What are the Winnipeg Jets afraid of…Big Buff a man of many words…no Sun in Twang Town…and a non-diving Dane

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

It’s almost Groundhog Day. Does that mean Grand Master Kevin Cheveldayoff is about to poke his head out of his hiding hole and do something? Or say something?

Grand Master Kevin Cheveldayoff

That would be refreshing, since the man who does Saint Mark Chipman’s bidding hasn’t done or said much of anything since shuffling Evander Kane and Zach Bogosian off to Buffalo. For those of you keeping score at home, that was almost 365 days ago.

Chevy is the Howard Hughes of National Hockey League general managers. A recluse. He is the anti-John Ferguson.

When Fergy was at the wheel during the Winnipeg Jets’ initial whirl in the NHL, he took ownership of his deeds. Good (hello, Dale Hawerchuk) or bad (hello, Jimmy Mann). He didn’t hide from the faithful or news scavengers. From the moment he arrived in River City from Gotham until the day he was asked to leave, Fergy was up front and loud. His was the face and voice of the franchise.

What we now have with Cheveldayoff and the present-day Jets is complete non-accountability.

If there is a face and/or voice to this franchise, I can’t see it or hear it. No one can. Cheveldayoff says less than a street mime. The Winnipeg Sun recently requested an audience with the Grand Master for its three-part, state-of-the-union series on the Jets and was told, “Sorry, no can do. Chevy’s too busy doing stuff that is none of your business or anybody else’s business.”

That is so lame.

What I find myself wondering is this: Is Cheveldayoff standoffish by nature, or is he under some sort of gag order issued by team co-bankroll Saint Mark? I mean, it’s one thing for Chipman to operate a secretive society that suckles at the public teat in the form of tax advantages/subsidies and gaming revenue, but this isn’t about True North Sports & Entertainment profits. It’s about a hockey team, one in which the community has invested deeply, whether through ticket/merchadise sales or emotions. What is he afraid of?

If Chipman hasn’t instructed Cheveldayoff to keep his lips zipped, what is the GM afraid of?

Answering a few questions in advance of a looming NHL trade deadline ought not be an option. It ought to be an obligation.

Big Buff

On a similar theme, it was interesting to read dispatches from this weekend’s NHL all-star hijinks in Twang Town, Tennessee, because we discovered a side of Dustin Byfuglien seldom, if ever, seen in Winnipeg. Turns out Big Buff is humorous, witty, glib and an all-round nice guy who seemingly enjoyed his 25-minute parry-and-thrust with hockey scribes on media day. That Nashville scene, of course, would never take place in River City, because the Jets are so freakish about controlling the message that they shield their players from prying eyes and ears. News scavengers aren’t granted the opportunity or time to get to know players like Byfuglien as people and, by extension, Joe and Josephine Phan are also left out of the loop. Shame, that.

Not surprisingly, the Big Buff chin wag referenced his contract negotiations with the Jets. The all-star rearguard and pending free agent was asked point blank if his desire was to remain in Winnipeg, and, while he had some favorable comments about good, ol’ Hometown, part of his reply likely left a few in Jets Nation a tad uneasy. “I just want to put on a jersey, to be honest with you.” He didn’t say a Jets jersey. Apparently, any NHL jersey will do. He later said, “I wouldn’t want to go anywhere else, but business is business.” Reminds me of the answer Evander Kane delivered in July 2014 when Team 1040 Radio in Vancouver quizzed him on his status with the Jets: “Well, I think, um, I’m a Winnipeg Jet right now and, um, you know there’s been speculation and rumors for the three years since I got there. You know, we’ll see what happens, and we’ll carry on as if I’m a Winnipeg Jet.” We all know how that ended.

Sad, but not surprising, that there’s no Winnipeg Sun presence in Nashville. The tabloid was served by the Toronto-based Michael Traikos of Postmedia and Mike Zeisberger of the Toronto Sun. Get used to it, people. Meanwhile, the Winnipeg Free Press has its own man, Tim Campbell, on site. Score one for the Freep.

