Paul Maurice

Let’s talk about Opposite Chevy and the George Costanza method of managing…Jets on the move…Is Coach PoMo a better bench puppeteer?…the price of used clothing…a team to be named later…LIV Golf and the WHA…and other things on my mind…

Twin sisters Dr. Patti van Puck and Dr. Patti van Pigskin are internationally renowned sports psychologists who specialize in what makes athletes/coaches/managers/owners/sports scribes/broadcasters tick. Jocks the world over flock to their clinic, the River City Shrink Wrap, and Drs. Patti and Patti have a waiting list longer than a politician’s nose at election time. They don’t always have the right answer, but if loving the Winnipeg Jets and Blue Bombers is wrong, they don’t want to be right.

Dr. Patti van Puck is in today, and she has general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff of the Jets on the couch…

DR. PUCK: “Welcome Kevin. How can we help you this fine morning?”

CHEVY: “Well, you can start by calling me Chevy. Most of my friends do, although I’m a bit short on friends these days. Who wants to hang out with a loser, right?”

DR. PUCK: “Whoa! Where’s that Gloomy Gus talk coming from, Chevy.”

CHEVY: “Let me count the ways, Doc: I have a coach who trash talks his players in public, and I have players who trash talk their coach and each other in public. I have players who want out of Winnipeg like John and Paul wanted out of The Beatles. I have an owner who won’t let me take a pee without his okie-dokie. And I have to deal with a media that thinks I’m all hat and no cattle. Add it all up: I’m Gloomy Gus!”

DR. PUCK: “Come on, Chevy. You’re GM of a National Hockey League franchise in Canada. You know that headaches come with the gig. So why don’t you tell me the real reason you’re here?”

CHEVY: “Well, I’ve been bitten by the green-eyed monster, Doc.”

DR. PUCK: “Oh? Please share.”

CHEVY: “I’m jealous of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. I look at the Bombers and I see them trot out the same core of key players year after year. And what does that same core of players do? They win. They have championship parades. I trot out the same core of key players year after year and what do I get? A pant load.”

DR. PUCK: “Why do you think that is, Chevy?”

CHEVY (snivelling): “Because life isn’t fair, Doc! Is it fair that the Bombers have people who love playing in Winnipeg? Is it fair that they wouldn’t want to play anywhere else? Is it fair that some of them take less coin to be a Blue Bomber? Is it fair that some of them leave for greener grass, then realize the grass isn’t so green on the other side, so they return to the Bombers roost? Again, is it fair that I’ve got players who want out of Dodge the way O.J. wanted out of jail? It started with Evander Kane, then turned into Escape from Alcatraz…Jacob Trouba and Patty Laine and Jack Roslovic and Kristian Vesalainen and Andrew Copp and Big Buff, and now it’s Pierre-Luc Dubois and Logan Stanley. Is that fair? Why, why, why? It’s the same damn city for hockey players as it is for football players! Isn’t it?”

DR. PUCK: “I hear you, Chevy. A pothole is a pothole is a pothole, and 30-below is 30-below is 30-below, and lousy WiFi is lousy WiFi is lousy WiFi.”

CHEVY (pleading): “So what can I do about it? You’re the shrink, Doc. Tell me how I make my players love Winnipeg the way the Bombers love Winnipeg, so Winnipeg can love me.”

DR. PUCK: “What I’m hearing from you, Chevy, is a desperate need to be hugged.”

CHEVY: “Hug shmug! What I really need, Doc, is some of that Blue Bombers Kool-Aid. I’m entering the most critical month in my 13 years as Mark Chipman’s errand boy, and I have to sweet talk some of our key core pieces into staying. Mark Scheifele, Connor Hellebuyck and Pierre-Luc Dubois—they’re all due to become free agents next summer, so I need to convince them that this is shinny Shangri-la. I can’t have a Johnny Gaudreau situation on my hands, where they swan off and I’m left with a bucketful of nothing. Again, it was easy to sway guys like Scheif and Bucky when they were fresh-scrubbed and naive, but now that they’ve been around the barn and back they won’t be so quick to swill the Jets Kool-Aid. And that’s not to forget Blake Wheeler. It’s costing me $8 million-plus to keep the old warhorse in harness. That’s money better spent. But letting Wheels go would be like putting down Ol’ Yeller.

DR. PUCK: “I thought your core players were the problem.”

CHEVY: “They are. All they do is bitch and moan, but they’re my bitch-and-moaners and I believe in them. I’d like to give these same guys the chance to bitch and moan again.”

DR. PUCK: “Have you ever considered parroting George Costanza?”

CHEVY: “What do you mean, Doc? George Costanza was a basket case. He was the most neurotic character in the history of TV. A total loser. He did nothing but cough up hair balls.”

DR. PUCK: “Except when he didn’t. To quote Jerry from Seinfeld, if every instinct you have is wrong, then the opposite would have to be right.”

CHEVY: “Giddyup, Doc! I remember that Seinfeld episode when George did the opposite of everything he’d ever done, and he became a success. Chicks loved Opposite George. That’s the ticket! I will do the opposite of everything I’ve ever done with the Jets! Oh, that’s gold, Doc! Gold!”

DR. PUCK: “Well, Chevy, our time is up. Good luck to you in your ‘most critical’ month, and remember to ask yourself this when there’s a big decision to be made: What would the Bombers do?”

CHEVY: “Forget the Bombers! I’ll do what George Costanza wouldn’t do. I’m Opposite Chevy! Stanley Cup, here I come! Thanks Doc.”

Florida Panthers might be the worst thing to happen to the Jets since Big Buff took his fishing pole and went home. How so? Well, Chevy and Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman could be buoyed by the notion of an eighth-seed advancing to the Stanley Cup final. It’s possible they’re thinking, “If the Panthers can crawl into the playoffs and reach the final, we can do it, too.” Thus, no need for a makeover.

The most traded members of the Jets this off-season are goaltender Hellebuyck and fleet forward Twig Ehlers. So far, either one or both have gone to the Republic of Tranna, Buffalo, Ottawa, Pittsburgh, Philly, Los Angeles, Edmonton, Detroit, New Jersey and maybe even one or two locales in Russia. My guess? Hellebuyck and Ehlers are in Good Ol’ Hometown when the Jets assemble for training exercises in September.

For all his flash and dash (the guy truly is electric), Ehlers might be a risky bit of business for any team to take on. The guy appears to be snake bit. He was available for just 107 of 164 regular-season games the past two campaigns, and the Jets haven’t gotten a full body of work out of him since the Covid-shortened crusade (71 games) of 2019-20. That’s not bang for 6 million bucks.

