebratory antics in a round robin win over the US were embraced by Canadian fans and media as a wonderful demonstration of a young man's pride and passion. But Canadian hockey hubris and hypocrisy are such that pride and passion become disrespect on the part of anyone who dares show anything but the utmost deference towards the self-proclaimed greatest hockey nation in the world, which by the way hasn't won a junior championship since 2009.
To be sure, Kuznetsov wasn't a model of humility during the tournament and didn't distinguish himself last night by mocking the crowd in return, but he's 19 years old. You're 144, Canada. What's your excuse?

McGuire the wrong man for the job

2012-01-03T05:34:00.004-05:00

It wasn't enough for Pierre Gauthier to throw Randy Cunneyworth under the bus the first time. The Canadiens general manager was compelled to back the Greyhound over his interim coach once more for good measure yesterday, when Gauthier publicly apologized - ostensibly to Canadiens fans - for hiring a unilingual anglophone coach.
So, Gauthier's not sorry that he signed a chronically injured defenceman who has yet to play a game since getting a 17-plus million dollar contract last summer, or that he wasted a year and countless millions before re-signing Josh Gorges to a long-term deal, or that he exacerbated the Canadiens salary cap crisis by trading for Tomas Kaberle, but he feels shame that he offended a handful of insufferable zealots whose agenda has nothing to do with hockey and everything to do with politics.
Those misguided priorities should be all the proof anyone needs that Gauthier is not the right architect for year 10 of the Canadiens 5 year rebuilding plan, but anyone who's part of the groundswell of support for Pierre McGuire as Gauthier's successor should be careful what they wish for.
McGuire is bilingual and has an encyclopedic knowledge of hockey, but there's a lot more that goes into being a GM than speaking two languages and being Rain Man with names and numbers. There's a reason McGuire's career as a hockey executive has been stalled since 1996. He's an unpredictable and extremely polarizing personality. You either love him or hate him, and he either loves you or hates you. Someone who's difficult to deal with by nature isn't the best person to be negotiating contracts with player agents or trades with other general managers.
In the 15 years since he last worked for an NHL team, Pierre McGuire has forged a highly successful broadcasting career, and everyone's interests - his own included - would be best served if he remained in the media, where an unpredictable and polarizing personality is an asset rather than a liability.

Juste gagne, bebe

2011-12-19T05:52:00.002-05:00

Saturday's coaching change didn't have an immediate impact for the Canadiens, nor will it matter much in the long-term without an accompanying change in philosophy. Whether it's Randy Cunneyworth or someone of more politically correct linguistic lineage, the Canadiens need someone who can find a way to make the most of each player's skill set within a team context - an approach that'll require the kind of imagination and risk-taking that were completely foreign to Jacques Martin's way of thinking...Francophone media members who actually believe that speaking French should be a prerequisite for coaching the Canadiens should be covering politics, not hockey. It must be tiring to still be fighting the Battle of the Plains of Abraham 252 years after the last shot was fired...Now that they've lost a football game, the Green Bay Packers can focus on defending their Super Bowl championship without the added distraction of pursuing perfection. The real downside is that they've lost their aura of invincibility...Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow wasn't terrible in Denver's first loss in the last seven games, but he got a lesson in poise and maturity from New England's Tom Brady, whose championship pedigree still makes him the standard by which all other NFL quarterbacks are measured, Aaron Rodgers included...House arrest for a month isn't much of a punishment for disgraced baseball home run king Barry Bonds, especially considering he'll do the time at his palatial estate in Beverly Hills. If the judge in his obstruction of justice case really wanted to punish Bonds, she should have sentenced him to 30 days at a crazy cat lady's house.

Hysteria is not a substitute for debate

2011-12-13T06:14:00.003-05:00

Montreal Gazette hockey writer Pat Hickey's article calling Theoren Fleury a sexual abuse enabler and a hypocrite has been met with the kind of predictable, over-the-top outrage that's come to characterize public debate in Canada.
Without question, Hickey's piece is hugely provocative, but it's an opinion piece, and not only is Hickey entitled to his opinion, he's paid to express it. His article on Fleury is well-written and his argument well-presented, whether you agree with it or not. At least one senior editor had to approve the article, and on a topic as sensitive as child sex abuse, it might have gone all the way to the publisher before Hickey got the green light.
In an industry where newsrooms are increasingly run by spineless yes men who don't hesitate to throw their own people under the bus to protect the sacred brand and please their corporate masters, it's a credit to the Gazette's commitment to editorial autonomy that Hickey was allowed to express a controversial but relevant opinion. The next test for the Gazette is whether it stands by Hickey in the ensuing firestorm, which is already well ablaze, with Fleury himself leading the charge for Hickey's dismissal from the newspaper.
Hickey deserves his employer's support, if only for the sake of journalistic independance and freedom of expression. Otherwise, we've reached a place of zero-tolerance for dissenting opinion, and that's not good for anyone - not even the misguided posers in the vanguard of the thought police.

Habs fans root for failure with told-you-so mentality

2011-12-12T06:19:00.002-05:00

Even by the cynical standards of hard-done-by 21st century Montreal Canadiens fans, the reaction to Friday's acquisition of Tomas Kaberle was extraordinarily contemptuous. They complain about the team not shaking things up, and then when the general manager makes a significant trade, they immediately trash it without waiting for events to unfold. Kaberle was a difference-maker in his Canadiens' debut Saturday in New Jersey and still couldn't get his due from a fan base whose bitterness is exceeded only by their sense of entitlement. News flash: the 1970's are over. Stanley Cup parades are no longer a rite of spring - in ANY city. Twenty-nine teams DON'T win the Cup every year. Kaberle's salary cap hit isn't the issue right now. The immediate priority is getting into the playoffs, and the Canadiens have a better shot of making it with Kaberle than they did without him...World figure skating champion Patrick Chan's lament about not being appreciated at home in Canada has some merit, but musing about returning to his ethic roots and representing China is not the way to endear himself to his fellow Canadians...If Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Ryan Braun already knew he had tested positive for steroids when he won the National League MVP Award last month, he did a good job of hiding it. Braun's poise, humility and gratitude betrayed no sign of knowledge that his reputation would shortly be tainted by allegations that are now under appeal, and that his spokesmen insist will be proven false because of extenuating circumstances...Due process will dispense this week with Barry Bonds, who faces sentencing on a conviction of obstruction of justice for refusing to answer questions in front of a grand jury investigating steroid use by professional athletes. Whether or not he goes to prison, one place Bonds won't be going to is the Baseball Hall of Fame - at least not without a ticket.

Loyalty, schmoyalty

2011-12-09T06:03:00.003-05:00

Albert Pujols had an opportunity to do something exceedingly rare and noble in professional sports, but like the old grey mare, the road less-travelled ain't what it used to be.
Pujols turned down a reported 200 million dollar offer to effectively remain a St. Louis Cardinal for life, which would have allowed the three-time National League MVP to carve a Cal Ripken-esque legacy as one of only a handful of modern day athletic superstars to spend their entire career with the same team.
Pujols certainly can't be faulted for accepting a reported 10 year, 254 million dollar deal with the Los Angeles Angels, and the decision was probably less about the extra 54 million than it was about career and lifestyle considerations. He'll be 32 on Opening Day and will benefit greatly from the American League's designated hitter rule, which gives players of a certain age an opportunity to take a routine break from the wear and tear of playing in the field and still get their every day at bats. On a personal level, as much as St. Louis is a terrific baseball town that had a decade-long love affair with Pujols, there's probably not a Latin American player out there who wouldn't be more in their element living in Southern California versus a Midwest lifestyle.
Baseball players used to spend their entire career with the same team because they had to. Ted Williams, Ernie Banks, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial and most of the rest of the one-team Hall of Famers were virtual slaves to the reserve clause, which tied them to the same team for life, unless that team decided to trade or sell them. Since the reserve clause was struck down in the mid-1970s, the pendulum has swung completely the other way, and players are de facto hired guns who move from one team to the next with little - if any - consideration for the teams and cities they left behind.
It would have been nice to be able to write a commentary about the eternal bond between Pujols, the Cardinals and St. Louis fans, but honour, loyalty and commitment can't be bought - not even for 200 million dollars.

Unfinished business for Als' Calvillo

2011-12-06T06:19:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure why I was surprised when Anthony Calvillo announced he'd be back for another season as quarterback of the Alouettes in 2012, because it makes sense on virtually every level. I guess I was thinking about Calvillo's age - 39 - coupled with both his wife's and his own cancer scares, and how that combination of factors could make focusing on his young family more important than pursuing a football career that's already produced irrefutable Hall of Fame credentials, including three Grey Cup championships and three CFL MVP awards.
But there are other, overriding factors that make coming back the logical choice for Calvillo. One is that despite his age and health setbacks, he's still the standard by which all other CFL quarterbacks are judged. Calvillo led the league in completions, passing yards and touchdown passes in 2011, and had an almost unheard of touchdown to interceptions ratio of 4-1. He was the only reason the Als took Hamilton to overtime in the Eastern Conference semifinal.
Beyond his still-formidable skill set and leadership qualities, Calvillo is not one to rest on his laurels, and he hates to lose. Behind the modest and soft-spoken facade is a fierce competitor whose unfailing public grace regardless of circumstance belies a deep abhorrence for defeat. He measures everything in the moment, and by that measure, a first round playoff exit in his most recent game means Anthony Calvillo's work is not done.

The perfect Pack (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-12-05T06:16:00.004-05:00

Yesterday's Green Bay-New York NFL game would have made a great Super Bowl, and it might have been the Giants' Super Bowl, because at 6-6 and mired in a four game losing streak, they're becoming increasingly marginal as playoff contenders. The Packers, meanwhile, are still on track for a perfect season, and with Oakland, Kansas City, Chicago and Detroit remaining on Green Bay's schedule, 16-0 isn't just possible - it's probable. There are some other great teams out there - San Francisco, New Orleans and New England among them - but the Packers are a cut above, thanks mainly to Aaron Rodgers, who's on the verge of carving as rich a legacy in four seasons as Brett Favre forged in 16 years in Green Bay. When character and leadership are taken into account, history might judge Favre as the Packers' third greatest QB, behind Rodgers and Bart Starr...Andrei Markov's surgeon, Dr. James Andrews, has long been considered the go-to guy for athletes with major knee injuries, but in light of Markov's repeated setbacks in his recovery, I'm starting to wondering if Andrews farmed out the Markov surgery to Dr. Doolittle, Dr. John or Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show...It didn't transpire, but had the Canadiens and Kings gone to a shootout Saturday in Los Angeles, my prediction for Jacques Martin's picks were Gill, Budaj and Cole - Bob, not Erik...Jeffrey Loria and David Samson have no shame. A decade after helping to orchestrate the demise of major league baseball in Montreal, the Miami Marlins owners are using revenue-sharing money from other teams to spend like drunken sailors on the free agent market. One can only trust that karma will eventually catch up with reprobates of their ilk, whether in this life or the next...I don't know enough about soccer to say with authority which four countries represent the Group of Death in the draw for Euro 2012, but Italy and Greece in the same foursome would have been a no-brainer for the Group of Debt.

There's no accounting for accountability

2011-11-30T06:16:00.005-05:00

There's a new buzzword making the rounds in the National Hockey League. It's "accountability," and it means...nothing.
Kirk Muller was talking about accountability Monday at his first news conference as the new head coach of the Carolina Hurricanes, and he might as well have been reciting the Moose Lodge oath of allegiance or whistling Dixie. Bruce Boudreau talked about accountability right up until he was fired Monday as head coach in Washington because the Capitals quit on him. Boudreau's fate was sealed when he held Alexander Ovechkin accountable by benching his best player in the late stages of a tie game earlier this month. Ovechkin paid lip service to accountability at the time but continued to tune out the coach and perform well below his pay scale, and Boudreau paid the price.
Accountability means something in the real world and even to the low level grunts among professional athletes, but the nature of the business is such that players of Ovechkin's status are not accountable. Scott Gomez is another glaring example. If Gomez were held accountable for his shortcomings, he'd be playing on the third line for the Toledo Walleye of the East Coast Hockey League.
Muller and Boudreau and the rest of the coaching fraternity can talk all they want about accountability, but they should understand that they're the only ones who will ultimately be held accoutable - not just for their own failures, but for the failures of fat cat prima donnas whose God-given ability insulates against accountability, whether or not they're carrying their weight.

Habs fans put "h" in fine "whine"...again

2011-11-29T06:15:00.004-05:00

The already overdone persecution complex among Montreal hockey fans became even more exaggerated yesterday when the NHL suspended Canadiens winger Max Pacioretty for three games for a hit on Pittsburgh's Kris Letang this past Saturday at the Bell Center.
How, wonder hard-done-by Habs supporters, can Pacioretty get three games when Boston's Milan Lucic got nothing for running Buffalo goaltender Ryan Miller earlier this month, and Bruins captain Zdeno Chara escaped suspension after literally breaking Pacioretty's neck last March? After all, Pacioretty only broke Letang's nose.
Well, here's the thing: none of the three incidents has anything to do with each other. Pacioretty's hit on Letang was a textbook example of what the league has stated it wants to eliminate: a blindside hit to the head. The Lucic and Chara incidents were both different in nature and more open to interpretation, at least among those of us who aren't the Amazing Kreskin or don't claim to be gifted with the power to read the thoughts of others. Also, Pacioretty doesn't get a freebie just because he was once victimized, or because he had the decency to apologize to Letang.
Rather than play the persecution card and trot out the tired old anti-Canadiens conspiracy theory, maybe Montreal fans should take some pride in the fact that Pacioretty saw fit to man up and admit he was in the wrong, which gives him an element of class and dignity that Lucic and Chara sorely lack.

Credit where credit is due (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-11-21T06:15:00.002-05:00

As much as it pains their critics, coach Jacques Martin and general manager Pierre Gauthier deserve at least some credit for helping get the injury-riddled Canadiens to the one-quarter mark of the season a game over .500 and well within striking distance of a playoff spot. Gauthier's ability to uncover useful replacement players and Martin's management of the limited resources available to him bode well for the Habs when and if they get back to something resembling full health...The depleted and relatively inexperienced and undersized defence corps gets its toughest test to date tonight at the Bell Center against the Bruins, who've won eight in a row after a slow start and haven't become any smaller or less belligerent...The long-awaited return of Sidney Crosby means at least as much for the NHL as it does for his own team. After it was announced that the Pittsburgh captain will play his first game in close to a year tonight, the Versus network in the US announced it was pulling the plug on the Boston-Montreal game to show the Penguins and Islanders in hopes of doubling hockey ratings on American television from 1.3 to 2.6 - people, not share points...Formula One might be the world's most glamorous sport, but it can't match NASCAR for drama. While Sebastien Vettel clinched the F1 championship with nearly two months left on the F1 calendar, the Sprint Cup title came down to yesterday's season finale in Homestead, Florida, where Tony Stewart and Carl Edwards finished 1-2 in the race and 1-2 in the Chase for the Championship, which went to Stewart on the basis of a tiebreaker after he and Edwards ended the season tied in points...A lot of President's Cup onlookers might have been disappointed, but no one should have been surprised that Tiger Woods and Steve Williams exchanged nothing more than a perfunctory handshake in their first public encounter since Woods fired Williams as his caddy. It's still golf, not roller derby.