Best reads this week were delivered by the Freep’s Paul Wiecek, whose piece on Saint Mark Chipman is superb. It’s Wiecek at his best and a prime example that the Free Press is well-served with him in the columnist’s seat. Meanwhile, the much-maligned John Scott told it like it is in a Players Tribune article that offers insight and humanizes one of the NHL’s dying breed—the enforcer.

Tell me if this is coincidence or an attitude adjustment: On Jan. 7, the NHL dinged Nikolaj Ehlers $2,000 for diving/embellishment. It meant he was a repeat offender. To that point in time, the diving Dane had scored six goals and 13 points in 40 games. Since the NHL dipped into his pay envelope, the Jets freshman winger has scored six goals and collected nine points in nine games. Apparently, Ehlers has concluded that staying on his feet is more productive than flopping around like a European soccer player. Skating alongside linemates not named Chris Thorburn likely helps, too.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 45 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented to her in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.

 

About raw sewage and Paul Maurice…the Freep recruiting Shakey Johnson…a herd of Buffalo Girls at the Scotties…and idiocy in print

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

I see where the city of Winnipeg allowed five million litres of raw sewage to pour into the Red River earlier this month. That’s nothing compared to what Paul Maurice keeps pouring over the boards.

Winnipeg Jets head coach Maurice has lost the plot. Totally. Or he’s gone into tank-for-Auston mode.

Winnipeg Jets head coach Paul Maurice

I mean, really. The Jets are down two goals vs. the New Jersey Devils, Maurice instructs his goaltender to vacate the net in favor of a sixth attacker in a final, frantic push to get a puck past Cory Schneider at the far end of the freeze, and one of his half-dozen wannabe heroes is Chris flipping Thorburn?

What am I missing here?

The last time Thorburn scored, the Prime Minister of Canada was a guy named Trudeau. Pierre, not Justin. Okay, so that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Thorburn actually has five snipes this winter. Trouble is, that’s his average over eight National Hockey League crusades. His career high is nine goals. He lights the lamp about as often as Adam Sandler makes a good movie. Thus, expecting Thorburn to come up with a big goal is like expecting Caitlyn Jenner to win a war of wits with Ricky Gervais.

So what is it that Maurice sees that the rest of us don’t?

Understand something here. I have no problem with Chris Thorburn being Chris Thorburn. The guy’s a gamer. Does whatever is asked of him.

My issue is with Maurice not recognizing that Chris Thorburn is Chris Thorburn.

So, after spending a few days to digest the ouster of old friend George (Shakey) Johnson as sports columnist at the Calgary Herald, here’s what I’m thinking: Why isn’t Winnipeg Free Press sports poobah Steve Lyons on the phone, making a pitch to bring Shakey home? The Freep hasn’t replaced Gary (La La) Lawless, who defected to TSN not so long ago. Since La La took his leave, columnist duties have been shared by the very capable Ed Tait and Paul Wiecek in something of a good cop, bad cop tandem. They’ve been cranking out boffo stuff. But Shakey Johnson is only the best sports writer in Canada (newspaper division). He got his start in River City, at the Winnipeg Tribune in the 1970s. It would be nice if he could finish it off in Pegtown.

Alberta champ Chelsea Carey.

Can you say Buffalo Girls, kids? There will be a heavy Manitoba flavor to the Scotties Tournament of Hearts next month in Grand Prairie, Alta. Kerri Einarson and friends, of course, will have the Buffalo on their backs when the Canadian women’s curling championship slides from the hacks Feb. 20, but Winnipeg’s Jennifer Jones and gal pals (Team Canada) will join the freshly minted Manitoba queens in the annual rock fest. There’s more. Chelsea Carey of the famed Carey curling clan and a former Manitoba champion is also headed for Grande Prairie as the rep from Wild Rose Country. Chelsea knocked off defending Alberta champion Val Sweeting on Sunday. We’re talking three of the morning-line favorites, all from the Keystone province.