Do I think Paul Maurice is a better bench puppeteer today than when he walked away from Good Ol’ Hometown in December 2021? No. But I will suggest Coach PoMo has more coachable players in Florida than he had in the Jets changing room.

Interesting piece in the Drab Slab from Mad Mike McIntyre on old friend Joe Daley, the one-time holy goalie with the Jets. Seems Joe’s equipment from days of yore has vanished and he’d like it back, especially his mask.

Astronomers have gazed to the sky and tell us there are 151 planet-killing asteroids in our neighborhood, but us earthlings should fear not. “It’s good news,” says study leader Oscar Fuentes-Muñoz, a University of Colorado Boulder researcher. “As far as we know, there’s no impact in the next 1,000 years.” That should give O.J. plenty of time to find the real killers.

I’m no star/planet-watcher, but if an asteroid were to strike our blue orb a thousand years from now, I doubt there will be anyone left to feel it. Except Keith Richards, of course.

NBA legend Karl (The Mailman) Malone auctioned off some used clothing last week, so let’s do some comparison shopping:
Michael Jordan 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team jersey: $3.03 million.
Larry Bird 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team jersey: $360,000.
Magic Johnson 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team jersey: $336,000.
Charles Barkley 1992 U.S. Olympic Dream Team jersey: $230,400.
Those aren’t exactly thrift store prices and the auction fetched $5 million for a guy whose net worth is estimated at $55 million. Proving once again that one man’s junk is another man’s chump change.

The Malone collection also included some sneakers: Jordan, $450,000; Bird, $91,000; Barkley, $79,200. Frankly, I’m surprised the Barkley sneakers went for so little. I mean, I can’t say for certain, but I think they’re the same pair Sir Charles wears every time he puts his foot in his mouth on TV.

The promotion of Craig Conroy to GM of the Calgary Flames was worth a two-minute bit on Sportsnet Central and three minutes on TSN SportsCentre, and it wasn’t top of the news on either (15 minutes into the show on Sportsnet, 18 minutes on TSN). Now, how do you suppose our two national sports networks will react when a puff of white smoke goes up at Scotiabank Arena in the Republic of Tranna, signalling the arrival of a new GM for the Toronto Maple Leafs? Try this: Lead story, sound bites featuring everyone from Justin Bieber to Doug Ford to King Chuckie and Her Royal Missus, analysis from Jeff O’Dog, Marty Biron, Noodles, Gino Reda, Bob McKenzie, James Duthie, Pierre LeBrun, Dregs, Elliotte Friedman, Frankie Corrado, Frank Seravalli, Ray Ferraro, Tessa Bonhomme, Craig Button, Mike Johnson, Jennifer Botterill, Kelly Hrudey, Kevin Bieksa, David Amber, Ron MacLean and Anthony Stewart, to be followed by a five-day, five-part documentary on the life and times of the new guy. Why, it’ll be such a grand production that Cheryl Pounder might even drag a brush through her hair.

Apparently Brad Treliving is the front runner for the GM job in The ROT. Little wonder. I mean, look what he’s done for Matthew Tkachuk’s career.

The Saskatchewan Roughriders have a big extravaganza planned for their home opener on the Flattest of Lands, June 16 vs. Winnipeg. They’re billing it as Dad’s Night Out and it will feature all sorts of dad things, like the inaugural Roughrider Cornhole tournament and a halftime sing-song with Kim Mitchell, who’s actually older than the Canadian Football League. I’d suggest Kim’s a bit too wrinkled to be rockin’ and rollin’, but he’s two years younger than me so I won’t go there.

Looks like the Washington Commanders are about to become a team to be named later due to a patent/trademark snag for the NFL franchise. Seems there are already claims on Commanders. So how about the Washington Swamp? I mean, it doesn’t get much more reptilian than the creatures who inhabit the American House and Senate, does it?

What does Brooks Koepka’s success in the PGA Championship tell us about LIV Golf? Nothing we didn’t already know. We knew there were elite players among the renegades who took the money and ran from the PGA Tour, so it was inevitable that one would win a golf major. It will happen again, and no one should be surprised.

The PGA-LIV golf duality is no different than the NHL and World Hockey Association in days of yore. The NHL housed the majority of the elite players and many among the rabble pooh-poohed the WHA product. Except the upstarts had considerable star power (Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretzky, Dave Keon, Bernie Parent, Gerry Cheevers, Mark Howe, Teddy Green, J.C. Tremblay, Andre Lacroix, Marc Tardif, Ulf Nilsson, Anders Hedberg, Vaclav Nedomansky, etc.) and, according to Curtis Walker’s WHA Hall of Fame website, the WHA had a winning record in friendlies vs. the NHL: 35-30-8.

Club professional Michael Block on what it was like being paired with Rory McIlroy in the final round of the PGA Championship last Sunday. “He’s a lot longer than I am. What I would shoot from where Rory hits would be stupid. I think I’d be one of the best players in the world. Hands down. If I had that stupid length, all day. My iron game, wedge game, around the greens, and my putting is world-class.” Ya, and if I could hit the high notes like Aretha Franklin I’d be on a world tour. But I do my singing in the shower, and Block gives golf lessons to put bread on his table.

And, finally, the women in my family have it all over the men when it comes to birthday candles. My Gran made it to age 100 before leaving for the great misty beyond, and my mom turned 95 on Friday. She’s in a care home and I doubt she realized it was her 95th, but it’s quite a milestone. Happy birthday, mom.

Let’s talk about hockey and the Hollywood hunk…Toronto Sun still playing the NFL card while the Argos still playing football…fairy tales in the TSN booth…prose and panhandling at the Drab Slab…old man Bones getting the job done with Winnipeg Jets…P.K. takes his slew foots to ESPN…and other things on my mind…

Top o’ the morning to you, Ryan Reynolds.

I must say, you sure know how to make a splash without doing anything, other than flapping your gums. The rest of us flap our gums and…crickets. But, hey, you’re a big-time Hollywood star, and a sound bite from a big-time Hollywood star is all it takes to get other gums flapping, especially if you’re perched on a chair beside Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

(Quick aside, Ryan: I’m not a Jimmy Fallon fan. I guess he’s a talented guy and people seem to like him, but not as many as in 2014 when he landed The Tonight Show gig and 11 million people tuned in. Today his audience is 2 million, or thereabouts, a dramatic dip that suggests it’s not just my own self who’s found him to be a fawning fool as a host on late-night gab TV.)

Anyway, Ryan, this isn’t about your buddy’s ratings. It’s about you telling Jimmy that you’re on the sniff for a “sugar mommy or sugar daddy,” a filthy rich someone willing to dip into her/his pockets and aid you in a bid to buy the Ottawa Senators.

