Those who occupy the ivory tower of the Canadian Football League have this peculiar knack for doing the right thing and the wrong thing at the same time. And, it must be said, they’ve totally lost the plot.
I mean, voyeurism is a firing offence and kicking the crap out of a woman isn’t?
Jerome Messam
Jerome Messam has been dismissed by the Saskatchewan Roughriders and barred from the CFL and, at the same time, the league and its boot-licking, lap-dog accomplices at TSN celebrate in full throat and pomp the expected arrival of Johnny Manziel as starting quarterback for the Montreal Alouettes.
Just to refresh: Johnny Manziel beat the hell out of, and offered to end the life of, his former girlfriend. He was indicted by a grand jury in Texas. She applied for, and was granted, a restraining order.
Serious stuff.
Now we have Messam, who apparently took video evidence of a roll in the hay while a member of the Calgary Stampeders two years ago. Disgusting? If done without consent, absolutely. That’s total perv territory. The emotional damage to the victim can be immeasurable. Which is why Messam has been charged with voyeurism.
And it’s fine for the CFL to punt him. No argument.
Randy Ambrosie
“The Canadian Football League is aware that Jerome Messam has been charged with Voyeurism, a Criminal Code offence,” the league said in a statement. “He has been released by the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Commissioner Randy Ambrosie has informed all member clubs that the league will not register a contract for Messam should any team attempt to sign him.”
Ah but…they allow the Hamilton Tiger-Cats to sign Manziel and permit the Alouettes to pick up his contract.
Again, what part of its own policy of violence against women does the CFL not understand?
What does commissioner Randy Ambrosie require? Film at 11? Maybe of Johnny Rotten dragging Colleen Crawley by her hair? Or slamming her head into a car window? Or whacking her on the side of the head, rendering her deaf in one ear? Perhaps sound bites of him offering to commit homicide/suicide?
No way Manziel should be prepping for a date vs. the Tiger-Cats on Friday at Timbits Field in the Hammer.
Johnny Manziel
But, hey, Johnny Frat Boy is a Heisman Trophy winner, don’t you know. He’ll make for boffo box office and have the cash registers humming in the gift shop.
Messam on the other hand…he couldn’t sell a raffle ticket for a free lifetime supply of Pioneer canola seed to a Saskatchewan farmer. Head coach Chris Jones had already reduced the big, burly running back to a bit part in the Gang Green offensive scheme, so anything more disturbing than an agreed-upon French kiss and the Riders—also the league—were prepared to give Messam the ultimate kiss-off. They rode him out of Dodge faster than you can say Marshal Dillon fancies Miss Kitty.
Now, no one has ever accused me of being a scholar (I had the poor grades to confirm it), but surely I’m not the only one who recognizes the contradiction here. Messam, the alleged voyeur, was put out of work on the same day that Manziel, the guy who beat up a woman, was taking first-team reps in advance of the Montreal-Hamilton skirmish.
What astonishes me is that no one in mainstream media has called out Ambrosie on this glaring and obscene miscalculation, one that mocks the CFL’s domestic violence policy.
Art Briles
Where is the great hue and cry we heard from news snoops, opinionists and fans last year when the Ticats sought to bring Art Briles on board as an assistant coach? The considerable and justified noise forced the Tabbies and Ambrosie to do a rethink, and Briles never crossed the border.
That’s where Johnny Manziel should have been stopped, too.
But, hey, there’s a set of rules for guys with a Heisman trinket in their trophy case and a set of rules for regular working stiffs like Messam and Briles. So damn straight they’re gonna cut Johnny Rotten some slack. He’s good to go, and TSN’s ratings will shoot through the roof on Friday night.
Three soft-boiled eggs on whole wheat toast and some leftover thoughts for a Monday morning breakfast…
I cut my teeth in the rag trade by standing on the lumpy, pock-marked sidelines of local football fields, covering the Sisler Spartans, Churchill Bulldogs, Elmwood Eskimos and other outfits in the Winnipeg High School Football League.
If not at high school grid, I was courtside watching the best local tennis players do their thing on the clay courts of the Winnipeg Canoe Club or Winnipeg Lawn Tennis Club.
Major Junior/Junior/Senior hockey, kids curling, high school track and field, badminton, junior golf, bowling, figure skating, fastball, gymnastics, Junior baseball, hoops, amateur boxing…you name it, I was there to write about it. And if I wasn’t on site, I was on the Winnipeg Tribune sports desk, doing rewrites or laying out the pages that would prominently feature the games that local people played for no pay.
People continue to play those games today, but the sports sections of the two daily rags in River City have abandoned them. Almost entirely. And that is, indeed, sad and most unfortunate.
I mean, why am I reading about Miguel Angel Jiminez leading the Senior British Open golf tournament and a tie atop the ladies’ Scottish Open leaderboard in the Winnipeg Free Press instead of, say, the Manitoba Junior Baseball League playoffs, which are down to the short strokes and will feature two local outfits, the St. James A’s and Elmwood Giants, in the final?
Why does the Winnipeg Sun devote two full pages to a guy from Vancouver, Adam Zaruba, who’s in the training camp of the Philadelphia Eagles, two full pages to UFC blood-spilling in Calgary, and another two full pages to the Tranna-centric musings of Steve Simmons instead of the MJBL final four?
I know the reason behind the Sun’s dismissal of all local sports outfits that aren’t named Jets, Blue Bombers, Moose or Goldeyes, and I addressed it in January 2016, after parent company Postmedia adopted a centralized sports desk for its member papers:
“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.”
The Moose and Goldeyes haven’t been ignored, but the others? Bupkus.
From July 15 until this very morning, the Sun printed 313 stories in 16 sports sections, and the professional-amateur split reads like a Harlem Globetrotters-Washington Generals scoreline—308-5. That’s a paltry 1.6 per cent of all copy devoted to amateur sports coverage, which has been sacrificed for Postmedia piffle from hither and yon, articles that have scant or zero significance to the River City rabble. Seriously. Steve Simmons taking issue with Kyle Lowry’s silence is something I want or need to read about in a Winnipeg newspaper?
It’s only marginally better at the Freep, where sports columnist Paul Wiecek wrote this at the start of the month: “A confluence of events over the Canada Day long weekend got me thinking about how we as Canadians so dramatically undervalue the contributions our amateur athletes make to this country, while simultaneously just as dramatically overvalue the contributions of our professional athletes.”
That particular column was more a gripe piece about greedy play-for-pay athletes, but the Drab Slab toy department and Wiecek then proved how little they value amateurs. From June 30 until this morning, they ran 614 articles and here’s the pro-amateur split: 558-56, or 9.1 per cent for amateurs. In that same time frame, Wiecek scribbled a dozen essays, 100 per cent aimed at pro athletes and pro sports (hmmm, 12 columns in 31 days…nice work if you can get it).
Like I said, I understand why the Sun has bottomed out on local amateur coverage. It’s marching to a national drummer. But the Freep has no excuse. It’s an independent paper with a sports section that doesn’t have any less space today than it did in the 1970s, and there’s no less staff. Which means there can only be one reason—they just don’t give a damn.
Speaking of pro sports, I must say, there was some gawdawful officiating on display during the Bombers-Tranna Argonauts skirmish on Friday night at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry, and it greatly benefited the home side. Winnipeg FC still would have beaten the Boatmen sans the generous flag-tossing, but, had the phantom infractions not been called, it might have made for a more compelling match.
The Bombers had a head count of 27,116 on Friday, their largest gathering of this Canadian Football League crusade, but Winnipeg FC is still 2,040 behind last-season’s three-game pace. That’s a dip of at least $57,000 in ticket revenue.
Rod Smith, Jim Barker, Matt Dunigan, Milt Stegall
I like Jim Barker’s input as one of the newbies among TSN’s cast of characters on CFL coverage, but he’s got to do something about his lid. If Barker’s grey-and-black locks aren’t flopping over his right eye, they’re sticking out at the back like he’s got bed head. Very distracting. As for that other newby, Davis Sanchez, if I want to listen to a man butcher the English language I’ll take Chris Walby any day. Bluto has better stories and he’s a lot funnier.
Listening to Kate Beirness of TSN glorify Johnny Manziel before and after the Edmonton Eskimos-Montreal Alouettes grass-grabber on Thursday night, I couldn’t help but wonder this: What does she really think about a guy who beat up his (former) girlfriend? What does she say about the Als quarterback once the camera is turned off? Is she being forced to promote him as the CFL’s shiny, new object?
I’ll say this for Paul Wiecek, he’s the only columnist in Canada who’s had the junk to write that Johnny Manziel’s doesn’t belong in the CFL due to his domestic violence history. If another scribe has spoken out, I missed it. So good on him.
Here are this week’s CFL power rankings…
1. Calgary (6-0): Who’ll stop these guys?
2. Winnipeg (4-3): Feasting on Tranna.
3. Edmonton (4-2): All those penalties (17) won’t cut it against a top-level foe.
4. Saskatchewan (3-3): Has anyone figured out what Chris Jones is trying to do?
5. Ottawa (4-2): Not going to win many games kicking seven field goals.
6. B.C. (2-3): Not convinced Travis Lulay is the answer at QB.
7. Hamilton (2-4): Going…going…gone?
8. Toronto (1-5): Time to try another quarterback.
9. Montreal (1-5): Still awful in either official language.
I note that hockey legend Mario Lemieux is selling his shack in Mont-Tremblant, Que., for a mere $21,999,066 million. It has eight bedrooms and nine washrooms. That’s $2,444,340.66 per biffy, for those of you keeping score at home.