How do you write a story about the provincial women’s curling championship without telling readers that you’re writing about the provincial women’s curling championship? That’s a good question to ask Jim Bender of the Winnipeg Sun, because he managed to report on Sunday’s Manitoba Scotties Tournament of Hearts final between Kerri Einarson and Kristy McDonald in Beausejour without once mentioning the sport of curling. Tsk, tsk Big Jim.

I have long harbored great admiration for a number of sports scribes in our home and native land. I think of wordsmiths like Jack Matheson, John Robertson, Jim Taylor, Jim Coleman, Milt Dunnell, Dick Beddoes and current-day jock journalists Cam Cole and Bruce Arthur. Giants, each of them. But, in terms of pure writing talent, there are precious few about whom I have said, “I wish I could write as well as him/her.” Atop that list would be the legendary Trent Frayne, whose way with words was unequalled. There has not been a better sports scribe in the True North. Ever. After Trent, my personal fab four includes Allen Abel, Stephen Brunt and Shakey Johnson.

Nothing to admire in this quip from Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun: “The idiocy of social media: Fans arguing online who was the better Leaf, (Dave) Keon or Wendel Clark.” Apparently, no one is allowed an opinion unless it jives with Little Stevie Blunder’s. If he says Keon is the greatest of the Toronto Maple Leafs, cased closed. As if, Stevie. Talk about idiocy.

This from my very own self just 15 days ago: “Prediction: By the end of this month, the Jets will be in a playoff position.” D’oh! What a mook.

Winnipeg, the last two-paper town in the West…how Shakey Johnson got his name…promotion for Kirk Penton…and a long overdue induction for Dave Komosky

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

Once we get past the handwringing, the gnashing of the teeth and the anger/bitterness of journos across the land in the aftermath this week’s Postmedia print purge, what are readers of newspapers left with? This: Winnipeg is the sole two-paper town west of the Republic of Tranna.

Oh, sure, Postmedia continues to print both a broadsheet and a tabloid in Vancouver (Sun and Province), Edmonton (Sun and Journal) and Calgary (Sun and Herald), but this is a classic case of a one being dressed up as a two. If the deep-thinkers in one newsroom determine what is to occupy the space between the display ads of both dailies in those three bergs, it is one newspaper, no matter how it is packaged.

Think of this as beer. If you pour half a bottle of Molson Canadian into a mug and the other half into a tall, thin glass, you’re still drinking the same beer. Tastes the same, just looks different.

So it shall be in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary. Rather than two competing journalists chasing the same story and, hopefully, delivering different slants, you now shall have one reporter with no urgency to get the scoop and no fear of being beaten by the opposition. There is no opposition. No alternative voice.

Which makes Pegtown a unique market in the western flank of the nation.

The puppeteers at Postmedia pull the strings for the Winnipeg Sun, while FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership bows to its own master in publishing the Winnipeg Free Press. Unlike others in the Postmedia collective, the two Pegtown sheets are not Siamese twins, joined at the head. They are in competition, which serves the greater need, even though the end result each day might not always satiate the appetite of readers.

What I am left to wonder is how much Winnipeg will remain in the Sun.

Although not included in this week’s carnage, which involved the merging of newsrooms at eight dailies (the Ottawa Sun and Citizen being the others) and the kicking to the curb of 90 journalists, the after shocks were felt in River City.

Ted Wyman remains sports editor at the Sun. Sort of. He keeps the job title, but some invisible head sitting behind some invisible desk in some remote outpost of the land now will decide what Winnipeg sports fans want to read. How this serves Pegtown provides serious pause for ponder. I mean, shouldn’t a sports editor be able to reach out and feel the pulse of the people? It’s easy enough to recognize that the Winnipeg Jets and Winnipeg Blue Bombers are the big dogs in town and, thus, generate the most talk. But what of lesser players such as the Manitoba Moose, the Winnipeg Goldeyes, the University of Manitoba Bisons, junior hockey, local tennis, golf, curling, figure skating, etc.?

My concern is that they shall be lost in the shuffle.

