Detroit Red Wings

Let’s take a trip down memory lane on Manitoba Hockey Heritage Day

This being Manitoba Hockey Heritage Day, it puts me in a reflective mood, pondering my former life as a rink rat.

It began as a wobbly, Bambi-legged urchin on the outdoor freezes at Melrose Park Community Club, Bronx Park and East End, then moved to shinny shacks both primitive and elegant, from Transcona to Texas, from Sargent Park to Stockholm, from the Old Barn On Maroons Road to the Forum in Montreal (best hot dogs, ever) and Maple Leaf Gardens.

It was a lengthy trip, 30 years of it scribbling for the Winnipeg Tribune and Winnipeg Sun (with a couple of brief pit stops in the Republic of Tranna and Calgary), and there were highs and lows and in-betweens. This is what’s on my mind today:

The Old Barn On Maroons Road, when it had that new-rink smell.

I’m thinking about Mosie and the Winnipeg Warriors. I attended my first live pro game in the mid-1950s, a Western Hockey League skirmish featuring Billy Mosienko in the twilight years of a boffo career that included a 1952 record that stands uncontested to this day in the National Hockey League—three goals in the lickety-split time of 21 seconds. Mosie left the Chicago Blackhawks to wind it down with the Warriors in Good Ol’ Hometown, and it was a treat beyond description for a six-year-old kid to observe hockey royalty in person, in a swanky, new Winnipeg Arena.
I’m thinking about Father David Bauer and our national men’s team, based in River City during the 1960s. Our amateur Nats faced insurmountable odds in a quest to wrestle global supremacy from the U.S.S. R. “amateurs.” We all knew the Soviets were “amateurs” like cherry Kool-Aid is Russian vodka.
I’m thinking about Benny Hatskin and the original Winnipeg Jets, a Junior outfit in the Western Canada Hockey League that engaged in epic battles with the Flin Flon Bombers of coach Paddy Ginnell. Come playoff time, they’d pack the joint.
I’m thinking about Bill Addison, longtime commissioner of the Manitoba Junior Hockey League. As a journalist and rink rat, I can’t think of anyone with whom I enjoyed talking all things puck more than Bill, a true gentleman in an era when a fellow would wear a necktie and a fedora to the rink.
I’m thinking about Frank McKinnon, the first sports figure I ever interviewed for the Trib, and the Manitoba Amateur Hockey Association was the subject matter of my first byline article on June 14, 1971. It was buried on the back pages of the sports section, surrounded by Harold Loster’s horse racing copy, and it included a ghastly error—I wrote the MAHA had elected Frank president of the “1871-72” executive. What can I say? I’m an old soul. And, hey, I was only out by 100 years.
I’m thinking about Benny Hatskin signing Bobby Hull at Portage and Main in June 1972. I was a few blocks away in the Trib building when it all went down to change the shinny landscape forever. A younger generation might suggest Mark Chipman and David Thomson bringing the National Hockey League back to Good Ol’ Hometown in 2011 was a bigger story, but no. Everything flowed from Benny getting Hull’s signature on a World Hockey Association contract.
I’m thinking about the Jets introducing Anders Hedberg, Ulf Nilsson and Lars-Erik Sjoberg to the masses in May 1974. Some of us were convinced that Benny and his minions had lost the plot because Swedes, thought to be cottony soft, couldn’t possibly survive vs. the barbarians who occupied too many roster spots on WHA outfits. Well, we now know they didn’t simply survive, they excelled, and served as Pied Pipers to numerous Europeans who found their way to the Jets.
Kevin McCarthy

I’m thinking about Junior hockey. I remember my first road trip, a milk run from Winnipeg to Dauphin for MJHL playoffs, and there were other junkets on the iron lung with the Winnipeg Clubs and Monarchs. Kevin McCarthy was the most talented local kid I ever covered, and watching him and Doug Wilson anchor a powerplay was special. My old coach Gerry Brisson, who owned the Junior Jets/Clubs/Monarchs before whisking the WHL franchise to Calgary, was a different head of lettuce, and my favorite character was Muzz MacPherson, coach of the 1973 Centennial Cup champion Portage Terriers before moving behind Brisson’s bench with the Clubs.
I’m thinking about the many hours I spent in the company of scouts, guys like Bob Goring, Bruce Cheatley, Jimmy Walker, Bruce Southern and Dino Ball, who made the down time more enjoyable.
Billy Robinson

I’m thinking about my favorite hockey people, in no particular order: Don Baizley, Jeep Woolley, Tom McVie, Terry Hind, Earl Dawson, George Allard, Gordie Pennell, Bill Addison, Frank McKinnon, Barry Bonni, Spider Mazur, Julie Klymkiw, Rudy Pilous, Teddy Foreman, Mike Doran, Sudsy, Aime Allaire, Bill Juzda, Bones Raleigh, Ed Sweeney, Billy Robinson, Aggie Kukulowicz, Marc Cloutier, Gordie Tumilson, Bill Bozak, John Ferguson, Peter Piper, Brian Gunn, Adam Tarnowski, Andy Murray, Teddy Green, Laurie Boschman, the Swedes (all of them), Portage Terriers.
I’m thinking about covering both the Jets final skirmish in the WHA, vs. the Edmonton Oilers (a 7-3 win), and their NHL baptism, in Pittsburgh vs. the Penguins (a 4-2 loss). Reyn Davis and I were the beat writers of the day for both those games, and Friar Nicolson was the play-by-play guy on radio. Sadly, Reyn and Friar left us long ago.
I’m thinking about the 1975 World Junior tourney, with a group of WCHL all-stars facing off against the elite of the Soviet Union, Sweden, Finland, Czechoslovakia and the U.S. The lads from Mother Russia ruled the day, besting the our kids 4-3 in the final game, prompting this rather peculiar observation of the comrades from Bobby Hull: “I’d like to see those guys in the shower, I’ll bet they’re all muscle.”
I’m thinking about Aime Allaire, the hard-luck case of my time covering shinny in Good Ol’ Hometown. Aime did everything possible to bring Senior hockey’s Allan Cup home, but his St. Boniface Mohawks always came up a day late and a dollar short. I rode the iron lung with the Mohawks one winter, and Aime once hired me to handle stats for the Central Amateur Senior Hockey League.
I’m thinking about refereeing Winnipeg Colts tryout scrimmages for Stan Bradley and Harold Loster before they departed on their annual junket to a PeeWee tournament in Goderich, Ont.
I’m thinking about the night the Jets whupped the Soviet national side, 5-3, and Ulf Nilsson telling me in a noisy changing room that he was “proud to be a Canadian tonight.”
Mikhail Smith