On the subject of bathrooms, tennis great Serena Williams is whinging about men in lab coats continually knocking on her door and demanding that she pee in a bottle. Apparently, the doping sleuths have visited her five times this year. So what’s the big deal? I’ve had to pee in a bottle six times in the past 10 months, and I’m not even a world-ranked tennis player.
Shouldn’t the promotion of Gina Kingsbury to general manager of Canada’s national women’s hockey team warrant more than an ‘oh, by the way’ blurb in the media? It was bottom-of-the back-pages news in the Free Press, and 10 pages deep into the Sun sports section.
And, finally, the silence since a National Hockey League arbitrator awarded Jacob Trouba a $5.5 million contract has been deafening. Nothing from Winnipeg Jets ownership/management. Nothing from the Trouba camp. Kind of puts a chill into Winnipeg’s hottest summer in 30 years.
I cannot survive in a 140- or 280-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…
Johnny Frat Boy
TSN no longer has football broadcast teams. It has a cult. The Cult of Johnny.
Or perhaps it’s a church. The Church of Latter Day Frat Boys. Johnny Manziel being the Saint in Residence.
Whatever the case, all the natterbugs on TSN football want to talk about is Johnny Manziel. So let’s talk about Johnny Manziel.
He beat up a woman and threatened to kill her. Full stop.
At least it should be a full stop, because once you’ve said a man has beaten up a woman and threatened to kill her, you’ve told me everything I need to know about that man. I don’t need to hear about Manziel’s frat-boy partying, the drugs, the booze and the skirt chasing. He beat up a woman and threatened to snuff out her life. And his life. ‘Nuff said.
The shame is, the Canadian Football League ignores it. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats ignored it. The Montreal Alouettes are ignoring it. Ditto TSN and most mainstream sports media. The folks who repeatedly chanted “We want Johnny! We want Johnny!” at Percival Molson Stadium in Montreal on Thursday night ignore it.
Colleen Crowley
It’s as if Colleen Crawley doesn’t exist. Like she’s a fictional character in an Agatha Christie or John Grisham crime novel.
But Crawley is very real. She’s the woman Manziel beat up and threatened to kill. No one in the CFL ivory tower has ever spoken to her about her night of terror, as Manziel raged and roughed her up. Nor has anyone at TSN. They don’t care about Colleen Crawley.
All they care about is whether or not the Montreal Alouettes quarterback can throw a tight spiral.
Johnny Frat Boy has yet to fling a football in a three-down game that matters, but that hasn’t prevented TSN and others from unabashedly glorifying him. If anything, it’s encouraged them to chatter more about the National Football League washout.
In the leadup to the Als-Edmonton Eskimos match on Thursday, the main TSN web page featured six Johnny Manziel videos on Tuesday morning. There were another four on Wednesday. Five more on game day. In the TSN pre-match nattering, ever-beaming host Kate Beirness and the panel—Henry Burris, newby Jim Barker and Milt Stegall—spent the better part of 25 minutes gasbagging about Manziel before even mentioning the Eskimos, who, oh by the way, rag-dolled les Alouettes, 44-23.
Kate Beirness
By the end of the night, after Larks head coach Mike Sherman had displayed the good sense to keep Manziel confined to the sidelines, Beirness had wiped away her smile like faulty makeup. She was in distress, if not PO’d.
“Even though Mike Sherman told us we would see Johnny Manziel on Thursday night, we did not,” she pouted, her face as long as Johnny Frat Boy’s litany of trespasses. “He did not take a single snap. We have not seen Johnny Football in a regular-season pro football game since December 2015, and we will have to wait just a little bit longer.”
It was as if her dog had died. I swear, I could hear a Merle Haggard hurtin’ song playing in the background.
Good grief.
Rod Smith, Jim Barker, Matt Dunigan, Milt Stegall
If TSN’s shameful fawning and obsessing with Manziel on Thursday didn’t turn enough stomachs, the boys were at it again the following night. Rod Smith and the three chatterboxes sitting to his left—Davis Sanchez, Matt Dunigan and Stegall—mentioned Johnny Rotten four times in the first two minutes (and five times total) during their chin-wag prior to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers-Tranna Argonauts joust. Color commentator Glen Suitor, meanwhile, felt obliged to talk about him toward the end of the match. Well, let’s file that under WTF. I mean, Manziel was 1,800 kilometres and two provinces to the east of Pegtown, most likely cruising Crescent Street in Montreal. So why was he part of the conversation? The TSN boys are acting like 1970s teeny-boppers waiting for a David Cassidy concert. Get a grip, for gawd’s sake.
Manziel enablers and apologists might be interested in some disturbing, scary facts from the Canadian Women’s Foundation: Approximately every six days, a woman in Canada is killed by her intimate partner; in 2014, 80 per cent of the victims of police-reported intimate partner homicides were women; 80 per cent of dating victims are women. And one study, conducted between 2011 and 2014, found that domestic violence calls in Calgary were 15 per cent higher when the Stampeders played the Eskimos and increased to 40 per cent when the Stamps were in the Grey Cup game. But, hey, let’s ignore the facts and root, root, root for a guy who beat up a woman.
Johnny Manziel and his guard dog June Jones.
Most asinine comment I heard or read about Manziel last week was delivered by Marc Dumont of The Athletic Montreal. He wrote: “Canadians can indeed be a forgiving people, finding empathy for those dealing with issues like substance abuse, but we rarely ignore incredibly serious issues like domestic violence.” Rarely ignore? I call total BS on that. TSN has been unrelenting and unapologetic in its campaign to get Johnny Rotten on the football field, completely disregarding the reality that he terrorized and beat up a woman. At Manziel’s intro presser after he signed with the Tiger-Cats, head coach June Jones shut down any conversation about domestic violence. And the Canadian sports media gave convicted woman-beater Floyd Mayweather a complete pass when he surfaced in the Republic of Tranna to tub-thump his farce of a fist-fight with Conor McGregor last year.
Andrew Harris
It’s not often that I lend an ear to podcasts, but Jeff Hamilton’s recent chit-chat with Winnipeg Blue Bombers running back Andrew Harris was definitely worth a listen.
Hamilton, one of the CFL beat boys at the Winnipeg Free Press, asked Harris to weigh in on the Jacob Trouba saga, which resulted in the young Winnipeg Jets defenceman receiving a $5.5 million salary award from a National Hockey League arbitrator after contract negotiations ground to a halt.
“Most players have an inflated vision of what they’re worth, and, in a sense, you should,” said Harris, who defected from the B.C. Lions to join Winnipeg FC in 2016. “You realize how much you put out there, how much work you put in, and all the things you go throughout a season and through a career. Ultimately, you want to get compensated for that.
“You’re gonna get paid this amount of money for a short period of time, maybe 10 per cent, or 15 per cent, or 20 per cent of your whole life will be playing professional sports, so you’ve gotta maximize that to the full potential. But I think a lot of guys ruin a good thing after asking for too much money or going for places because they’re getting paid a certain amount when it’s not a good fit for them. A good fit within their system, within the community, within the lockerroom…it definitely can ruin a lot of careers just wanting more money or going where the grass is greener.
“Honestly, deep down inside I wanted a change. And I wanted to go to free agency. It really didn’t matter what (B.C.) offered me initially, I knew it was going to be a low-ball offer. It wasn’t horrible, but I made it seem like it was because I wanted to ultimately try to press as much and try to squeeze it for all the juice, but it ended causing more friction and made the last half of the season more negative than it probably should have been.”
Honest stuff.
Hamilton’s boss at the Drab Slab, sports editor Steve Lyons, and columnist Paul Wiecek went off on Trouba and liars in sports in their Say What?! feature last week, with Wiecek delivering this snicker-inducing remark: “I don’t tolerate (lies) in my personal life and I won’t tolerate it in my professional life.” Ya, right. What’s Wiecek going to do to stop athletes/coaches/managers/owners from lying to him. Tell them to go stand in a corner? Send them to bed with no dessert? Ground them like a teenager who broke curfew? As if. Lyons served as a voice of reason, writing: “If you are expecting the absolute truth to come out of the mouths of folks in pro sports, you are setting yourself to feel betrayed down the road. Don’t take it personally.”
Wiecek, who simply cannot get out of his own way when it comes to Trouba, says he’d “respect” Trouba if he went public and admitted he wants out of Winnipeg. Ya, like earning a news snoop’s “respect” is high on any pro athlete’s to-do list. There’s a basic reason why the jock-journo relationship is often adversarial—they don’t trust each other. And they don’t trust each other because they lie to each other. All…the…time. Yes, sports scribes also live on Planet Pinocchio. They don’t fib as often as jocks, but they bend, stretch and twist the truth like a blob of silly putty in a White House press secretary’s hands.
The athlete-media dynamic was another of the topics Hamilton and Harris discussed during their The Handoff podcast. “I’ve definitely been misquoted,” said Harris. “I’ve been misquoted for sure. There’s a guy in Vancouver—he doesn’t work in the business anymore…he’s swimming with the fishes now.” He was joking. I think.