Take curling as an e.g. It is the third biggest beat at the two River City dailies, behind only the Jets and Bombers. But will there be a Winnipeg Sun presence at next month’s Scotties Tournament of Hearts in Grande Prairie, Alta.? Not likely. Thus, no local angle, even though there shall be two Toba teams in the event. The Brier, meanwhile, is in Ottawa. Will we be reading Manitoba-centric dispatches from Paul Friesen, Ken Wiebe or the aforementioned Wyman, or generic puff from a Bytown scribe?

I fear the worst, and all this because Postmedia bit off more than it could chew when it purchased Sun Media’s English-language properties last spring.

As mentioned, Wyman is not out of work. He becomes part of the Sun’s bare-bones stable of scribes, replacing Kirk Penton, an elite reporter who has been anointed the Postmedia chain’s national writer for all things Canadian Football League. Coverage of the Bombers shouldn’t suffer in terms of quantity, but quality will take a hit because Penton is the best in the business.

After scribbling a piece about George (Shakey) Johnson the other day, it occurred to me that most folks don’t know the story behind the deposed Calgary Herald sports columnist’s nickname. We don’t call him Shakey because he’s a nervous Nellie with constant jitters. It’s due to his golf game. Back in the 1970s, you see, a few of us from the Winnipeg Tribune sports department would gather for a round of golf on occasion. The cast would rotate, but it generally involved Caveman Dutton, Greaser Drinnan, Swampdog Rauw, Davey Boy Komosky, Shakey and myself. Shakey played a neat-and-tidy game of golf. He struck the ball straight and true, although not far, and we actually witnessed a hole-in-one from him one day at Tuxedo. But he could not sink a putt inside three feet to save his life. He had the yips on the green. After one astonishing display of unparalleled hopelessness with the blade, we retreated to the pub, whereby Caveman Dutton and I commenced to calling him Shakey. The name stuck.

Big night for my longtime friend and colleague Dave Komosky, who joins the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Media Roll of Honour at their 60^th annual awards dinner at the Delta Hotel. As I scribbled a few weeks ago, it’s a long overdue honor. I only wish I could be there to hear his acceptance speech. I have a feeling Davey Boy is going to put some people on the BBQ.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 45 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented to her in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.

It’s -30- on Shakey Johnson’s sports writing career…say it ain’t so, Postmedia

Scant years after the 20^th century had arrived at its midway mark, author Truman Capote appeared on the television show Open End, whereupon he lashed out at the Beat Generation of American writers who delivered notable works in the 1950s.

“None of these people have anything interesting to say and none of them can write, not even Jack Kerouac,” he told host David Susskind. “It isn’t writing at all. It’s typing.”

Whether his was an accurate appraisal of the scribblings of Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Herbert Huncke and others among the Beat wordsmiths is, of course, open to interpretation, but the core of Capote’s critique is unassailable: Some people write, others just type.

I am reminded of the In Cold Blood author’s quote due to the blood-letting that has taken place this week on the sinking ships we know as daily newspapers in Canada.

George (Shakey) Johnson

Included in the Postmedia carnage that killed competition in four major cities and left approximately 90 people out of work was George (Shakey) Johnson, whose poetic way with words has graced sports sheets across the nation ever since he walked out of a Red River Community College classroom and into the Winnipeg Tribune newsroom in the 1970s.

Shakey Johnson doesn’t type. He writes.

Which makes the Postmedia resolve to deep-six him not simply callous and cold-hearted but mystifying in the extreme.

I mean, it’s one thing to merge the two newsrooms of supposedly competing papers in each of four bergs in the True North, which Postmedia has done in Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Ottawa, but surely the fallout from fiscal folly ought not to include your best and brightest people.

Shakey Johnson is among the best. And brightest. Still.