I’m thinking about Mike Smith, the egghead scout/coach/GM of the Jets who shall long be remembered for two things: 1) his make-work-for-Russians project; 2) running Ducky Hawerchuk out of town. The man I called Mikhail had a degree in Russian studies and a maniacal obsession with every Vladimir or Igor who laced up a pair of skates, and he attempted to transform the local shinny side into the Central Red Jets. The plan was a colossal flop and Hawerchuk became a casualty, moving to Buffalo.
I’m thinking about Billy Bozak, a very nice man known as Magic Fingers. Boz was responsible for healing the lame and halting among the Jets, and there wasn’t an owie the longtime team trainer couldn’t cure. How his healing hands made Terry Ruskowski suitable for combat in the 1979 WHA final I’ll never know.
I’m thinking about the day of the long faces, which is to say the final farewell for the original Jets, who packed up and skedaddled lock, stock and jock strap to Arizona. There weren’t many dry eyes in the joint on April 28, 1996, and it had nothing to do with a 4-1 playoff loss to the Detroit Red Wings. It had everything to do with a funeral. The NHL was dead in Good Ol’ Hometown. It took 15 years for many among the rabble to recover from the Jets’ departure. Many still mourn the loss.
I’m thinking about piggy banks and pucks and Peter Warren of CJOB roaming the landscape on a flatbed truck, accepting donations from the young, the old and the in-between in a bid to Save the Jets from extinction. It worked once or twice, but kids emptying their piggy banks and little, old ladies signing over pension cheques was never going to be the solution.
I’m thinking about Tuxedo Night and how snazzy all the luminaries and the Zamboni driver looked in their monkey suits. The promo was the brainchild of marketing guru Marc Cloutier, who wanted Good Ol’ Hometown to look its spiffy best for the first appearance of NHL royalty, the Montreal Canadiens. Lafleur and Savard and Robinson and Gainey and Shutt et al were greeted by a gathering of 15,723 on Dec. 15, 1979, and the Jets faithful feared the worst. But a rag-tag roster filled with hand-me-downs rag-dolled the Stanley Cup champions, winning 6-2, with Willy Lindstrom scoring three goals and Peter Sullivan collecting five points.
John Ferguson

I’m thinking about Bobby Hull and how he was greeted with such pomp and pageantry at Portage and Main in June 1972, and how he left the building in such an undignified manner seven years later. The Golden Jet was scheduled to be in the lineup for Tuxedo Night, nationally televised on Hockey Night in Canada, but he was confused about faceoff time and arrived late. Coach Tommy McVie, not one for bending rules, informed Hull that he’d be sitting this one out. When advised of Hull’s punishment, GM John Ferguson pitched a fit, kicking a hole in a dressing room door. Didn’t matter. Hull, one of the team owners, was out. He never wore Jets linen again.
I’m thinking about Teemu Selanne’s astonishing 76-goal rookie season, in 1992-93, and GM John Paddock trading the Finnish Flash to the Disney Ducks three years later. D’oh!
I’m thinking about doing color commentary to Friar Nicolson’s play-by-play on Jets radio broadcasts, in the WHA and NHL, and I’m sure I was awful.
Valeri Kharlamov

I’m thinking about tossing back vodka and beer with the Russians at the Viscount Gort during the Winnipeg portion of the 1981 Canada Cup tournament. They couldn’t speak English, I couldn’t speak Russian, but we managed to conduct an impromptu and teary-eyed wake for legendary Soviet forward Valeri Kharlamov, who was buried that day back home in Mother Russia.
I’m thinking about all the good guys no longer with us, too many to list.

I’m no longer a rink rat. I haven’t attended a live hockey game since 1999, when I put Good Ol’ Hometown in my rear view mirror after 30 years in the rag trade. But it was a rush. Some might even think of it as a bit of a charmed life, and I suppose watching hockey and writing about the game for a living was every bit of that.

The only thing missing was girls/women’s hockey, and I hope Ponytail Puck receives more ink in the local dailies once it’s back on the ice. Ditto Junior, university and high school shinny. I realize readers can’t get enough of their Jets, but they weren’t the only game in town during my time at the Trib and Sun, and they still aren’t.

Happy Hockey Heritage Day.

Let’s talk about the NHL lottery and Mickey Mouse…privacy vs. public figure…Edmonton’s Rocky Mountains…B.C.’s Rock Star Doc…Theo’s Hockey Hall of Fame snub…secret ballots…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday morning smorgas-bored…and, like the National Hockey League draft lottery, a lot of this probably won’t make sense to anyone…

I once saw a monkey figure out a Rubik’s Cube, but I’ll wager that the same smart-ass monkey couldn’t figure out the NHL draft lottery process.

Ideally, the first shout-out at the annual auction of teen talent would go to the NHL’s Sad Sack outfit, the Detroit Red Wings, who gave new meaning to the term “bottom feeder” in a season never completed. But no. The ping-pong balls didn’t bounce the Winged Wheel’s way in Phase 1 of the lottery on Friday night, and a Team To Be Named Later will pluck can’t-miss-kid Alex Lafreniere from the pool of NHL wannabes. The TTBNL might actually be named Pittsburgh Penguins, who narrowly edged the Red Wings in the Eastern Conference standings by a mere 47 points, and, as Brian Burke emphasized on Sportsnet, that’s “nothing short of a disgrace.”

Burkie was in full-throated rant mode post-lottery, and he went off on the NHL in a natter with David Amber. The former NHL general manager and league exec said: “I think it makes our league look really bad. I think it makes our league look Mickey Mouse, and we’re not Mickey Mouse.” Perhaps not, but Goofy and Dopey come to mind.

So, after Phase 1 of the lottery, the Edmonton Oilers have a chance to win the No. 1 pick and land Lafreniere. Of course they do.

Let me see if I’ve got this straight: In March, one basketball player tested positive for COVID-19, putting the brakes on the entire sports world and, at the same time, launching a stampede to the toilet paper aisles that resembled the California gold rush of the mid-1800s. Yet now, with many dozens of athletes in many sports testing positive, it’s go-time for the NHL, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball? What part of “deadly virus” do they not understand?

Just between you and me, I’m more excited to see toilet paper back on the shelves than shinny on the ice, hoops on the hardwood, and rounders in the ballyard.

It’s an old debate: Public figure vs. private citizen. Does the rabble have the right to know that Auston Matthews has tested positive for COVID-19? Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna thinks so, thus he wrote the story even though Matthews and the Toronto Maple Leafs preferred to keep it on the QT. Others, like TSN and Sportsnet, ignored it. Why? Because they’re part of the Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment structure, and they don’t think an employee’s personal health information is any of our business. Seems to me it should be up to the athlete. If Matthews had chosen to disclose his “upper body injury,” fine. If not, you can’t convince me we’re better off knowing about it. Unless he’s going to be sitting next to me at the pub, it’s none of my bee’s wax.

Old friend Ed Willes of Postmedia Vancouver took a big-picture look at the Matthews situation, and he doesn’t like what he sees vis-a-vis the pro sports team-media dynamic, in terms of controlling the message. He laments “a landscape where every attempt is made to manage availability in order to create homogeneous storylines,” and adds this: “Maybe you don’t find this outrageous. But this comes at a time when both the business and the soul of traditional media is fighting to survive. We used to be an unbiased filter between the established order and the public. Sometimes we still are. But we’re losing our strong, independent voices. We’re losing our place and the public is losing something in the bargain. You can understand why teams and leagues, to say nothing of political parties and their leaders, like this arrangement. But you shouldn’t.” If he thinks sports teams are controlling the message now, he ain’t seen nothing yet. It’ll be worse on the other side of the pandemic. That genie is out of the bottle, and she’s not going back in.

Longtime Sports Illustrated scribe S.L. Price had this take on the Willes essay: “This is more important than it seems, a canary in the ever-darkening journalism coalmine.” A tad dramatic, perhaps, but likely true.