Tebow of Nazareth

2011-11-18T05:42:00.006-05:00

Maybe there is something to this God thing, because there's no logical explanation for how devout Christian Tim Tebow keeps coming up with miracles on the football field.
Tebow has one of the worst ratings among starting quarterbacks in the NFL, but is 4-1 as a starter after leading the Denver Broncos to yet another surreal comeback win. Tebow was entirely ineffective for 54 minutes last night before engineering a late scoring drive that culminated in a 20 yard Tebow touchdown run for a 17-13 victory over the visiting New York Jets. Tebow's latest heroics came four days after an even more improbable Broncos win in Kansas City, where pro football's least conventional quaterback completed two - count 'em, two - passes, but made one of them good for 56 yards and a touchdown, and added a rushing TD of his own.
He has been dismissed as a one-dimensional quarterback with no long-term professional upside and openly ridiculed for his faith in Christianity, but all Tebow has done so far is find ways to win, while sticking steadfastly to the high road despite the mockery and criticism. He was dismissed as a poser for kneeling in prayer after beating Miami in overtime a few weeks ago, but really, what was Tebow doing other than honoring and emulating his Lord and Savoir? I haven't read the New Testament word for word, but I'm pretty sure Jesus never broke into the Riverdance after healing the lepers or did a Sea of Galilee version of the Lambeau Leap after walking on water.
Tim Tebow is - for the time being, at least - a winner, and will always be a Christian gentleman, whose honesty, humility and gratitude are a blueprint for the peace of mind that comes with having faith in a Higher Power, while sparing him the burden of a God complex.
His detractors should be so blessed.

Here's Howe (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-11-14T06:17:00.005-05:00

If yesterday's CFL Eastern semi-final was Anthony Calvillo's last game - and there's no firm indication that it was - the 39 year old Alouettes quarterback went out in style, even in a losing cause. Passing for 513 yards and three touchdowns, Calvillo did everything in his power to prolong the Als' pursuit of a Grey Cup three-peat. With Montreal and Hamilton combining for 96 points, the respective defensive coordinators might argue with the description of the game as an instant classic, but nobody came to the Big O hoping to see a punting duel, with the possible exception of the close friends and immediate family of the punters...Due process took another beating Saturday at Penn State, where 120 thousand people took part in a prayer service on the assumption that everything that's been alleged in a child sex abuse case is a matter of fact. The mad dash to the moral high ground has already precluded anyone in the case from getting a fair trial...Stand by for the usual bellyaching from Canadiens fans about NHL favoritism towards the Bruins if Boston's Milan Lucic isn't suspended for Saturday's hit on Buffalo goalie Ryan Miller, and there's no reason Lucic should be suspended. Miller was playing the puck well out of his crease and Lucic didn't deliberately target Miller's head when the two players collided, so the two minute penalty Lucic was assessed for charging is where it should end. And that's coming from a Canadiens fan...Sometimes, it takes someone other than Don Cherry to explain why fighting has a legitimate place in hockey. Mark Howe, a highly-respected, newly-minted member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, says that putting the onus on the referees over letting players police each other is an open invitation to the kind of cheap shots that routinely show up on the nightly highlight reel (see Lucic versus Miller). When Cherry argues the point, he's dismissed as a dinosaur, but coming from Howe it's perfectly credible...Speaking of Howe, did you see his father, Gordie, at Saturday's Hall of Fame festivities? Even at age 83, the elder Howe resembles Mark's slightly older brother more than he looks like his father. Mr. Hockey also looks like he could still break your nose with a well-placed elbow if you tried to cut the line at Tim's.

The rush to judgement at Penn State

2011-11-09T06:15:00.004-05:00

Anyone who lives within a hundred miles of Penn State University should exercise extra caution in crossing the street these days, lest they get run roughshod by the stampede to the moral high ground.
Some judicial and journalistic fundamentals have already been trampled in the scandal at Penn State, including the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. The grand jury report accusing former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky of sexually abusing eight young boys and charging two former high-ranking university officials with perjury in an alleged coverup is a damning indictment, but the premature rush to judgement is more than a little unsettling. Media commentators who should know better aren't even bothering to put the charges in their proper legal context anymore. The term "alleged" has become optional, insinuating that the guilt of all parties is a given even though due process has yet to run its course.
What's equally unseemly is that the media crosshairs are fixed more squarely on legendary Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno than they are on the the guy who's actually accused of raping children. There's absolutely no evidence of legal wrongdoing on Paterno's part, but because he's by far the biggest name in the big picture, the scandal has become all about him.
I'm not sure when or how we got to the point where the legacy of a football coach - no matter how iconic - became more of a priority than justice for the victims of a heinous crime, but here we are. Maybe I'M jumping to conclusions, but in this instance, that wouldn't make me any different than anyone else.

Gone fishin' (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-11-06T20:52:00.011-05:00

Spare me the sob stories about the officiating in the Canadiens' loss in New York Saturday. Aside from the phantom interference call on Michael Blunden, the Canadiens got everything they deserved from the referees. Between a smart game plan with solid execution by the Rangers, at least one goal that Carey Price would probably like back, and four goal posts by the Canadiens, there was a lot more to that hockey game than penalties...Boston's 7-0 blowout of Toronto exposed the Achilles heel that's going to eventually bring the Leafs back to earth. The absence of a proven, quality goaltender is going to be Toronto's undoing, unless general manager Brian Burke uses his blue line depth to trade for help from outside the organization...

In the context of a hockey broadcast, Don Cherry's tributes to the military are frequently awash in maudlin cornball, but the double-breasted Canadian Legion blazer and regimental tie combination Cherry wore on Coach's Corner Saturday marked the first time in recent memory that he looked like a distinguished elderly gentleman and not a creepy old carnival barker...Worst hockey analysis ever - Ottawa color commentator Denis Potvin on Senators forward Jesse Winchester: "If you put a fishing rod in his hands, he'll do whatever it takes to catch a fish, and he brings that same attitude to hockey." Fishing as a metaphor for hockey? Sounds like Denis put the wrong mushrooms on his pre-game steak...

(photoshopping by Josie Gold)

So, Kyle Busch deliberately spins Ron Hornaday Jr. into the wall at the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Race in Texas and gets suspended for the weekend. For the weekend. In most jurisdictions, what Busch did qualifies as assault with a deadly weapon, if not attempted homicide. In NASCAR, it gets you a two day grounding and a stern talking-to...Stranger things have happened, but it's difficult to imagine the slumping, injury-riddled Alouettes turning things around in the playoffs on the heels of three consecutive losses, including Saturday night's 43-1 debacle in BC. Anthony Calvillo might still be the best quarterback in the CFL, but unless he adds blocking, tackling and faith healing to his repertoire between now and next Sunday, the three-peat dream is dead...One thing about Bill Belichick - no matter what the score is, you can always tell he's an asshole.

Tweet this

2011-11-02T05:41:00.006-04:00

The most contentious element of Winnipeg Blue Bomber Johnny Sears' helmet-to-helmet hit on Toronto quarterback Steven Jyles last Friday isn't the hit itself or the one game suspension the CFL handed Sears yesterday. The infraction and the subsequent suspension and fine are cut-and-dried, done-and-done.
What's dubious is whether the league was acting within its limits of authority when it fined two Toronto players for their comments about the hit on social media. Argos offensive linemen Rob Murphy and Taylor Robertson, both of whom were injured and didn't play in Winnipeg, went on Twitter after the game to say that Sears is fortunate they weren't playing, and that they'll settle the score with him next season. Murphy and Robertson were fined an undisclosed amount by the CFL, and Murphy has indicated (via Twitter, where else?) that he will appeal, as well he should.
Social media is here to stay and like most of the rest of their generation, professional athletes are all over it. Finer legal minds than mine will be required to decide whether an athlete is answerable to his team or league for what he posts on Facebook or Twitter, and Murphy's appeal could go a long way towards determining whether players are liable to censure under the terms of their playing contracts and the collective bargaining agreement.
It would seem to my not-so-refined legal mind that as long as they're not uttering death threats, promoting hatred or dabbling in libel or slander, what anyone says on their personal social media account is their own business.

Christian athletes fair game for mockery (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-10-31T05:36:00.007-04:00

Detroit Lions linebacker Stephen Tulloch says he was only having fun and meant no disrespect when he mocked Denver quarterback Tim Tebow's one-knee prayer after sacking Tebow yesterday, but mockery - by definition - is an act of disrespect. That Tebow is a devout Christian is the only reason Tulloch's gesture wasn't greeted with widespread outrage. Imagine if the Lions had danced the Hora or faced east and prostrated themselves to Allah after sacking a Jewish or Muslim quarterback. They would have been universally condemned for cultural insensitivity and forced to apologize, but mocking Tebow's religion is apparently okay because it's just having a little fun at the expense of a Bible thumper. I'm not offended as a Christian, but I am offended by the double standard...Finishing first in the CFL East is about more than just home field advantage for the Alouettes, who no longer control their own playoff destiny after yesterday's loss to Calgary. In a league whose revenues are a fraction of other major pro sports leagues, a home playoff game at Olympic Stadium can have a substantial impact on the team's bottom line...Along with most of the rest of the Canadiens, goaltender Carey Price lifted his game to another level last week, but two of the biggest saves of the week were made by defencemen. With their goaltender out of position on separate occasions, desperation goalmouth dives by Raphael Diaz and Josh Gorges were turning points in back-to-back wins over the Bruins...Besides demonstrating a quick wit, Price proved himself as a student history Thursday when he said of the soft goal he gave up in Boston, "I Bill Buckner-ed it." Buckner's infamous fielding gaffe in the 1986 World Series is not a personal memory for Price, who was born in 1987...While Lars Eller is getting better all the time, it might be a little early to saddle him with a nickname as bold as "The Great Dane," although it does have a better ring to it than "The Much-Improved Dane"...Mike Milbury said one of the dumbest things in recent memory Saturday when he criticized PK Subban's wardrobe on Hockey Night in Canada, saying that Subban's stylish sartorial choices are part of the reason other players don't like him. This from a guy who was wearing a tie that looked like it was knit for him by his Nana.

Things my friend Mark says - Volume 4: A giant sucking sound

2011-10-28T19:31:00.004-04:00

Shades of '75

2011-10-28T06:17:00.010-04:00

Game 6 of the 1975 World Series is still the best baseball game I've ever seen, but that might only be because I didn't actually see last night's sixth game of the 2011 Fall Classic. I was already dead asleep for two hours by the time David Freese won it for the Cardinals with a leadoff homer in the bottom of the 11th, but I knew I'd missed something special when I logged on to Twitter first thing this morning and read comments like "This ball game is ridiculous," "I cannot believe this," "This is why baseball is the greatest sport on the planet" and "Move over, Carlton Fisk."
Like Fisk's legendary game-winning home run 37 Octobers ago, Freese's walkoff bomb will be the enduring memory of last night's game, but there was so much more to both games that was or will be all but lost to the sands of time. This morning's vivid images of Freese's game-tying, two-run triple in the bottom of the 9th, Josh Hamilton's two-run homer to put Texas back on top in the 10th and Lance Berkman capping another Cards' rally in the St. Louis half of the 10th will eventually become dusty footnotes like Bernie Carbo's three run homer in the 8th that set the stage for Fisk, George Foster throwing out Denny Doyle at the plate and Dwight Evans robbing Joe Morgan of a go-ahead home run in the 11th in back '75.
Like good scotch, baseball is an acquired taste, and anyone who doesn't have the patience for it can't appreciate that what they perceive as the agonizingly slow pace of the game is exactly what makes it so exciting. When the drama is allowed to build the way it builds in baseball, the emotional payoff is enormous, especially when the stakes are as high as they are in October.
Last night's game will go down as one of the top four or five games in the history of the World Series, and in a sport that's produced more instant classics than any other, that's saying a lot.

Staying up late to pitch in the World Series and other Monday morning musings

2011-10-24T05:15:00.009-04:00

Well, no one can accuse the Canadiens of panicking. Petteri Nokelainen and Garrett Stafford for Brock Trotter and a seventh round draft choice is the managerial equivalent of taking a valium when the prescription calls for a liberal dose of stimulants. With fans and media alike calling for drastic measures up to and including the exhumation of the mortal remains of Toe Blake, acquiring a has-been and a never-was for a minor leaguer and a late round pick only invites open disdain and mockery...It's a bit like saying that other than hitting the iceberg, the Titanic had a terrific maiden voyage, but that really was an entertaining hockey game at the Bell Center Saturday, right up until much-reviled former Canadien Mikhail Grabovski came back to haunt the Habs with as nifty an overtime goal as you'll ever see...San Jose's Joe Thornton played his 1000th NHL game in Boston Saturday and was well-received by the same fans who pretty much ran him out of Boston six years ago. It was the kind of reception Mikhail Grabovski should not count on if he happens to play his 1000th NHL game in Montreal. His millionth, maybe, but not his thousandth...So, Texas pitcher Derek Holland can throw a baseball 98 miles an hour but he can't grow a mustache. Rangers manager Ron Washington didn't take Holland out of the game in the 9th inning last night because Holland was tired. He gave him the hook because it was past Holland's bedtime...If the CIA is serious about making the western world a safer place, it should send a copy of yesterday's 6-3 Cleveland-Seattle NFL game to Guantanamo Bay and make the detainees watch it until they spill everything they know about Al-Qaeda. The war on terror would be won by noon tomorrow.

Things my friend Mark says - Volume 3: No mo' Momo

2011-10-20T19:47:00.008-04:00

Jimmy Crack Corn and Bryant Gumbel don't care

2011-10-20T05:26:00.005-04:00

And you thought Don Cherry was a loose cannon.
HBO Sports anchor Bryant Gumbel went off on a tirade this week that made Cherry's "pukes and hypocrites" brouhaha look like a pre-nap tantrum during quiet time at nursery school.
In an editorial addressing the basketball lockout, Gumbel likened NBA commissioner David Stern to a modern day plantation owner treating men as if they were his "boys."
This isn't one of those cases where Gumbel can get away with saying that because he's black. Playing the race card is a dubious proposition at the best of times. To characterize highly-paid and pampered pro athletes as slaves just because the majority of the work force is black and the NBA commissioner is white isn't just irresponsible - it's inflammatory.
The disturbing thing is that as a seasoned, award-winning journalist, Gumbel knows better, which means his comments were calculated, although to what end is known only to Gumbel himself. His documented history of controversial, race-related comments bespeaks a shameless, self-seeking publicity hound, but maybe he really fancies himself as some kind of latter day Martin Luther King, Jr., fighting the good fight for civil rights. If that's the case, Gumbel might want to pick a different battlefield than the NBA. Comparing privileged multi-millionaires to slaves minimizes genuine social injustices and undermines the efforts of the legitimate champions of racial equality.

When the reward doesn't justify the risk (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-10-17T04:50:00.023-04:00

In the context of sports, the expression "high risk, high reward" doesn't normally imply the risk of death, but the tragic events at yesterday's Indy car race in Las Vegas were a sobering reminder that death lurks on every corner and straightaway. As with every fatality in elite level motorsport, there will be an appropriate mourning period for two-time Indianapolis 500 winner Dan Wheldon, then it'll be business as usual until the next driver is killed, whether it's next week, next month or next year. It's a measure of the magnitude of the rewards and the addictiveness of speed that racers routinely and willingly risk sudden, violent death, but how do his teammates, peers and rivals explain to Wheldon's widow and two young children that it was worth the risk?...I don't care if Peter, Paul and Mary are playing defence - anytime the Canadiens score five goals, there's no excuse for a goaltender of Carey Price's calibre not parlaying it into two points. By the time the Canadiens and Avalanche got to a shootout Saturday, Price almost looked like he'd given up...Kudos to the Canadiens and Price for supporting Breast Cancer Awareness month and for the subtle touches of pink on Price's goaltending equipment, Price's tastefully low-key presentation could serve as an example for the NFL, where over-the-top pink shoes, socks, towels and even whistles have had the effect of making the cause intrusive...It's only mid-October and the fossilized remains of Bob Cole are already in mid-season form. The marginally coherent Hockey Night in Canada windbag had some real doozies Saturday, announcing that a Colorado penalty when the Avs were already shorthanded was "the first penalty of the game," and calling Colorado's David Jones "Johnson." How do you not get "Jones" right? That's like mispronouncing Smith...Those throwback jerseys the Green Bay Packers were sporting yesterday looked like something a prison team wouild wear, complete with the black numbers inside a yellow circle providing tower guards with a convenient bulls-eye in the event of an escape attempt.