I caught your natter with Fallon and here’s what I thought, Ryan: It’s only fitting that an actor wants to purchase Ottawa HC. After all, the Senators have been play-acting as an National Hockey League team for the past five seasons.

Ya, I went for a cheap laugh, Ryan, (Ta-dum! We’re here all week, folks.) just like you did with your quip to Jimmy F. about buying U.S. senators on your Tonight Show bit.

Seriously, though, this is what I really thought of your notion: What does it say when a guy worth $150 million needs a “sugar mommy or sugar daddy” to help him get a shiny, new toy? I mean, folks worth $150M shouldn’t be looking for sugar mommies or daddies. People ought to be coming to you for handouts, Ryan.

But I get it.

Forbes, after all, put a sticker price of $525 million on the Senators a year ago, and Sportico pegged the franchise at $655 million just last month, so it’s not like you’re looking to buy a newly knitted ugly Christmas sweater or a dinky toy (do they still make those things?) to put under the tree next month. Even if you and your bride, Blake Lively, coupled your fortunes, $180 million will only get you a tank of gas for the Zamboni. And maybe a backup goaltender, although he’d have to moonlight and drive the Zamboni.

So, sure, bring on the sugar mommy and/or daddy if that’s what it takes, Ryan. We can’t have enough Hollywood celeb owners.

I think John Candy was the last one we had up here on our Frozen Tundra, when he threw in with Wayne Gretzky and Bruce McNall to bankroll the Toronto Argos. That worked out okay. The Boatmen won the Grey Cup and Candy was a delightful diversion for all who follow Rouge Football. And I suppose Humpty Harold Ballard qualified as a celeb bankroll while paying the bills for the Toronto Maple Leafs and Hamilton Tabbies, but I don’t recall anyone ever calling him Hollywood Harold. More like Hoosegow Harold.

No doubt they’d love you as a front man in Bytown, Ryan, because you’re a nice blend of Tinsel Town star power and aw shucks, home boy charm, a guy who does right by others without being phony or loud about it.

I hope it works out for you, Ryan. And, hey, if you find your sugar mommy or daddy, don’t let them talk you into doing something totally daft. You know, like selling the next Daniel Alfredsson or Erik Karlsson for a bag of pucks. Don’t be like Eugene.

That was quite an emotional pre-game scene on Friday night in the Republic of Tranna, where Toronto Maple Leafs great Borje Salming stepped front and centre (with assistance from Darryl Sittler) and received a warm greeting from the gathering at Scotiabank Arena. Salming is suffering from ALS, so send a kind thought his way.

I was a perfect 0-2 in forecasting the opening salvo of the Canadian Football League playoffs last weekend, and I blame it all on TSN natterbug Davis Sanchez, because he confuses me. Chezy aside, I like the Winnipeg Blue Bombers over the B.C. Leos in Good Ol’ Hometown this afternoon, and the Toronto Argos over the Montreal Larks at a half empty BMO Field. (I actually think the Larks will prevail, but I don’t fancy Danny Maciocia’s smugness, so I want him to lose.)

During the buildup to today’s Argos-Larks skirmish, the Toronto Sun devoted a full page to the pipe-dream prospect of the NFL chipping in to construct an NFL-worthy stadium in the Republic of Tranna. “CHEERING FOR T.O.” was the headline. Surely to gawd they could have chosen a better time to run that piece. Like, oh I don’t know, never! But I guess The ROT’s obsession with four-down football will never end, and the tabloid is happy to play along.

Interesting how newspapers with dogs in the fights played the Rouge Football division finals in their sports sections today:
Winnipeg Sun: Front page of paper, sports Pages 1-8.
Winnipeg Free Press: Sports P. 1-2.
Vancouver Province: Sports P. 6-8.
Toronto Sun: Sports P. 6-7.
Toronto Star: Sports P. 8.
Montreal Gazette: Sports P. 2.
In Good Ol’ Hometown, the tabloid Sun absolutely mauled the broadsheet Drab Slab with its coverage.

Okay, once again, why do the squawk boxes on TSN insist on lying to us about head counts for Rouge Football games?

I mean, to listen to Glen Suitor last Sunday, half the people in Vancouver were crammed into B.C. Place Stadium to witness the Leos-Calgary Stampeders grass-grabber. More than once he mentioned the place was “packed” (there was repeated reference to an audience numbering “close” to 40,000) and that the Leos had created the “template” for turning around a sagging franchise.

As if.

The ballyard in Vancouver accommodates 54,500. Attendance: 30,114. That’s not “close” to 40,000 and, if my math is correct, it’s 24,386 empty chairs. Ergo, not “packed.”

So let’s deal in facts rather than the fiction Suits was spewing:

The Leos attracted 20,387 customers per game during the regular season, a notable hike of 7,879 from a year ago. That’s boffo stuff. They twice sold out the lower bowl at B.C. Place Stadium, first for the home-opener that featured a OneRepublic concert, and for last weekend’s West Division semifinal. Again, boffo stuff.

That tells us team bankroll Amar Doman and his worker bees have done a remarkable and praiseworthy job in their quest to make the Leos relevant on the Left Flank of the land again, so accentuate the positive but spare us the bedtime fairy tales.

What’s the over/under on how often Suitor mentions “three chords and the truth, baby” during today’s Blue Bombers-Leos skirmish for bragging rights in the West Division? Whatever it is, I’ll take the over.

As the Grey Cup game approaches, I find myself wondering if this is the year the Football Reporters of Canada finally vote a female scribe/talking head into the Canadian Football Hall of Fame. I’ve been touting Robin Brown, Joanne Ireland, Judy Owen and Ashley Prest as hall-worthy for years, because they have the bona fides and it’s wrong that the media wing of the CFHF remains an all-boys club this deep into the 21st century. If the world’s oldest golf club, the Royal Burgess in Edinburgh, has finally opened its doors to women, surely the FRC can, too.

At a time when more and more toxicity in sports is being unearthed, Judy Owen’s piece on the Bombers culture is a refreshing read. Judy’s been churning out Rouge Football copy, on and off, for more than a quarter-century, and it’s nice to know she still has the touch.

On the subject of the write stuff, Jeff Hamilton of the Drab Slab delivers a major takeout on Winnipeg FC QB Zach Collaros. It’s an easy, informative read, so pour yourself a cup of java, settle in, and enjoy Jeff’s scribbling.