That was quite a sales pitch Alberta Premier Jason Kenney delivered in attempting to convince NHL Commish Gary Bettman that he’d be wise to set up shop in Edmonton for the Stanley Cup runoff. I mean, mountain vistas. Mountain resorts. Mountain lakes. Mountain waterfalls. Mustangs roaming wild and free. Who knew? Last time I was in downtown Edmonton, it looked a lot like downtown Winnipeg, only without the inferiority complex. But, hey, that was a couple of decades ago. Perhaps climate change means the Rocky Mountains have crept closer to the Taj West Edmonton Mahal. Does Greta Thunberg know and does she approve?

The Kenney video tweet supposedly was aimed at families of NHL players. While hubby/dad is busy playing hockey and living in a downtown hub bubble, mom and the kids can scatter hither and yon for fun and frolic. In other words: Come to Edmonton, but you probably won’t want to stay.

Vancouver, which actually features mountain vistas and oceanfront property for real rather than on propaganda material, is out as an NHL playoff hub bubble, and I’m not hearing a big squawk from anyone on the Left Flank of the land. That’s because B.C.’s top doc, Dr. Bonnie Henry, managed to get a handle on the COVID-19 count from the get-go, and no one’s in the mood for a backslide by bending quarantine rules for an NHL invasion. “We are doing very well, we have a good balance,” says the Rock Star Doc. “But under no circumstances was I going to compromise in any way the health of people here in British Columbia.” She’d have put a series on hold if players tested positive, and that wouldn’t work in Commish Gary’s world. Some suggest a hub bubble in Vancity would have meant $19 million in found money during a financially crippling pandemic, but what’s the cost of lives?

Loved Scott Campbell’s fun tweet about the Hockey Hall of Fame’s latest list of inductees, which includes former Oilers defender Kevin Lowe: “Another tough year for me not making HHOF, but nobody cares. How many Avco Cups did Lowe win, huh?!!” You tell ’em, Scotty. Your one World Hockey Association champion ring is worth all six of Lowe’s Stanley Cup rings. Or maybe not.

Quick now, name all eight female players elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame. Heck, name five of the eight. Betcha can’t do it. For answer, see below.

Now that you ask, yes, I believe Theo Fleury belongs in the HHOF based on the numbers he put up in the NHL and his success while wearing Team Canada linen. But, no, I’m not surprised that he’s been snubbed again. His on-ice bona fides are beyond challenge, but, as he wrote in his book Playing with Fire, “Hockey wants to be known as the school’s good-looking, clean-cut jock,” and that ain’t Theo Fleury. Confessions of off-ice antics that included excessive boozing, heavy drug abuse, womanizing, gambling and barroom brawling tend to be a turnoff to the purists.

Got a kick out of Mad Mike McIntyre’s take on the HHOF election process, which remains a deep, dark secret. “Because vote totals aren’t released, we have no idea how close Fleury came, who may have lobbied for his inclusion and who was against it,” he writes in the Drab Slab. “Compare that with how the NHL’s annual awards work, in which a couple hundred members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association reveal our ballots every year in the name of accountability and transparency, which is how it should be.” Every year? Spare us the back-patting, Mad Mike. The PHWA was a secret society for 49 years and didn’t play show-and-tell with its ballots until 2018, so pots shouldn’t be calling kettles black.

On the subject of pots and kettles, Damien Cox of the Toronto Star also took a run at the HHOF, asking this question: “Can anybody offer a plausible rationale for the secrecy?” Right. The guy who serves as executive director of the Lou Marsh Trophy voting committee is calling out the HHOF for a lack of transparency. That’s like Lance Armstrong trashing A-Rod for taking drugs. We’re never told exactly who and how many people are on Cox’s Lou Marsh selection panel, nor which jocks receive how many votes in Canada’s athlete-of-the-year balloting. We just know that a bunch of news snoops gather around a big boardroom table in the Republic of Tranna for snacks (presumably) and to bicker for a couple of hours. After that, they send up a puff of white smoke to alert the rabble that they’ve anointed the country’s top jock. That’s transparent like a jar of peanut butter.

Something only a news snoop from the Republic of Tranna would say, Vol. 3,692: “Everyone loves Vince Carter in Canada,” TSN gab guy Jay Onrait declared last week after the former Tranna Jurassics star retired. Well, speaking only for moi and not the entire nation, I’ve never understood the Vince Carter as God thing, and I think about him as often as I watch Friends reruns. Which is never. (Loved Phoebe Buffay, though.)

Kudos to Sportsnet, which has been featuring stories and video in support of gay athletes during Pride month, whereas TSN basically ignored the issue. “There’s a lot more out athletes who have made names of themselves in the media—people like Megan Rapinoe, Adam Rippon or Gus Kenworthy—so…the media are collectively much more aware of LGBTQ people in sports,” says Jim Buzinski, co-founder of the gay website Outsports. “But also, at some level, I think they get a little bit bored of it if there’s not a big name coming out.” So that explains it. TSN is bored. Or boring. (Seriously, have you been watching SportsCentre lately?)

According to Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, the Tranna Blue Jays have asked Trudeau The Younger for permission to play their MLB season at home. If that request is granted by the feds, perhaps they’ll also explain why the Winnipeg Goldeyes are calling Fargo, N.D., home this summer.

Funny how we develop a rooting interest for different sports outfits. My team in the English Premier League is freshly crowned champion Liverpool FC, and it has nothing to do with footy skill. I like them because of the Beatles and the team theme song, You’ll Never Walk Alone by another Liverpool band, Gerry and the Pacemakers. I couldn’t name three members of the LFC starting 11, but, hey, I know the names of all four lads in the Beatles’ starting lineup, and one who didn’t make the final cut (hello, Pete Best). You’re right, it’s probably a silly reason to root, root, root for LFC, so sue me.

And, finally, the eight female players in the Hockey Hall of Fame are Kim St-Pierre, Angela James, Cammi Granato, Hayley Wickenheiser, Geraldine Heaney, Angela Ruggiero, Danielle Goyette and Jayna Hefford. If you named them all without going to Google, I’m guessing you wear your hair in a ponytail.

About the Day of Yadda, Yadda, Yadda for the Winnipeg Jets…the rumor mill…the family feud…news snoops…Charlie’s status…and Paul Maurice’s BS

A midweek smorgas-bored…and it’s hard to tell the BS from the mule muffins…

Hey, did you notice that Jacob Trouba was wearing a Detroit Tigers cap during his blah, blah, blah session with news snoops on Monday?

You know what that means, don’t you?

Jacob Trouba: The proof he wants to play for Detroit is on his head.

That’s right, the young Jets defender definitely wants out of Dodge. Wants to join the Red Wings back home in Motown. Otherwise he’d have been wearing a Winnipeg Goldeyes lid.

But wait.

Didn’t Kyle Connor also have a Tigers cap on? Damn straight, he did. And isn’t he a Detroit kid? Damn straight, he is. Must mean he wants to follow Trouba and join the Winged Wheel.

Sounds silly, right? I mean, who’s going to draw conclusions based on what a guy plunks on his melon? But that, ladies and gentlemen/boys and girls, is how rumor, innuendo and speculation are born and grow legs.