Zach Bogosian
Would anyone out there in Jets Nation welcome a Jacob Trouba-for-Zach Bogosian swap even-up? Didn’t think so. I doubt Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff would either. Yet they agreed to give an underperforming Bogosian a seven-year contract with a $5.1-million cap hit in 2013, then placed a value of $4 million on Trouba nine days ago. That simply doesn’t add up. I mean, if they believed Bogosian was worth $5.1 million to them five years ago, they have to believe Trouba is worth a whole lot more in 2018. Naturally, we don’t know what numbers les Jets presented the Trouba camp prior to their recent arbitration hearing, but anything less than $5.1 million would have been highly objectionable and insulting. And people think Trouba’s the bad guy?
Marko Dano has signed with the Jets for $800,000. Nice gig. Sit in the press box, watch 82 hockey games, eat popcorn, collect 800 large. That’s almost as much as a beat writer at the Free Press makes. The least Dano could do for that kind of coin is file a game story and sidebar. On deadline. Also gain about 40 pounds and wear wrinkled clothes that don’t fit. Then he’d feel right at home with the rest of the boys on press row.
Oscar Madison
Hey, I’m not saying news snoops are slobs and shlubs. Some of them actually own neckties. They just don’t know how to tie them. If you ever watched Jack Klugman or Walter Mathau as Oscar Madison in The Odd Couple you’ll catch my drift. (Am I showing my age when I use the term catch my drift?) The only news snoop I ever knew who belonged on the cover of GQ was George (Shakey) Johnson.
And, finally, nice exchange between Bombers head coach Mike O’Shea and news snoops following Winnipeg FC’s 40-14 romp over the Argonauts on Friday night at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry…
Reporter: “Do you have any plans for your bye week coming up?”
Two eggs overeasy, toast and some leftover thoughts for a Monday morning breakfast…
Kurt Overhardt
Tough to tell who’s Public Enemy No. 1 in Good Ol’ Hometown today, Jacob Trouba or his paid mouthpiece, Kurt Overhardt.
I do believe, however, that Overhardt is ahead by a nose.
Here’s a small sampling of what the rabble has been saying since a National Hockey League arbitrator advised the Winnipeg Jets that they must compensate Trouba to the tune of $5.5 million in their next crusade, a pay bump of $2.5 million.
“With a different agent Trouba could have had a much happier outcome.”
“Trouba has an overinflated sense of self worth.”
“Mistake by Trouba. He is back to arbitration in one year. He could have gotten a big signing bonus plus long-term contract. His agent may need to be replaced.”
“He could have taken a (Matt) Dumba-type contract. Seems like he feels like he is worth more than he is.”
“Are we sure his known douchebag agent isn’t the problem?”
“Overhardt is overpricing him and giving him more bad advice.”
“He’s a bald-faced liar, a poor teammate, and not that great a player. Oh, and did I mention fragile?”
“Trouba has been wrongly directed by his controversial agent Overcharge.”
“Trouba has a fool for an agent and should have fired this doofus a long time ago.”
“He is not a Peg kind of guy.”
I’m quite uncertain what a “Peg kind of guy” is, except to suggest he likely has a cottage, shops wholesale, sucks on Slurpees and caves to the whims and desires of his employer. Apparently that ain’t Trouba.
Thus, the horse opera between the 24-year-old defenceman and les Jets continues, with guys in black hats and guys in white hats and no end in sight.
No palm trees here.
I must confess that I missed my guess on the Trouba-Jets dance. I thought they’d agree to a six-year partnership, then he’d ship out as an unrestricted free agent still at the peak of his powers. But I stand by what I wrote in early November 2016: “There’s as much chance of Jacob Trouba finishing his career in Jets livery as there is of palm trees sprouting at Portage and Main in January. He’s gone. It’s just a matter of when.”
Consider this, then cringe: It’s quite possible that les Jets will enter their 2018-19 crusade with a third defence pairing (Tyler Myers/Dmitry Kulikov) that earns more coin ($9.83 million) than its top pairing of Trouba/Josh Morrissey. This is good management of money how?
Paul Stastny
The Summer of Chevy has been hit-and-miss. Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff’s preference was to keep Paul Stastny in the fold, but he wasn’t willing to pay the veteran centre’s sticker price. He wanted to lock up Trouba long term, but he wasn’t willing to pay the sticker price. He did, however, manage to find the coin to keep goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, defenceman Tucker Poolman, press box squatter Marko Dano, and forwards Adam Lowry and Brandon Tanev happy. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather have a happy Stastny and Trouba than Lowry and Poolman.
If you’re scoring at home, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers defensive dozen surrendered just four points in a 38-20 romp over the Argonauts on Saturday in the Republic of Tranna. A week earlier, it was 20 points, which will win you 97 per cent of Canadian Football League matches. So, do we still want to fire defensive coordinator Richie Hall?
Mix some things together and they don’t always end well: Gasoline and fire; drinking and driving; Johnny Manziel and Crescent Street in Montreal. Not predicting that the Alouettes newly minted quarterback will go bonkers in Ville-Marie, but there’s great temptation in them thar streets, especially for a frat boy.
Since the CFL insists on allowing the woman-beating Johnny Rotten to play the three-down game, the ideal landing spot for the former Heisman Trophy winner would have been the Republic of Tranna, where the Argonauts need fans as desperately as Donald Trump needs approval. Only 10,844 sets of eyes were in BMO Field on Saturday to watch the Bombers rout the Boatmen, prompting this tweet from Troy Westwood of TSN 1290 in Pegtown: “Bombers 14, Attendance 12.” That’s funny.
While most followers of three-down football are still wondering if Johnny Rotten has what it takes to make a go of it in the CFL, at least one pundit, Dan Barnes of Postmedia Edmonton, has already given him the seal of approval. “In Johnny Football, Montreal gets a legit quarterback,” he writes, “the crucial piece of the puzzle that it hadn’t been unable to unearth in the wake of Anthony Calvillo’s retirement four years ago.” There’s zero evidence to support Barnes’s belief, but whatever.
Manziel has yet to take his first official snap on Canadian soil and already his first CFL jersey is a collector’s item. Saw one on ebay this morning for $129.99—or best offer.
Here are this week’s CFL power rankings…
1. Calgary (5-0): The juggernaut continues to roll.
2. Winnipeg (3-3): That’s more like it.
3. Edmonton (3-2): Took the week off, no damage done.
4. Saskatchewan (3-2): Brandon Bridge looking better at QB.
5. Ottawa (3-2): Hard to get a good read on these guys.
6. Hamilton (2-3): Suddenly, oh woe are the Tabbies.
7. B.C. (2-3): Tough way to go out for Wally Buono.
8. Toronto (1-4): Nothing without Ricky Ray.
9. Montreal (1-4): Still awful in either official language.
Tiger Woods
Quick takeaways from the Open Championship at Carnoustie in Scotland: I honestly thought I would never again see the name Tiger Woods atop the leaderboard of a golf major, but there it was on Sunday morning. Then came the 11th and 12th holes and reality for the 14-time Grand Slam winner. Too bad. A Tiger win would have been a terrific story. Mind you, he likely would have been a bit of a dink about it and whinged about all the naysayers who’ve written him off…Clearly, the one thing that helped power Woods during his heyday—intimidation—no longer exists. Nobody cowered once he took the lead…The champion, Francesco Molinari of Italy, has the kind of golf game we all should have—steady, risk-free. But, geez, it’s bloody boring…The Carnoustie course looks like a cow pasture with green spots…Is it my imagination, or was there an unsually large number of commercials during the broadcast? It seemed like there was 10 minutes of ads for every five minutes of golf…I no longer golf, but I can relate to something NBC gab guy Johnny Miller said during the final round Sunday: “Golf seduces you into trying things you have no business trying.”
And, finally, it’s about those fans who stood and cheered at Miller Park in Milwaukee when Brewers relief pitcher Josh Hader took the mound: Seriously? A standing O for a guy exposed as a racist, a bigot, misogynist and homophobic just days earlier? I won’t get into the gory details because the things Hader tweeted six years ago are vile, but saluting him as some sort of conquering hero is every bit as disgusting. It’s a bad look, Milwaukee.
I cannot survive in a 140- or 280-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…
Jacob Trouba
So, if I’m reading the rabble accurately, here’s the lay of the land for the Winnipeg Jets:
Connor Hellebuyck is an aw shucks, gosh-darn good guy because, like Rink Rat Scheifele and Twig Ehlers before him, he re-upped with no muss, no fuss.
Ditto Adam Lowry and Brandon Tanev.
Josh Morrissey is also every inch and ounce a gosh-darn good guy because, without the arbitration option, he will eagerly accept whatever coin the National Hockey League club tosses his way and utter nary a discouraging word. Again, no muss, no fuss.
And, of course, there’s ownership/management. They’re a bunch of swell dudes, too, because they’ve refused to cow to Jacob Trouba’s ridiculous salary demands and his trade ask of two years ago. Doesn’t matter that they lowballed him with a slap-in-the-face number ($4 million) ahead of their arbitration hearing on Friday in the Republic of Tranna. That’s just business.
Jacob Trouba…now there’s your resident villain.
Josh Morrissey
The Jets defenceman thinks he’s worth $7 million. The cheeky sod. Doesn’t he realize that les Jets are staring at a salary cap crunch? He’s thinking only of himself again, not the team. He’s arrogant, ignorant and selfish right? Run his Sad Sack heinie out of Dodge!
Except I don’t see it that way.
I mean, okay, once upon a time Trouba asked for a trade and temporarily withdrew his services. He filed for salary arbitration this summer and someone in an expensive suit stated his case on Friday morning. Last time I looked, none of that was included in our criminal code. He’s guilty of no wrong-doing.