Calvillo simply the best (and other Monday morning musings on a Tuesday)

2011-10-11T06:17:00.005-04:00

The most impressive thing about Anthony Calvillo is that being pro football's all-time passing leader isn't the most impressive thing about him. Even before being confronted with his wife's illness and a cancer scare of his own, the Alouettes quarterback's athletic aptitude and accomplishments were secondary to his character. Calvillo has always had confidence without arrogance, and been humble without being aloof. As a leader, a role model and a person, the best comparison - and maybe the highest compliment you could pay him - is to call Calvillo the Jean Beliveau of football...Speaking of Beliveau, with all the casualties the Canadiens are suffering and the damaged goods they've had to ship back to other teams, big Jean is now officially back on the Montreal depth chart among forwards. A couple more injuries and it'll be Beliveau on a line with Aaron Palushaj and John Chabot...I don't doubt it was well-intentioned, but Sunday's warm and fuzzy pre-game video tribute to former Winnipeg Jet Rick Rypien, who committed suicide over the summer, struck me as an inappropriate spectacle that risked sending the message to young people with self-destructive tendencies that if you take your own life, you'll be remembered as a hero...Before Toronto's city fathers prematurely clear the decks for a Stanley Cup parade, let them recall that the Leafs started last season 5-0-1 and still managed to finished 10th and miss the playoffs by eight points... It doesn't matter that Minnesota's Pierre-Marc Bouchard isn't a goon by nature. If you deliberately smash a guy in the face with your stick, two games is a justifiable suspension, whether Bouchard's agent, Allan Walsh, likes it or not. By the way, Walsh is the same guy who went on Twitter a couple of years ago to complain that Carey Price was getting more playing time than Walsh client Jaroslav Halak, and accentuated his point by comparing their statistics. I guess I don't have to tell you that Walsh hasn't been tweeting any statistical comparisons between Price and Halak lately.

Things my friend Mark says - Volume 2

2011-10-10T17:52:00.003-04:00

Bad fashion choices and other Monday morning musings

2011-10-03T05:36:00.006-04:00

Only in Montreal does public and media sentiment about the local hockey team fluctuate from confidence to near-panic back to unbridled optimism, all during two weeks of training camp. The bandwagon is overflowing once again after the Canadiens wrapped up the pre-season by steamrolling Tampa Bay 5-1 in Quebec City. A near-flawless dress rehearsal with what was essentially the opening night lineup against a quality opponent puts the insignificance of a 2-6 exhibition record in its proper perspective...If the Alouettes defence is looking for something to build on in what's been a factious season, they need look no further than the goal line stand that preserved Friday's victory in Winnipeg. On and off the field, they'll get more and better results from a united front than they will from backbiting and second guessing each other...It doesn't get much more inappropriate than the last place Baltimore Orioles pouring out of the dugout like they'd just won the World Series after eliminating the Red Sox from playoff contention on the last night of baseball's regular season. Losing 93 games and being out of the pennant race since July calls for something a little more dignified and humble than a season-ending dogpile...Someone needs to tell St. Louis Cardinals pitcher Octavio Dotel that the high socks are not flattering on a man of his age and body type. He's a fanny pack and a pair of sandals away from being a German tourist...Even the best in the sports broadcasting business have off-days. Iconic ESPN host Chris Berman reported yesterday that when NFL teams start the season 3-0, they make the playoffs "seventy cent per six of the time." I'm Bed Tird, K103 Sports.

They're not saying "Budaj" - they're booing

2011-09-30T05:17:00.005-04:00

When they signed him on the first day of free agency this summer, Peter Budaj's two year contract with the Canadiens seemed like a steal. A million and change per season for an established NHL goaltender to back up Carey Price is a nifty bit of fiscal management in a salary cap world.
Well, let the second-guessing begin after Budaj turned in back-to-back exhibition performances that had the Canadiens faithful pining for the good old days of Alex Auld, Yann Danis and Red Light Racicot. Budaj has struggled mightily in the pre-season, getting lit up for seven goals against Boston last Sunday before absorbing a 4-0 loss to Tampa Bay last night at the Bell Center, where he actually gave up five goals, one of which was negated by an early whistle.
It's only exhibition, but that doesn't disguise the fact that Budaj just hasn't looked good, and considering he's a year shy of 30 and heading into his seventh NHL season, it's not as if his struggles can be ascribed to rookie jitters. Presumably, he won't be this terrible all season, but that we're even having the discussion underscores the critical importance of Price staying healthy and carrying 80 to 90 percent of the load.

You call that a choke?

2011-09-29T06:16:00.011-04:00

This is going to come across like one of those "back in my day" rants triggered by early onset dementia, but if that's what it takes to put the Boston Red Sox 2011 collapse into its proper perspective, so be it. To be sure, blowing a nine game lead in less than a month and losing the wild card on the last night of the season is an epic choke, but in history's catalogue of Red Sox catastrophes, it ranks as a distant third at best.
1978: Boston squanders a 14 1/2 game mid-season lead and loses a one game playoff to the hated Yankees on a home run by banjo-hitting Bucky Dent, whose pop fly into the net atop the Green Monster at Fenway Park would have been a routine out in any other ballpark.
1986: the Red Sox are one out away from winning the World Series when Mookie Wilson's weak grounder skips between Bill Buckner's legs and wins Game 6 for the Mets, who go on to take Game 7 and the Series, spawning yet another legend in which a Boston bartender supposedly turns to the inconsolable patrons in his packed establishment and says "The son-of-a-bitches killed our fathers and now they're coming for us."
The Dent and Buckner disasters both prolonged a world championship drought that began in 1918, and that popular superstition claimed was rooted in the team's ill-fated decision to sell Babe Ruth to the Yankees. The vast majority of the team's fans in 1978 and '86 had lived a lifetime of losing, often in the most improbable, spectacular and heartbreaking fashion. Red Sox Nation today knows nothing of that kind of torment, having won two World Series in the last seven years. For them, anything else is still gravy, which is why they'll get over last night's goings-on and forgive Jonathan Fucking Papelbon a lot quicker and easier than earlier generations recovered from Bill Fucking Buckner and Bucky Fucking Dent.

Faggots and bananas

2011-09-28T06:15:00.002-04:00

Awfully decent of New York Ranger Sean Avery to champion the gay pride cause; too bad he did so by tacitly endorsing racism.
The timing of Avery's claim that Philadelphia's Wayne Simmonds called him a faggot during an NHL exhibition game two nights ago is more than a little suspect, coming less than a week after someone threw a banana on the ice while Simmonds, who's black, was taking a penalty shot. Simmonds says he doesn't recall dropping the homophobic f-bomb on Avery, but whether he did or not, a lot of things get said in the heat of the moment during hockey games, and it has ever been thus. That doesn't excuse it, but there's no comparison between an overt act of racism openly witnessed by thousands of people and a name-calling incident that was localized to the hockey players within earshot for whom trash talk long ago became the accepted soundtrack of their professional lives. As one of the game's most despised players, Avery has probably been called a lot worse, and his own record of inappropriate comments and sociopathic behavior hardly make him a credible witness against anyone else.
Avery can try all he wants to take the moral high ground, but by calling out Simmonds within days of the banana tossing incident, he's suggesting Simmonds had it coming to him, which is as reprehensible as the act itself, and far more offensive than any amount of name-calling.

Shanahan kicking ass and taking bank account numbers

2011-09-27T06:46:00.003-04:00

Now we can take Brendan Shanahan seriously.
After a series of hard-hitting suspensions against marginal NHL players, the league's new hanging judge lowered the boom on a prominent veteran yesterday, banishing Columbus defenceman James Wisniewski for the remainder of the exhibition schedule and the first eight games of the regular season for a head shot on Minnesota's Cal Clutterbuck.
What separates Wisniewski from other players who've been suspended during training camp is the amount he'll forfeit in salary. Taking into account that he just signed a 6 year, 33 million dollar contract with the Blue Jackets and that he's classified as a repeat offender for past transgressions, Wisniewski is out of pocket to the tune of 536,585 dollars.
Critics have been clamoring for the NHL to curb reckless play by hitting the violators where it hurts the most - in the pocketbook - and if there was any doubt about Shanahan's resolve, the magnitude of the fine accompanying Wisniewski's suspension makes clear in no uncertain terms that he means business. You can bet your last 536,585 dollars that the new sherrif in town now has the full attention and respect of every player in the league.

Chill out (again)

2011-09-21T06:33:00.004-04:00

If there's one thing we learned last night, it's that we never learn.
The doomsayers weren't in quite the same voice as last year, but there were still scattered boos followed by considerable online panic-mongering over Carey Price getting lit up in the Canadiens' pre-season opener at the Bell Center. Price wasn't available for comment after giving up four goals on 13 shots, but had he faced the media hordes, past experience tells us what he would have said: relax and chill out, because the Stanley Cup isn't won in September. And, of course, he'd be right. Price led NHL goaltenders in wins last season and there are still rocket scientists out there second guessing the Jaroslav Halak trade 15 months later, and they're using last night's goings-on as fuel for their fire.
What's remarkable is that in a city that's supposedly as hockey-savvy as Montreal, the first game of the exhibition schedule is the subject of hockey's version of a coronor's inquest. The proliferation of internet, cable and satellite sports media creates a need for substantially more content than traditional media ever had to produce, so non-events like exhibition openers tend to get over-analyzed. Mostly, though, it's the honest but misguided enthusiasm of a fanatical fan base that inevitably lets the passion of the moment cloud their better judgement, sometimes for a year or more.

Markov's "wonky" knee and other Monday morning musings

2011-09-18T17:21:00.008-04:00

If reports of Andrei Markov suffering a setback in his recovery from knee surgery are much ado about nothing - as Markov and the Canadiens suggest - then why so much ado? Well, for one thing, Markov plays in Montreal, where a Canadiens player suffering a hangnail is good for three pages in the Journal and the first 25 minutes on l'Antichambre. Fortunately for all, reporters aren't doctors, and to think that the Canadiens would re-sign Markov to a lucrative free agent contract without medical due diligence is absurd...Los Angeles defenceman Drew Doughty needs a new agent. With the Kings seemingly poised to make a serious Stanley Cup run, rejecting a 6.8 million dollar a year contract offer and refusing to report to training camp is only going to alienate Doughty's teammates and damage his reputation...Reading Mike Boone's wonderfully-crafted and unfailingly entertaining columns in the Gazette sports section this past week made me wonder why they ever took the guy off sports in the first place. Boone's a better writer than most syndicated columnists, and it's to our benefit that he didn't take his considerable skills to Toronto, like most of the rest of the superior media talent that ever came out of Montreal...The only thing funnier than HBO's Larry Merchant telling Floyd Mayweather that he wished he was 50 years younger so he could kick Mayweather's ass is (K103 morning man) Java Jacobs' observation that if Merchant were 50 years younger, he'd be 93.

Things my friend Mark says, part 1

2011-09-18T15:41:00.010-04:00

My friend Mark is as funny and articulate as anyone in the blogosphere, but too lazy/humble/indifferent to start his own blog, so he just writes gold and sends it to me. His observations need to be shared, for amusement's sake if not for the betterment of mankind.

On sideline Tony
Sept18/11
Dear Mr. Burp,

After 4 dismal years, is it not time for Fox Sports to end the Tony Siragusa sideline experiment?

He has never been funny even once (nor insightful nor even mildly interesting). With the exception of about 7 beer swilling idiots in New Jersey, who can stand to even look at the fucker?

And on top of that, Siragusa - "The Luckiest Fat Fuck in the World" - has the gall to be unprepared! When they go to him he looks mildly startled, then he hasn't got a thing planned! He just banters - badly - with the guys in the booth, and looks actively annoyed that he has to wait 30 whole seconds for that all important next bite of cannoli. I'm convinced that he literally drops the food onto the turf two seconds before the red light goes on, then picks it up again right afterward.

Geez, I wish I was him.

Mildly ashamed but adamant,

Mark

Postal workers strike in Winnipeg!!!
June3/11
Dear Ted,

Could there be a more futile gesture than a mail strike in the 21st
Century?

"Dear God, how will we communicate?"

It strikes me that regular mail service is something that the government might set up as an emergency measure if something horribly wrong happened to the internet; something on the order of a full scale cyber attack by China.

Picture it - The Prime Minister holds a news conference to announce plans to reestablish communications across the nation. "We have developed an envelope-based messaging system. A person will be able to hand write or type a message on paper, seal it in an envelope, and bring it by hand to a centralized collection depot. It will then be picked up and transported by a fleet of trucks, trains, airplanes, more trucks, the occasional bicycle, and finally by a small army of people on foot who will hand deliver the messages. This method has the disadvantage of being expensive,unsanitary, plagued by theft, utterly prone to human error, and almost comically slow. On the bright side, thousands of otherwise unemployable people will be used as carriers."

Mr. Harper assured Canadians that, "this appalling and makeshift
system will be abandoned as soon as the crisis has ended".

Face it, Ted, when you have to actually lick something before you
can get it moving, times are tough. A saliva-based shipping method!

Anachronistically,

Mark

Beeg Buckets
Feb13/11
Dear Bird,

Richard Engel is the Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent for NBC News, and has done brilliant work out of the Middle East for nearly 10 years now. He's great.

The poor man was in the middle of Revolution Square in Cairo in the minutes after the "resignation" of Hosni Mubarak was announced. Now Engel is a complete professional, and was doing terrific, live, on-the-spot reporting. But the airhead MSNBC anchor, Contessa Brewer, kept insisting that he speak to the people in the square right on camera and live mike.

Engel tactfully ignored her at first, pretending not to hear Brewer's idiotic entreaties to interview the rejoicing protesters. But finally, with a pained expression, he turned his microphone into the crowd to ask how they felt. He knew what was coming, and this is what he got....

A 35ish man who clearly had not bathed for some days seized the mike with two hands, and said - almost word for word - the following - - - -

"Mubarak is an ugly man. UGLY!! He has big buckets - BEEG BUCKETS, like a woman," while making the universal two-handed male gesture indicating really, really unpleasantly huge, woggily tits.

Engel tried grimly to wrest control of the microphone (and subject) from the man. Sadly, the fellow was of the sort who feels compelled to repeat himself even more loudly and with still more graphic gestures to make sure that the world had gotten his point. And it must have. I, for one, will never again have Hosni Mubarak cross my mind without thinking about his tits. This is not a major burden, I suppose, but it is one that I would have preferred not to bear.

Mark

How stupid do they think we are? (Pretty stupid, apparently)

2011-09-16T06:16:00.003-04:00

Sometimes - MOST of the time, in fact - honesty is the best policy, the rare exceptions to the rule including such loaded questions as "Do these jeans make me look fat?" and "Have you ever fantasized about sleeping with my sister?" This week was one of those times for the New England Patriots, but the spin doctors in the team's front office decided to go with another tried and true rule of thumb: never overstimate the intelligence of the American public.
In a remarkable lapse of judgement Tuesday, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady - responding to a reporter's question about what message he had for New England fans ahead of this Sunday's game with the visiting San Diego Chargers - said "Start drinking early. Get nice and rowdy - 4:15 game, lots of time to get lubed up." Not a smart thing to say in the prevailing social climate of political correctness, but in the final analysis, it was a bad joke that would have gone away, except that the Patriots vice-president of media relations went into damage control mode and released a statement saying that what Brady meant was "stay hydrated, drink a lot of water, be loud, drink responsibly."
Do they really think we're that dumb? Actually, yes, they do, because when people move out of the real world and into the corporate hierarchy, it's all about perception, even at the expense of common sense. Frankly, I'm more offended that anyone would think I'm that stupid than I am by Brady's bad joke. And so is your sister. (And by that, of course, I mean your sister's intellectual integrity has been compromised by the assumption that she's not sufficiently intuitive to see through a lame exercise in public relations absurdity.)