Now, in Trouba’s case, we know he’s expressed a desire to part company with the Winnipeg Jets, and nothing he muttered during his garbage bag day chin-wag suggested he’s developed warm-and-fuzzies for Pegtown since delivering a trade request three years ago. More to the point, he likely firmed up the belief that his shelf life in River City is now shorter than a two-year-old kid’s attention span.

“Same answer as always,” Trouba said when asked, point blank, if he had any desire to re-sign with les Jets long term. “We’ll figure it out once things get going in the summer, what’s best, move forward from there. We’ve gotta sit down, have a meeting, figure out what to do, move forward. I haven’t really thought about it.”

For now, then, whether Trouba returns for another whirl with les Jets or general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff finds him a home with another National Hockey League outfit is pure conjecture.

Just like this whole house-divided business.

Serious infighting, of course, is the narrative the Drab Slab began to push on April 5 with this headline: “Something is rotten in Jetsville.” In the accompanying article, by Mike McIntyre, we were informed that the local shinny side was “rotten to the core.” He cited “multiple sources,” who could have been his barber, his dentist, his neighbor’s day-care worker, or someone who saw Trouba wearing a Detroit Tigers ball cap. But he failed to tell us what those “multiple sources” told him.

Oddly enough, a week later McIntyre was advising us that les Jets had better harmony than the Everly Brothers (Google them, kids; they were very good).

And now, after les Jets have had their Day of Yadda, Yadda, Yadda with news snoops, the Freep is back to the house-divided narrative, with a creepy pic of an evil-looking captain Blake Wheeler and this hedder and drophead (on Page One, no less): “Cracks in the ice…Jets pack up early amid whispers of fractured locker room.” McIntyre goes to great lengths to support his notion that a nasty family feud was behind les Jets’ premature ouster from the Stanley Cup tournament, Saturday vs. the Blues in St. Loo.

His evidence…

Exhibit A: “We’ve got a few ruffled feathers in there that we’re gonna have to flatten out,” said head coach Paul Maurice. Really? There were bruised egos in the changing room? How shocking. Like, that’s never happened before with any other team.
Exhibit B: According to GM Chevy, his exit interviews with the workers were “not similar at all” to last year’s. They were “pretty frank, pretty blunt” with “lots of different questions.” Well, duh. Last year, les Jets reached the Western Conference final. This time they were one and done. That demands a different tone to the dialogue.
Exhibit C: Chevy hinted at changes in the leadership group. Sorry, nothing to see there. It’s happened before (see Thornton, Joe; Luongo, Roberto) and six NHL outfits function without anyone wearing the ‘C’ on his jersey. Leaders are going to lead, with or without a letter, and followers will follow.
Exhibit D: The players held a late-season, closed-door meeting after a loss, denying news snoops prompt access to the changing room. Oh…my…gawd! Stop the presses! Dog bites man! Seriously. The airing of grievances behind closed doors is as commonplace in sports as spitting.

Here’s Wheeler on that matter: “We have closed-door meetings all the time. It just may not be necessarily after a game when guys are waiting outside the door. You know what I mean? So, um, communication’s a huge thing, um, you know, air everything out, especially when the team’s struggling and you’re not winning. These are all real positive things every team does, not just us, and, um, I think that particular situation was more noticeable because, like I said, you know, we made you guys wait.”

And here’s Maurice: “We might have had twice as many closed-door meetings last year. We just didn’t schedule ’em right after a game after a loss you didn’t like. And, boy, you’re a lot more worried when you’re coaching a team and they aren’t having any. Like, you gotta have two or three a year. You need a couple of dustups. This is a competitive, snarlin’ sport when it’s played right, and you need a bit of that.”

I covered sports for 30 years, and experience tells me Wheeler and Maurice aren’t BSing us.

Exhibit E: Maurice isn’t warm and fuzzy with all the players. You think the Montreal Canadiens of the 1970s linked arms and sang Kumbaya around the campfire with Scotty Bowman? They felt warm and fuzzy about him when they collected their Stanley Cup rings and received their winning playoff shares. The rest of the time, not so much.

Bottom line: McIntyre is reading between the lines and has yet to provide concrete evidence that les Jets were undone by family squabbling. Until he delivers, I’m not convinced it was anything more than the basic bickering you find anytime you put two dozen alpha males in the same room.

Just wondering: If McIntyre and the Drab Slab are right about a deep divide with les Jets, why isn’t Ken Wiebe and the Winnipeg Sun also beating that drum? I mean, Wiebe has been with Winnipeg HC almost every step of the way, so it follows that he, too, would have sniffed out any serious disconnect among the players. Is Wiebe a lousy news snoop who knows about the chasm but chooses not to write it, or is it a faux narrative? Personally, I think Wiebe has grown into a fine reporter. I don’t believe he would sit on a story that significant, which tells me it isn’t a significant story. Except in the Drab Slab.

It’s easy to take a quote and torque it to your liking. News snoops do it all the time. Wheeler, for example, said this when asked about Chevy’s difficult task of keeping this current Jets roster intact: “We’d like to keep every guy.” Sure sounds like he’s happy with his teammates. Every one of them. See how that works?

So tell us, Jacob Trouba, any interest in helping good, ol’ Chevy sign all those restricted and unrestricted free agents? You know, maybe take a discount so Chevy can keep the gang together for another run at the Stanley Cup next spring? “That’s his job,” Trouba harrumphed. Translation: I want mine.

Yo! All those among the rabble who’d like to see blueline guru Charlie Huddy punted! This from Coach Potty Mouth Maurice: “Here’s what I’m gonna do for you. If all the coaches that lose, that have this meeting after the first round get fired, I’ll resign…take my staff with me. So that’s how I feel about it.”

And, finally, Maurice delivered my favorite line of the day, near the conclusion of his yadda, yadda, yadda: “Everything I’ve said today is bull shit ’cause we didn’t win.” Yup.

About Terrible Ted taking a stand…Tessa is a living (Barbie) doll…Genie going Hollywood…puppies and spin-the-bottle in Carolina…puck luck, Puck Finn and lost in a snow maze…broken silence in Lotus Land…tabloid T&A in The ROT…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and I think we need an International Day of Old Lady Bloggers…

Much has been said and written about Ted Lindsay since his death last week, all of it justifiably praiseworthy.

Puck pundits, opinionists and news snoops allowed that Terrible Ted ranks among the National Hockey League’s all-time elite, as a player and a gentleman, and they’ve made special note of the stiff price he paid for stirring up the serfs in the 1950s and attempting to form a players association.

Stripped of his captain’s ‘C’ and cast aside like a leper by the Detroit Red Wings, Lindsay soldiered on to finish his Hockey Hall of Fame career in 1965, and therein lies my favorite Terrible Ted tale, one that’s always worth retelling.

The HHOF was to fete Lindsay and eight other players at the 1966 induction soiree, but he wanted no part of it. Not unless his wife and kids could attend. Sorry, Ted, it’s strictly stag.

So he boycotted his own induction.

“(Players) are wonderful people when we’re winning, but when we go home and we’re losing, we’re miserable for our wives and our children,” was Lindsay’s explanation. “My feeling was, families put up with us when we were temperamental idiots, they should be able to enjoy the benefits of what the league is giving us. That’s a very simple decision.”

The following year, the HHOF opened the doors to its induction gala to women and family members.