Look, I could understand the scorn and hostility heaped upon Trouba had he been playing like a pylon and flitting about the countryside, acting like a dipstick of the Evander Kane ilk. Or if he’d said Good Ol’ Hometown is dark, cold and in dire need of a WiFi upgrade. But no. So, why is it that so many among the rabble think Trouba isn’t worth a roll of butt wipe, let alone the Jets’ shameful arbitration gambit of $4 million?
I just don’t get it.
Kevin Cheveldayoff
Frankly, I’m inclined to paint Jets management/ownership as the villain in the Trouba saga. I mean, if Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff truly want him on board for the duration, they have a peculiar way of pitching woo. Seriously. An opening bid of $4 million? Hey, I understand negotiations. Been there, done that, don’t wear the t-shirt. But in offering Trouba $4M, here’s what they’re telling their top-pairing D-man: “Love you loads, Jake, and it’s damn straight that we’ll keep sending you over the boards to shut down the other team’s best players, but we don’t believe you’re worth as much coin as Dmitry Kulikov, our third-pairing D-man. But, hey, don’t take it personal.” Of course Trouba will take it personal, then get out of Dodge five seconds after he becomes an unrestricted free agent two years hence.
For the record, here’s what Trouba said in May when interrogated by news snoops who sought insight re his thoughts on remaining in River City: “You get the sense there’s a little unfinished business with this team. We all have such good relationships on this team, it’s fun to be a part of. Ya, it’s a special team, you wanna play for a contender, and that’s what we have here. I haven’t put a whole ton of thought into it yet, the season just ended, but I’m sure in the next week or two, couple days, I’ll meet with my agent and we’ll go over stuff and we’ll see where it goes from there, let him talk to Chevy and I’m sure something will be worked out. Quicker the better.” So, was he sincere or were his pants on fire? Since neither you or I live or visit inside Trouba’s head, we don’t know. It’s total guess work, and the fact that his agent, Kurt Overhardt, and Cheveldayoff arrived at a contract impasse doesn’t mean Trouba lied.
Patrick Roy
Let’s say, for the sake of discussion, Trouba desires a new postal/zip code and is slumming in Good Ol’ Hometown until such time as les Jets peddle him or he’s a UFA. That makes him unique how? Apparently John Tavares wanted off Long Island (or out of Brooklyn). Scott Niedermayer and Zach Parise wanted out of Jersey (who doesn’t?). Zdeno Chara wanted out of Ottawa. Scott Stevens wanted out of Washington. Patrick Roy wanted out of Montreal. LeBron James wanted out of Cleveland. Twice. Shaq wanted out of Orlando. Roger Clemens wanted out of Beantown. Barry Bonds wanted out of Pittsburgh. Reggie White wanted out of Philly. Deion Sanders wanted out of Atlanta and San Francisco. A-Rod wanted out of Seattle. Reggie Jackson wanted out of Baltimore so he could become Mr. October in Gotham. David Beckam and Wayne Rooney wanted out of England. Need I continue? Suffice to say, athletes seeking a change in locale has been an every-day occurrence in hockey and every other professional sports league since the first skate blade touched a frozen pond.
Oddest comment on the Trouba situation was delivered, not surprisingly, by Paul Wiecek, the Winnipeg Free Press sports columnist whose obsessive hate-on for the Jets defender shows no indication of ebbing. The way Wiecek tells it, Trouba had the bad manners to “drag his employer to a salary arbitration hearing.” Oh, those poor, put-upon Winnipeg Jets. As if. It’s actually quite simple: If the Jets deploy Trouba as a top-pairing defenceman—which they do—they should pay him like one. Then he might not feel obliged to “drag” the poor dears to arbitration.
Marcus Stroman
Some really strange stuff from news snoops in the past week. Let’s start with Sportsnet gab guy Jeff Blair, who went off on Tranna Blue Jays temperamental pitcher Marcus Stroman:
“He’s got this idea that the Toronto media’s against him, yet the people who cover the team on a day-to-day basis—the people who have, frankly, the greatest reason to not like him—voted him pitcher of the year. He has this sort of make-believe grudge against a bunch of people who don’t have a grudge against him. The only thing I ever heard anybody say about him in this city that could possibly annoy him was that we don’t know if he’s good enough to be an ace. Well, we say that about everybody. There’s enough serious stuff going on in everybody’s lives right now that you don’t need a guy who kind of makes stuff up. At some point you wanna ask him, ‘Hey, that might have worked your rookie year. Well, grow up, stop it, be a pro, go about your business. Try to be a little real. Don’t try to create all these make-believe enemies. We don’t need it. Nobody needs that at this point. Maybe it’s time Marcus Stroman stopped being such a narcissist and, uh, you know, take a look around.”
Actually, maybe it’s time that Blair paid attention.
Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna has called Stroman a “jerk” and “an annoying kid who needs to grow up just a little.” Meanwhile, disgraced baseball broadcaster Gregg Zaun lashed out at Stroman for his animated antics following a Tranna win over the Los Angeles Angels in April 2017, saying, “Some of the behaviour rubs people the wrong way. I’m one of them. There’s no reason for it. It’s an unsportsmanlike way to behave. You just dominated somebody. Just high five your teammates and go back in the clubhouse and celebrate. I don’t understand why the flashing, the showboating, the rubbing it in people’s face. It ruins a perfectly good day. For people like me, it ruins a perfectly good day. There’s a way to behave on a Major League Baseball field and there’s ways not to do it. Maybe it’s this new generation. Everybody’s gotta have that dig-me moment.”
Those are just two examples of Stroman bashing. I’d say he has a legit reason for not cozying up to news snoops.
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir
I’m not sure what la-la zone the aforementioned Simmons was in when he wrote this gem: “Don’t know if a skating pair can qualify for the Conn Smythe Trophy (sic), but just passed (sic) the halfway point of the year, would anyone have a better case for athlete of the year than Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir?” Sigh. Canada’s top jock(s) receives the Lou Marsh Award, not the Conn Smythe Trophy, which goes to the most valuable player in the Stanley Cup tournament. And pairs fancy skaters have already won the Lou Marsh trinket twice: 2001 Jamie Salé and David Pelletier; 1959 Barbara Wagner and Bob Paul. Just the facts, ma’am. They aren’t hard to find.
I note the Edmonton Eskimos have dropped Terrell Owens from their negotiation list, which means the 44-year-old receiver is free to join any Canadian Football League outfit. A good landing spot would be the Republic of Tranna, where his presence might bump up Argonauts ticket sales. The head count for Saturday’s matinee vs. the Winnipeg Blue Bombers was 10,844, prompting Simmons to scribble this: “If you haven’t been to BMO Field for a football game, you’re missing something. The stadium is the star of this show.” What a truly stupid thing to write.
Really enjoyed The Beaches’ two-tune gig during down time of the Saskatchewan Roughriders-Hamilton Tiger-Cats joust on Thursday night at Timbits Field in the Hammer. You can’t go wrong with girls and guitars, and The Beaches really got after it with Money and T-Shirt. Good stuff.
So, Euclid Cummings is charged with sexual assault and his contract with the B.C. Lions is voided. Teague Sherman is charged with sexual assault and his contract with the Ottawa RedBlacks is voided. Johnny Manziel beats the hell out of his (former) girlfriend and he’s allowed to join the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and now the Montreal Alouettes. What part of its own policy on violence against women does the CFL not understand?
Truly wonderful choice for the Arthur Ashe Courage Award this year—the many victims and survivors of the horrible Larry Nassar and his decades-long campaign of sexual abuse. Seeing the women standing on stage, many of them hand-in-hand, at the ESPY Awards was powerful, moving stuff, and it brought to mind recent winners of the Ashe honor:
2018—the Nassar survivors.
2017—Eunice Kennedy Shriver, founder of Special Olympics.
2016—Zaevion Dobson, high school football player gunned down and killed while shielding two neighborhood girls during a drive-by shooting in Knoxville, Tenn.
2015—Caitlyn Jenner, filthy rich and famous reality TV diva who put on a wig, a gown and showed the world a pair of store-bought boobs.
Reminds me of the Sesame Street game: Which of these things doesn’t belong?
And, finally, just wondering: Did human tumbleweed Neymar fly home from the World Cup with his Brazil teammates, or did he roll home?
Scrambled eggs, toast and some leftover thoughts for breakfast…
An argument can be made, I suppose, that Richie Hall’s defensive dozen let the side down on the shores of the Pacific Ocean on Saturday night.
Not only were they an obliging bunch when they needed to be unyielding in the game’s final throes, they were also incredibly dense. (Memo to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers defence: Do not touch the quarterback after he flings the football. Do not even breathe on him. Do not say anything about his mother. Run from him like ABC ran from Roseanne Barr.)
The thing is, you don’t really want to hang Winnipeg FC’s shameful 20-17 paddywhacking at the hands of the previously inept B.C. Lions on D-coordinator Hall, who’s been wearing a pair of goat’s horns for so long he belongs in a petting zoo. His friends have taken to calling him Billy.
It seems to me, however, that this one’s on coaches not named Richie Hall. And the offence.
Seriously. Seventeen points. That’s the best you can do? You know how often an outfit scoring 17 or fewer points wins in the Canadian Football League? Only slightly more often than Banksy is seen in public. It’s happened once (in a rain storm) in 19 games this crusade. It happened twice in 86 games last season. It happened three times in 86 games in 2016. That’s 3.1 per cent, or about the same as Donald Trump’s approval rating in the U.K.