Racism my white, freckly ass

2011-09-13T06:12:00.005-04:00

It'll be interesting to see what kind of spin Oracene Price comes up with on this one: a day after Price's thinly-veiled suggestion that her daughters, Venus and Serena Williams, are routinely victimized by racism, Serena was fined two thousand dollars for verbally abusing the chair umpire during Sunday's US Open women's final in New York. That's two thousand out of a 1.4 million dollar payday - not exactly the makings of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy claim. If anything, it's incredibly lenient in light of the fact that under the terms of her probation for her notorious meltdown at the 2009 Open, Williams could have been fined upwards of 175 thousand dollars and suspended from Grand Slam competition for an entire year. Under the circumstances, a paltry two large smacks of favoritism.
The racism card is a red herring that doesn't stand up to the slightest bit of scrutiny. It's 2011. No one who was born after 1950 and wasn't raised by inbred rednecks in a tar paper shack south of the Mason-Dixon line would refer to Williams as "uppity." A self-entitled prima donna, yes, but a petulant diva is a petulant diva whether she's black, white or pink with purple polka dots. To claim persecution when you're living a life of privilege is an affront to the real victims of discrimination.

Cowboys collapse, Serena snaps and other Monday morning musings

2011-09-12T05:01:00.005-04:00

New season, same old Dallas Cowboys, starring Tony Romo as football's version of Chief Inspector Clouseau. Romo's history of saving his worst gaffes for the most inopportune times repeated itself last night, as the Dallas quarterback committed two fourth quarter turnovers that set the stage for the New York Jets to rally from 14 points down and beat the Cowboys 27-24. Romo might have a knack for making things happen, but they're not always good things..Speaking of same old, same old, how about Serena Williams bizarre outburst at the US Open women's final in New York? The only thing more inappropriate that Williams' verbal assault on the chair umpire was her mother Oracene's thinly-veiled suggestion that the Williams sisters are routinely discriminated against, as if Serena is penzalized because she's black rather than because she's a petulant diva with an inflated sense of entitlement...Michael Schumacher drew some criticism for his aggressive tactics in yesterday's Formula One Italian Grand Prix, but his ruthless resolve was a reminder that even if Schumacher doesn't have the fastest car anymore, he's no less fierce a competitor...Old habits die hard for Canadiens legend Jean Beliveau, who was well-known during his playing days for personally responding to every piece of fan mail, and is curently in the process of individually thanking acquaintances and strangers alike who took the time to send Beliveau best wishes on his 80th birthday. Hockey could use more ambassadors - and the world more people - like Gentleman Jean.

Christmas for Crosby, sans Santa

2011-09-09T06:53:00.001-04:00

Sidney Crosby's much-anticipated state of the cerebrum address two days ago was almost completely overshadowed by events in Russia, where virtually an entire hockey team was wiped out in a plane crash. Not that any major developments were missed, because Crosby's news conference was the biggest non-event since Y2K.
The answer to the one question on everyone's mind - the timetable for Crosby's return to the NHL - was that there is no timetable, because there's no firm prognosis for a complete recovery from concussion symptoms plaguing the Pittsburgh Penguins captain since he was blindsided by Washington's David Steckel more than eight months ago. Crosby's doctor, Ted Carrick, only confused the issue when he said it's Christmas for Crosby, leaving reporters wondering whether he meant Crosby would be playing hockey by Christmas. Dr. Carrick had to explain that he only meant Crosby's recovery is like a gift, but considering that it's still not known when or even whether he'll play again, the Christmas reference was a bit of a stretch.
Thanksgiving might represent a more appropriate holiday metaphor. The fact that he's making progress in his recovery and that he can lead a normal and productive life outside of hockey gives Crosby something to be grateful for, but it isn't Christmas 'till the fat man comes down the chimney and leaves a clean bill of health under the tree.

The NHL's half-assed response to tragedy, and karma's a bitch for Tiki Barber

2011-09-06T06:16:00.003-04:00

If the National Hockey League's first major statement following the deaths of three players by their own hand this summer is any indication, the league's resolve in assessing and protecting the mental health of its players leaves something to be desired. In a statement released over the Labor Day weekend, the league says "we are committed to examining, in detail, the factors that may have contributed to these events, and to determining whether concrete steps can be taken to enhance player welfare and minimize the likelihood of such events taking place." That's "whether" concrete steps can be taken, not "what" concrete steps to take. So the NHL has already given itself an out on the issue if it can come up with the right spin on the results of whatever it deems to be a detailed examination of the facts. That's not exactly an iron clad committment to the stated goals of enhancing player welfare and preventing future tragedies...The Alouettes have some serious soul-searching to do at the midway point of the CFL season. The thinking that they're a lock for the playoffs with Anthony Calvillo at quarterback and Marc Trestman as coach only holds up if the rest of the players and coaches do their part, and that's not happening...Blue Jays rookie Brett Lawrie did it again yesterday, lifting Toronto past Boston 1-0 with a walkoff home run in the 11th inning. He's only been in the major leagues a month, but he's already the toast of Toronto and his legend is spreading. Lawrie's only downside is that he strikes out a lot, but so did Reggie Jackson. And Mike Schmidt. And Mickey Mantle...Thirty-six year old former NFL running back-turned-broadcaster Tiki Barber is reportely devastated that no team was interested in facilitating his comeback attempt after four full seasons out of football. I wonder if Barber's as devastated as his wife was when he left her for a 24 year old NBC intern while Mrs. Barber was pregnant with twins.

Lord Stanley down!

2011-08-31T06:17:00.003-04:00

How many Newfoundlanders does it take to damage the Stanley Cup? Two, apparently: one to win the Cup and bring it to Newfoundland, and the other to build a crappy table not strong enough to support the 35 pound trophy.
Hockey's Holy Grail sustained minor damage yesterday when Michael Ryder placed it on table that subsequently collapsed in Bonavista, Newfoundland, where Ryder was exercising a unique tradition that allows each reigning Stanley Cup champion to take sole possession of the vaunted hardware for a day. As Stanley Cup misadventures go, it was relatively minor. According to popular legend, the Cup has been dropped into a bonfire, left on the side of a road, drop-kicked into the Rideau Canal, spent the night at the bottom of at least two swimming pools and visited numerous strip joints, because that's where hockey players go when they're not playing hockey. It's been used as a dog food bowl, potato chip dish, champagne cup, flower pot, baptismal chalice and for other functions that are best left unmentioned.
The uninitiated might consider that ample evidence that the Cup should be kept under lock and key and out of the clutches of hard-partying hockey players, but its colorful history is a big part of what makes it professional sports' most celebrated trophy. Ultimately, in the annals of Stanley Cup lore, Ryder won't even be on the radar, unless he can get it back long enough to use it as a lobster trap or a still for homemade Newfoundland screech.

Hurricane Irene, Bob Cole blow hard

2011-08-29T06:19:00.006-04:00

It's a testament to the power of Hurricane Irene that she forced the postponment of the New York Jets-New York Giants NFL pre-season game from Saturday to tonight. Football is a sport that not only routinely tolerates the elements, but embraces and even celebrates inclement weather. Football lore is rife with weather-related legends, including the Mud Bowl, the Fog Bowl, the Ice Bowl, the Freezer Bowl and the time the snowplow cleared a path for New England placekicker John Smith to kick the winning field goal during a snowstorm in 1982 - a memorable event that could probably could use a catchier name than "the time the snowplow cleared a path for New England placekicker John Smith to kick the winning field goal during a snowstorm in 1982"...Competitors in the LPGA Canadian Open showed at least as much moxie as the goliaths of the gridiron when they played yesterday's fourth round in near tropical-storm conditions at the Hillsdale Golf Club in Mirabel. Tournament organizers minimized the weather's impact by wisely moving start times up by 90 minutes, and grouping the golfers in threesomes instead of twosomes...Baseball, as usual, ran away and hid from the rain, postponing seven games over the weekend, although the Yankees and Orioles managed to play two in Baltimore yesterday, even though the Marlins and Phillies were rained out just an hour up the road in Philadelphia...Congratulations to the new English radio voice of the Montreal Canadiens, John Bartlett, whom Team 900 general manager Wayne Bews says was selected from a surprisingly long list of high quality applicants, which begs the question: with a surplus of capable play-by-play broadcasters out there, why does Hockey Night in Canada insist on inflicting Bob Cole on a hockey-savvy audience that deserves so much better than the Cole's borderline-dementia ramblings. Begone, hapless blowhard, and make way for the two generations behind you.

One person's man-whore is another's eligible bachelor

2011-08-26T06:19:00.003-04:00

Well, here's a sign of the times. One of the top headlines in baseball today, alongside Jim Thome returning to Cleveland and the shocking suicide death of former Cy Young winner Mike Flanagan, is that Derek Jeter has broken up with his girlfriend.
Mind you, we're not talking about just another vaccuous airhead that Jeter met in a Manhattan night club. Minka Kelly is an actress of some repute - think cheerleader Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights - and was voted Sexiest Woman Alive by Esquire magazine in 2010. She is also just the latest in a long line of uber babes who at one time or another have been in the Jeter stable - a list that reportedly including actresses Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Scarlett Johansson and Jordana Brewster, singer Mariah Carey, Brazilian supermodel Adriana Lima and former Miss Universe Lara Dutta, and that's just the A list.
Yet despite going through women the way many people go through shoes - one or two new pairs per season - Jeter hasn't cultivated a public reputation for being a shameless womanizer or skirt chaser. Instead, he's universally described as an "eligible bachelor." Apparently, the difference is in the perceived quality of the women you love and leave. It also doesn't hurt if you play shortstop for the New York Yankees.

Jimmy jack this

2011-08-24T05:36:00.002-04:00

Driving into work yesterday morning, I suddenly felt a stabbing pain that started in my left eye and shot clean through my head and down to the stem of what's left of my brain. Fortunately, it was nothing more serious than a traditionalist's reaction to hearing a sportscaster describe a home run as a "three run jimmy jack."
I don't know when home runs became jimmy jacks, but it must be in the five to ten years since I pretty much lost day-to-day interest in major league baseball. I do know this: Vin Scully, the dean of baseball broadcasters and the best who ever practiced the craft, would never call a home run a jimmy jack, just as Danny Gallivan would never refer to the puck as "the biscuit" or say that someone went "top shelf, where Daddy keeps the dirty magazines" or "Mommy keeps the anti-depressants." The great ones don't lean on cliches, and if they make something up, they make sure it's something of substance, like Gallivan's Savardian Spinorama or Scully's wonderful desciption of Bob Gibson pitching as though he's doubled-parked.
Memo to aspiring play-by-play announcers: don't imitate the masters, but emulate them. Respect longstanding tradition and stay within the established, time-honored vernacular if you can't do any better than "jimmy jack," which sounds more like a cheap prize in a box of kids' cereal than it does a legitimate home run call by a broadcast professional.

Assessing the future of an important practitioner of the ice hockey profession relative to the concussion symptoms incurred at a prior point in time

2011-08-23T06:16:00.002-04:00

Like most lawyers, Sidney Crosby's agent, Pat Brisson, would make a good politician, if only for his ability to say everything and nothing at the same time.
Responding yesterday to reports that his prize client has suspended his off-season training because of recurring concussion symptoms, Brisson said Crosby "simply adjusted his summer program accordingly to the different needs for the appropriate recovery." That could be innterpreted any number of ways, the most obvious of which is that Crosby still isn't well enough to properly prepare for the opening of training camp next month. Meanwhile, while the future of its best player hangs in the balance, the NHL completely ignored its most pressing problem at last week's much-celebrated research and development camp, where league executives were too busy tinkering with possible rule changes to power plays and overtime to bother with career-threatening concussions. In the the nearly nine months since hockey's most important player became only the latest casualty of a blindside cheap shot, it's become abundantly clear that the NHL's decision-makers have no idea how to handle the problem, so they've chosen to do nothing at all. Or as Pat Brisson might say, they're proceeding in a manner consistent with the existing will within the NHL executive branch to bring the dossier to a satisfactory conclusion without compromising the fundamental integrity of the status quo.

Surrendering to reality (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-08-22T05:35:00.006-04:00

Nothing is going to be learned or gained from the untimely passing of Winnipeg Jets forward Rick Rypien until police and surviving friends and family members stop dancing around the details and openly acknowledge that Rypien committed suicide. Reporting his death as "non-suspicious" or lamenting that Rypien "lost his battle" fails to adequately confront the stark and brutal reality of the consequences of unchecked mental illness. We don't need all the morbid minutiae, but sanitized platitudes serve no useful purpose in fostering a broader understanding and acceptance of depression as a potentially deadly disease...The most bizarre moment of another eventful NAPA Auto Parts 200 at Circuit Gilles Villeneuve actually occured after the race, when Patrick Carptentier's crew chief, Jerry Baxter, reached inside the 66 number car and pulled driver Steve Wallace's hair, which was slightly more manly than hitting Wallace with his purse but still fell considerably short of the established norms of sportsmanship...I'm loathe to disagree with Gazette hockey writer Red Fisher, who's been covering the Canadiens since before I was born and has forgotten more about hockey than I'll ever know, but when Red refers to the shootout as a gimmick that's got to go, he forgets that we live in an instant gratification society fuelled by gimmicks - or apps, as they're otherwise known...If his performance at the world under-20 championships is anything to go by, Brazil's next one-name soccer superstar is Oscar - a 19 year old phenom who, according to legend, grew up in a garbage can on the mean streets of Rio and dislikes flowers, kittens, ice cream, romantic music and people being nice to one another.

Remembering a legend (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-08-15T06:11:00.002-04:00

McGarrity.
790.
You're gone.
I didn't listen to the guy because I didn't grow up here, but Ted Tevan's legacy is so strong that someone who only knew him by reputation instantly recognizes his catchphrases. The outpouring of affection online and in the mainstream media following his death Friday is powerful testimony to the impact of a broadcaster whose heyday was 30 years behind him when he passed away. Like the local sponsors he flogged on the air, Ted Tevan was truly a Montreal original...The greatest challenge facing Tiger Woods won't play itself out in the public eye. No matter how badly he falters professionally, Woods has nothing left to prove on the golf course. Where he needs to rehabilitate himself is as a person and especially as a father to his two small children. Of all the advantages his wealth and privilege give him, the most precious resource Tiger Woods has is the time to spend with his children. A better father than I am once told me your children won't remember what you bought them as much as they'll remember what you did with them...Even though most of them went by the wayside earlier than ticket holders for the Rogers Cup semifinals and finals had hoped, at least the world's best tennis players showed up in Montreal, which is a far cry from the days when, by the time the excuses were made and the withdrawals announced, the top seed was a homeless guy named Stinky...Blue Jays rookie and Langley, BC native Brett Lawrie looks like the real deal, not just because of he's hitting .370 with a ridiculous .741 slugging percentage after a week and a half in the major leagues, but because he's doing it at 21 - an age when most players are still honing their craft in the low minors...Awfully decent of New York Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora to end his holdout and honor the contract that'll pay him more than seven million dollars over the next two seasons. Where does he find the capacity for such self-sacrifice?

Goddam hippies

2011-08-11T06:15:00.005-04:00

Well, it was only a matter of time, and frankly, I'm surprised it took this long for a loose coalition of misguided pacifists to take aim at the Winnipeg Jets new logo. The critics say the reborn NHL franchise's choice of a Canadian Forces CF-18 as its emblem alienates fans who are anti-war.
First of all, the self-appointed peaceniks don't have a monopoly on being anti-war. As Don Rickles once said, we all want peace; sometimes we just can't make a deal for it.
Using a military jet as their logo isn't a pro-war statement by the Jets. It's a means of acknowledging Winnipeg's longstanding relationships with the aviation industry and the Royal Canadian Air Force - a branch of the Canadian military steeped in tradition, service, honour and sacrifice. The RCAF were and remain the good guys. It's not like the Jets are paying tribute to Al Qaida, the Luftwaffe or the air arm of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Some people need to get a hobby...like reading or watching the History Channel.