And look where we are 53 years later: Six female players have rings to prove they’re card-carrying members of the Hockey Hall of Fame, and another, Cassie Campbell-Pascall, has been added to the selection committee.

That’s a small part of the Ted Lindsay legacy, and it’s worth acknowledging on the heels of International Women’s Day.

Where is female hockey today? Depends on who you ask.

During an interesting panel discussion on Hockey Night in Canada, Campbell-Pascall suggested the glass is “three-quarters full.”

“We need men to understand what some of our challenges are. What some of our needs are,” she told Ron MacLean in a chin-wag that included HHOF member Angela James, broadcaster Christine Simpson and Allison Sandmeyer-Graves, CEO of the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity. “And also cover our sports like they would cover male sports. Just don’t use the same big stories over and over again. Get to the rink, get to the practices and cover our sports just like you would cover male sports and get those personalities out there, ’cause we have so many great ones in the female game today.”

That’s a tough sell, given that very few men in mainstream media give a damn about the distaff side of the game. Except, of course, when there’s an Olympic gold medal at stake.

“People are supportive of women’s hockey,” says Sami Jo Small, a product of the frozen ponds of Good Ol’ Hometown and now general manager of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League Toronto Furies. “They love watching it, but they don’t know how to watch it. That’s one of my biggest battles, to get people to know where to watch these games, how to watch these games, where to buy the tickets, and get them into the venue. Not just watching the Olympics.”

To their point, consider this: The CWHL Clarkson Cup playoffs are currently in progress, with one skirmish pitting the Toronto Furies vs. the Calgary Inferno in a best-of-three set that goes to a rubber match this very afternoon. What kind of coverage did Game 2 warrant? Squat in the Toronto Sun. Nada. The Calgary Sun, meanwhile, scribbled a few hundred words (no byline) about the Inferno’s 3-zip win, yet devoted two full pages to the Calgary Roughnecks, a lacrosse outfit. Like I said, it’s a tough sell when mainstream media is reluctant, or refuses, to spread the word. And that’s sad.

In honor of International Women’s Day, I’d like to acknowledge the women with whom I worked during my time in mainstream media: Peggy Stewart (Winnipeg Tribune), the lovely Rita Mingo (Trib), Mary Ormsby (Toronto Sun) and my fave, Judy Owen (Winnipeg Sun). That’s it. Four women in 30 years. Today, there are no women writing sports at either of the two River City rags. Melissa Martin makes cameo appearances to cover the Scotties Tournament of Hearts for the Drab Slab, but that’s it.

What’s this? Fox plans to make a movie out of tennis diva Genie Bouchard’s Twitter date with fan boy John Goehrke? Well, if the movie is anything like Genie’s one-and-done game, don’t order the large tub of buttered popcorn. You won’t have time to finish it.

I always thought that Tessa Virtue was a living doll, so it’s no surprise that the folks at Mattel toys have included a likeness of our fave fancy skater in their Role Model series of Barbie Dolls. But here’s what I’m wondering: Whatever became of her lifelong accomplice, Scott Moir? I see our Tessa on TV regularly, peddling mattresses, skin cream and what have you. But poor Scott. We haven’t seen him since he was observed sopping up the suds at an Olympic hockey game last winter. He’s vanished, kind of like Art Garfunkel after Paul Simon went his own way. I guess that’ll teach Moir for playing with dolls all his life.

So, the Carolina Hurricanes continue to play little post-match parlor games like Duck, Duck, Goose, and along comes Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab to inform us that what is known as the Storm Surge has made the ‘Canes “somewhat relevant again.” He adds: “If you don’t like this, I’m going to assume you also dislike puppies, too.” Oh, please. I mean, exaggerate much, Mike? Look, the Hurricanes will be relevant if they make some noise in the National Hockey League’s Beard Season. As for liking puppies, I think they’re cute and cuddly, but that doesn’t mean I also have to like choreographed cornball-ism like grown men playing spin-the-bottle.

By the way, the Hurricanes have become so “relevant again” that their average head count is up a whopping 627 this season, and their average audience of 13,947 is fourth worst in the NHL. Seems as though the folks in Raleigh have better things to do.

While many of us have been curious or flat-out baffled by Patrik Laine’s herky-jerky goal-scoring pattern this season, the Drab Slab’s stats goomer, Andrew Berkshire, set about to solve the mystery of the Winnipeg Jets winger. Using a couple of charts with the required squiggly lines to get his point across, Berkshire arrived at this conclusion: “The biggest factor in his drop in goal scoring at even-strength this season is just bad luck…the puck just hasn’t bounced the right way for him.” That’s it? Puck luck? That’s what the squiggly lines tell him about Puck Finn? Well, I have a suggestion for Stats Boy: You might want to actually watch a game instead of staring at your pie charts.

I note that Angie and Clint Masse have made their way into the Guinness Book of World Records for building the planet’s largest snow maze on their farm near St. Adolphe, just south of Winnipeg. I imagine it’d be easy to get lost in there. Hmmm. Maybe that’s where Puck Finn disappeared to for three months. Whatever, it’s nice to have the kid back.

This from TSN’s Dave Poulin at the NHL trade deadline, on Feb. 25: “There’s not going to be eight-year deals anymore.” Just 11 days later, Mark Stone signed an eight-year deal with the Vegas Golden Knights. D’oh!

What part of “moment of silence” does the rabble in Lotus Land not understand? During what was meant to be a silent salute to the late Ted Lindsay the other night at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, Tranna Maple Leafs loyalists and some among the Canucks faithful engaged in a hissing contest. As Jed Clampett used to say whenever Jethro did something dumb, pitiful. Just pitiful. But I suppose we should be thankful that they didn’t try to burn the town down this time around.

In the department of Are You Really That Arrogant?, I present Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna. In a tweet about the rag trade in the Republic of Tranna, he wrote this of his Toronto Sun: “The only paper still covering sports like it matters, with its own people.” Spare me. On that same day, there were seven bylines in the Toronto Star sports section, each one of them the Star’s “own people” covering sports “like it matters.” That coverage, by the way, included a terrific spread on women in sports on International Women’s Day. Simmons’ Sun, meanwhile, saluted International Women’s Day with a photo spread of a lass named Sydney, adorned only in her black lace bra and knickers. That’s the Sun—still covering T&A “like it matters” after all these years.

And, finally, at tip of the bonnet to the Drab Slab for its recent uptick in local amateur coverage. We read about university track and field on the sports front Friday, plus a full-page, deep dive into the Manitoba Junior Hockey League playoffs and the high school shinny championships. They followed with U hoops, high school puck, U track, and elite female athletes on Saturday. That’s what I call old-time coverage. Took me back to the hey days of Winnipeg Tribune and Free Press sports pages.

About the Calgary Stampeders’ psyche…a Blue Bombers-RedBlacks Grey Cup game…brutal blunder by Postmedia…a tough crowd at the Little Hockey House Of Horrors…Puck Finn the underachiever?…a dingbat in the Tranna media…unbreakable records…and voting “no” in Cowtown

Another Sunday smorgas-bored and another couch potato day with pizza and three-down football on the menu…

No beating around the bush, kids. I’m going to come right out and say it: The Winnipeg Blue Bombers can make plans for an all-expenses-paid trip to E-Town. Call the travel agent. Now. No need to wait.

