About the Winnipeg Jets spending more big bucks…the Blue Bombers’ winning formula…”gutless” comments…and other things on my mind

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

Mark Scheifele: A $49 million smile.

It’s no surprise that the Winnipeg Jets have tossed top dollar at Mark Scheifele.

Yes, in the grand scheme of things, the Jets operate on the chintz. In any payroll search of National Hockey League clubs, you’ll always find the locals nearer the bottom of the heap than the top. This is a “budget” team.

Yet the Secret Society that is True North Sports & Entertainment contradicts itself. That is, it is not a big spender, yet it has never been shy about spending big.

I mean, any outfit willing to compensate a lowly foot soldier like Chris Thorburn to the tune of $1.2 million per annum isn’t afraid to chuck the change around. Co-bankroll David Thomson likely found enough to pay Thorbs’s salary hidden behind and beneath the cushions of his sofa.

The point is, stuffing $49 million (US) into Scheifele’s piggy bank doesn’t represent a seismic shift in how True North does business. The Jets have a history of showing a willingness to deliver term and top-market compensation to those they deem their most valued workers. Anyone who thinks otherwise hasn’t been paying attention.

Earlier this year, the Jets committed $38 million to defenceman Dustin Byfuglien. Two days ago, it was $16.5 million for Mathieu Perreault, a generous stipend for a guy who might be playing third-line minutes. None of this is chump change. Nor was the $93.1 million they doled out to three players—Blake Wheeler, Bryan Little and Zach Bogosian—three years ago this month. Thirteen months before that, they agreed to pay Ondrej Pavelec $19.5 million over five years (ignore the reality that it was money not wisely spent on their much-maligned goaltender).

So no one should be surprised that the Jets went all-in with an eight-year, $49 million contract for Scheifele. It wasn’t a debunking of a “cheapskate tag,” as the Winnipeg Free Press suggests. It’s what they’ve done and will continue to do. Nothing has changed.

Blake Wheeler

I have one question about the Jets signing of Scheifele: Why didn’t they name the 23-year-old centre team captain at the same time? While prevailing sentiment suggests Wheeler ought to wear the C, Scheifele will be doing his thing at the Little Hockey House on the Prairie for the next eight winters. Wheeler, whose birthday cake next month will feature 30 candles, won’t be.

In Florida, owners of the Panthers talk about winning the Stanley Cup. “They expect a Stanley Cup and we have a duty to bring the best team possible to our fans,” general manager Tom Rowe says of owner Vincent Viola and vice-chairman Doug Cifu. In Winnipeg, meanwhile, His Holy Hockeyness, Mark Chipman, and his valet, Kevin Cheveldayoff, talk about a “process.”

Nice to see the Winnipeg Blue Bombers finally found a winning formula—play a team that will commit six turnovers. That’s what went down when the Bombers bettered the Hamilton Tiger-Cats, 28-24, Thursday night at Timbits Field in the Hammer. The trick now, of course, is to find a few more teams as inept as the Tabbies.

On that note, who stole the real Hamilton Tiger-Cats and what have you done with them? Not to discredit the Bombers, who’ll take Ws in any shape or size, but the Tabbies were gawd awful and aren’t even a reasonable facsimile of the outfit that has been a Canadian Football League force since Kent Austin put his hands on the till. Yes, I realize the starting quarterback, Zach Collaros, is in sick bay, but that’s no excuse for the Keystone Kops routine.

Just wondering: Did South African High Court Judge Thokozile Masipa give her “fallen hero” Oscar Pistorius a hug and a kiss before shipping her “broken man” off to jail for the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, or did she settle for an autograph?

Cathal Kelly is among the finer wordsmiths in Canadian jock journalism, but I fear he’s lost the plot when it comes to tennis. Scribbling in the Globe and Mail, he mentions “the golden era of Canadian tennis” and cites Genie Bouchard’s march to the 2014 ladies’ final at Wimbledon and Milos Raonic advancing to the gentlemen’s semi-final round before bowing to Roger Federer that same summer. That’s Kelly’s idea of a golden era? One fortnight on the lumpy lawns of the All England Club? I’m sorry, but there’s nothing “golden” about one exceptional-yet-unsuccessful run at a tennis Grand Slam, then operating on the periphery of the sport’s elite. I would suggest that if Raonic topples Andy Murray in the Wimbledon final on Sunday morning, we can begin talking about a “golden” era of Canadian tennis. But not before he’s actually won something of note.

Shame on Steve Simmons, Postmedia sports columnist and TSN gab guy who this week on The Reporters with Dave Hodge advised us that Kevin Durant has “no spine” and his signing with a stacked Golden State Warriors outfit was “gutless.” In case we didn’t hear him the first time, he repeated his reckless “no spine” insult in his weekly three-dot column. Yo! Stevie! I’ll tell you what takes “no spine” and is “gutless.” Sitting in the shelter of a faraway TV studio or in your home office and slandering one of the top five performers in the National Basketball Association. Stand on a chair, look Durant in the eyes and then say he’s spineless and gutless or don’t say it at all.