The Drab Slab has gone PBS on us, panhandling online by asking 1,500 readers and/or friends to pony up $150 apiece and join something called the Free Press Patron program. The annual $225,000 cash grab is (supposedly) required due to lost advertising revenue and no more feeding at the public trough, and it will (supposedly) “safeguard the future of the Free Press and journalism that matters.” Hmmm. If I’m going to donate $150 of my meager pension to a panhandling newspaper, I want them to hire a sports columnist who stays home to write about the Bombers instead of swanning off to Calgary and Seattle for ho-hum games No. 13 and 14 of the Winnipeg Jets 82-match marathon. That’s just wrong. Every local sports columnist from Rouge Football playoffs past must be spinning like a lathe in his grave, even those who aren’t yet in the grave.

Watched both TSN SportsCentre and Sportsnet Central in the small hours this morning, and couldn’t help but notice the avalanche of American college football highlights. Meantime, there was no mention of Canadian U Sports football playoffs on TSN, and Sportsnet showed highlights from two skirmishes in Eastern Canada and ignored the University of Saskatchewan Huskies 23-8 victory over the UBC Thunderbirds. Typical, also pathetic.

The removal of the ‘C’ from Blake Wheeler’s jersey was the most obvious indication that the Jets no longer have their wagon tied to the veteran winger, and additional evidence can be found on the freeze. He’s now a second-line performer whose ice-time allotment averaged 19:12 a year ago but has been slashed to 17:08 through 13 skirmishes this time around, with no negative impact on his production. Hmmm. Why didn’t Paul Maurice think of that? Whatever, the Wheeler Window has been closed, and it appears the Jets have a better chance of doing some damage in the Stanley Cup merry-go-round next spring with the former captain in a supporting role.

Just curious: If Dusty Baker can manage the Houston Astros—and win the World Series—at age 73, why did many among the rabble think Rick Bowness was too long-in-tooth for the Jets coaching gig at age 67? How do you like the old man so far, people?

Sideshow Gary Bettman was in Good Ol’ Hometown last week, and the NHL commish informed news snoops that empty seats in the Little Hockey House On The Prairie is no biggie. “I don’t think there’s an attendance issue,” he said. Hmmm. I suppose when you have another franchise that maxes out at 5,000 customers in the Arizona desert, 13,000+ doesn’t look so bad.

I’m guessing Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman, the 3rd Baron Thomson of Fleet and the bean counters at True North Sports + Entertainment don’t view 1,000+ unoccupied chairs in the Little Hockey House the same as Commish Gary. I’m guessing they think it’s “an issue” and it sucks. But, since the Puck Pontiff delivers fewer sound bites than a street mime, we really don’t know what he’s thinking.

What kind of scheduling is this? The Calgary Flames put the wrap on a three-games-in-four-nights road swing on the East Coast, then they were required to scurry across the continent from Boston to Calgary, where a Jets outfit that had played one game in six nights sat in wait. So how did Winnipeg HC conspire to lose 3-2 last night?

An aside to those among the rabble in E-Town who’ve soured on Jack Campbell’s goaltending and demand to see Mike Smith back in the blue paint for the Oilers: That’s like asking Bonnie and Clyde to guard your valuables.

Hey, former defenceman P.K. Subban has landed a job talking about all things NHL on ESPN. Apparently his contract includes a clause that allows him to step outside the studio and slew foot anyone on the street whenever he’s feeling frisky.

Did you know there’s a National Toy Hall of Fame in the U.S.? Yup, true story. It’s in Rochester, N.Y., and they just announced the newest inductees—the spinning top, Masters of the Universe and Lite Brite. I’d say the salute to the top is long overdue, because the twirling toy has been around for about 5,000 years, or the same amount of time it’ll take Pete Rose to get into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

There’s been a lot of yakkety-yak lately comparing Flightline to Secretariat. Well, let me say this about that: Whoa Nellie! I watched Flightline romp to the wire in the Breeders Cup Classic last weekend, and it was gobsmackingly brilliant, but my measuring stick for race horses is the giddyup they show in the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes. Until a pony comes along and betters Secretariat’s record in all three gallops, I’ll take Big Red every time.

Oh, dear, the universe is not unfolding as the U.S. women’s national soccer side would have it. Motormouth Megan Rapinoe and the Yankee Doodle Damsels were beaten 2-1 by Germany the other night in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., their third consecutive L in friendlies and first on their star-spangled homeland in more than five years. The team only an American can like had gone unbeaten in 71 successive matches inside U.S. borders. Longtime national team member Carli Lloyd suggests accountability has taken a hit in the U.S. side, saying it “has been slowly fizzling away. Wanting to win has taken on a different meaning.” Meantime, our Canadian women have won five friendlies in a row, the latest a 2-1 verdict over Brazil in Santos on Friday, so the stars and planets are aligning on our side of the great U.S.-Canada divide.

George Costanza and The Boss, George Steinbrenner.

Just a thought: If George Steinbrenner was still picking up the tab for the New York Yankees would he have allowed home run king Aaron Judge to reach free agency? Over George Costanza’s dead body.

From the department of You Can’t Make This Stuff Up: The Houston Astros managed to win the World Series earlier this month without using garbage cans to cheat (we think), then, scant days later, they tied the can to GM James Click and assistant GM Scott Powers. What, they didn’t cheat enough?

There are loud rumblings that the most bitter of men, grumpy Greg Norman, soon will be out as mouthpiece for the Saudi-moneyed LIV Golf Series. The Saudis deny they plan to DQ the Shark. But, hey, they also deny killing people.

And, finally…

Let’s talk about Paul Maurice, the Festivus pole, looking for strawberries and a statue of the Rink Rat

Top o’ the morning to you, Paul Maurice.

Are you feeling it, Coach PoMo? Did you feel a bit of a burn when you sat down for your Corn Flakes this morning? If so, I’m guessing it isn’t a fresh batch of hemorrhoids kicking in. More like the back end of your trousers taking on a warm glow from that seat you’re sitting on, because I have to think it’s finally heating up.

Not that I believe your ouster as bench puppeteer of the Winnipeg Jets is imminent, understand. It’s too late into this year’s frolic for that, Coach PoMo.

Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman and general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff will let you see the Jets through this National Hockey League crusade, even as it’s taken a nasty, abrupt turn south and, as my old boss Jack Matheson used to say when the Winnipeg Blue Bombers hit the skids, this is no time for a toboggan ride.

You’re just eight games removed from Beard Season, Coach PoMo, and your lads have hit a patch as rough as Jumbo Joe Thornton’s chin whiskers, losing your last four skirmishes, including a 6-1 paddywhacking from the Edmonton McDavids that dropped you into third place in the Hoser Division on Monday night.