So, it was the offence that came undone on the Left Flank of the land, not the D.
If, during his three starts as the Winnipeg FC fill-in QB, Chris Streveler had performed as poorly as his head coach, his offensive coordinator and the starting quarterback on Saturday night, we’d be writing and talking about rookie mistakes and inexperience this morning. So what’s the excuse for Mike O’Shea, Paul LaPolice and Matt Nichols?
Richie Hall
Kirk Penton of The Athletic delivered some interesting insider comments (from unidentified CFL coachs/general managers) about the Bombers prior to the weekend farce at B.C. Place Stadium.
Example 1: “Bombers-Lions last week was a typical CFL game. It gets out of hand early and usually stays that way. The real answer about each team will be defined by how their game goes this week. A major difference is the best non-head coach in the game right now is (Paul LaPolice). He’s running laps around these other guys.”
Example 2: “I think Hall is a symptom of the Bombers defensive problems, not the cause of it. The cause is deeper than him and his defence. From what I know, coach Hall has two Grey Cup victories as a defensive coordinator. Obviously, he can coach, or O’Shea would have made a change, because there were options open to him. Supposedly coach O’Shea has great input this year, so why hasn’t anything changed with all the talent they have? Their best corner (Chris Randle) gave up a 101-yard touchdown in Game 1 in man-to-man coverage, and people blame the DC. Maybe he is the easy scapegoat for enabled, undisciplined defensive players.”
If it’s true that the CFL season doesn’t really kick in until the Labor Day weekend, this is what the Bombers are looking at down the stretch: vs. Saskatchewan (three games), vs. Edmonton Eskimos (two), vs. Calgary Stampeders, Montreal Alouettes and Ottawa RedBlacks (one each). Winnipeg FC might want to go into squirrel mode immediately, which is to say they’d be wise to start collecting Ws before the weather turns.
Bo Levi Mitchell
Here are this week’s CFL power rankings…
1. Calgary (4-0): As Bo Levi Mitchell goes, so go the Stampeders, but even if Bo’s a no-show this week they ought to be able to handle the Alouettes.
2. Hamilton (2-2): Didn’t play last week and gained ground.
3. Edmonton (3-2): Not impressed with their win over the Argonauts, but Mike Reilly is still a beast.
4. Ottawa (2-2): Only offence worse than Winnipeg’s last week.
5. Saskatchewan (2-2): A week off gave Chris Jones extra time to mess things up with his QBs.
6. Winnipeg (2-3): Still better than the Leos after a home-and-home split, but a lot dumber, especially the coaching.
7. B.C. (2-2): The win over the Bombers was a gift.
8. Toronto (1-3): Played Eskimos tough.
9. Montreal (1-3): Still awful in either official language.
Neymar
The World Cup of diving and fake injuries is over, so can I have my pub back? It’s not like I spend a lot of time in my local watering hole (just two sessions per week), but I do believe I’ve had my fill of the footy fans who invaded Bart’s Pub and vented, quite loudly and passionately, every time Neymar performed his signature dive-writhe-and-roll. If it’s all the same to them, I shall return to regularly scheduled reading, writing and listening to enjoyable music while nursing a pint of lager.
One final thing about footy fans: Why is it that they must have the volume up while watching a soccer game in a pub? I mean, we watch hockey, football, baseball, basketball, tennis, horse racing, etc. without sound, so why not soccer? Are the British broadcasters who talk about “cheeky goals” that much better than the boys who occupy our towers of babble on? Come to think of it, they are.
Serena Williams
Very strange headline in the National Post: “If Serena wins Wimbledon less than a year after giving birth, she really won’t have anything left to prove.” Excuse me, but the notion that Serena Williams has anything to prove on a tennis court is absurd.
In reaching the Wimbledon ladies’ singles final, where she lost to Angelique Kerber, 6-3, 6-3, Williams climbed 153 spots in the rankings and is now world No. 28 among women. As if. There are 27 female tennis players better than Serena Williams like there’s 27 rock bands better than The Beatles.
I don’t know about you, but the fifth-set marathons in the men’s draw at Wimbledon left me cold. I mean, Kevin Anderson and John Isner whacking big, booming first serves at one another for six hours is about as entertaining as watching snow melt. I tuned out long before Anderson prevailed, 26-24. Same with Novak Djokovic and Rafa Nadal in their semifinal match, which ended 10-8 in the fifth. It should have been compelling sports theatre, with two of the top three players in the world having at it, but it became tedious. Play a tiebreaker already.
John Daly
I note that John Daly has withdrawn from the Open Championship at Carnoustie, Scotland. Who knew John Daly was still a thing in golf?
I’m old enough to remember when there were two Major League Baseball all-star games each summer, and I watched them faithfully. Now, not so much. I think it was the introduction of the dog-and-pony show (read: home run derby) that turned me off.
And, finally, just wondering: What treats does Winnipeg Jets general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff have in store for the rabble this week? Do I hear a Josh Morrissey signing? Jacob Trouba?
I cannot survive in a 140- or 280-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…
Loved the headline in the Winnipeg Free Press after the Winnipeg Blue Bombers coughed up a 17-point hairball and lost 20-17 to the Lions at B.C. Place Stadium on Saturday night: GOOD GRIEF!
Good grief, indeed, Charlie Brown.
Winnipeg FC had no business losing to the inferior Leos, but that’s what happens when you play and coach stupid football. Seriously. Three roughing-the-passer violations? Twice ignoring a gimme three points? That’s dumb, dumber and dumbest.
Asked post-game why he twice gambled on third-and-short rather than kick field goals, head coach Mike O’Shea said: “To me it’s a no-brainer.”
Exactly. No brains.
Connor Hellebuyck
I don’t know about you, but I look at the signing of Connor Hellebuyck as an appetizer, something for the rabble to nibble and nosh on until the main course arrives, hopefully later this week.
I mean, yes, the freshly minted agreement between the Winnipeg Jets and their all-star goaltender takes care of the blue paint for the next six National Hockey League crusades. It’s a favorable development. But the real intrigue in Jets Nation is on the blueline, in the form of Jacob Trouba and, to a much lesser degree, his running mate, Josh Morrissey.
Trouba is the X factor.
Given his history that includes a training-camp/early-season work stoppage and a trade request, skeptics abound when it comes to the 24-year-old defender. They won’t be convinced that Trouba is, as they say at the Vegas poker tables, “all-in” with Winnipeg and les Jets until they know his signature is at the bottom of a contract. Long term. As in six or eight years.
Trouba has an audience with an arbitrator scheduled for the morning of July 20, a bargained-for option exercised by 43 other NHL players this summer. If dealings with les Jets stall this week and he meets with the arbitrator, all bets are off on his shelf life in Good Ol’ Hometown.
My guess? Trouba stays. Six years. Then he leaves.
Jacob Trouba
Apparently, Paul Wiecek has insider intel on Trouba. If only he’d be kind enough to let the rest of us in on the scoop. But no. When Wiecek writes that “Trouba is a problem. Again.” it’s his little secret. He isn’t prepared to share the gory details. We have to guess what it is that makes No. 8 “a problem. Again.”
Well, here’s the actual problem: Wiecek harbors a stalker-like obsession with Trouba, one that began in September 2016 and has become an obscenity.
Twice in the past 10 days, Wiecek has launched gratuitous, factless attacks on the Jets young defender. First the Winnipeg Free Press sports columnist informed us that “Trouba, for one, has a long track record of doing what’s right for Trouba, even when it’s been what’s wrong for Trouba.” (It’s uncertain exactly how Wiecek could possibly know what’s right and what’s wrong for Trouba, but, hey, perhaps the guy’s got a life-coaching gig on the side.) He then doubled down with his cryptic “Trouba is a problem. Again.” Ah, but Wiecek provided not a sliver of evidence to prop of his allegation.
Why is Trouba so far up Wiecek’s nose?
Is it the arbitration thing? Naw. Can’t be. Forty-three other NHL players filed for arbitration, including four of Trouba’s teammates. I hardly think that qualifies any of them as a problem child.
Dale Hawerchuk
Maybe it was the trade demand two years ago. Naw. Can’t be that either. Plenty of people have wanted out of Winnipeg, the great Dale Hawerchuk among them. No one thought of Ducky as a problem child.
So what is it? Simple. During the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, Trouba told Wiecek a mistruth. Said he was happier than a pig in slop to be playing in River City, and he hoped to be on board for the long haul. Shortly thereafter, Trouba was a no-show at training camp and he was AWOL through the first month of the season. So he had lied (just like everyone else in hockey, including writers). Wiecek took it as a personal affront and he’s waged a one-man, two-year vendetta to discredit Trouba, branding him a liar, petulant, a malcontent, impetuous, the biggest loser, reckless, greedy, phony and, most recently, selfish and a problem.
It’s irresponsible, tawdry journalism, and someone high on the food chain at the Freep ought to step up and nip it in the bud.
John Ferguson
I had issues with fibbers during my time in sports. Jets GM John Ferguson once told myself and Friar Nicolson a flat-out lie about Bobby Hull. It was a whopper. So I called him out, in print. Fergy was steamed. I was, too. We didn’t talk to each other for two weeks. Not at the rink. Not on the team bus. Not at the airport. Not on the phone. He would just glare down the gun barrel that passed for his nose, and I would ignore him. I don’t recall how we arrived at détente, but Fergy and I eventually got along just fine. Whatever fibs he told me thereafter were little and white. The worst was Sam Katz, owner of the Winnipeg Goldeyes. Sammy was a carnival barker. He would tell the boys at the Free Press that a baseball was round, then he would tell us at the Winnipeg Sun that a baseball was a hockey puck. I couldn’t believe anything that fell from that man’s mouth, so I simply stopped interviewing him and took to calling him The Unmentionable Man in print. Sammy and I were cordial when our paths crossed, but we never warmed to each other. No big deal. I didn’t need him to do my job and he didn’t need me to fill seats in the Ballyard At The Forks.