Quiet, you

2011-08-10T09:14:00.004-04:00

Adam Scott did something this week that Tiger Woods should have done a long time ago. He told caddy Steve Williams to shut his pie hole.
Williams was front and center after Scott's win last weekend at the Bridgestone Invitational in Akron, Ohio, where Williams celebrated as if he were the one who'd won the tournament. Williams' comments about it being the most satisfying win of his career would have smacked of arrogance were they not so pathetically delusional.
It's understandable that he was happy his guy won and Tiger Woods was a non-factor in Woods' first tournament since he fired Williams, but the post-tournament preening would have reflected poorly on an actual competitor, never mind a glorified baggage handler. Scott seemed less concerned about having his thunder stolen that he did about being associated with a media circus, and he exercised sound judgement in publicly if gently rebuking Williams and reminding him of his place in the PGA pecking order.
Whether Williams is willing to recognize and accept that place after more than a decade of hubris accumulated by riding Tiger Woods' coattails remains to be seen.

Alex Kovalev: a talented dink

2011-08-09T07:03:00.001-04:00

If Alex Kovalev were to be memorialized with a brutally honest epitaph, it might go something like this: "Don't they know who I am, and it's all their fault." Kovalev, who never met a scapegoat or mitigating factor that he wouldn't blame for his own shortcomings, fired some characteristically petty parting shots after completing what was almost certainly his last NHL contract, and going home to Russia to play in the Kontinental Hockey League. Kovalev's targets in his latest tirade are former Ottawa coach Cory Clouston, whom Kovalev feels didn't coddle him enough during the better part of two seasons with the Senators, and the Ottawa media - a group Kovalev claims knows more about smuggling beer through airport security than they do about hockey.
Typically, he did his bellyaching to a Russian reporter, which is a time-honored Kovalev tactic so that when he gets called out in the North American media, he can claim he was misquoted or that something was lost in the translation.
A bigger and better person would man up and be a little more humble and grateful after getting paid 10 million dollars to average 17 goals and 49 points over two seasons, but like personal fortitude and competitive resolve, humility and gratitude were never part of Alex Kovalev's makeup, which is why - despite his enormous natural ability - he'll always be remembered more for what he didn't do than he will be for what he did.

Of all the Bubbas, he was the Bubbest

2011-08-04T07:51:00.003-04:00

Before Bubba Gump, before Bubba Trammell, before Bubba Paris, Bubba Watson and Bubba the Love Sponge, there was Bubba Smith - the Pro Football Hall of Famer who passed away unexpectedly this week at the age of 66.
For an entire generation of football fans, the name Bubba was as synonymous with Bubba Smith as Hacksaw was with Jack Reynolds, Too Tall was with Ed Jones, or Night Train was with Dick Lane. They weren't the only Bubbas, Hacksaws, Too Talls and Night Trains out there, but they owned their respective nicknames because of the enormity of their talent and their larger-than-life personalities.
Somewhere along the line, football got lazy with nicknames, to the point where the default mode today is to go with initials like T.O. and L.T. Chad Ocho Cinco gets points for originality, but changing your last name to your uniform number in Spanish for self-promotional purposes is a far cry from the days when Mean Joe, the Mad Stork, White Shoes, Broadway Joe, Sweetness and the Fridge were earning their aliases by tearing up the gridiron.
So rest in peace, Bubba, knowing that you were the product of a byegone era when nicknames were bestowed with consideration and creativity, and capriciousness was never confused with character.

Wang danged if he does, danged if he doodles

2011-08-02T17:16:00.003-04:00

(I have no idea what that headline means, but it was fun to write)
It's not surprising that 57 percent of Nassau County, New York voters rejected a proposal to publicly finance a new hockey arena and baseball stadium.
What's surprising is that 43 percent were in favor of sinking 400 million dollars in public money into a project that would have guaranteed the long-term future of the New York Islanders.
Either way, it's a blow for Islanders owner Charles Wang and a boost for hockey fans in Quebec City, where municipal and provincial government officials have already committed themselves to building a new arena at taxpayers expense, without going through a referendum or any other form of the pesky democratic process.
As an added bonus, Wang says he'll honor the Islanders' existing lease, which doesn't expire until 2015, giving Quebec plenty of time to build the arena required for a credible franchise pitch to the NHL.
The timing also provides a four year window for shoring up Montreal's crumbling infrastructure - not that Quebec City or the NHL care whether Montreal is falling apart, but Montrealers pay provincial taxes, too, and if we're going to get hosed for part of the cost of a new arena in Quebec City, it would be nice to have a functional bridge we can safely cross to get there.

Bubbles the ump and other Monday morning musings

2011-08-01T06:04:00.005-04:00

Even if you didn't hear it here first, remember that you heard it here: the Philadephia Eagles are going to win the Super Bowl this season. In a sport where one big play can change everything, no other NFL team has a more impressive collection of difference-makers than the Eagles, who've added a pair of elite shutdown corners to a roster that already included two All Pro defensive backs, two d-linemen with double figures in sacks, a thousand yard rusher and a combination wide receiver/return specialist who's a consistent home run threat, all anchored by 2010 Comeback Player of the Year Michael Vick, who was just getting warmed up last year. If there's a scarier team out there than the Eagles, I haven't heard of them...Moving from the Giants to the crosstown Jets doesn't represent the change of scenery Plaxico Burress might have required after spending 20 months in a New York prison, but at least he won't have to go far to check in with his parole officer...It was apparently part of his routine and not out of self-mockery that baseball umpire Jerry Meals wore glasses on the field the night after badly blowing a decisive call at home plate to give Atlanta a 19 inning, walk-off win over Pittsburgh. If Meals was going for self-deprecation, he'd have been better off wearing a replica from the Bubbles Coke bottle collection or something with a nose and mustache attached...Everyone's entitled to dream, but speculation about the return of baseball to Montreal on the basis two sold out U2 shows at the Hippodrome will only have credibility when Bono adds 40 miles an hour to his fastball and The Edge learns to lay off the slider.

It ain't the Four Seasons for a reason

2011-07-29T06:14:00.005-04:00

Edmonton Oilers goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin probably won't be surprised to learn that accomodations are less than five-star at Arizona's infamous Tent City Jail, where Khabibulin begins serving a 30 day sentence tomorrow for a drunk driving conviction. According to a former inmate, the place is overrun with ants and the food and sleeping conditions are terrible.
What? No foie-gras canapes or nightly turndown service with mint chocolate on your pillow?
Of course the place is a dump - it's jail.
Khabibulin should consider himself fortunate. Some vacationers who don't do their homework actually pay to sleep with ants and eat rotten food at budget resorts in Mexico and the Caribbean.
And at least he didn't kill anyone, unlike Rob Ramage, who's on parole for a drunk driving accident that killed fellow NHL alumnus Keith Magnusson in 2003, and TSN analyst and former NHL player and coach Craig MacTavish, who served a year behind bars for killing a 26 year old woman when he was drunk at the wheel in 1984.
It might not make conditions in Tent City any more bearable for Khabibulin, but better 30 days of bad food and bedbugs on a threadbare mattress than a lifetime of guilt and remorse.

Rommel's abbreviated Tour de France and other Monday morning musings

2011-07-25T06:15:00.005-04:00

As ugly and distasteful as the demise of the Expos was, there are elements of the franchise's legacy that remain unstained by the carpetbagging and betrayal that characterized the team's last few seasons in Montreal. One of those elements is Dave van Horne's uninterrupted run as the voice of the Expos from their inception in 1969 until 2001, when he left an unsettled situation in Montreal for the relative security of the Florida Marlins broadcast booth. Van Horne was honored Saturday at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown with the Ford C. Frick Award, which doesn't include induction but is tantamount to Hall of Fame membership in light of the award's stature. When you're on a list with the likes of Red Barber, Vin Scully, Curt Gowdy, Jack Buck and Harry Caray - among others - you're a baseball legend...It's only fun until someone loses an eye, and while Alouettes quarterback Anthony Calvillo still has both peepers, there was something ominous-sounding about what appears to be the internal nature of the eye injury that knocked Calvillo out of last night's loss to Saskatchewan at Molson Stadium...Too bad the Canadiens couldn't sign Josh Gorges to a multi-year contract, but if they can't use the time the agreed-upon one year deal bought them to figure out something longer-term, then it wasn't meant to be...It's a bit misleading to say that 2011 Tour de France champion Cadel Evans is the event's oldest winner since World War Two, considering that Field Marshal Rommel, while 14 years Cadel's senior, won the 1940 Tour in a tank and only had to go from the German border to Paris.

Tiger's gotta get a brand new bag carrier

2011-07-21T08:39:00.001-04:00

After a 12 year ride on Tiger Woods' coattails, Steve Williams is officially off the gravy train. Williams has been fired as Woods' caddy, even though the two haven't worked together since Woods left the Tour this spring to rehab a knee injury.
I don't profess to know the exact nature of the golfer-caddy relationship at the PGA level, but it seems to me that Williams has accrued notoriety completely out of proportion to what might reasonably be expected for a glorified bellhop. He's got his own website, wrote a book and avails himself as a speaker at corporate functions and other public or private events, including a charity dinner in 2008 in New Zealand where Williams ran afoul of his boss and was forced by Woods to apologize for making disparaging remarks about Phil Mickelson. But let's be honest - the fact that his dismissal was headline news around the world has nothing to do with Williams being a good caddy and everything to do with Woods being the most famous athlete on the planet.
It's like if Batman fired Alfred the Butler. We all know Alfred's a loyal soldier who does a bang-up job keeping Wayne manor and the batcave in order, but it's still the caped crusader does the heaving lifting against the forces of evil, and it's still Tiger Woods who has to make the shot regardless of which club he's handed and who hands it to him.

Putting the "pig" in pigskin

2011-07-19T06:17:00.002-04:00

The NFL wanna-bes in Toronto are finally getting a US professional football expansion franchise, but it's not the one the vast majority of Queen City gridiron enthusiasts was hoping for.
The Lingerie Football League, which has been putting both the "pig" and the "skin" in pigskin since 2009, is bringing its unique brand of athletic pornography to Canada this fall by fielding the Toronto Triumph as its first franchise outside the US. The Triumph has already scored a minor publicity coup by recruiting linebacker and team captain Krista Ford, the niece of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, as part of a lineup that will also include such delicate flowers as Alexandra "The Animal" Grant, Gigi "Ironworker" Cignini and Momo Bonofski, who along with having a great football name even looks a little bit like Bronco Nagurski with boobs.
How a city that barely supports its CFL team is expected to support a Lingerie Football League franchise is beyond me. One can only assume its backers are gambling that in a metropolitain area of six million people, the Triumph can entice a sufficient number of sophmoric perverts to turn out on a regular basis to watch women play football in their underwear.
Not satisfied with offending a substantial portion of the female population by objectifying and degrading women, Lingerie Football League commissioner Mitch Mortaza has gone the extra mile by insulting the limited intelligence of his target demographic, claiming that while fans might initially come out for the T and A, they'll come back for the football.
Sure they will, Mitch, just like they come back to strip joints for the dancing and free buffet.

Tiger, schmiger and other Monday Morning Musings

2011-07-13T12:35:00.010-04:00

The PGA needn't worry about waning interest in golf in the absence of Tiger Woods. The plot line in the last two majors has been as uplifting as anything Woods could have engineered. Likeable journeyman Darren Clarke's British Open championship and Rory McIlroy's win at the 2011 US Open on the heels of McIlroy's epic collapse at the Masters are two of the best feel-good stories of the year in any sport...I might have said this out loud before, but I'll say it again: why don't they hold the British Open in one of the warm weather Commonwealth countries like Barbados, Malta or the Seychelles? That way, it's still technically a British event, and nobody would have to pack a parka, hip waders or a life raft...Okay, so Alouettes quarterback Anthony Calvillo's record breaking 395th career touchdown pass at Molson Stadium Friday probably wasn't a touchdown pass because Eric Deslauriers appeared to be out of bounds, but Calvillo's subsequent strike to Brian Bratton in the end zone was perfectly legit, so the point is moot...It doesn't matter whether or how Roger Clemens is ultimately judged in a court of law, because he'll always be guilty in the court of public opinion, thanks to his thoroughly unconvincing testimony during a cringeworthy appearance in front of a US congressional committee in 2008...San Francisco Giants relief pitcher Brian Wilson doesn't only look like Joaquin Phoenix. He's also either equally as crazy as the former actor-turned-rap artist, or he's as guilty as Phoenix is of creating a fake persona for self-promotional purposes. Watch the viral video of Wilson's dugout meltdown from a couple of weeks ago and judge for yourself whether he's a genuine loose cannon or if he's just bad actor playing to the camera...Tiger Woods' ex-wife Elin Nordegren is dating billionaire businessman Jamie Dingman, whom I'm sure she loves for his sparkling personality, just as she fell for Tiger's dashing good looks.

The Hockey Hall of Huh?

2011-06-29T06:02:00.005-04:00

Even by its own historically flimsy standards, the Hockey Hall of Fame plumbed new depths in how low it set the bar for the class of 2011. Doug Gilmour, Joe Nieuwendyk, Ed Belfour and Mark Howe were all good hockey players with gusts up to great, but what's the point of a Hall of Fame if it's not reserved for players who were consistently great over a long period of time? It's not the Hall of Above Average or the Hall of Milked It For Longer Than Most. It's the Hall of FAME.
Even at number three on the career wins list for goalies, Belfour is more famous for drunkenly offering police officers a billion dollar bribe than he is for anything he ever did on the ice. If Dino Ciccarelli had to wait his turn with 608 career goals, how does Belfour get in on the first ballot?
Of course, the genie's been out of the bottle for years. If you let Clark Gillies, Joe Mullen, Bernie Federko and Larry Murphy in, how do you say no to Gilmour, Nieuwendyk, Belfour and Howe? That's not to demean any of the above-mentioned players - except maybe the marginally crazy Belfour - but the ever-diminishing standards for Hall of Fame membership make it seem more like a Legion Hall than a pantheon of hockey immortals.

Y'all ain't from around here, are ya, boy?

2011-06-28T07:38:00.003-04:00

It's a good thing for the free world that the National Hockey League wasn't in charge of D-Day, or the Allied Expeditionary Force might have invaded Labrador instead of the north of France.
The geographical genuises at the NHL have decided to keep the former Atlanta Thrashers-turned-Winnipeg Jets in the Southeast Division, because nothing says peach trees and magnolias like a December day in Manitoba. Presumably, the Jets will be grouped with more logical rivals when the NHL realigns for the 2012-2013 season, and in the meantime, they won't be the only franchise at complete geographical odds with their divisional assignment. The Dallas Stars are in the Pacific Division, even though the surf is seldom up in Big D, which is separated from the Pacific Ocean by most of Texas and all of New Mexico, Arizona and California. For years, baseball's National League had the Chicago Cubs in the East Division and the Atlanta Braves in the West, which conveniently ignored the fact that Chicago is west of Atlanta, and that after South Carolina, the only thing east of Atlanta is Africa. In the NFL, Green Bay, Chicago, Minnesota and Detroit used to share the NFC Central with Tampa Bay, which has about as much in common with those four cities as Casablanca has with Chicoutimi.
Aligning franchises to make geographical sense and produce a balanced schedule that doesn't impose an unfair travel burden on one team or another is really not that complicated. All you need is an Atlas and some fundamental skills in mathematics. Even my 10 year old could do it, if he wasn't so busy downloading music onto my iPod and pre-programming the GPS for our summer vacation.

Rafa got a great big bag (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-06-27T06:12:00.003-04:00

BD-June27/11
It was a public relations bonus for the Canadiens that when it came their turn to pick in Friday's first round of the NHL draft, the best available player also happened to have a French name. The downside is that Nathan Beaulieu is French in name only, and doesn't speak the language. However, as the son of a franco-Ontarian father, there will be enormous media pressure on Beaulieu to learn French, to the point where his language development is almost as important as his hockey development, and he'd be well-served if he were traded from St. John to a Quebec-based team so he can immerse himself for the remainder of his junior career. You know and I know it shouldn't matter, but Beaulieu can spare himself a lot of unnecessary grief by gaining a working knowledge of French by the time he's ready to play for the Canadiens...If you'd have told me before last season that former Canadiens forward Alex Tanguay had a 5 year, 17.5 million dollar contract in his future, I'd have backed out of the room slowly while avoiding eye contact. But kudos to Tanguay, who represented cheap labor for Calgary coming off a career-low 10 goals for Tampa Bay, gave the Flames his best production in five seasons, and was in turn rewarded with financial security that he could dream about less than a year ago...If Red Bull's Sebastien Vettel was rattled by the last lap mistake that cost him the Canadian Grand Prix, he was well over it by the time he got to Valencia, Spain, where pole position, fastest lap of the race and the checkered flag in the European Grand Prix re-established Vettel as the most dominant force in Formula One since Michael Schumacher routinely ran away with the championship for Ferrari...When I play tennis, the most I ever need to show up with is a racket, a can of balls and a water bottle. So why is it that Rafael Nadal, who gets everything supplied by tournaments and sponsors, shows up for his matches lugging a bag big enough to carry a full set of goalie equipment? I'm not sure I even want to know who or what is inside that thing.