Shakey is unlike any sports scribe I have known, something I recognized early, when we were both novices learning our trade at the knee of Jack Matheson at the Trib. He would prattle on about his fave jocks like Ali and Jack Nicklaus, with the odd genuflection toward Davey Keon and Italian fitba, but he really got off on the theatre and movies. He was as apt to work Sir Laurence Olivier, Richard Burton or Judy Garland and Streisand into a lede as Wayne Gretzky or Lanny McDonald. And don’t even think about getting him started on Sinatra. Ol’ Blue Eyes was, is and always will be his main man.

That’s what makes Shakey special, at least to my way of thinking. It isn’t all about pucks and pigskins and point guards. He comes at sports writing from a different angle. He’s both high-end and high-brow. And he does it with such elequence and knock-’em-dead dry wit.

It’s why, as sports editor at the Calgary Sun in the early 1980s, I lured him away from our sister paper in Edmonton and installed him as our National Hockey League beat writer, his main focus being the Flames. I knew Shakey would deliver the same sterling stuff I’d read in the Trib and Winnipeg Sun, where he was among the plucky rogues and rebels who brought a newspaper to life out of the Tribune ashes.

That Postmedia cannot see this same talent is mind-boggling.

Sure, go ahead and merge the Calgary Herald and Sun newsrooms. Kill the competition. But do not kill the quality.

Shakey Johnson has been a chronicler of Calgary sports for more than three decades, first at the Sun then the Herald, and he’s done it with unparalleled polish. His choice of wording is as his choice of wardrobe—impeccable. Thus, it is most discouraging and disheartening to think he’s arrived at the end of the ride because some suit doesn’t know a noun from a nincompoop. Shakey still has so much more to share. Surely we haven’t seen the last of Sinatra, Streisand or Sir Laurence in the lede of a sports story.

If it is over for Shakey, I offer another Truman Capote quote: “To me, the greatest pleasure of writing is not what it’s about, but the inner music that words make.”

I don’t know what inner music Shakey hears when he writes, but what I’ve always heard in reading his words is a beautiful symphony.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 45 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented to her in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.

I miss Citizen Kane…$1 million should make Big Buff a fan of 3-on-3 hockey…a swan-diving Dane…and other things on my mind

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

Top o’ the morning to you, Evander Kane.

Evander Kane

I must say, it’s been awful quiet in these here parts ever since you packed your track suit and shuffled off to Buffalo. The boys you left behind are quite the bland lot. I mean, the surviving members of the Winnipeg Jets all pay their restaurant and bar tabs. They pay their parking tickets. They don’t swan off to Las Vegas and tweet selfies featuring great gobs of American greenbacks. They don’t buy billboards on Sunset Strip in Tinseltown to woo back their model girlfriends. All they do is kiss Saint Mark Chipman’s ring finger and play hockey. Bor-ring.

I was kind of hoping that your return to Pegtown for the Buffalo Sabres-Jets joust this afternoon at the Little Hockey House on the Prairie would liven things up. You know, get our motors running. But you didn’t play along. Your chin-wag with news scavengers upon your return to River City was as ho-hum as your offensive output this National Hockey League season. Just another game, you said. Business as usual, you said.

Balls!

It’s never “just another” anything when you and Winnipeg are in the mix, Evander. You had a love-hate relationship with us. Sans the love. You wanted out of River City the moment your eyes made acquaintances with Portage and Main. But you lied to us about that, didn’t you, Evander? You said everything was cool. You even signed a long-term contract that, as we have since learned, was window dressing and not an indication that you liked us, you really liked us.

It’s not quite a year since the trade that sent you from one NHL backwater burg to another and, other than a wardrobe adjustment from Jets to Sabres linen, not much has changed for you, Evander—eight goals and five assists in 30 games, pauperish returns for princely pay.

Still, I miss you and your underachieving ways, Evander. You were interesting. Fun. A walking, talking, 72-point headline.

That’s why you’re in for a rough ride this afternoon. The rabble in River City prefers their sporting heroes to be humble. Modest. Feet on the ground, not nose in the air. You made too much noise, Evander. The wrong kind of noise. And now you’ll be hearing a different kind of noise at the Little Hockey House on the Prairie. It won’t be pleasant and it won’t be polite. But I suppose it will be befitting.