Yup, Winnipeg FC shall conquer the Calgary Stampeders.

It’s no small chore, of course, because the Stampeders are a more imposing outfit than the recently vanquished Saskatchewan Roughriders, who try to beat you with one arm tied behind their backs (read: no quarterback). Not so with the Cowtowners. They’ve got Bo Levi Mitchell and his gun-slinging right arm to fling the football.

This Bo knows winning. He does it more than any Canadian Football League QB between mid-June and the final Sunday in November. Ditto the chronically complaining sideline steward, Dave Dickenson.

From a distance, they come across as a rather snooty tandem. But, real or perceived, it is an earned arrogance.

The firm of Mitchell & Dickenson arrived first at the West Division finish line in each of their past three regular-season crusades, stacking up 41 victories against just 11 stumbles and a pair of stalemates, and there were two successive trips to the title skirmish. It is only in the championship match that the Stamps have received a comeuppance, two years ago due to some truly dumb coaching and last year when the football literally took an Argo bounce.

So here they are in the West Division final again, rested from a bye week and only the pesky Bombers left to disturb their march to another Grey Cup game.

What makes me think Winnipeg FC is up to the task of toppling the Calgary juggernaut? Running back Andrew Harris for one. Linebacker Beastmo Bighill for another. And QB Joe Ordinary has kicked the giveaway habit that brought him to his knees in early September.

There’s also the Stampeders’ psyche. I’m thinking it’s as fragile as sports scribe’s ego.

Oh, sure, the large lads in red still have plenty of swagger, but what happens if their universe isn’t unfolding as it should on Crowchild Trail this afternoon? If the Bombers bully the bully, do insecure thoughts begin to prey on the Stamps? Do the mishaps of recent Novembers begin to haunt them? Rattle them? Could happen.

It’s different for Winnipeg FC. The Blue-and-Gold expect to win, but they aren’t supposed to win. No reason to be antsy.

So I’ve sifted through the tea leaves, and here’s how it’s going to shake down: This game will be decided on a failed two-point convert. Bombers win and advance to the Grey Cup frolic on Nov. 25 in Edmonton.

Just wondering: Do you think anyone in the Republic of Tranna knows there’ll be two CFL games played today?

It’s about the East Division final between the Bytown RedBlacks and Hamilton Tiger-Cats: I really like the Tabbies, even without rassler Ric Flair stirring up the rabble. Mind you, I’d like them a lot more if Speedy B was available to play catch with Jeremiah Masoli. My initial instinct is to suggest it’ll be a good, old-fashioned shootout. But no. I’m afraid the RedBlacks possess too many offensive weapons. Bytown by two TDs. (Brief aside: One of my Gridiron Girls gazed into her crystal ball last June and saw a Grey Cup game featuring Hamilton and Winnipeg. I hate to go against her, but I must.)

The CFL will add an eighth on-field flag-thrower for each of today’s division skirmishes. It’s official then: CFL games now have more zebras than the Serengeti.

D’oh! D’oh! D’oh! Let’s just call the Winnipeg Sun sports front on Friday the greatest gaffe—ever.

If you missed it, some totally inept Postmedia editor has Andrew Harris and the Bombers playing the Tiger-Cats in the East Division final this afternoon. That isn’t just a minor typo. It’s Bill Buckner letting that ground ball dribble through his legs in Game 6 of the 1986 World Series. It’s Jean van de Velde taking seven swings to score a triple bogey on the 72nd hole of the 1999 British Open and squander a three-shot lead.

We ought not be surprised, though. Colossal blunders like this occur when a newspaper’s page layout, design and editing is farmed out to someone in a distant locale. Someone who wouldn’t know Portage and Main from a port-o-potty. Someone who wouldn’t know Bud Grant from Bud Light.

But, hey, it’s not like quality matters to Postmedia. If it did, they wouldn’t have punted/bought out hundreds of quality journalists in the past few years.

I feel bad for the Sun’s three sports scribes—Paul Friesen, Ted Wyman, Ken Wiebe—because they’ll have to wear a stupid mistake made by someone sitting at a news desk in another part of the country.

Strangest headline of the week was delivered by the Winnipeg Free Press: “Bombers staying disciplined.” You simply do not write that header the same week three Bombers—Jackson Jeffcoat, Sukh Chungh, Pat Neufeld—are slapped with fines for goon tactics.

I’ve been calling it the Little Hockey House On The Prairie ever since the Winnipeg Jets set up shop in their Portage Avenue ice palace in 2011, but it turns out that the local freeze is also a Little Hockey House of Horrors for National Hockey League foes.

“It seems like you’re skating up ice the whole time,” Gabriel Landeskog of the Colorado Avalanche says of the Jets home. “It just seems tilted in their favor, and obviously the fans are a big part of that and the way they play as a team.”

According to a poll of 61 players, only one NHL rink is more difficult to play in—the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, where visitors to the Twang Town barn can be expected to dodge catfish.

So the local rabble can take a bow. They don’t toss catfish on the ice, but they toss some serious shade on the enemy.

Question 1 for Tranna Maple Leafs loyalists: Les Leafs are 14-6-0 without William Nylander. They’re 7-3-0 sans Auston Matthews. If AWOL Willy’s bargaining leverage for a new contract is weakened because les Leafs continue to win while he’s home in Sweden counting missed paycheques, does the same theory apply to Matthews, who’s been in the repair shop due to a wonky shoulder since Oct. 27?

Question 2 for Tranna Maple Leafs loyalists: Matthews missed 20 games last season and he’s already been in the repair shop for nine this crusade. When his entry level contract expires next spring, do they pay him John Tavares coin if he continues to be damaged goods?

When I examined the NHL scoring leaderboard this a.m., 41 players had more goals than Patrik Laine. That’s not how it’s supposed to work. Puck Finn is supposed to have more snipes than anyone not named Ovie. Yet there he sits, with just eight red lamps in 18 assignments. However, before anyone runs off with the notion that he’s underachieving, keep in mind les Jets have yet to arrive at the quarter-pole of their crusade. Another goal or two by the 20-game mark and we’re looking at a second successive 40-snipe season. Before he’s legal drinking age in the U.S. If that’s underachieving, I’m Melania Trump.

Speaking of the wives of loose cannons, what was it that Archie Bunker called his bride Edith? Oh, that’s right, Dingbat. Well, Edith was a regular Einstein compared to Damien Cox of the Toronto Star. In an exercise of blatant click baitism, Cox sent out this tweet about the Maple Leafs last week: “John Tavares is playing so well it makes you think; why not sign (Mitch) Marner and Nylander and trade Matthews for a whole pile of goodies? Not saying they would, but it’s not such a crazy idea anymore?” Not a crazy idea? The airplane wasn’t a crazy idea. The light bulb wasn’t a crazy idea. Eating what comes out of a chicken’s butt for breakfast wasn’t a crazy idea. But les Leafs trading Matthews for a “pile of goodies?” Totally crazy.

Old friend Troy Westwood of TSN 1290 tweets this: “I double dog dare ya to present to me a sports record that is more unbreakable than Billy Mosienko’s 3 goals in 21 seconds.” I’ll accept that challenge, Troy. Try Glenn Hall’s consecutive-game streak. Mr. Goalie started, and finished, 502 consecutive matches from Day 1 of the 1955-56 NHL season through the first 12 games of 1962-63. And the Detroit Red Wings/Chicago Blackhawks keeper did it all with his bare face hanging out. Yup, no mask. In order to break that record, a goaltender today would be required to start and finish every game for six-plus seasons. Never going to happen, kids.