What happened in Vegas shouldn't have happened in Vegas

2011-06-23T06:25:00.003-04:00

I don't have a problem with an American team winning the Stanley Cup. The Boston Bruins have been in the National Hockey League since 1924, making the 41 year old Vancouver Canucks relative newcomers by comparison.
What is off-putting is the league's decision to hold its annual awards ceremony in a city that has absolutely nothing to do with hockey - Las Vegas. Vegas is to hockey what Regina is to surfing and Nairobi is to cross country skiing. It's great that the players and their wives or girlfriends - or in some cases, wives and girlfriends - get to sample Disneyland for grown-ups in the anonymity that comes with being a hockey player in the Nevada desert, but they've got an entire summer to be anonymous, and it would serve the fans and the sport better to hold a marquee event like the awards ceremony in a legitimate hockey town.
But what do you expect from an organization that recruits Donny Osmond as an award presenter? Yup, Donny "Puppy Love" Osmond. Where were David Cassidy and Lief Garrett? And nothing says hockey like the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, whose onstage presence was as stiff and phoney as their botoxed foreheads and store-bought boobs. (Oh, by the way, ladies, it's pronounced Mar-tihn' Sahn lou-ee', not Martin Saint Lewis.)
For better worse, what happened in Vegas didn't stay in Vegas last night. It was broadcast back to the country it should have been held in in the first place; where it would have been the main event instead of just another Sin City sideshow.

NHL rule changes nothing more than window dressing

2011-06-22T06:16:00.001-04:00

If inter-office memoranda and news releases were still distributed by paper instead of via the Internet, the NHL would have taken out an entire Canadian forest with yesteday's announcement of redefined rules for boarding and hits to the head. Get a load of this mumbo jumbo:
"A boarding penalty will be assessed for a hit on a defenseless player that causes the victim to hit or impact the boards violently or dangerously. The new wording requires the player delivering the check to avoid or minimize contact if his opponent is defenseless. It also allows the referee discretion to determine whether the recipient of the contact placed himself in a vulnerable position immediately prior to or simultaneously with the collision and whether the check was unavoidable."
How's that for clear as mud, and all in regards to something that happens at speed and in a split second? Meanwhile, here's the new deal on head shots:
"A hit resulting in contact with an opponent's head where the head is targeted and the principal point of contact is not permitted. The qualifying terms "lateral or blind side" for such hits have been deleted. However, in determining whether such a hit should have been permitted, the circumstances of the hit, including whether the opponent put himself in a vulnerable position immediately prior to or simultaneously with the hit or the head contact on an otherwise legal body check was unavoidable, can be considered."
Bottom line: no matter what the rules say, boarding with intent to injure and hits to the head are still judgement calls, meaning nothing's going to change unless the NHL has the will to enforce the rules. The discretionary escape clause for officials strongly suggests this is a public relations exercise more than it is a serious attempt to clean up the game.

No Mickelsonitis for McIlroy(and other Monday morning musings on a Tuesday because I had Monday off)

2011-06-21T06:19:00.003-04:00

That Rory McIlroy recovered from his Masters meltdown to win the US Open is remarkable enough. That he did it in record fashion at the age of 22 just two months after a collapse of historic proportions at Augusta is nothing short of astounding. There's no telling how much Mickelsonesque grief McIlroy spared himself by brushing that monkey off his back before it became a gorilla...His career speaks for itself, but Rafael Nadal showed another sign of a true champion when he dismissed pre-Wimbledon suggestions that he's an imminent threat to Roger Federer's record of 16 Grand Slam tennis championships. For the tournament's defending champion and top seed to publicly defer to his greatest rival is a measure of Nadal's respect for Federer, and a demonstration of the humility of a real champion compared to the substantial number of the arrogant professional athletes whose talent is exceeded only by their sense of entitlement...Say what you will about the concept of a Higher Power, but from where I sit, it's only by the grace of God that Canadiens forward Max Pacioretty has a clean bill of health and a new multi-million dollar contract fewer than 3 1/2 months after most of us wondered for a few anxious moments whether he was dead...I had the privilege of chatting briefly with Larry Robinson at the Strangers in the Night charity event at Fairview Saturday, and the Hall of Fame defenceman wondered aloud whether it's only a matter of time before someone is killed in a National Hockey League game. Many others have said the same thing, but when it comes from someone of Robinson's stature and credentials, it really gets your attention.

Tough tits for the haters

2011-06-17T06:13:00.004-04:00

You don't have to like the Boston Bruins, but if you can't respect them, your credentials as a hockey fan are suspect.
Contrary to popular belief among their detractors, the Bruins didn't bully their way to the Stanley Cup championship. They won it old-school style, with heart, grit and a tireless work ethic. Their best players were their best players, which certainly wasn't the case with the Canucks, but the Bruins also got significant contributions from their secondary players. Unheralded journeymen like Rich Peverly, Chris Kelly, Andrew Ference, Dennis Seidenberg and Johnny Boychuk played some of the most inspired hockey of their otherwise ordinary careers, rookies Brad Marchand and Tyler Seguin acquitted themselves with distinction in their first Stanley Cup test, and the timely efforts of the supporting cast spared the likes of Milan Lucic, David Krejci, Patrice Bergeron and Zdeno Chara from having to do all the heavy lifting, which could have burned the Bruins out during or even before during the Cup final. And how can you not like and respect Tim Thomas, who didn't play in his first NHL game until he was 28 - a full decade after being a ninth round afterthought in his draft year - and now has a Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe Trophy to go with the Vezina Trophy he won in 2009.
There's nothing fancy about the Bruins, but that's a huge part of their everyman appeal. Any group that takes collective committment and sacrifice to a level that more talented teams failed to achieve and comes away with a championship is worthy of respect, whether you like them or not.

Vancouver proves itself unworthy

2011-06-16T06:08:00.007-04:00

The images out of downtown Vancouver last night tell you everything you need to know about why that city doesn't deserve a Stanley Cup champion. For the second time since 1994, when their team lost the seventh game of the Stanley Cup final in New York, Vancouver hockey fans went on a destructive rampage resulting in dozens of injuries and arrests and property damage that's expected to far exceed that of 17 years ago.
And spare me the claptrap about it being a handful of opportunistic hooligans and not real hockey fans who were responsible for the riot. It's no different than what routinely happens in Montreal when the Canadiens enjoy any kind of playoff success. The fans who gather by the tens of thousands create and feed the mob mentality, and among the ones who don't actually participate in the violence, thousands are willing and enthusiastic spectators. The pictures and video speak for themselves.
When media-designated pyschologists and sociologists weigh in in the coming days on the underlying reasons behind this appallingly uncivilized behavior, I hope at least one of them has the courage to question the cockamamie Canadian sense of Stanley Cup entitlement, and the role of the widespread clamoring to "bring the Cup home." The Cup is home. It's at the home of the Stanley Cup champions: the Boston Bruins.

Karma crashes Luongo's crease

2011-06-14T06:00:00.006-04:00

I don't know who's going to win the Stanley Cup tomorrow night, but there's no question in my mind about which team deserves it the most.
Led by the ultimate overachiever, former ninth round draft choice-turned-Vezina Trophy winner Tim Thomas, the Boston Bruins have repeatedly stared down adversity in the 2011 playoffs, and it's been adversity that's blinked every time. The Bruins are 3-0 in elimination games, including last night's 5-2 win in Game 6 against Vancouver after winning both the Montreal and Tampa Bay series in seven games. They've demonstrated terrific poise and character in bouncing back from oh-2 series deficits against the Canadiens in round 1 and the Canucks in the Stanley Cup final. For real hockey fans who admire and respect work ethic and resolve and aren't slaves to misguided nationalism or blinded by default hatred for a traditional rival, the Bruins are easy to cheer for.
The Canucks, meanwhile, have advanced this far in spite of themselves more than they've made it on merit. They came within a whisker of squandering a 3-0 series lead against Chicago in the opening round and have blown hot and cold ever since. Like the Bruins, they're a reflection of their goaltender. Overpaid underachiever Roberto Luongo tempted fate with his petty complaining after Game 5, and his errant focus was the determining factor last night in Boston, where the Bruins chased Luongo with three goals on their first eight shots.
Having been thoroughly trounced in all three games in Boston, the only thing the Canucks have going for them in Game 7 is that it's being played in their rink, where they've won three games in this series by the skin of their teeth.
The laws of karma and averages say Vancouver's number is up, and the next lucky bounce - and the Stanley Cup - will belong to the Bruins.

Nadal still Federer's nemesis

2011-06-06T06:16:00.003-04:00

A Rafael Nadal-Roger Federer French Open final has become something of a rite of spring on the men's pro tennis tour. Unfortunately for Federer, losing to Nadal is as much a part of the tradition as the matchup itself. Nadal tied Bjorn Borg's record yesterday by winning his sixth French Open championship and fourth against Federer, whose only title at Roland Garros was in a championship match with Robin Soderling in 2009. While his most ardent supporters don't believe that detracts from Federer's legacy as the greatest player ever, until such time as he beats Nadal in a French Open final, the claim is still open to debate. That said, there has still never been a greater champion than Federer - not only because he has more championships than anyone else, but because of the poise and dignity with which he invariably conducts himself, win or lose...It figures that the guy who dodges a suspension for allegedly biting in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final scores two goals - including the overtime winner - in Game 2. Meanwhile, even if Alexander Burrows bit Patrice Bergeron's finger, I don't blame him, and I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often because as near as I can figure, it's both a natural reaction and the best defence when someone sticks the palm of their dirty, sweaty hockey glove in your face. Worse things happen at the bottom of a football pile, and it's accepted as part of the game...And finally, a big welcome to the high-rolling Eurotrash who've arrived early for this coming weekend's Formula One Canadian Grand Prix. Don't forget to tip your waiters, waitresses and lap dancers, and remember - the best golf, poker games and steak dinners are just across the Mercier Bridge.

2011-06-03T06:17:00.000-04:00

Shaquille O'Neal made a logical decision when he pursued basketball as his chosen profession, but with his superhuman size and strength, the just-retired NBA great could probably have excelled at any number of other sports had he taken a different path.
At 7 feet, one inch tall and 325 pounds, it's not difficult to envision Shaq terrorizing opposing quarterbacks as a defensive lineman in football, or bringing some serious heat a la Randy Johnson or CC Sabathia as a baseball pitcher. With proper training, O'Neal's enormous strength and reach provided him with considerable potential as a formidable foe in the boxing ring. And if he'd grown up in North Bay or Terrebonne instead of New Jersey and Texas, hockey coaches would have been clamoring to recruit a would-be power forward who'd have made Milan Lucic look like Kjell Dahlin.
But size also has its disadvantages in the athletic arena, and there are several sports that pose seemingly insurmountable difficulties for someone of Shaq's physical stature. Thoroughbred jockey and race car driver are only the most obvious examples. As agile as he is for a big man, O'Neal would have been relatively hopeless at a number of Olympic disciplines, including pole vaulting, cycling, equestrian, rythmic dancing and ski jumping, which can be especially unforgiving for someone with the aerodynamic properties of an anvil.
As always, though, you can't measure determination and desire. An individual as driven as Shaq might have surprised us all by making a go of something that doesn't cater to his natural athletic advantages or talent. Anyone who can't sing or act but has 5 CD's and 11 movies to his credit is not to be underestimated.

Canada's team my white, freckly ass (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-05-30T06:16:00.002-04:00

I'll probably have my citizenship revoked for it, but I'm rooting against "Canada's Team" in the Stanley Cup final. Never mind that the Vancouver Canucks have fewer than a dozen Canadian players who've taken a regular shift in the playoffs as opposed to the 15 Canadians who suit up for the Bruins on a routine basis, or that I can drive to Boston in the time it takes to fly to Vancouver, the patriot police have decreed that the Canucks are Canada's team, with the not-so-subtle implication that cheering against them would represent an unpardonable act of sedition. That's exactly the kind of perfunctory flag-waving and narrow-minded jingoism that used to make bemused Canadians roll our eyes at our American neighbors...Lady Luck was a generous mistress yesterday at both the Indianapolis 500 and the Monaco Grand Prix. Dan Wheldon celebrated a gift-wrapped Indy championship after last lap leader JR Hildebrand crashed on the final turn. In Monaco, a red flag accident with six laps to go allowed Sebastien Vettel to pit for new tires and hold off a hard-charging Fernando Alonso, who otherwise probably would have passed Vettel and given Ferrari its first checkered flag of the season...One of the unique touches at the Indy 500 is the traditional singing of Back Home Again in Indiana, much like the Kentucky Derby honors tradition with the singing of My Old Kentucky Home. I'd like to see other sporting events adopt the same tradition, and to that end, I have a few suggestions: for the Tour de France, Bicycle Race by Queen; for the Calgary Stampede, the Rodeo Song (with appropriate disclaimers); for the running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, take your pick - AC/DC's Big Balls, Dumb by Nirvana or REM's Everybody Hurts.

Thomas steals the show (and other Monday morning musings on a Tuesday)

2011-05-24T06:13:00.004-04:00

Tampa Bay coach Guy Boucher didn't play the wrong hunch last night as much as Boston's Tim Thomas flat out stole the game. Boucher made the logical choice by starting backup goaltender Mike Smith, who saved the Lightning's bacon after Dwayne Roloson ran out of gas. Smith remains the logical choice for Game 6...After flirting with disaster against Chicago and playing in fits and starts versus Nashville, the Vancouver Canucks appear to have hit their stride against San Jose and restored their pre-playoff status as Stanley Cup favorites, assuming they don't tank against the Sharks and regardless of who comes out of the East...Becoming the world's oldest boxing champion was a remarkable achievement for Bernard Hopkins, but he could have shown more class. Taunting Jean Pascal by doing pushups between rounds and at the end of their Bell Center bout this past Saturday showed that while Hopkins might be a 46 year old man in a 25 year old's body, he's got an adolescent teenager's mentality and emotional maturity...Too bad Fernando Alonso couldn't parlay a spectacular start at the Spanish Grand Prix into something better than a fifth place finish, a full lap-and-then-some behind Sebastien Vettel. Ferrari is still Formula One's glamour franchise, and the sport lacks something when the Scuderia is puttering around with the also-rans...Say a prayer for Gary Carter, who's been diagnosed with brain tumours. No one personified the Expos more than Carter, who always had a smile and a good word and never complained about playing in the Siberia of major league baseball. On the contrary, he embraced the city, and now more than ever, we need to return the sentiment ten-fold.

If hockey blogs were written by copyright lawyers

2011-05-20T19:05:00.002-04:00

May 20, 2011
Without predjudice

The following commentary was written so as to satisfy the expectations and demands of copyright lawyers who are paid handsomely to monitor and litigate trademark violations against the parties referred to herein, to wit: I was watching a sporting event being broadcast on an electronic entertainment device located in the living quarters of the enclosed structure where I reside. The contest involved two formations of athletic participants whose collective aggregations are based in the eastern portion of one of two continental land masses named for late 15th/early 16th century explorer, navigator and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci (I hope none of Vespucci's descendants settled in Lasalle - if they hear this, I'll get a cease and desist letter by noon).
I was unable to maintain consciousness for the entire occurence, owing to my failure to visit a refreshment establishment named for a former professional hockey defenceman, where the lineups of gas and diesel-powered motor vehicles extend for considerable distances because of the distinct allure of a hot beverage that is highly caffeinated. It has been brought to my attention, however, that the players wearing the white jerseys with black trim emerged victorious, giving them the advantage in pursuit of a silver trophy donated by the former representative of the empire that oversaw the colonial territory prior to its formation as a federation of provincial bodies.
According to information gleaned for a desktop electronic processsor designed to accept data, perform prescribed mathematical and logical operations at high speed and display the results of those operations, Game 4 goes tomorrow afternoon in Tampa.