I’m liking two new features in the Winnipeg Free Press toy department: 1) Paul Wiecek’s Sticks and Stones column (a string of brief opinion blurbs can make for a bright and breezy read; 2) TV columnist Brad Oswald’s take on the sports shows we watch. I’m anxious to see if Oswald will critique sports scribes freelancing as broadcasters or treat them like sacred cows. I’m betting it’s the latter, because people in the toy department don’t tend to eat their own.

It’s about that Trivago guy who shows up in all those commercials during sports programs: Someone has to tell him to stop dancing. He’s smooth like JLo is ugly.

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

Oh, woe is TSN…cutting off Kevin Cheveldayoff in mid-sentence…trading to land Auston Matthews…and putting the C on a Winnipeg Jets jersey

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

Note to self: Get a life.

I mean, I tuned in to TSN’s Trade Centre at the crack of 5 o’clock Monday morning and didn’t pull the plug until the clock struck midnight (figuratively) on the deadline for National Hockey League players to be dispatched hither and yon. Actually, make that hither and yawn.

Jennifer Hedger

I’m not sure what rates as the main highlight during the first 5 1/2 hours, listening to Jennifer Hedger tell us what the O’Dog, Jeff O’Neill, was having for lunch (apparently, wrapping cheese around munchies is “genius”), or Hedger catching a cotton missile Marty Biron launched from the T-shirt cannon.

Host James Duthie described it as “painful.” Yup, that bad.

Oh, well, I suppose it beat watching Gino Reda herd lamas in the parking lot (see 2015 TSN Trade Centre).

Truer words have never been spoken: When asked by Duthie what to expect from the Winnipeg Jets at the NHL trade deadline, TSN reporter Sara Orlesky answered, “I’m not expecting much.” Many of us have learned to never expect much from Jets management. Ya, okay, that’s a bit of a cheap shot, but it doesn’t make it any less true. They’ve made one NHL player-for-NHL player in five years.

What was unofficial general manager Mark Chipman telling the fawning faithful in Jets Nation when he gave official GM Kevin Cheveldayoff the okie-dokie to send captain Andrew Ladd on his merry way to the Toddlin’ Town last week? Try this: Those first five years in River City? Ignore them, kids. We’re starting over.

How typical, also dismissively rude, of TSN to cut off Cheveldayoff in mid-sentence during his post-deadline presser and go directly to the Republic of Tranna so we could hear the precious bleatings of Maple Leafs GM Lou Lamoriello. Doesn’t matter that Cheveldayoff was saying a whole lot of nothing. Lamoriello said even less.

So, the people who own the Jets have unveiled plans for True North Square in River City. There’ll be four towers built, the first of which is to be completed by the summer of 2018 and the others by the end of 2019. Terrific. True North Sports & Entertainment can change the entire face of downtown Winnipeg in less than four years but they can’t win a playoff game in five years.

Is it just me or does anyone else find it odd that Jets head coach Paul Maurice says Chipman will have a say in which skater has the C stitched onto his Jets jersey? “We’re going through a process,” PoMo told news scavengers when asked about an heir to departed captain Ladd. “We have some strong candidates and management and ownership will be involved.” Is Saint Mark really that much of a control freak? I mean, it seems to me that choosing a team captain would be down to the players and coaching staff. Why would anyone outside the changing room be given a voice?

I get a kick out of people who’d never heard of Marko Dano the day before the Chicago Blackhawks shipped him to the Jets in barter for Ladd and are now telling us what a brilliant prospect he is. Spare me. Dano is only 21 and he’s being passed around like a reefer at a 1960s pot party. Something doesn’t add up.

Auston Matthews

The Jets will have two first-round shouts in the NHL auction of freshly scrubbed teenagers in June. Assuming they don’t win the draft lottery, I say they package those two picks in a deal that fetches them the No. 1 overall selection. It’s the only way they’ll land Auston Matthews.

No surprise that Peter Chiarelli would wait until the draft lottery in April before making sweeping changes to the Edmonton Oilers roster. I mean, if the Oilers win the lottery and lay claim to first call (for the gazillionth time) in the entry draft, GM Chiarelli would be positioned to pluck Matthews from the pool of hot-shot teens, which would make it a whole lot easier to part with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, Jordan Eberle or even Taylor Hall in exchange for the blueline/goaltending help he desperately needs.

Would there be enough ice time in Edmonton for both Matthews and Connor McDavid playing centre? Well, the Oilers made it work back in the day with Wayne Gretzky and Mark Messier. So, sure.

I know there’s a rule about tampering in the NHL, so shouldn’t someone in the ivory tower in Gotham have a chat with Florida Panthers’ co-bankroll Doug Cifu about him flapping his gums re Andrew Ladd before the trade that sent him to Chicago? “He’s a great player, a character guy, obviously Dale (GM Tallon) knows him very well,” Cifu told the Florida Sun-Sentinel. “I’m not going to comment on discussions, but he’s a great character, a great hockey player, he really is.” If that isn’t tampering, it’s as close as damn is to swearing.

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