Welcome back, Evander.

No. 33 is no fan of 3-on-3 shinny.

So, the successful side in this month’s NHL all-star hijinks in Twang Town, Tennessee, divvies up a $1-million pot of gold. That would be one million U.S. dollars, or about one million, 400,000 loonies. Something tells me that Dustin Byfuglien suddenly is a fan of three-on-three hockey. Big Buff, of course, harrumphed mightily earlier this season after he and the Jets had been beaten in a three-on-three overtime session. It’s not hockey. It’s terrible. It’s stupid. Fine, Buff. Remind us of that when you and your Central Division colleagues are counting the cash in Nashville.

Speaking of cash, I note that Jets’ freshman Nikolaj Ehlers is a bit lighter in the wallet these days. The NHL dinged the not-yet-great Dane to the tune of $2,000 for diving/embellishment, which means he’s a repeat offender. Somebody tell the swan-diving Dane that the pond is frozen. You want to embellishment something, kid? Try your scoring numbers. You had four goals before we carved our Halloween pumpkins. Then you turned into a pumpkin. You’ve scored two since, one into a empty net. Stay on your feet and play the game, Swanny.

Why all the angst over the Jets getting an early first-round pick in June’s NHL entry draft? If grand master Kevin Cheveldayoff is such a wizard on the draft floor, it shouldn’t matter whether he gets his initial call in the top 10, middle 10, or bottom 10 of the first round.

Who is Ken Wiebe of the Winnipeg Sun trying to fool? Following the Jets’ 4-1 faceplant against the Disney Ducks in Anaheim, he wrote, “Faced with a back-to-back situation, the Jets were unable to find their skating legs against a well-rested Ducks team.” Really? Well-rested? Wiebe surely is not letting the facts get in the way of his reporting, because the Ducks were playing their fourth game in six nights. Same as the Jets. Up to and including that game, the Ducks played nine matches from Dec. 17-Jan. 3. The Jets played eight. The Jets played five road games during that stretch. The Ducks played seven, including four on the opposite side of the continent. It was the Jets’ fifth post-Christmas game. Ditto the Ducks. So, exactly when did the Ducks have time to rest? Wiebe’s comment smacked of homerism.

Local sports scribes who wrote articles this week that did not include the sport and/or league they were writing about: Ed Tait, Tim Campbell, Melissa Martin, Scott Billeck, Jeff Hamilton, Doug Brown, Ken Wiebe, Paul Friesen.

Prediction: By the end of this month, the Jets will be in a playoff position. Seriously. The Nashville Predators have gone into free fall and the Colorado St. Patricks are legitimate like Jaromir Jagr is a rookie. About the only thing I can see screwing up the Jets this month is the return of Ondrej Pavelec.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 45 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented to her in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.

 

The Drab Slab recruits Scott Campbell…nothing new at the Sun…still a hate-on for Shane Doan…and why not Anthony Peluso in the NHL all-star game?

I cannot survive in a 140-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…

So, how does one improve upon the toy department of a daily newspaper? Why, you recruit a non-writer to write, don’t you know? That, at least, is the thinking of the madcap minds at the Winnipeg Free Press, which now has more sports scribes than Donald Trump has critics.

Scott Campbell

Latest to join the Drab Slab’s stable of thousands is old friend Scott Campbell, who, when last seen, was helping the Winnipeg Jets wrestle the final World Hockey Association championship away from the Edmonton Gretzkys, then, sadly, he fought a losing battle with asthma that ended his National Hockey League career at the tender age of 25.

Scotty was one of the good guys, one of my all-time fave Jets. A raw-boned rearguard, he was friendly, witty and quick with a laugh. He took his game seriously but not himself.

And what will he bring to the Freep sports pages commencing Friday? Honesty. Bluntness. I hope.

I say that based on Scotty’s scribblings at Mitch Kasprick’s pride and joy, Winnipeg Hockey Talk. He doesn’t write with the smoothest pen (copy editors, please take note: punctuation is not Scotty’s strength), but he offers unvarnished critique, fair analysis and the voice of someone who has been there, done that.