Bob Cole strikes again

2011-05-16T06:26:00.001-04:00

I didn't watch Game 1 of the NHL Eastern Conference final between Tampa Bay and Boston in its entirety so I wasn't party to all of Bob Cole's inevitable stupidities, but I did catch this gem from Hockey Night in Canada's resident gasbag with the Lightning up 3-1 late in the first: "Before a minute-47 is out in this first period, we could be looking at a brand new hockey game." Earth to Bob: what kind of ridiculous observation is that? It's not a bold prediction as much as it is a doddering old man desperately trying to come up with something that he thinks is going to create a sense of drama. Cole is bad enough at play-by-play without subjecting viewers to his equally preposterous color commentary. Say what you will about Don Cherry, but at least Cherry still has his wits about him. Bob Cole makes Mike Tyson sound like Sir Laurence Olivier. For the love of God, somebody give this guy his gold watch and a one way ticket home to Newfoundland...Please tell me we're not going to be subjected to a steady diet of caterwauling about how the Canadiens let Chris Higgins and Maxime Lapierre "get away." Just because Higgins and Lapierre are enjoying a deep playoff run with Vancouver doesn't change the fact that they were dead weight when they were unloaded by the Habs...The lycra-clad Green Men who taunt visiting players from the other side of the penalty box glass in Vancouver are the best NHL arena sideshow since the off-duty strippers who flashed their assets from the private loges at the Bell Center. Someone actually using their imagination to entertain the crowd between whistles is a refreshing change from a matted, googly-eyed team mascot whose creative repertoire is limited to the handshake, the head tilt and the blank stare...Bret Favre says he has no intention of coming out of retirement. He didn't specify which retirement.

Canucks lack killer instinct (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-05-09T06:15:00.002-04:00

They're still well in the hunt for the hardware, but it's difficult to envision the top-seeded Vancouver Canucks fulfilling the prophecy that made them pre-playoff Stanley Cup favorites. Saturday's loss trimming their series lead over Nashville to 3-2 marked the fourth time in five opportunities that the Canucks have failed to win an elimination game in the 2011 post-season. Assuming they get past Nashville - and that's a giant assumption - the killer instinct element missing in Vancouver would not stand the Canucks in good stead heading into the final four. They just don't look like a team on a mission...Did I hear Boston general manager Peter Chiarelli correctly when he said the Bruins sent Patrice Bergeron to the "quiet room" after Bergeron suffered a concussion against Philadelphia? I thought the quiet room was a place of penance for unruly toddlers at daycare, which would represent a major step forward in child welfare from when I was in kindergarten and Mrs. Paige used to put us in the furnace room...Animal Kingdom's spectacular sprint down the stretch Saturday at Churchill Downs reinforced the Kentucky Derby's reputation as the most exciting two minutes in sports, which got me to wondering, which sporting event or segment of a sporting event represents the least exciting two minutes in sports? I've got it as a three way tie between Hal Gill on a breakaway, any curling highlight package, and the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association doing the national anthem in sign language.

Other letters to fans from NHL owners

2011-05-06T06:17:00.002-04:00

Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis' open letter of apology to the team's fans following another disappointingly early playoff exit appears to be part of a trend. It's only been a few weeks since Canadiens owner Geoff Molson penned an open letter to Habs fans, promising to play a leadership role in cracking down on hockey violence in the immediate aftermath of the Zdeno Chara-Max Pacioretty incident. NHL owners are busy people, with business concerns other than hockey teams, but as long as they're committed to accountability, I'd like to volunteer to ghost-write letters to fans for them, starting with New York Islanders owner Charles Wang:

Dear Islander fans,
Long time, no see. I've guess you've both been pretty busy. Just wanted to remind you that plenty of good seats are still available for next season, and you might want to jump on them because I expect a real run on season tickets, now that we've got the nucleus of an up-and-coming team with Tavares, Moulson and some other guys whose names I don't remember. Our 30 year rebuilding plan is right on schedule.
Any travel plans this summer? I'm thinking about Quebec City, for no particular reason. I hear it's quite charming - sort of like France, but within driving distance.
Saw Milbury on Hockey Night in Canada the other night. Hard to believe he's an even worse commentator than he was a general manager.
Anyhoo, must run. The DiPietros are over for dinner and I think Rick just fell down the stairs and broke every bone in his body. Why am I not surprised?
Keep in touch, and don't forget to check out our website for online discounts on the ten thousand Alexi Yashin jerseys still in stock.
All the best,
Charles

Sore winners and other Monday morning musings

2011-05-02T06:05:00.003-04:00

It hardly seems possible, but certain elements in the Boston Bruins' fan base and media entourage have managed to harvest sour grapes from winning. The anti-Montreal vitriol on the internet and in the Boston press in the days following the Bruins hard-fought and well-earned opening round playoff win over the Canadiens sounded like the stuff of sore losers rather than gracious winner and would-be champions. The best explanation I've heard for that kind of mentality is "inferiority complex"...Even though Phoenix and Los Angeles were bounced in the first round and Atlanta and Florida missed the post-season entirely, the NHL playoffs are not without enduring dream scenarios for league Comissioner Gary Bettman, who must be absolutely giddy at the prospect of a Nashville-Tampa Bay Stanley Cup final...The New York Giants' second round pick in the 2011 college draft, North Carolina defensive lineman Marvin Austin, has been described as undersized for an NFL nose tackle even though he weighs 310 pounds. Is it any wonder these guys turn to steroids and human growth hormone?...Don't know if you've seen former teenage golf phenom Michelle Wie's Kia commercial, but she's not "this many" anymore.

Bitter rivals add to storied playoff legacy

2011-04-28T09:22:00.002-04:00

It goes into the record books as one-and-done, but anecdotal history will be kinder than cold fact to the Canadiens, who gave a better account of themselves than anyone could have reasonably expected before bowing out in the first round of the 2011 NHL playoffs.
Like every other game in the series, last night's sudden death thriller in Boston could have gone either way, and came within inches of being a Montreal success story when the puck trickled just wide past a down-and-out Tim Thomas moments before Nathan Horton broke the Canadiens' hearts at 5:43 of overtime.
That it got to that stage is a tremendous testament to the competitive resolve of both teams. The Bruins defied their own playoff history by coming all the way back after losing the first two games at home, while the Canadiens staved off elimination in Game 6 Tuesday before rallying from deficits of 2-0 and 3-2 to force overtime in Game 7.
Even if it didn't produce the same positive result for the Habs, the series was at least as entertaining as last spring's first and second round wins over Washington and Pittsburgh, and twice as emotionally-draining because of the nature of the Boston-Montreal rivalry. Despite the outcome, there was a palpable sense of accomplishment in the Canadiens' post-game comments, which doesn't suggest they're not disappointed as much as it says they have nothing to be ashamed of after giving as good as they got against a superior opponent for seven games and then some.

Monday morning musings on a Tuesday

2011-04-26T06:16:00.001-04:00

Amid the suddenly cold comfort of the oft-quoted 87 percent success rate among playoff teams that take 2-0 series leads and Boston's failure to ever win a series in which the Bruins lost the first two games, there's been a more sinister statistic lurking: the Canadiens have lost the last two playoff series in which they won the first two games - five years ago against Carolina and in 1996 versus the Rangers. That doesn't mean any more or less than any other historical footnote, but it's still out there...As much as the Canadiens are out of wiggle room against Boston, their mindset is rock solid compared to the panic-stricken Vancouver Canucks, who've blown a 3-0 series lead against Chicago ahead of Game 7 tomorrow night. As top seed in the West and the pre-playoff pick of most experts and oddsmakers to win it all, the Canucks are on the verge of writing the most agonizing chapter in a long history of squandered post-season promise...Joe Thornton might be a hero in San Jose for scoring the overtime goal that put the Sharks into the second round, but he's let his country down by not upholding his longstanding tradition of tanking in the playoffs so he can represent Canada at the world championships...Phoenix goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov's vow to leave the team and go home to Russia if the Coyotes move to Winnipeg is drastic but not preposterous. Moving from Phoenix to Winnipeg is like moving from...well, Phoenix to Winnipeg. As a native Russian, it's understandable that Bryzgalov would prefer the real deal to Stalingrad on the Assiniboine.

Habs rest on their laurels, pay the price

2011-04-19T06:09:00.000-04:00

If moral victories counted for anything, the Canadiens would be leading their playoff series with Boston two-and-a-half games to one, but all the rationalization in the world doesn't mask the fundamental reality that the Habs let the Bruins off the mat last night.
Coach Jacques Martin says he felt at the morning practice that his players weren't ready for Game 3, and his sense of impending disaster proved unhappily accurate when the Canadiens joined 21,273 other spectators in watching the Bruins jump out to a 3-0 lead. Montreal dominated the second half of the game to the point where the Bruins needed a heroic third period performance from goaltender Tim Thomas and an empty net goal in the dying seconds to short-circuit a furious Canadiens comeback bid.
The refusal to fold in the face of a three goal deficit is being touted as a momentum-builder for the Habs for Game 4 Thursday, but that's a pretty weak song-and-dance for taking their foot off the pedal after winning the first two games on the road, and with an opportunity to all but bury the Bruins in Game 3.
If the Canadiens weren't ready last night, as their coach suggests, that's not his fault. At this time of the year, circumstances alone should provide the required motivation. The Habs allowed themselves to get as giddy as the rest of the city over a series that was only half-won, and they paid for it. Whether they learned from it will only become apparent Thursday night.

McIlroy's meltdown (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-04-11T06:16:00.002-04:00

There may have been more dramatic fourth rounds at the Masters, but seldom - if ever - has there been a finish as unpredictable as yesterday's wild scramble at Augusta. No fewer than half a dozen golfers had a legitimate shot at the championship on the last few holes before South Africa's Charl Schwartzel put it away by closing with with four straight birdies...There's a couple of advantages to ill-fated third round leader Rory McIlroy being 21 years old. He's young enough that he can recover from yesterday's epic collapse, and old enough that he can drink himself into a blackout in the meantime...I've heard more than a sufficient number of Dick Enberg's corny Masters essays over the years that I get the history, majesty, glory, ethos, pathos, glucose and fructose or it all, but it's enough already with the chirping birds and piano mood music in and out of the commercial breaks. It's a golf tournament, not an episode of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood...I don't know what RDS or the CBC have in mind as theme music for the Canadiens and Bruins Thursday, but I think we can pretty much rule out Elton John's Can You Feel the Love Tonight...Whether or not you agree with his politics, you've got to admire Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe's political savvy in suggesting the French-language leaders' debate be rescheduled so it doesn't conflict with the Habs playoff opener. There's a guy who knows what really matters to the electorate.

Hammer gets his due

2011-04-05T06:05:00.002-04:00

If ever there was an unsung hero who didn't fit the mold, it's Roman Hamrlik, who was named yesterday as winner of the Jacques Beauchamp trophy, awarded annually to the Canadiens player deemed to have made the most significant contribution to the team without winning any particular honor.
As a former number one overall draft choice making 5.5 million dollars a year, Hamrlik represents a radical departure from past Beauchamp trophy recipients, like bottom six grinders Maxim Lapierre and Steve Begin and undrafted free agents Josh Gorges and Francis Bouillon. It was long-term injuries to fellow defencemen Gorges, Andrei Markov and Jaroslav Spacek that thrust Hamrlik into a much more prominent role than he's played in the past, and he's responded by providing yeoman's service in every aspect of the game and as a leader by example.
Short of the Canadiens training and medical staff, no one contributed more with less fanfare during this injury-plagued season, and despite not fitting the traditional profile of the improbable sentimental favorite, Hamrlik was a no-brainer for an award that in its own way is at least as gratifying as the heavier duty hardware they hand out to the glamour boys.

Price hits the skids

2011-03-31T06:16:00.002-04:00

There's nothing to suggest that it's anything other than coincidence, but Carey Price's game has taken a sharp turn for the worse since around the time a groundswell begin to build promoting the Canadiens goaltender as a finalist for the Hart Trophy as the NHL's Most Valuable Player.
Last night's 6-2 setback in Carolina was Price's fifth loss in his last six starts and marked the third time in less than two weeks that he failed to finish a game. On two of those occasions - last night and two Fridays ago against the Rangers - Price was playing for the second time in as many nights, which appears to say something about coach Jacques Martin's confidence - or lack thereof - in Alex Auld. Back-to-back games traditionally represent an ideal circumstance for giving your starting goaltender a night off and your backup some work, but Auld hasn't exactly been a model of consistency despite fairly decent numbers overall.
Price's overall numbers are still top 10 if not top 5 in the major statistical categories for goaltenders, but a bloated 3.86 goals against average and equally unsightly .884 save percentage during the aforementioned six game slide have gone a long way towards relegating him from frontrunner status to marginal candidate for MVP or Vezina Trophy consideration. Of greater concern to the Canadiens and their fans is that with the playoffs only two weeks away, Price's heavy workload might be catching up to him at the worst possible time.

Was that really necessary?

2011-03-29T06:14:00.002-04:00

As pre-fight hype goes, it doesn't get any more ill-conceived or poorly-executed than yesterday's Jean Pascal-Bernard Hopkins news conference circus act promoting their May 21st WBC light heavyweight championship rematch at the Bell Center. The two fighters got into a shoving match and Hopkins even threw a punch after Pascal challenged his opponent to take a blood test to prove that he's not on performance-enhancing drugs.
Let's give the promotors the benefit of the doubt and assume they didn't put Pascal up to it, because they've already got an event that's able to sell itself on its own merits, with Pascal and Hopkins ready to pick up where they left off in a dramatic and controversial fight last December in Quebec City, where Pascal retained the title by a disputed majority draw. In challenging Hopkins to get tested for drugs, Pascal offered nothing in the way of proof that the 46 year old fighter's ripped physique is the result of anything other than long hours of hard work in the gym, and even passed the buck to the faceless multitudes, saying it's the fans who want Hopkins to take the test. Pascal claims he's defending the integrity of his home province after Hopkins called Quebec City a "village" and its residents "little people," but linking name calling to drug testing is a tenuous leap of logic.
Not only was it cheap theatrics unbecoming of a champion, but in the absence of evidence or even any hint of a drug scandal in the Hopkins camp, Pascal came away from yesterday's spectacle looking exactly like what Hopkins described him as - a scared punk preparing his excuses for losing in advance.

Two words: P-U

2011-03-25T09:54:00.003-04:00

That's not the way it was supposed to happen.
The Canadiens were beaten at their own game last night: outskated, outfinessed and taking bad penalties instead of drawing them. They were badly exposed on a night when Carey Price was ordinary - not that this was in any way Price's fault, but the superhuman skills that put Price in the thick of the Hart and Vezina Trophy discussions were not on display last night, while Tim Thomas was perfect at the Boston end of the rink on the rare occasions when the Canadiens generated anything remotely resembling a quality scoring chance. It's the second time in his last three starts that Price has failed to finish the game, raising legitimate questions about that wonky knee that chased him from practice earlier this week, and whether his heavy workload is starting to take a toll at the worst possible time.
It's been clear from the get-go that the Canadiens are only going to go as far as Price carries them. Still, that doesn't excuse the rest of the team from showing up. It was only one game, but in what was by far the biggest game of the regular season, the Canadiens laid an egg.