Many among the rabble have begun to mutter and curse about another now-you-see-’em, now-you-don’t playoff appearance, and it’s hard to disagree with them.

So I’m guessing life really bites right about now, Coach PoMo. Well, okay, not big-picture life, because I’m hoping all is well on the home front, but the hockey portion of your life must smell like the inside of a laundry hamper.

Speaking of which, you used to do your dirty laundry in-house, Coach PoMo, but a couple of the boys have gone rogue and aired it out in public.

After you hauled Connor Hellebuyck’s hide out of the blue paint 12 minutes into a game last week, your Vezina Trophy-winning goaltender bitched about it to news snoops. Said it was dumb coaching. No, he didn’t use those exact words, Coach PoMo, but when he says “I don’t think I should have been pulled” and his game “was good enough to win,” we don’t need someone from homeland security to decode the message. Hellebuyck was saying you made a dumb decision.

Then, two nights later, you “pissed off” your leading scorer, Rink Rat Scheifele, by plunking him on the pine and leaving him there to rot and stew for 13 minutes. You didn’t appreciate that your assistant captain ignored the “core values” you’ve established, and staying on the ice too long and dogging it back to the bench is taboo. So, like Bucky, the Rink Rat wasn’t shy about sharing his thoughts with news snoops, saying, “I don’t agree with him benching me” and admitting he was “pissed off.”

Yes, Coach PoMo, I realize a nice, old lady like myself shouldn’t be repeating that kind of raw language, but when the boys are PO’d and bitching on record it’s noteworthy. Besides, there’s a reason I call you Coach Potty Mouth, and it isn’t because you talk like a choir boy. You’ve said much worse, in public. So I’ll wash my mouth out with a bar of soap if you will.

Anyway, as much as the losing skid is disturbing, the sideshow might be more worrisome.

I mean, you know what happens when the workers put up the Festivus pole and go public with an airing of grievances, don’t you Coach PoMo. That’s right. Soon enough the mates take control of the ship and you become Captain Queeg looking for the missing strawberries.

I’m not suggesting you have a mutiny on your hands, Coach PoMo, and Rink Rat Scheifele is spot on when he says coaches and players don’t have to agree “on everything.”

But we know that he and Hellebuyck aren’t the first Jets with a bone to pick (see: Evander Kane, Jacob Trouba, Big Buff, Jack Roslovic, Patrik Laine), and it’s interesting to note that all the malcontents have been run out of Dodge and you’re still here. Ownership/management has never looked at you in matters of player discontent, Coach PoMo. They’ve always looked the other way. Which is why I’ve long held that you’ll survive all tempests that arrive at your doorstep.

I doubt you can win a public hissing contest with Scheifele and Hellebuyck, though. That’s spitting into the wind, tugging on Superman’s cape, and telling Mike Tyson he talks funny.

Winning, of course, will make all this go away, and by that I mean in the Stanley Cup tournament. It doesn’t really matter what transpires on the freeze during the remainder of the regular season, because you’re locked into a playoff position and whether you’re the second or third seed is irrelevant.

It’s all about what you do in Beard Season, Coach PoMo, and right now a deep run looks like a daunting chore.

I never thought I’d say this, Coach PoMo, but I’m no longer convinced that you have a lifetime contract to work the Jets bench. Another one-and-done should be the end.

But, what the heck, that will give you plenty of spare time for chores around the house and to work on that statue of Rink Rat Scheifele.

Let’s talk about our Leading Lady of the Links…Rink Rat Scheifele in the Bow Wow Bungalow for dogging it…the Toronto Maple Blue Meanies…Ponytail Puck and gender bias…CFL is showing some leg…Hockey Night in Canada in tongues…Chucklehead Barkley…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and the Oscar for excellence in (computer) screen writing certainly doesn’t go to this blog…

We can all use a little good news these days and, thankfully, we have Brooke Henderson for that.

Brooke is the 20-dollar bill you find in the pocket of an old coat you haven’t worn for a year. She’s that unexpected job promotion that includes a corner office. She’s waking up early in the morning and realizing you can sleep in for another hour or two. Nothing but nice surprises.

The 23-year-old is also one of those special athletes who make you feel like you’re right there beside her as she puts the finishing brush strokes on another work of art and flashes that winning smile, which the 5-feet-4 mighty mite did in the final round of the LA Open at Wilshire Country Club in Los Angeles on Saturday.

Our Leading Lady of the Links took 67 swings to get the job done and nail down her 10th victory on the LPGA Tour, ending a win-free stretch dating back to June 2019.

The irony, of course, is that while the delightful native of Smiths Falls brought greater golf glory to a province ravaged by COVID-19, no one in Ontario is allowed to tee it up, meaning the next Brooke Henderson out there is on hold.

“I think golf is a great way to be outdoors and get some exercise, and it’s really unfortunate that they’re shut down right now,” Brooke told the Toronto Star. “Hopefully they’ll open up sooner than later. It’s a great way to, like I said, get exercise, fresh air and also have a little bit of social (interaction) by doing it pretty safely.”

That’s Brooke Henderson: A ray of sunshine in the gloom.

Do I smell a scandal brewing in Good Ol’ Hometown? Have feathers been ruffled? I mean, Rink Rat Scheifele spent some time in coach Paul Maurice’s pooch palace on Saturday night for, appropriately enough, dogging it. Coach PottyMo plunked Scheifele on the pine and kept the Winnipeg Jets’ leading point-collector in the Bow Wow Bungalow for 12 minutes and 53 seconds during the second period of the home side’s 4-1 smackdown by the Toronto Maple Leafs, and there’s no way to put a happy face on that. We await the fallout in these Doghouse Days of April.

Can anyone tell me exactly when those big, bad, blue meanies from the Republic of Tranna supposedly became a bunch of dirty, rotten no-goodniks who steal lunch money? I’ve never once thought of Zach Hyman as a dirty hockey player, even if he mistook Neal Pionk’s coconut for a pinata. Jumbo Joe Thornton and Nick Foligno? Sure, they’ve been known to play with an edge and take no prisoners. But Alex Galchenyuk? Come on, man. He’s as menacing as a kid with a pea shooter. But to hear it, the Leafs are Hells Angels on skates. There hasn’t been this much talk about T.O. toughness since Conn Smythe muttered something about beating ’em in the alley. But the Toronto Maple Blue Meanies they ain’t. The Jets and their faithful have to get over it and get on with it, even if it might mean elbows high.

When a sports scribe feels obliged to inform his readers that he isn’t a “homer” for fear they might view his essay on the home team getting beat up as homerism, chances are he’s a homer. Just saying.