Speaking of Sammy, his Goldeyes celebrate their 25th anniversary this season. There were ample doubters at the beginning for the independent ball club—and I still wish he’d named his rounders side something other than Goldeyes—but Sammy pulled it off and the Fish have been a rousing success at the box office and between the foul lines with four titles. So good on him and them.
More kudos to Sportsnet for putting Caroline Cameron on the Tim & Sid show while Tim and Sid are goofing around off-set. She was co-hosting with Donnovan Bennett last week and, among many issues, they discussed the eventual return of Roberta Osuna, the Tranna Blue Jays relief pitcher who faces a court hearing on a domestic violence charge and is under suspension by Major League Baseball.
Bennett: “Are you okay with him being back with the Jays before the actual court case is resolved?”
Caroline Cameron
Cameron: “No I’m not, and for a few reasons. If the Blue Jays see this as a baseball decision, it’s not simply that. A situation like this never is. And in sports at lot of time we see that it mirrors what’s happening in society, and that includes the things that are going wrong with society. And the nice thing about sports—and excuse my use of the cliché—is sports you can play by your own rules, right? You can make your own decisions and figure out how you want to deal with these societal, moral issues. If the Jays bring Osuna back because they think they need his arm in a season that’s already lost, what message are you sending to the fans? And even on the flip side, innocent until proven guilty, do you want to have Roberto Osuna out there, out on the field, out in the bullpen when this is not resolved? What kind of reaction do you think he’s going to get? I just think you have an opportunity—and I’m not saying the Blue Jays have to set a precedent—but someone at some point has to set a precedent or else change will not happen and this will continue to be just a ‘baseball move’ as opposed to what it actually is.”
Imagine that. A woman, rather than a man, giving voice to a topic so significant to so many women. On a Canadian TV sports gab show. That’s as rare as a Serena Williams loss on Centre Court Wimbledon. Most of the women on Canadian jock talk TV get to read a teleprompter, nothing more. This is refreshing.
Mark Masters
Did one man, Mark Masters of TSN, really ask another man, ESPN tennis analyst Darren Cahill, to put the past year of Serena Williams’ life into “context?” Yes. Yes he did. Which means Masters wins the award for the dumbest question ever, ever, ever. I mean, how in the name of Mama Liv Walton can a man possibly give context to carrying a fetus for nine months, giving birth to a six-pound, 13-ounce girl, breast feeding, then returning to play in the ladies’ championship match of a tennis Grand Slam tournament? Only three people—Margaret Court, Evonne Goolagong Cawley, Kim Clijsters—can answer that question, and none of them are men. What will Masters do next? Ask John McEnroe what it’s like to be a lesbian on the tennis tour? To his credit, Cahill politely answered the questionable question about Williams’ pregnant pause, saying, “You can’t put that into context” before mentioning that Clijsters and other women have put their careers on hold to start a family and returned to win Slam titles.
Serena Williams and Angelique Kerber
I suppose with a soon-to-be 37-year-old mom navigating her way to the Wimbledon final in just her fourth post-childbirth tournament, pundits will be slagging the quality and depth of women’s tennis. But in besting Williams on Saturday, 6-3, 6-3, Angelique Kerber became the seventh different champion in the past seven majors. So, I’d say the distaff side of the sport is just fine, thank you. The real issue is on the men’s side, where all four semifinalist at the All England Club are 30somethings. Generation Next simply cannot break through.
The Duchesses of Something
I don’t know about you, but I can’t tell my British duchesses without a program. Is Kate the Duchess of Cambridge and Meghan the Duchess of Sussex, or is Kate the Duchess of Sussex and Meghan the Duchess of Cambridge. If they’re going to sit in the Royal Box at Wimbledon, I think they should be obligated to wear duchess name tags.
Joey Votto of the Cincinnati Reds swatted his 266th home run last Monday to climb above Matt Stairs on the all-time dinger list for Canadians in Major League Baseball. He now stands second to Larry Walker. Well, to borrow Votto’s words when he piddled on our Corn Flakes earlier this year, “I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about that,” and I won’t give “a rat’s ass” if he goes on to surpass Walker’s record of 383 HRs.
Dave Poulin
I heard Dave Poulin gabbing about the Connor Hellebuyck contract on TSN the other day, and I had to tune out because the guy no longer has street cred. Not after he was one of seven voters to leave Connor McDavid off their all-star ballot. I mean, McDavid was the scoring champion, for cripes sake. And Poulin is telling us he wasn’t among the top three centre-ice men last season? What would he have us believe next? That Bobby Orr was a slowpoke? Sidney Crosby needs to work on his hand-eye coordination? Bobby Hull never wore a rug? It’s one thing for shinny scribes/broadcasters to dumb down, but there’s no excuse for a former NHL player to be such a d’oh boy. If you’re wondering, the other geniuses who made their ballots a no-McDavid zone were Dave Shoalts (Globe and Mail), Mike Colageo (New Bedford Standard Times), Stephen Conroy (Boston Herald), Emily Kaplan (ESPN), Gann Matsuda (Frozen Royalty), and Arthur Staple (The Athletic New York). Off with their press passes!
There’s a lot of good reading in The Athletic, but I’m deeply disappointed in the Winnipeg content. A chap named Murat Ates is the man about the Jets, and he’s advertised as someone who delivers a blend of “modern hockey analysis with engaging storytelling.” Sorry, but what I’ve seen to date is nothing but number crunching. All the “engaging storytelling” must be hidden in the math and, since I’m not a numbers geek, his copy is a total, also lengthy, yawn. Reading all those numbers makes my eyes glaze over. I don’t say that to be mean, but math and I have been at odds since Grade 1 at St. Alphonsus, and I believe sports is more about people than salary dumps and contract term. Meanwhile, if The Athletic Winnipeg has someone on the Bombers beat, he or she must be in a witness protection program. I realize the online newspaper is still looking for good people, but giving the Canadian Football League short shrift when Winnipeg FC is the only game in town until September is bad form. The Athletic Winnipeg needs a jolt of creative juice. Pronto.
And, finally, I note that 680 CJOB in Good Ol’ Hometown is getting back into the jock talk business. All sports director Kelly Moore needs now is a host, and I find myself wondering if he’d be brave enough to do something radical. You know, like hire a female as the lead voice on the gabfest. Actually, I wonder if any women will bother to apply. As mentioned earlier, jock talk in Canada is very much an old boys club.
Bacon, eggs, toast, but no bangers or beans, and some leftover thoughts for a Monday morning breakfast…
I have Irish blood pumping through my veins—or so I’ve been told—and I know the Irish and British have had their squabbles through the centuries, but I’ve got no quarrel with them, so I’m root, root, rooting for England in the World Cup? Go Harry Kane and all you Three Lions!
In the good news-bad news department, I present the Winnipeg Blue Bombers.
First the glad tidings: The local lads delivered a proper paddywhacking to the B.C. Lions on Saturday evening, a result that leveled their performance sheet at 2-2 and puts them on equal footing with the Edmonton Eskimos and Saskatchewan Roughriders in the mosh pit that is the West Division of the Canadian Football League.
Now for the bad tidings: The head count at Football Follies Field was 26,567. Measured against any franchise in the eastern precinct of the land, that’s a boffo bit of business. Measured against their own bottom line, not so much.
Winnipeg FC has attracted 52,025 to its fancy digs in Fort Garry for the first two home skirmishes of this Grey Cup crusade, down 3,225 from Games 1-2 a year ago. That’s a minimum of $90,000 in lost ticket revenue (based on a $28 ticket), and only the club bean counters and Wade Miller know how much of a hit they’ve taken in concessions and merchandise. Do the math and the Bombers are staring at a dip of $405,000 (minimum) in ticket sales for their nine home dates unless there’s a sharp reversal. Ouch.
It could always be worse, of course. In the Republic of Tranna, home of the Grey Cup champion Argonauts, only 12,196 souls were coerced into spending Saturday afternoon at BMO Field, where quarterback James Franklin put up a surprising W in his first start in Ricky Ray’s stead. Total for two home dates in TROT: 28,656. Seriously, how long can the Argos stay in business? And should those of us in the colonies care?
It’s 11 a.m., does Senators Nation know where Erik Karlsson is?
Aside to any National Hockey League outfit that might be contemplating a contract offer for wife-beating, disgraced defenceman Slava Voynov: Just say “no” to Slava.
Why is it that when any of our baseball, football or hockey teams prevent a foe from scoring, we call it “a shutout” but soccer people call it “a clean sheet?”
Neymar
Does anybody miss the Neymar dive-writhe-and-roll at the World Cup? I do. The Brazilian’s antics were comedy gold, even if his thespian skills are suspect. Jim Calder, acting coach from the University of New York, provided the New York Times with this critique: “Neymar does what all beginning actors do. They oversell the event. All humans are acting. You learn when you’re a baby. If I cry, my mother will come over. If I cry, this guy will get a red card. It’s the same thing.”