And, finally, in a 53-47 per cent vote, the good people of Calgary have said “no” to the 2026 Winter Olympic Games in their city. In a non-related vote, 100 per cent of Calgary Flames fans said “no” to Mike Smith playing another game in goal.

About Claude’s boy Brendan going off his nut…Beastmo Bighill for MOP…fifth Beatle Ty Long…Andrew Harris had to get the ball…a new headset for Coach LaPo?…Sportsnet drops the ball on U football…the Bosox beer toss…Clayton K is no Sandy K…a good read on No. 4 Bobby Orr…and just say no to Slava

Another Sunday morning smorgas-bored…and keep in mind that no one has ever won a bar bet based on anything I write…

Top o’ the morning to you, Brendan Lemieux.

Well, I guess it’s true what they say—you’re a chip off the old blockhead. That’s right. Your old man, Claude, was a cheap-shot artist of the tallest order, and now here you are, just 18 games into your National Hockey League career, and already you’re facing a suspension for attempting to rearrange Vincent Trocheck’s facial features.

Mind you, what you did to Trocheck of the Florida Panthers on Friday in Finland was the equivalent of a paper cut compared to the bludgeoning Papa Claude laid on Kris Draper in 1996.

I’m sure you know all about that, Brendan. Probably seen the video. Heck, you and the old man might have had a giggle or two watching it on YouTube. Just to refresh, though, Papa Claude drove Draper into the boards—from behind—and broke his face. That’s not an exaggeration. The force of the blow shattered an orbital bone, a cheekbone, Draper’s nose and his jaw.

That’s the signature moment of your old man’s career, Brendan. A goon act.

Oh, sure, some folks talk about his Stanley Cup victories, the Conn Smythe Trophy, the 19 game-winning goals in the postseason. But the conversation always comes back to Kris Draper and the night Papa Claude went all Pearl Harbor on the Detroit Red Wings forward.

You once told a reporter that you want to be seen as a “young Claude Lemieux,” and “every time I’m compared to my dad, it’s a compliment.”

Sorry, Brendan, but you don’t want to run off with the notion that folks are speaking favorably when they draw parallels between you and Papa Claude. More than likely they’re calling you a couple of dipsticks. Sure there are positive similarities. There’s tree bark to your game, just as there was to his. You can be a useful, disruptive irritant. But I’m certain fly-by muggings are not what the Winnipeg Jets had in mind when they brought you on board.

Your attack on Trocheck wasn’t just wanton and lawless, it was selfish. It was game-changing in a destructive way.

So here’s the bottom line, Brendan: I think it’s great that you’re proud of your old man, but just because Papa Claude had a tendency to go off his nut, it doesn’t mean you have to.

Straighten up and fly right, kid.

I’ve long held that a player like young Lemieux was a missing element to les Jets makeup. I reckoned they needed someone of the Nazem Kadri ilk. You know, a guy with serious skill but also a royal pain in the ass. Sadly, Lemieux isn’t even a reasonable facsimile. Although only 22, he might already be an NHL writeoff.

Nice to see Patrik Laine rediscover his scoring touch during Winnipg HC’s two-game tour of duty in Finland, but let’s make something perfectly clear: Criticizing Puck Finn’s play early in this crusade does not make anyone a “Patrik Laine hater” or a “Patrik Laine naysayer.” It’s fair comment. The guy’s been gawdawful most nights, something he copped to post-hat trick in Winnipeg HC’s 4-2 victory over the Panthers on Thursday. “I’ve been a pretty bad player,” he admitted. So let’s keep this in mind: Laine still has yet to score at even strength with a goaltender in the net. That’s not hating on Puck Finn. It’s reporting the facts.

Fashion note: Saw one of those horrid Jets aviator alternate jerseys in a sports merchandise shop last week. The thing is selling for $134. That’s a lot of coin to spend on ugly. Sales dude told me nobody’s buying them out here on the west flank of the land. “People prefer the Jets heritage sweaters,” he said. Ya think?

I’ve studied the list of nominees for most outstanding player in the Canadian Football League and I don’t see anyone whose work has been more boffo than Beastmo Bighill, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers ransackish, plundering linebacker. Beastmo won’t win the vote, though, because the Football Reporters of Canada have a thing for guys who play the glam or diva positions. You know, the quarterbacks, receivers and running backs. Only once since they began doling out the MOP trinket in 1953 have news snoops broken ranks and saluted a pure defender. That was Solomon Elimimian of the B.C. Lions in 2014. So, if my math is correct, another defensive player isn’t due to win the MOP award until 2076, by which time we hope Winnipeg FC head coach Mike O’Shea finally has figured out when—and when not—to gamble on third down.

The Lions’ MOP candidate this year is Ty Long. He’s a punter/placekicker. No knock against Long, but that’s kind of like nominating Ringo Starr as the most outstanding Beatle. (For you kids in the audience, the Beatles were a rock band in the 1960s and Ringo was the drummer. The other band members were John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison. Two of them are in the grave, and Ringo still isn’t the most outstanding Beatle.)

O’Shea did the right thing by starting Andrew Harris in the Bombers’ meaningless matinee vs. the Eskimos at Commonwealth Stadium in E-Town on Saturday. Sure there was a risk he’d suffer an owie that would put him on the shelf for the Grey Cup runoff, but you’ve gotta give the ball to a guy who’s eight yards shy of another rushing title. It’s said that Coach Mikey is a player’s coach, and that’s what a player’s coach does.

So what are the odds of Paul LaPolice landing a CFL head coaching gig? There’s a vacancy in the Republic of Tranna, where the Argonauts kicked Marc Trestman to the curb (apparently for his failure to keep Ricky Ray vertical), and Wally Buono has had his fill of football in B.C. and anywhere else people grab grass and growl. Jason Maas’ status in E-Town is still iffy, and perhaps the same can be said for Mike Sherman in Montreal. If the Bombers inflict serious damage during this month’s sprint to the Grey Cup, guaranteed the Winnipeg FC offensive-coordinator will be on someone’s short list. More to the point, I’d expect to see him wearing a head set on the sidelines next year. If so, good on him because I still believe Coach LaPo got a raw deal from inadequate, trigger-happy GM Sleepy Joe Mack with the Bombers in 2012.

Here’s my take on the Trestman dismissal by the Argos: A lot of folks who follow three-down football outside the Republic of Tranna will give a damn; few in The ROT will even notice he’s gone. Such a shame.

Also a shame that Sportsnet totally ignored the Canadian university football playoffs, which commenced on Saturday. What kind of a national sports network doesn’t cover the postseason from start to finish? They won’t have their cameras and talking heads on site next weekend either. Pathetic.

Interesting tradition Boston sports fans have during title parades—the beer toss. Yup, the rabble gathered last Wednesday in downtown Beantown to greet their most recent conquering heroes, the World Series champion Red Sox, and Bud Light bombs were bursting in air. It was a 21-can salute from the fawning faithful to their baseball icons. At first blush, I thought it a horrible waste of beer, but then I realized it was American beer. I’d toss it away, too.