Apparently, the best female hockey players on the Big Blue Orb aren’t allowed to have nice things anymore, like their best-on-best world tournament, scuttled (for now) by politicians unwilling to open the Nova Scotia border to visitors from hither and yon for fear they might have the deadly COVID-19 virus as a travelling companion.

So it’s deja vu all over again for the women, whose world showcase is now a once-cancelled (2020), twice-postponed (2021) event due to the killer pandemic.

Except, while they’re left holding the bag (or, in this case, unpacking their travel bags) and await word on new dates and/or locale, it’s business as usual for the boys/men operating under the International Ice Hockey Federation banner.

World Junior championship: Been there, done that in Edmonton.
U18 championship: Drop the puck in Frisco and Plano, Texas, on Monday.
World championship: Still good to go, May 21-June 6, in Riga, Latvia.

Looks like, walks like, talks like, smells like gender bias, no?

It’s understandable, therefore, that practitioners of Ponytail Puck are feeling like red-haired, freckle-faced stepchildren these days.

“Without pointing a finger and placing blame, because we can’t really compare our tournament location to any other tournament, every government has their own guidelines so I definitely want to make that clear, but I just feel like it’s very hard not to look at it from a gender standpoint because it seems like a little bit of a trend,” Team Canada forward Sarah Nurse told Donna Spencer of the Canadian Press.

“It’s hard not to look at it through that lens for sure.”

Well, Sarah might want to take another peek through “that lens,” or at least get out the Windex and give it a thorough cleaning.

First of all, Premier Iain Rankin is the scoundrel who pulled the plug on the world tournament, initially scheduled for April 7-17 then reworked for May 6-16 in Halifax and Truro, N.S., and there’s nothing to indicate he performed the dirty deed because most of the players tie their hair in ponytails.

Second, at last count the IIHF had cancelled 18 men’s events this year, that after scuttling the world championship and 14 other tournaments in 2020. Do the math: 33 men’s events chopped.

Thus, unless Sarah Nurse or anyone in Ponytail Puck can produce compelling and unassailable evidence to the contrary, this wasn’t a decision based on gender, even if some, like Kendall Coyne Scofield, choose to take that narrative and shout it from rooftops or bark about it on Twitter.

“Like so many of us, I’m tired of saying this…but even more exhausted from feeling it: Women’s hockey, once again, deserves more and better,” the U.S. national team captain huffed and puffed. “We deserve a World Championship before the end of this hockey season—it has been 739 days since the last.”

True.

And it’s been 700 days since the last men’s world, with no guarantee they’ll actually get on the ice in Latvia next month.

Coyne Schofield went on to scold the IIHF for not having a Plan B and immediately shuffle the women’s world to an alternate site, adding, “This response shows the lack of care that the IIHF had when it came to making sure the Women’s Worlds was successful like the other international hockey events we have so joyfully watched over the last year and will be watching very soon.”

One of Coyne Schofield’s American accomplices, Hilary Knight, provided the backup vocals, saying the postponement is “just another reminder that women’s hockey continues to be treated as an afterthought. Why is women’s hockey not afforded the same opportunity to compete within a bubble environment as the men? Why is our tournament expendable when others are not?”

Again, the biting disappointment is understandable, but making it a goose-and-gander squawk misses the mark.

So, repeat after me, kids: This women’s tournament was postponed not because it’s a women’s tournament, it was scuttled (for now) because Nova Scotia Premier Iain Rankin (right or wrong) believed it to be a grave health risk to his constituents.

It’s a COVID thing, not a she thing.

The Coyne Schofield harrumph brought Hailey Salvian of The Athletic into the fray with this take: “Kendall Coyne Schofield is the captain of Team USA and one of the best players in the women’s game, so her statement carries a ton of weight here. And it’s more than just the women’s worlds she is speaking about. It’s women’s hockey as a whole, which most players will tell you is consistently an afterthought. Look no further than the fact that the women’s hockey calendar since 2019 has almost entirely been wiped out at the professional and international level. And while the women sit at home, the men (for the most part) continue to play.” Hailey, who’s done some fabulous work on the Ponytail Puck file, ought to know better than to play the gender card. As for the women’s game being “almost entirely wiped out” since 2019, much of that is of their own authorship. The Canadian Women’s Hockey League shuttered its doors in spring of that year and, rather than link up with the National Women’s Hockey League and create a super league, the survivors went rogue to form the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, choosing to participate in a series of hit-and-miss friendly matches (Dream Gap Tour) that are glorified scrimmages and largely ignored. Seldom on the ice, the non-professional PWHPA has expended much energy sniping at the NWHL because it won’t get out of the way. So, yes, it’s an absolute shame that the women’s world event has been put on hold, but it’s also a shame Ponytail Puck can’t get its house in order.

So, let me see if I’ve got this straight: Premier Rankin of Nova Scotia pulls the plug on the women’s world showcase at the 11th hour because of COVID-19, a decision that led the rank-and-file of the PWHPA, also their friends in the media, to raise a skunk-level stink with direct accusations of gender bias against the IIHF. But wait. Correct me if I’m wrong (I’m not), but didn’t the PWHPA postpone its very own scheduled showcase in St. Louis earlier this month? At the 11th hour? By gosh, they sure did. Why? COVID-19. What, no Plan B? They couldn’t move it to another locale on a moment’s notice? No and no. But they say they’ll reschedule the event. You know, just like the IIHF. Funny how that works.

This from Tara Slone of Sportsnet in a natter with Canadian national team forward Natalie Spooner: “We have to talk about the PWHPA. The Dream Gap Tour has been, you know, pretty full swing south of the border…” Okay, I get it. Slone is a PWHPA groupie. She’ll never toss a tough question at Spooner or any of the Dream Gappers. It’s forever fluff. But does she have to lie to us? I mean, to say the Dream Gap Tour is in “full swing” is to say six Hearts and five Clubs is a full deck of cards. They’ve completed two stops this year, in Gotham and Chicago, and a third stop in St. Louis was postponed with no makeup date set. Total friendlies played 115 days into 2021: 4. I’m reasonably certain that Slone knows four skirmishes in 115 days is not “full swing.” For all the good work Sportsnet does on the female athletes file, it’s puzzling why they allow Slone and others to pander to the PWHPA rather than engage in meaningful and truthful dialogue about big-picture Ponytail Puck.

At the recent Canadian Football League global draft, 11 kickers/punters were selected by the nine teams, including four in the first round. There hasn’t been that much interest in legs since Betty Grable became every American GI’s favorite pinup girl during WWII.

For the youngsters in the audience, Betty Grable was an actor, singer, dancer and model, and the Gable gams once were insured for $1 million, which translates into $14.6 million today.