I note that Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson are talking about a mano-a-mano, winner-take-all $10-million challenge in Las Vegas. Apparently, both golf legends have agreed to a special concession that allows ol’ Lefty to hire English goalkeeper Jordan Pickford as his caddy. Pickford won’t be carrying Mickelson’s clubs, though. His sole duty will be to block any of Phil’s putts that roll past the hole and are in danger of skidding off the green.
What’s the over/under on how many restricted free agents Kevin Cheveldayoff will sign this week? Three? I have a hunch the Winnipeg Jets general manager will deal with most of his pertinent paper work swiftly, and that includes Jacob Trouba.
Milos Raonic
I’ve read and heard a lot about how Denis Shapovalov had usurped Milos Raonic as Canada’s top tennis player, an assessment based solely on one match between the two and the world tennis rankings. But look who’s still playing at Wimbledon. That’s right, Raonic, not Shapo, who can’t advance through the second round of any tournament that matters. I never bought into the Shapo over-hype. He’s a terrific, young talent (although far too geeked-up on court for my tastes). He might be the best tennis talent every produced in our country. But, for now, the kid’s still on training wheels. The gushing last year after wins over Rafa Nadal and Juan Martin del Potro should have been tempered.
TSN just won’t let the Johnny Manziel narrative go. In the wake of the CFL’s four Week 4 matches, there was plenty of fodder for interesting chatter, but not at TSN. Rather than talk about quarterbacks who actually played in the games, it always has been and, apparently, always will be about the Hamilton Tiger-Cats backup QB for TSN’s gab guys. Thus, Frick and Frack (more commonly know as Jay and Dan) invited football insider Dave Naylor to their show for something they call the Nayl Gun. Here’s how it went:
Dan: “At this pace, I don’t see Johnny Manziel hitting the field at all for the Ticats.”
Naylor: “I’ll tell ya, if you’d taken a hundred people who’ve studied the Ticats quarterback situation and said, ‘Do you think they’ll get to the bye week without Johnny Manziel taking a snap?’ a hundred people would have told you ‘No way’ and I’d have been to the front of the line. Look Jeremiah Masoli played really well, he’s had three 300-yard games, four 300-yard games, but the one issue that I think has been there, there’s been two games—Week 1 in Calgary and the other night in Saskatchewan—you know, he had the ball in his hands late in the game, down by less than a touchdown, and he couldn’t produce a win. Until he does that, I think there’s still gonna be a lot of scrutiny over his play. Will Johnny Manziel go through the year without getting on the field? No way. He’s gonna play at some point, and I think we’re getting close to that time. Is it possible he doesn’t start all season? I do think that’s possible because Jeremiah Masoli has earned the right to stay as the Ticats starter.”
Jay: “What do you think is more likely…gonna throw you a quick one here…more likely that he plays for the Tabbies this season or gets traded at some point this season?”
Jeremiah Masoli
Naylor: “I think it’s far more likely he plays. Look, if we get to the end of this year and Jeremiah Masoli puts up the kind of numbers he put through the first four weeks, I think we will see a trade in the off-season. And I think there’s an understanding, ‘Hey, Johnny Manziel committed for two years in the Canadian Football League,’ but after a year of backing up, the Ticats would owe it to him to either trade Jeremiah Masoli or to trade him to somewhere where he can get on the field. So, I think a trade this season, highly unlikely, a trade within the division ever is unlikely, but can I see him traded out west or Masoli traded out west after the year? Ya I could.”
Yo! Boys! It ain’t news until Johnny Rotten actually takes a snap. Until then, talk about the guys who are, as Matt Dunigan would say, gettin’ ‘er done.
And, finally, this week’s CFL power rankings:
1. Calgary (3-0): Only unbeaten outfit will be tested by the RedBlacks in Ottawa.
2. Winnipeg (2-2): Highest scoring outfit in the league, and defence stepped up vs. B.C.
3. Ottawa (2-1): We’ll know if RedBlacks are the real deal this week.
4. Hamilton (2-2): Seriously? A loss to the Roughriders?
5. Edmonton (2-2): Seriously? A loss to the Argonauts?
6. Saskatchewan: (2-2): I don’t care if they beat the Ticats; Chris Jones has created a mess.
7. B.C. (1-2): Quarterback issues aren’t going away.
8. Toronto (1-2): The win over the Eskimos is an anomoly.
9. Montreal (1-3): Really bad in either official language.
I cannot survive in a 140- or 280-character world, so here are more tweets that grew up to be too big for Twitter…
Welcome to Winnipeg, armpit of the National Hockey League.
Well, okay, that’s not exactly how shinny scribes Scott Burnside and Sean McIndoe worded it when Paul Stastny chose Glitter Gulch over Good Ol’ Hometown, but that was the sentiment of each pundit’s analysis—River City sucks. Still. Otherwise Stastny wouldn’t have vamoosed from the Winnipeg Jets to the Vegas Golden Knights scant seconds after the NHL opened its grab bag of free agents a week ago this very morning.
“While he did choose to waive his no-trade clause to go to the Jets at the trade deadline, Stastny’s departure as an unrestricted free agent merely reinforces the idea that, as good as the Jets are—and they are really good—they still aren’t at the stage where they are a destination for free agents. Not yet at least.”
“They were a darn good team before Stastny arrived, and they’ll be a good one with him gone. But seeing a top UFA walk away will reinforce the old idea that the Jets are at a disadvantage when it comes to attracting top players.”
Paul Stastny
Both scribes stopped short of stereotypical jabs about the dark, the cold, the crappy WiFi, the pothole-to-person ratio, and summer skeeters the size of a Zamboni in River City, but the gist of their analysis is unmistakable, and this Winnipeg-as-NHL armpit narrative is oh so dog-eared. Also wearisome.
I mean, I’d buy it if Stastny had gone on record saying he defected to Sin City because “Winnipeg is a garbage dump with a lousy zoo and an ugly museum.” But no.
“In the end,” the 32-year-old centre-ice man told the Las Vegas Sun, “sometimes you just have to go with your gut feeling. Sometimes it’s just one of those things that is the best fit, hockey-wise, family-wise and everything in between.”
Doesn’t sound damning to me.
Yet those of the Burnside/McIndoe ilk trot out the woe-is-Winnipeg refrain every time someone gives Good Ol’ Hometown the cold shoulder, mainly because it’s a convenient and lazy plot line that plays to the ill-informed among the rabble and, at the same time, ignores history. Yes, history.
Benny Hatskin and Bobby Hull on a happy day in Winnipeg.
Go ahead, kids. Name the most significant free-agent signing—ever—in professional hockey. That’s right, the name is Hull, Bobby Hull. And where did that game-shaping event take place? At the intersection of Portage Avenue and Main Street, where a flock of thousands gathered to witness Robert Marvin Hull, fresh off his fifth 50-goal season for the Chicago Blackhawks, scrawl his John Hancock on a Winnipeg Jets contract on June 27, 1972. This was the NHL’s glam guy, choosing Pegtown over Chitown. The sport and salaries were forever altered by one free-agent signing.
More to the point, the very foundation of the Winnipeg Jets was built exclusively on free agents, guys who willingly came to River City to form the World Hockey Association’s flagship franchise.
Ab Mcdonald, Joe Daley, Sudsy Sutherland, Ernie Wakely and others from the ‘hood came home from hither and yon to wear Jets linen. Anders Hedberg chose Winnipeg over Toronto. Kent Nilsson chose Winnipeg over Toronto and Atlanta. Willy Lindstrom could have played anywhere in North America. He chose Winnipeg. Ulf Nilsson and Lars-Erik Sjoberg chose Winnipeg. Peter Sullivan chose Winnipeg. Etcetera, etcetera and blah, blah, blah.
So enough of the tired, old refrain about Pegtown being a shinny leper colony.
Big Buff
Are there guys who’d rather not play in River City? Absolutely. We’re told Good Ol’ Hometown makes most no-trade lists. Just ask Ilya Bryzgalov. But, hey, John Tavares rejected 30 cities just last week, so it’s not like Winnipeg is unique. Look, players talk about three main things when wrestling with free-agency options: 1) Money; 2) the opportunity to win; 3) location. Well, Ben Hatskin wasn’t paying Hull $2.7 million in Monopoly or Canadian Tire money in 1972, and David Thomson and Mark Chipman aren’t paying Dustin Byfuglien $7.6 million per annum in food stamps with the present-day Jets. Competitively, les Jets were a final four team in this past spring’s Stanley Cup runoff. As for location, the ice fishing is boffo, thank you. Just ask Big Buff. So what’s not to like?
Just wondering: Are we still calling for Richie Hall’s head to roll? Probably not. Hall is the much-maligned man tasked with mapping out strategy for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers defensive dozen, whose deficiencies were exposed like a porn star’s privates in two of their first three skirmishes this Canadian Football League crusade. Then along came the B.C. Lions with a benign offence designed to heal whatever ails a wonky defence. So I assume Winnipeg FC’s 41-19 victory over the Leos on Saturday evening at Football Follies Field in Fort Garry means it’s safe for Hall to go grocery shopping and pump his own gas this week. Just to be safe, though, he should have Adam Bighill tag along.
Joey Chestnut
Here’s something to chew on: Joey Chestnut celebrated the dog days of summer by successfully defending his Nathan’s hot dog eating title, scarfing down 74 tube steaks in 10 minutes. It’s believed that no one has ever gone through that many dogs. Except the Edmonton Oilers, of course.