Now that the Los Angeles Dodgers have been ushered out of the World Series for the second straight autumn, can the ill-informed cease with the Clayton Kershaw-Sandy Koufax comparisons? The great Sandy K. got the job done when it mattered most. Kershaw not so much. Koufax pitched in four World Series, going 4-3 with a 0.95 ERA and a 0.825 WHIP. The Dodgers won three of those series and Koufax twice was chosen WS MVP. Kershaw, meanwhile, has a losing record in money games (9-10 overall; 1-2 in the World Series), his ERA is a plumpish 5.40 and his WHIP is 1.163. Case closed.

Two questions: The Professional Golf Association Tour has begun its 2018-19 season. Will anyone notice before Tiger tees it up? And does the professional tennis season ever end, or do they just keep playing until everyone is injured and sent to the repair shop?

If you’re looking for some good reading (the kind you won’t find here), check out Bruce Arthur’s piece on Bobby Orr in the Toronto Star. It’s boffo stuff on the boffoest of all hockey players.

And, finally, disgraced defenceman Slava Voynov has applied to the NHL for reinstatement. How fast can 31 teams say “no” to the wife-beater? Any outfit interested in recruiting Voynov is soulless.

About filling a hole up front for the Winnipeg Jets…Scheifele’s salary the ceiling…oddsmakers like the Leafs, Preds, Jets and Lightning…a $77 million hometown discount…Canada’s best team…and an old folks home in L.A.

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.

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 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.

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?

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?

Paul Maurice: Does the Winnipeg Jets coach enjoy his parry-and-thrust with the media?

A little bit of this, a little bit of that and a whole lot of opinion in a weekend wrap…

I’m not quite sure what to make of Paul Maurice vis-a-vis news scavengers.

I watch him work the Fourth Estate during his press gatherings and he is serious, sometimes sharp, snappy and abrupt. Coach PoMo often answers a question before it has been completely framed, which is to say he interrupts, hinting at a pinch of impatience. It seems to be his way of saying, “I’ve got things to do, let’s get to the point.” I sometimes see a smug man, with gusts approaching snarky.

Even on those occasions when he slips into light-hearted mode and kibitzes with his interrogators, his jabs at jocularity seem tempered.

At the same time, this Winnipeg Jets head coach is obliging, thoughtful, articulate, respectful and he’s media savvy, in a much different way than his predecessor, the joy-seeking Claude Noel, who was forever feeding scribes and talking heads with bons mots that made for brilliant, knee-slapping sound bites but offered little substance.

I really can’t determine if Maurice enjoys this part of his job or if he’d rather be elsewhere. My guess would be it’s the latter, but he surely understands that it is part of his job and he is better at it than most National Hockey League bench bosses.

HITHER & YAWN: I have added a new item to my Bucket List—appearing on TSN’s Off the Record with Michael Landsberg. I figure it’s the Canadian sports TV equivalent to being on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. It’d be a cool gig, especially the Next Question segment……So, how do you spell desperate? Evander Kane spells it: B-u-f-f-a-l-o. I say that because Kane is “very excited” about shuffling off to Buffalo, which tells us how desperate he was to get out of River City. I mean, if you’ve ever been to the upstate New York burg (I have), you know that it isn’t Shangri-la. But good luck to Kane and the Buffalo McDavids next hockey season…If the Winnipeg Blue Bombers make big noise in Canadian Football League free agency and no one hears it because the Winnipeg Jets trade Evander Kane a day later, did it really happen? I mean, poor Kyle Walters. The Bombers general manager went about the task of upgrading his last-place product by signing five bodies, and it was greeted with a yawn…We all know there are many differences between the CFL and National Football League. Here’s the latest: The NFL stages its neutral-site games in London in the U.K. The CFL goes to Fort McMurray, Alta., where a team from Toronto is the home side and a team from Alberta is the visitor…Has Kirk Penton of the Winnipeg Sun become the best football beat writer in Canada? If it isn’t Penton, it’s either Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press or Herb Zurkowsky of the Montreal Gazette.

THE WRITE STUFF: Very disappointed to see a scribe from the Republic of Tranna, Mike Koreen, in Moose Jaw to cover the Scotties Tournament of Hearts for Sun Media. Nothing against Koreen as a scribe, but readers of the Winnipeg Sun would be much better served if one of their own was on site. To date, we’ve read about Richard Hart coaching Team Canada (Rachel Homan from Ottawa), a piece on Kerry Galusha and Tracy Horgan discussing the new pre-qualifying portion of the Canadian women’s curling championship, and a feature on Lori Olson-Johns of Val Sweeting’s Alberta foursome. The only item on Jennifer Jones and her Buffalo Girls was a pre-event advancer for their Monday night skirmish with defending champ Homan. The Winnipeg Free Press, meanwhile, has staffer Melissa Martin in Moose Jaw to deliver daily dispatches about Jones and Co. Score one for the Freep…The most complete coverage of the Scotties can be found in the Heart Chart, the daily sheet produced in Moose Jaw by former Winnipeg Sun sports editor and longtime curling journalist Dave Komosky. He has ex-Saskatoon Star Phoenix sports scribe Cam Hutchinson riding shotgun, and the two of them are putting out a boffo product…So, Doug Brown scribbles a column for the Winnipeg Free Press about the horrors of pro sports dressing rooms. Good idea. Except the former Blue Bombers defensive lineman provides zero anecdotal evidence from his 20 years in football to support the notion that they can be raunchy, nasty, bad-news bunkers that foster bullying. Thus, he didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. He used a lot of really big words, though, which often seems to be the purpose of the exercise…This penetrating analysis from Gary (La La) Lawless of the Freep on the Jets post-season push: “The key for the Jets as they hope to secure a playoff berth for the first time since returning to Winnipeg will be to collect points on as many nights as possible over the remaining 24 games.” Well, duh. What was your first clue, Sherlock?

BOW WOW BUNGALOW: Little Stevie Blunder Simmons of the Toronto Sun has stepped in it again (he never fails to fail). This was his take on the Jets large trade featuring Evander Kane and Zach Bogosian going to the Buffalo McDavids…

“I seem to be in the minority on this, but I don’t think the Winnipeg Jets won the Evander Kane trade handily. I break it down this way: Tyler Myers for Zack (sic) Bogosian is one developing defenceman for another. Slight edge to Winnipeg. Now Buffalo gets Kane, a proven commodity with mounds of baggage in exchange for a late first-round pick, Claude Lemieux’s son and a minor leaguer. They may get something for Kane or they may end up with nothing. Late first-round picks are no sure thing. Buffalo gets a sure-thing NHL player in Kane to play alongside whichever centre they draft first in June.”

So, let’s see: He spelled Zach Bogosian’s first name incorrectly. He didn’t bother to identify Claude Lemieux’s son as Brendan Lemieux and, worst of all, he ignored the fact that the Jets also received Drew Stafford in barter from Buffalo. That would be the same Drew Stafford who’s already paid dividends, scoring one goal in regulation time and the shootout winner in the Jets 5-4 verdict over the Red Wings in Detroit on Saturday night.

Enjoy your stay in the Bow Wow Bungalow, Stevie.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been writing about Winnipeg sports for more than 40 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.

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