On the subject of body parts, Hockey Night in Canada was broadcast/streamed in 10 different tongues on Saturday night. It would have been 11 different languages, except Don Cherry was fired a year and a half ago.

The owner of Linnie’s Pub in Cincinnati is refusing to show National Basketball Association games until LeBron James is “expelled” from the league. “They just need to play the game and that’s it,” Jay Linneman says. “Their opinion doesn’t really matter. They’re using their position to push their opinion, and that’s just not right.” Number of night’s sleep King James has lost because of Linneman’s protest: Zero.

Sometimes Charles Barkley makes me laugh. Other times he makes me cringe. Last week, for example, he used his Inside the NBA on TNT pulpit for misogyny disguised as frat boy humor. “Georgia the only school in the world they named their mascot after the women down there,” Barkley said. The University of Georgia mascot, if you didn’t know, is a bulldog, and Uga X is no one’s notion of pretty. Sadly, it wasn’t the first time Sir Chucklehead has used women as fodder to feed his funny bone. Like his take on the female citizenry of San Antonio. “Some big ol’ women down there … that’s a gold mine for Weight Watchers,” he said. “Victoria is definitely a secret (in San Antonio)…they can’t wear no Victoria’s Secret down there. They wear big, ol’ bloomers down there. They ain’t wearin’ no…ain’t nothin’ skimpy down in San Antonio.” Yo, Chuck. It’s the 21st century calling.

It’s about that now-you-see-us, now-you-don’t bully gambit by European soccer power brokers hoping to form a breakaway Super League: I’m not saying the venture was short-lived, but I’ve taken pee breaks that lasted longer.

Loud shoutout to Pat O’Neill, equipment manager of the Vancouver Canucks who reached the 3,000-game milestone last week. You might not know this, but Patty got his start sharpening skates, washing jocks and serving as a sounding board for the quirky, the demanding and the pampered of the NHL in Good Ol’ Hometown with the Jets in the 1980s. As I recall, he usually had a friendly greeting for us pesky scribes when we would invade the inner sanctum, which automatically qualifies him one of the good guys.

Another loud shoutout to Jeff Hamilton of the Drab Slab. His six-part series about the shattered lives left behind by sexual predator Graham James has been shortlisted for two national journalism awards. A Stain On Our Game was fabulous work, even if much of the content was grim reading.

The Winnipeg Sun last Wednesday: 2 sports pages, 2 sports stories, both on the Jets. That’s rock bottom and, as a Sun sports alum, it truly saddens me.

On the same day, this was the page count for Postmedia sports sections (tabloid) across the tundra:

Vancouver Province 15
Toronto Sun 12
Ottawa Sun 8
Edmonton Sun 8
Calgary Sun 7
Winnipeg Sun 2

Talk about your red-headed, freckle-faced stepchild. Five papers get to sit at the big table with the grownups while the Winnipeg Sun is stuck in another room at the kiddies’ table with the nieces, nephews and cousins they scarcely know.

And, finally, Conservative MP Tamara Jansen of Cloverdale-Langley City in B.C. believes “lesbian activity” can be cured with conversion therapy. Well, I plan a full schedule of “lesbian activity” today. You know, make breakfast, watch a movie or two, check/send some emails, maybe step outside for a walk around the block or go for a pint at my local watering hole, make dinner, watch a bit of the Oscars, go to bed. I wonder if all the straight people know there’s a cure for all the “lesbian activity” they engage in during the day.

Let’s talk about chess with Swamp Dog…bravo Jennifer Jones…flush go the Habs…TSN’s flawed ‘Toba Top 10…Shaq’s name game…Ali vs. Tiger…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and, sadly, one of the old gang from the Trib, Swamp Dog Rauw, has left us…

The thing I remember most fondly about Murray Rauw is playing chess in the small hours of the morning, after we’d put the sports section to bed at the Winnipeg Tribune.

Swamp Dog and I would unwind from the grind by retreating to my modest dwelling on Leighton Avenue in East Kildonan, whereupon I would crack open the brown pops while he cracked open one of my many chess sets.

There’d be Beatles music playing in the background—on the down low since all others in the house were in slumber—and I would quietly sing along with the Fab Four while Swamp Dog contemplated a next misguided move that surely would lead to checkmate or stalemate. I sometimes wondered if my singing disturbed his thought process, but he never offered so much as a mumble in protest.

Swamp Dog seldom complained, although a small flap of fuss is how he earned his delightful nickname.

I was in the cockpit one night, laying out the Trib sports pages, while others wrote their stories, edited copy, wrote headlines, handled the phones and did rewrites. Swamp Dog, still reasonably new to staff, had two or three things on the go.

“Murray,” I said at one point, interrupting his work, “I need you to do something.”

“Me?” he yelped. “Me? I’m swamped!”

“You’re swamped?” I responded, snickering. “Let me tell you something about being swamped.”

I informed him how it worked in the Trib sports department. We were all multi-taskers, often expected to handle more than one beat on the same day. It was not uncommon for a select few of us to cover an event in the morning or afternoon, write our article, then design a six- or seven-page sports section that night. It made for long shifts, but it was an accepted part of the gig. Besides, most of us were young, full of P and V and eager to earn a “damn good stuff” from our sports editor, Jack Matheson.

“That’s okay,” I told Swamp Dog. “You just do what you’re doing. I’ll take care of the rest, because you’re swamped! You’re our Swamp Dog.”

Swamp Dog became a fabulous multi-tasker, skillfully covering everything from badminton to boxing to backing up Matty on the Blue Bombers beat, until Southam had the bad manners to stop the Trib presses for the final time in August 1980.

And now Swamp’s ticker has stopped.

Swamp Dog died last Sunday in Calgary, after a lengthy illness, and I spent much of the past week sifting through recollections of him and our cast of kooky characters at the Trib. (We would have made for a boffo sitcom.)

An unpretentious, fun guy, I can’t think of a former colleague who harbored a greater, more genuine appreciation for landing a sports writing gig than Swamp Dog. He was like a kid who sneaked in and out of the ice cream parlor every night without getting caught, and he never tried to hide his appreciation for his good fortune.

Swamp Dog made me laugh without trying. His eyeglasses, for example, were a trip. Back in the 1970s, they would sit at a 45-degree angle on the bridge of his nose, the large lenses plastered with very visible fingerprints from his constant but failed attempts to make the specs fit his face. His mustache drooped and would go months without a much-needed pruning. Then there was the day I learned he had tagged the lovely lady who would become his bride, Maureen, with the most unflattering of nicknames: Mush.

“Geez, Swamp, I don’t know many women who’d fancy being called Mush,” I said. “Doesn’t it bother Maureen?”