Richard Deitsch of The Athletic asked this question of jock journos on Twitter: “Who is the most media-friendly athlete you have dealt with?” For me, that’s a no-brainer: The late Vic Peters, with about 100 other curlers tied in second. Vic, in the grand scheme of jockdom, was a smooth-edged gem on a beach full of sharp stones. A most obliging, engaging man, he had time for us all. Always.
Sid Seixeiro and Caroline Cameron
Loved the new look and sound on the Tim & Sid show last week. Unfortunately, it’s only temporary.Caroline Cameron has been sitting in for the vacationing Sid Seixeiro on the Sportsnet gabfest, and they’re as different as a pit bull and a kitten. I mean, Sid’s shtick is to talk tough. He dresses the part, too. He looks like he belongs on the set of a gangster movie, skulking around with Luca Brasi and nervously glancing over his shoulder to see if Eliot Ness is on his tail. He wears his sneer on his sleeve. He’s prone to prop humor and theatrical orations that would earn him a failing grade in a high school drama class, and his rants are usually about as sincere as a Neymar dive-writhe-and-roll. Caroline, on the other hand…we’re talking Mary Richards from the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Polished, professional, knowledgeable, smiling, impeccable, pretty, a girl making her way and succeeding in a guy’s world. A lot of viewers (read: guys) pooh-pooh women on sports talk TV as empty heads. Well, Caroline Cameron is compelling evidence that there should be more female voices in the jock gab game. She’s very good.
Yes, now that you mention it, the goings-on in London are very strange, most notably on the women’s side of Wimbledon. They’re spitting out seeds like it’s a baseball dugout. Gone are nine of the top 10 seeds and 25 of 32 overall. Wimbledon has never seen such carnage. Serena Williams will have to break both legs and carry her baby on her back to lose this tournament. Even at that, she could probably win the thing and claim her 24th tennis Grand Slam title on crutches.
Ronaldo and Messi
A lot of British accents on our flatscreens during the World Cup, one of them belonging to Danny Dichio, former forward in the English Premier League. Sportsnet trotted him out as an analyst during the group stage of the event, and he had this exchange with Jesse Fuchs…
Fuchs: “People love to compare Lionel Messi and Christiano Ronaldo…Messi missed a penalty earlier in the tournament, now so has Ronaldo. And it ends up costly, as Portugal are held to a draw. Is it fair at all to criticize CR7?”
Dichio: “No. Not at all fair.”
So, let’s see if I’ve got this straight: The president of the United States, the Pope, Queen Liz, the Beatles, any journalist you care to name, and Jesus Christ himself are fair game for a roasting when they cough up a hairball, but Ronaldo, a guy who’s supposedly god’s gift to soccer, is untouchable when he gags on a shot from the 12-yard spot? As if. Dichio gets a red card for being a nincompoop.
Kaitlyn Lawes and Jennifer Jones
And, finally, based on his scribblings over the years, it’s apparent that Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press does not harbour a healthy fondness for professional athletes. He often writes of them with resentment, contempt and scorn, painting them with one broad brush stroke—they’re all money-grubbing elitists who look down on the rabble from their perch of privilege.
“A tiny cadre of coddled millionaires,” is how he described the Jets players in one of his tamer remarks.
Therefore it wasn’t out of character that he assailed play-for-pay jocks—defrocked Jets goaltender Steve Mason in particular—while making the case that the amateur athletes in our great nation are underfunded by the feds and underappreciated by the unwashed masses.
“Such is the deification that we accord professional hockey players in this country that we think nothing of paying the washouts millions not to play, while at the same time throwing chump change at our amateur athletes and then scolding them if they dare return home without Olympic medals every four years when we remember again that they exist,” he writes.
He calls financial support for our top amateurs “laughable” and “a complete joke.”
Mike O’Shea
Actually, the joke is a sports columnist prattling on about underfunding and underappreciation for amateurs when 95 per cent of his yearly material is devoted to his personal hot-button issues like Jacob Trouba’s attitude, Mike O’Shea’s “goofy” short pants, and Mark Chipman’s past life as a used-car salesman. His own newspaper treats amateur athletes like they have the cooties. Unless, of course, they’re holding a curling rock in one hand and a broom or sliding apparatus in the other. Kaitlyn Lawes, Jennifer Jones, Mike McEwen, Reid Carruthers and other pebble people get the jock star treatment from the Freep. The rest? Basically bupkus.
Here’s the professional/amateur story scorecard from the past seven editions of the Drab Slab: 140-13. Granted, seven days of sports sections is a small sample size, but just 8.5 per cent of all articles was devoted to amateurs.
In that same seven-paper time frame, Wiecek wrote three columns: his apples-to-oranges argument about amateur funding vs. greedy professional jocks getting too much coin for not enough work; the Blue Bombers lousy defence and firing lousy coaches O’Shea and Hall; and, once again, greedy pro athletes.
What’s that you say? Some sports scribes must be overpaid, underworked and coddled, too? Who knew?
Quick takeaways from Day 1 of the National Hockey League’s annual grab bag of free agents…
It’s true what the pundits are saying: Because the bean counters couldn’t rob Peter to pay Paul Stastny, the Winnipeg Jets aren’t as good today as they were on May 20, the night the Vegas Golden Knights ushered them out of the Stanley Cup spring runoff.
Fortunately for the rabble, they don’t have to be as good today.
Paul Stastny
General manager Kevin Cheveldayoff has until October to ferret out a reasonable facsimile of Stastny, an efficient and productive, albeit aging centre-ice man who has taken the money and skedaddled to Glitter Gulch, leaving les Jets with a significant vacancy in the middle of the rink.
Stastny, of course, was les Jets main person of interest when the National Hockey League opened its grab bag of free agents on Sunday, but keeping him in the fold was always an iffy proposition.
This was always going to be about salary cap, and it wasn’t enough that Cheveldayoff shipped hard-luck, backup goaltender Steve Mason and his burdensome $4.1-million sticker price to the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday to clear space. With a list of restricted free agents as long as a Winnipeg winter, the bean counters determined there simply wasn’t enough spare change in the piggy bank, otherwise Stastny would be returning to River City next autumn to help les Jets finish what was left undone in May.
It doesn’t really matter if the Golden Knights, at $6.5 million for each of the next three crusades, overpaid to lure the 32-year-old Stastny away from Portage and Main to the Vegas Strip. At issue is the hole he leaves down the middle.
Jack Roslovic
Jack Roslovic would be my choice to slide between Twig Ehlers and Patrik (Puck Finn) Laine on the No. 2 forward unit, at least when the local lads gather for training exercises in September. He’s no Stastny—not yet—but Roslovic plays with tempo and imagination. I think he’d be a suitable fit in what could become les Jets version of the Kid Line.
If Roslovic doesn’t work out, Bryan Little come on down! Again, Little is no Stastny, but, hey, it’s not like he’s Milan Lucic bad.
The point is, Cheveldayoff and the bean counters have all summer and September to figure this out. If neither Roslovic or Little is the answer, they can do something at the trade deadline, same as last season when they brought Stastny on board.
Rink Rat Scheifele
Brian Burke was part of the all-gab gang on Sportsnet’s coverage of free agent day, and he mentioned something about Cheveldayoff doing “too good a job,” hence the GM’s challenge of fitting financial square pegs into round holes. There’s certainly some truth to that. But here’s the real sticking point for Chevy: Rink Rat Scheifele’s team-friendly, steal-of-a-deal contract. Les Jets could have matched the Vegas offer of $6.5 million annually to keep Stastny on board, but they can’t have their aging, No. 2 centre ahead of their young, productive No. 1 centre at the pay window. Scheifele’s annual take is $6.125 million. So that’s the ceiling for Jets forwards. They could not have offered Stastny a penny more.
That ceiling will, of course,rise when Chevy re-ups his captain and best player, Blake Wheeler, about to enter the final year of a contract that makes him the third-highest wage earner among forwards at $5.6 million. Only Scheifele and Twig Ehlers ($6M) earn more, which, given Wheeler’s performance and importance to the team, is ridiculous. He should be rewarded as the highest-paid player. The real mystery is what they do when it’s time for Chevy and the bean counters to re-up Puck Finn, who comes out of his entry level deal next summer.
The oddsmakers at BetOnline like what they see in les Jets, even sans Stastny. After the Tranna Maple Leafs (+600) and Nashville Predators (+900), the local lads and Tampa Bay Lightning were listed on Sunday at +1000 to win the Stanley Cup. It’s a bet I wouldn’t make today, not with the iffiness of the No. 2 centre slot, but I might want to make it next spring. (Surprisingly, the Detroit Red Wings were the longest shot on the BetOnline board, at +10000. Are they really that bad?)
The gab gang on Sportsnet suggested John Tavares left money on the table when he chose to abandon the New York Islanders and accept $77 million to join the Maple Leafs. In other words, it was a hometown discount because his childhood dream was to play in the Republic of Tranna. Well, excuse me, but in whose universe is $77 million a discount?
John Tavares
The Leafs get Tavares and his 84 points, the Islanders get Leo Komarov and his 19 points. Do the math. And will the last person to leave Long Island please turn out the lights?
It’s fine that the rabble in the Republic of Tranna are going ga-ga over Tavares, but here’s something they should keep in mind: He doesn’t make Jake Gardiner or Ron Hainsey better defencemen.
So, add Tavares to the Leafs roster and take Stastny from les Jets roster and who has the better team? Still the Jets, mainly because of the blueline and in goal.
Do the Los Angeles Kings have anyone under age 30 on their roster?
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