My main concern is this: Given that the Freep is in bed with the Jets (official newspaper and all that rot), will Scotty be writing in a harness or given free rein? If he’s expected to be a True North Toady, it shall become a wasted exercise. If allowed to ruffle feathers, it’s game on.

Go get ’em, Scotty. I’m root, root, rooting for you.

So now the Drab Slab has one ex-jock, Campbell, scribbling hockey, and another former play-for-pay guy, Doug Brown, prattling on about the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and all things Canadian Football League. How do they compare as writers? Scotty is meat-and-potatoes. Brown is…well, let’s just say the former defensive lineman is from a school that preaches, “Why use just three words when three dozen are so much better?” Basically, just one thing separates the two—a thesaurus.

In advising readers that the Freep toy department is “upping its game” by bringing a novice on board, sports editor Steve Lyons also invited feedback. Or input, if you will. “How are we doing?” he asks. “Is there something you would like to see more regularly? Is there something you would prefer to not see at all?” Well, now that you ask, Steve…is it too much to expect from your scribes (also copy editors) that they adhere to the basics of writing? You know, the who, what, when, where and why of a story. It’s disgraceful and shameful that Freep writers repeatedly fail to mention the league or sport they’re writing about. It’s an every-day occurrence. This is a pet peeve of mine and I’m not going to let it go until I see them spell it out—every day, in every article.

I keep waiting for the Winnipeg Sun to add a fresh voice to its sports pages, but it remains same old, same old—Paul Friesen, Kirk Penton, Ken Wiebe and cameo appearances by Ted Wyman. Those boys do boffo work, but even following the Freep’s lead and finding someone to do a once-a-week gig would give the Sun a bit of a jolt. As it is, they continue to trot out the weekly Toronto-centric, three-dot ramblings of Steve Simmons each Sunday. Do people in River City really care about the goings-on in the Republic of Tranna? I think not. I enjoy reading quick-hit journalism, but I’d rather it be about good, ol’ Hometown rather than big, bloated Hogtown.

Shane Doan as a rookie with the Winnipeg Jets.

It occurs to me that there remains a pocket of people in Pegtown still harboring a fierce hate-on for Shane Doan. Why is that? I mean, it wasn’t his fault that a bunch of carpetbaggers took Winnipeg Jets 1.0 and hightailed it south to the Arizona desert in 1996. Doan went along for the ride, simply because he had no choice, and the fact the Arizona Coyotes’ captain broke Dale Hawerchuk’s franchise goal-scoring record last week ought to be saluted, not scorned. I mean, are we really still bitter about the NHL allowing the Jets to skulk out of town and morph into the Desert Dogs? Are the Jets 2.0 not a suitable consolation prize? Get over it, people.

I can think of a few things that would put my nose out of joint, but John Scott appearing in the NHL all-star game isn’t among them. Sure it’s farcical that the Arizona Coyotes’ resident rottweiler will be part of the glittersome gathering in Twang Town, Tennessee, at the end of the month, but what is the NHL all-star skirmish if not farce? Seriously. A hockey game with a football score is not a purist’s idea of quality shinny, which is why it’s no longer a single farce but a series of little farces. So why not let the goons in on the fun? What the hey, had Jets loyalists been on the ball, they would have stuffed the ballot box and sent Anthony Peluso to Nashville, whereupon both he and Scott could lay a hurtin’ song on the real hockey players.

Unless there is a dramatic change in fortune, we soon shall hear much talk of tanking in Jets Nation. For the record, I don’t believe that team co-bankroll Mark Chipman will instruct grand master Kevin Cheveldayoff to deliberately tank in order to better position the Jets to win the right to bark out the name Auston Matthews at the 2016 NHL entry draft. If the Jets get first shout at the June garage sale of freshly scrubbed teenagers, they’ll do it the old-fashioned way—bad management.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 45 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented to her in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.