Matt's goose Cooked

2011-03-22T06:10:00.002-04:00

So, the torch-bearing mobs finally got their pound of flesh. The NHL has suspended Pittsburgh's Matt Cooke for the last 10 games of the regular season and the first round of the playoffs, which is about what the righteous masses were demanding for Zdeno Chara after his hit on Max Pacioretty two weeks ago.
The Cooke case is more cut and dried on several levels. Unlike Chara, Cooke is a repeat offender, was clearly targeting his opponent's head and couldn't find a character witness if he was equipped with a search warrant and a pack of trained bloodhounds. His own coach and general manager even threw Cooke under the bus and then took turns driving it back and forth over the body a few times for good measure.
In and of itself, ten games and a playoff series for Matt Cooke isn't going to resolve the NHL's head shot dilemma. If it takes as many incidents as Cooke has been involved in for the league to lower the boom, players are still going to be inclined to take liberties. But the league has at least sent a messsage and set a precedent, which is exactly what its most ardent critics have been demanding in lieu of life at hard labor in a Siberian prison camp for Zdeno Chara.

RIP Rick Martin and other Monday morning musings

2011-03-14T06:02:00.006-04:00

Don Cherry comes off as a half-crazed old crank as often as not, but he made one of the most relevant and revealing contributions to the player safety debate during Saturday's edition of Coach's Corner on Hockey Night in Canada. Cherry showed a montage of 18 instances of players being slammed into the stanchion between benches - not to exonerate Zdeno Chara for his hit on Max Pacioretty, but to demonstrate that it wasn't an isolated incident, and that flawed arena design was as much to blame as anything for the severity of Pacioretty's injury. Cherry did what a lot more people need to do: he identified a problem and proposed a solution...You think the Canadiens have had it tough with injuries to key players? Pittsburgh's been without Sidney Crosby for 29 straight games and Evgeny Malkin for 22 of the last 23, and the Penguins are still fourth in the East and within striking distance of conference-leading Philadelphia...If you're not old enough to remember former Buffalo Sabre Rick Martin, who died over the weekend, think Rick Nash - soft hands, big shot and a nose for the net, and one of the best natural goal scorers of his era. Somebody needs to explain to me how guys like Clark Gillies and Larry Murphy are Hall of Fame-worthy but Rick Martin isn't...Good conscience precludes me from picking sides in the NFL labor dispute. How do you sympathize with either of two parties who can't agree on how to split nine billion dollars? It's not like they're getting divorced and emotion is preventing one or both sides from seeing reason. It's business. Get it done.

The shameless scramble to score PR points off Pacioretty

2011-03-11T06:05:00.003-05:00

While an overwhelming majority of Montreal Canadiens fans are allowing emotion and bias to drive their reaction to the Zdeno Chara-Max Pacioretty incident, at least their hearts are in the right place. They want justice - or their perception of justice - after the NHL declined to suspend Chara for checking Pacioretty headfirst into a glass partition at the Bell Center. There are other forces at work with more self-serving agendas.
Air Canada's letter to the NHL threatening to withdraw sponsorship makes it abundantly clear that the airline is more interested in protecting its precious corporate brand than it is in protecting players, which must make Pacioretty feel all warm and fuzzy. Canadiens owner Geoff Molson jumped on the bandwagon yesterday, pandering to the team's fan base by saying he shares their frustration, disappointment and shock and that he's willing to take a leadership role in improving player safety. That's all well and good, but where was Molson when players on other teams were taking career-threatening head shots? The most suspect development yesterday was the Montreal police force announcing it was opening a criminal investigation into the Chara hit, fewer than 24 hours after police lectured Canadiens fans about abusing 9-1-1 lines reserved for reporting real crimes and emergencies - an about-face that smacks of opportunism further up the law enforcement and political food chains.
Transparent corporate self-interest and cheap political posturing bring nothing of value to an already overheated debate. If anything, they diminish and demean what they claim to represent.

Oh, and by the way, the Canadiens won

2011-03-10T06:17:00.002-05:00

So, it's like I was saying after the Bruins handed the Canadiens their lunch last month in Boston: the Canadiens don't have to be tougher to beat the Bruins - they only have to be better. Tuesday night, they were both, starting with Ryan White, who won a unanimous first period decision over Johnny Boychuk after Boychuk took a run at P.K. Subban. But mostly, it was about being better - better 5 on 5, better on the power play and killing penalties, and better between the pipes, where Carey Price was Ken Dryden to Tukka Rask's Gilles Gilbert, and Patrick Roy to Rask's Reggie Lemelin.
Price didn't have to steal this one, though. He was just another cog in a well-oiled machine. The Canadiens controlled the game from start to subdued finish, when 21 thousand plus left the building thinking less about the outcome than they were about Max Pacioretty's immediate and long-term prognosis. Zdeno Chara's hit on Pacioretty aside - if it's possible to set a hot-button issue of that magnitude aside, even for a moment - the Canadiens' convincing 4-1 win over Boston validated general manager Pierre Gauthier's cautious approach at the trade deadline, when self-proclaimed experts with nothing at stake except water cooler and tavern table bragging rights demanded that Gauthier to go out and acquire more grit, just as they clamored for him to trade Price and keep Jaroslav Halak last summer.
Oh, yeah, the first star in the Canadiens most important and gratifying win of the season? Lars Eller. He's the guy Gauthier got for Halak.

Bob Cole blows and other Monday morning musings

2011-03-07T06:45:00.004-05:00

History has taught us never to take anything involving Andrei Kostityn to the bank, but there's reason for cautious optimism after Kostitsyn ran his consecutive games point streak to six with a first period assist in the Canadiens' 4-2 win over the Lightning in Tampa Saturday. As an added bonus, the pairing of Kostitsyn with rookie Lars Eller has been an elixir of sorts for Eller, who's showing more of the poise and polish that made him a first round draft choice in 2007. It'll be interesting to see how coach Jacques Martin reacts - or overreacts - if the Kostitsyn-Eller combination goes sour for even a game or two, given that Martin changes his lines more often than most coaches change their underwear...After 40 plus years as a sports fan, the playing of the national anthem or anthems rarely even registers with me anymore, but I really liked the job Tommy Hunter and Grady from Sanford and Son did before the Canadiens game in Tampa. Ask your parents. Or your grandparents...If Victor Hedman is supposed to be the second coming of Niklas Lidtsrom, he's behind schedule. The highly-touted Tampa Bay defenceman was virtually invisible Saturday, which is a pretty neat trick when you're 6-6 and 230. In fact, Hedman's only memorable moment in his first two NHL seasons was delivering the coup de grace that put Crosby out of commission long-term. Mind you, Carey Price was delayed in playing up to his potential, and he's certainly been worth the wait...Hockey Night in Canada windbag Bob Cole was at his blowhard worst Saturday, delivering this head-shaker - among others - after Dwayne Roloson robbed Brian Gionta with the Habs leading 2-0: "Maybe that'll get the Lightning fired up, pardon the pun." Uh, that's not a pun, Bob, or if it is, it's a bad one. You might have wanted to go with "get the Lightning charged up" or "put a jolt into the Lightning" or "I'd like to take this opportunity to announce my long overdue retirement."

Andrei the Giant Underachiever and other Monday morning musings

2011-02-28T08:17:00.006-05:00

Awfully decent of Andrei Kostitsyn to show up two days before the trade deadline. Kostitsyn's stellar performance in the Canadiens' win over Carolina Saturday was as confounding as it was exhilarating, because it makes you wonder for the hundredth or so time why he can't bring it like that every game. Even in his contract year, Kostitsyn's been mailing it in more often than not. It's a terrible waste of talent from a guy who's got the physical goods to be an elite power forward, but has a disconnect somewhere between his heart and the rest of his body...After adding the lead-footed Brent Sopel to a blueline corps that already included Hal Gill and Paul Mara, the Canadiens are officially a Gerald Diduck comeback away from having the slowest defence in the history of the NHL...Baseball Hall of Famer Duke Snider was Dave Van Horne's broadcast partner for fewer than half of the Expos' 36 seasons, but for Montrealers who came of age in the team's golden era from the mid-to-late 1970s into the early 80s, the legendary Brooklyn Dodger was as much a part of Montreal's summer soundtrack as Van Horne himself. Snider's passing on the weekend was yet another wistful reminder of how good Montreal baseball fans had it before the Expos were run into the ground by the likes of Claude Brochu, Bud Selig, Jeffrey Loria and David Samson....At the risk of insulting basketball fans and Irishmen everywhere, I find the Boston Celtics road uniforms to be shockingly unattractive. Short pants and tank tops in full-on kelly green might be de rigeur for a leprauchan, but they wouldn't flatter Shaquille O'Neal if you threw in the pot o' gold hat, shillelagh and a bowl of Lucky Charms.

Same Auld story for Habs

2011-02-25T06:06:00.002-05:00

What is there to say about the Canadiens backup goaltending situation, except "Next!"? Alex Auld isn't getting it done, and it's not as if there's a lot to get done when you're playing behind a workhorse like Carey Price. Auld was chased last night for the second time in his last four starts, giving up three goals on just nine shots in 13 minutes, against the lowly Leafs, no less. Two of the goals were scored on Toronto power plays, but conventional hockey wisdom dictates that in order to be successful, you need your goaltender to be your best penalty killer, and Auld was not that against the Leafs.
After being the Canadiens best player in back-to-back losses in Calgary and Edmonton and a hard-fought, emotional win in Vancouver, Carey Price deserved and needed a night off. Alex Auld couldn't give it to him at a time when Price could benefit hugely from an opportunity to mentally and physically recharge for the playoffs. It's been apparent all season that the Canadiens are only going to go as far as Price carries them. That's a heavy enough burden without being called on to bail out the guy who's supposed to have your back.

Gomez poster boy for a wider malaise

2011-02-23T06:17:00.002-05:00

The next time the gang gathers 'round the water cooler to group-trash Scott Gomez, how about saving some breath for some of the Canadiens' other overpaid underachievers...like, say, Brian Gionta, who has more points than Gomez but fewer than Sergei Kostitsyn? I'll say that again: even with the goal he scored last night, Brian Gionta has fewer points this season than Sergei Kostitsyn. So, for that matter, does everyone else on the Canadiens except Tomas Plekanec and James Wisniewski, and the Wiz racked up the bulk of his points with the gawd-awful Islanders. There's no question that on a bang-for-the-Canadiens-buck basis, Gomez is the biggest underachiever of the bunch, but for five million dollars a year, it's fair to expect more out of Gionta than 32 points in 61 games. Same goes for Mike Cammalleri, who checks in at 6 mil a year, and has only been marginally more productive than Gionta. If the rationalization is that they're handcuffed by Jacques Martin's system, then that's an argument that has to be applied to Gomez as well. I'm not defending the guy. Anyone who's making 8 million dollars while on pace for a 9 goal season with a minus 17 rating in a system that preaches defence first is beyond defending. Gomez has earned every brickbat thrown his way, but it's not fair that he takes all the heat while others get a free ride.

Heritage Classic, Daytona, women's underwear and other Monday Morning Musings

2011-02-21T06:08:00.002-05:00

The worst thing to come out of last night's 4-0 loss at the outdoor Heritage Classic in Calgary was that the Canadiens were dominated in a game that had virtually no hitting. That's not a good sign for a team that favors speed and skill over size and muscle...I've heard nothing but rave reviews about the Flames' old-school, yellow-on-burgundy uniforms, despite a look that's firmly entrenched in the 1920s. I guess I'm okay with that, but it's a slippery slope from vintage jerseys to knickerbockers and singlet bathing suits...Even though the game was between two Canadian teams, it was nice of them to play the American national anthem as a nod to the seven people watching on the game on ESPN 12...Speaking of which, how about NBC hockey going head-to-head with Fox's live coverage of the Daytona 500 yesterday afternoon? The NBC crew probably could have done the Pittsburgh-Chicago game in pig Latin while wearing women's underwear without anyone being the wiser... I've always been more of a Formula One fan than I am a NASCAR guy but that doesn't make me blind to what's great and exciting about NASCAR. There were 74 lead changes before rookie Trevor Bayne's unexpected and electrifying win in the 2011 Daytona 500. There might not be 74 lead changes in F1 this season...I'm a couple of weeks late with this, but could the PGA not have come up with a better name for its Phoenix tournament a couple of weeks ago than the Waste Management Open? I realize it's a sponsorship issue, but the Canadian women's curling championship is sponsored by a toilet paper company and they still have enough sense not to call it the Bumwad Tournament of Hearts.

Canadiens make a move...barely

2011-02-17T06:16:00.002-05:00

Do you get the feeling that reacquiring Paul Mara from Anaheim for a fifth round draft pick wasn't the move Canadiens fans have been clamoring for to make the team tougher and grittier in time for the playoffs? Mara's a 31 defenceman who was more of a liability than he was an asset for the Canadiens last season, when he was minus-16 in 42 games before suffering a season-ending shoulder injury. He's been pretty much a non-entity in Anaheim, where Mara was a healthy scratch for 23 of the Ducks' last 25 games. His are not credentials that bespeak an imminent journey to the promised land.
However, you're not going to get something for nothing, and fifth round draft choices amount to nothing 95 percent of the time, so it's not as if the Canadiens have gone out on a limb here. What Mara gives them is additional veteran depth along an injury-depleted blue line at an almost negligible salary cap hit. Even if that's not much, it's still better than nothing. The toughness and grit blockbuster will have to wait for another day, if in fact general manager Pierre Gauthier decides to fiddle with the existing dynamic of a group that in spite of all its perceived shortcomings still has the 8th best record in a 30 team league. As the guy to has to make the actual decisions and accept responsbility for the consequences, that's not a circumstance that's likely to panic Gauthier as much as it seems to consternate his volunteer army of unpaid armchair assistants.

Fun with sports names

2011-02-15T06:15:00.001-05:00

You know you've made it to the pinnacle of celebrity when you are only referred to by one name, like Bono, Madonna, Charo and Sinbad(the latter two of whom prove that fame and talent can be mutually exclusive). Nowhere is one name celebrity status more commonly celebrated than in soccer - especially Brazilian soccer, which said "ate logo" to one of its best yesterday when Ronaldo announced his retirement. Ronaldo won two World Cup championships while sharing the spotlight with such distinguished teammates as Ronaldinho, Cafu, Romario, Bebeto and the unfortunatey named Kaka, who suffered in one name the humliation it took former pro athletes Dick Pole, Harry Colon and Chubby Cox a first and a last name to acquire. Kaka aside, the Latin-based Romance languages lend themselves to credible and sonically-pleasing single names to a much greater extent than Anglo Saxon languages like English or German. Tom, Dirk and Helmut just don't have the same acoustic appeal as Pele, Zidane and Maradonna, either as soccer players or as attorneys or chartered accountants. Face it: to whom would you rather entrust a complicated litigation case or tax file - Neymar, Sandro and Ederson or Jimbo, Al and Gordie? So, as we can see, "what's in a name" is more than just a rhetorical question. I'm Ted, K103 Sports (see, that's what I'm talking about, right there.)

What's a Joffrey? (and other Monday morning musings)

2011-02-14T06:13:00.002-05:00

Random observations from section 108 at the Bell Center Saturday: Who are these Leafs? At least when Toronto had Ed Belfour, Tie Domi and Darcy Tucker, you knew who to hate. The current Leaf roster is stacked with no-names like Rosehill, Crabb and Aulie, who sound more like a Vaudeville trio than they do hockey players...This hasn't been a stellar season for Jaroslav Spacek and he's read and heard all about it, so it's only fair to acknowledge that he was rock solid Saturday. Better late than never for Spacek, whom the Habs need to lift his game a notch or three for the stretch run to the playoffs and beyond...I've become the hockey fan I loathed at the dawn of the Blackberry era - the guy who gets great seats and then spends half the game texting. The drugstore reading glasses only add to my shame...The opposition criticism of P.K. Subban has reached the point of gratuitousness. Joffrey Lupul's bellyaching that Subban didn't take the time to remove his helmet and visor before their first period fight smacked of the same petty resentment that's followed the talented and entertaining Subban around the league this season. Lupul should concern himself with his own issues, like the fact that his parents couldn't even spell "Jeffrey."