Yo! Mark Chipman! Butt out, you buttinski

The floating rumor that Mark Chipman is a buttinski is not a rumor at all. It is fact.

The Winnipeg Jets’ co-bankroll and governor sat at a round table last month and admitted as much during a no-necktie chin wag with George Stroumboulopoulosboulopoulos, Hockey Night in Canada host and unabashed citizen of Habs Nation.

What we don’t know is this: How much of a buttinski is Mark Chipman?

Could it be that Saint Mark is the reason Andrew Ladd and Dustin Byfuglien remain unsigned, untraded and destined for unrestricted free agency, at which time the Jets shall receive diddly for two of the National Hockey League club’s more prominent pieces? I mean, based solely on his comments to Stromboy, Chipman has stuck his beak into the seemingly stalemated to-and-fro between Grand Master Kevin Cheveldayoff and the camps of Ladd and Byfuglien.

Mark Chipman

“Chevy and I talk pretty much daily,” he said of his working relationship with general manager Cheveldayoff. “Those are his calls to make, but it would depend on the extent of the term or the quantum of the contract you’re talking about (that) would, to a certain degree, determine the level of involvement that he would require me. The lengthier the deal or the more impactful the deal, the more I would be involved on a consultant basis.”

I would submit that the re-signing and/or trading of your team captain, Ladd, and the oftentimes rogue reardguard Byfuglien would qualify as “impactful.”

So, is Chipman asking Cheveldayoff what he’s doing, or has he gone all Steinbrenner and is telling his general manager what to do?

It should be pointed out that this was not a one-on-one tete-a-tete between Saint Mark and Stromboy. Also flapping their gums were Geoff Molson, a product of a family of beer barons and le grand fromage of les Canadiens de Montreal, and Jeff Vinik, noted philanthropist and the money behind the Tampa Bay Lightning.

Here’s what each had to say about their involvement in signings/trades:

Geoff Molson: “The general manager is accountable for that, and he knows that. Marc (GM Bergevin) knows that. And so whether it’s a contract negotiation or a trade, I’m informed the whole way through because we talk almost every day. But I’m not calling the agent, I’m not calling the player. I’m helping Marc in his negotiations so we can be successful, or I’m encouraging Marc with questions. It’s easy for me to not get involved because they’re much better at making decisions like that than I am. I know my general manager is going to do everything he can to win hockey games.”

Jeff Vinik: “I meet or talk to Steve Yzerman once a week. I don’t find it necessary to check in more often than that. When it comes to a major player, you don’t want me making those decisions. You want Steve making those decisions.”

It’s interesting to note that both Molson and Vinik are clear in stating their modus operandi: They bow to the expertise of their respective general managers and get the hell out of the way.

Not so Chipman. He confesses that the more “impactful” the scenario, the more he sticks his thin, pointy beak where it doesn’t belong.

Wrong answer, Saint Mark.

Ya, sure, he owns the franchise and, by default, he must be made privy to the status of talks. But he’s not a hockey man. Having the largest office and a partner, David Thomson, with the deepest pockets in Canada doesn’t make Chipman any more knowledgeable than the lumps who sit on stools in sports bars or phone Radio Chin-Wag to promote conspiracy theories about sinister NHL skunk skirts plotting to keep the Jets below the playoff line.

Chipman has had a free ride from mainstream media and fans since the Atlanta Thrashers caravan rolled into River City and morphed into Jets 2.0 in 2011, but he must be called out if we find his fingerprints on the final reckoning of major trades and signings.

He has to do what Molson and Vinik do—get the hell out of the way.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for 45 years, longer than any living being. Do not, however, assume that to mean she harbors a wealth of sports knowledge or that she’s a jock journalist of award-winning loft. It simply means she is old and comfortable at a keyboard (although arthritic fingers sometimes make typing a bit of a chore) and she apparently doesn’t know when to quit. Or she can’t quit.
She is most proud of her Q Award, presented to her in 2012 for her scribblings about the LGBT community in Victoria, B.C., and her induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Association Media Roll of Honour in 2015.