“Why would it?” he answered as if I had asked a very dumb question. “She’s my Mush.”

Once the Trib folded, both Swamp Dog and I found our way to Calgary, first him at the Herald and then myself at the Sun a couple years later. I didn’t know a soul, other than Swamp Dog, Maureen and the two people who had hired me. Swamp Dog promptly set me up to play slo-pitch on one of the city’s elite outfits, and he dragged me to his raquetball club. After our always-enjoyable matches, we’d sometimes retire to his home and Maureen would be kind enough to feed us.

Oddly enough, Swamp Dog and I never played another game of chess. I guess that was our Winnipeg thing. But we’d get together for some giggles, or he’d get serious on occasion and discuss his MS. He’d unfailingly inquire about my Uncle Dennis, who’d been confined to a wheelchair due to MS since I was a sprig.

After I left Calgary and returned to Good Ol’ Hometown, we seldom saw each other, basically when road assignments would take us to the Grey Cup, the Brier or Stanley Cup playoffs. The Canadian Football League and curling were his main beats, and he was among the best at both.

Foremost for me, though, are the personal recollections, and I smile at the memory of us shifting chess pieces across the board, his knight taking my rook or my bishop taking his queen. Eventually, one of us would notice the morning sun peeking through my living room drapes, and he’d take his leave.

Now Swamp Dog is gone permanently, but I’d say his sun is still shining—through Maureen and the kids, Josh and Cayley, and granddaughter Charlotte.

Rest easy, old friend.

The Grim Reaper has now fetched Matty, Swamp Dog, Gus Collins Uncle Vince Leah, and freelancers Harold Loster and Ronnie Meyers from our 1970s toy department at the Trib. And that’s not to forget photog Jon Thordarson, whom I always considered one of us. Those of us still drawing oxygen are in our 60s and 70s, or older, so Dave Komosky and I often wonder who’ll be next. My kidneys are suggesting it might be moi. If that’s how it shakes down, in lieu of flowers send laughter.

Big tip of the bonnet to Jennifer Jones, who’s now won more games at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts (159) than any curler. Ever. By the time she’s finished, Jen’s collection of Ws might be unbeatable, although I suppose Rachel Homan will have something to say about that. For now, though, Jen is the standard, and I say it’s only fitting and proper that someone from Winnipeg stands atop the heap. After all, Good Ol’ Hometown is the curling capital of the world, no matter what some folks in Alberta might want you to believe.

Is it just me, or does anyone else get the impression that the women at the Scotties have a whole lot more fun than the men at the Brier? Just saying.

Some people haven’t been impressed with the quality of play at the Scotties in Calgary. Too many flubbed shots. Iffy strategy. Well, what did you expect? I mean, they’d been away from the pebble for a year, and I’m guessing we’ll see a similar number of hairballs coughed up when the boys gather for the Brier at the end of this week.

Apparently it’s been so quiet at the fan-free Scotties that Saskatchewan skip Sherry Anderson says she “heard the toilet flush” while on the pebble the other day. But, hey, let’s not talk about the Montreal Canadiens.

I’m not saying the Habs’ hope for a successful crusade is down the toilet. If they can get rid of the imposter wearing Carey Price’s jersey, they might yet qualify for the Stanley Cup tournament. Then again, maybe O.J. will find the real killers.

Paul Stastny poached a goal from Twig Ehlers to give the Winnipeg Jets their 2-1 OT win over the Habs on Saturday night. You just don’t do that. It’s chintzy.

Let’s see if I’ve got this straight: Patrik Laine wanted first-line minutes skating alongside Rink Rat Scheifele, but Jets head coach Paul Maurice would have none of it. So they shipped him to Columbus. Now Pierre-Luc Dubois, the guy the Jets received in barter for Puck Finn, is getting first-line minutes skating alongside Scheifele. What am I missing here?

Dumb headline in the Winnipeg Sun: “Coach, teammates like new Jet Dubois.” Well, duh. What does anyone expect them to say? That he’s a sloth? Bring Patty back? Now that would be a story. The fact the Jets have warm-and-fuzzy feelings for the new kid in town isn’t newsworthy.

Good stuff from Mad Mike McIntyre in the Drab Slab on local Black shinny players who found their way to the upper levels of professional hockey. Among those he chatted with are Bill Riley and Ray Neufeld, one of the nicest men to wear Jets linen. It’s worth a look.

So why is it that I don’t believe Canadian Football League commish Randy Ambrosie when he tells us there’ll be Rouge Football this year, but I believe Winnipeg Blue Bombers CEO Wade Miller when he says the same thing? Maybe it’s because Wade transformed Winnipeg FC from a laughing stock into a Grey Cup champion, whereas Commish Randy couldn’t sell a spare tire to a guy with a flat.

Nice touch by TSN to serve up a Top 10 moments for Manitoba athletes last week. Except they should have consulted someone from the Keystone Province before revealing the list. There was no Clara Hughes collecting medals at both the Summer and Winter Olympics. There was no Donny Lalonde knocking Sugar Ray Leonard to the canvas. There was no George Knudson winning on the PGA Tour. There was no Bobby Clarke, the first captain of a National Hockey League expansion outfit to hoist the Stanley Cup. There was no Reggie Leach, scorer of 80 goals in the 1975-76 NHL season/playoffs. There was no Don Duguid going unbeaten to win consecutive world curling titles. No Jeff Stoughton. No University of Winnipeg Lady Wesmen hoops team winning 88 consecutive matches. But Anthony Coombs made the grade with a catch in a meaningless game for the Toronto Argos. Skeleton guy Jon Montgomery was featured drinking beer and pretending to be an auctioneer. Corey Koskie cracked the list for catching a foul ball in a game no one remembers. And Andrew Harris was featured running the ball for the B.C. Lions in a game no one remembers. Totally lame.

Shaquille O’Neal has taken some heat for his work as a TV analyst. It seems Shaq is unfamiliar with the first names of numerous National Basketball Association players, including Pascal Siakam of the Tranna Jurassics. “Oh, I never knew his first name,” Shaq confessed in a panel natter with Ernie Johnson in a recent NBA on TNT broadcast. I guess that makes Siakam the ultimate player to be named later.

Tim and Sid are no more. Well, okay Tim is still Micaleff and Sid is still Seixeiro, but they’re no longer Tim & Sid, after 17 years together on Sportsnet. Sid’s next gig is Breakfast Television in the Republic of Tranna and, given his penchant for goofing around, the show might become known as Dog’s Breakfast Television. Tim & Sid was sometimes-see TV for me, never must-see TV, but you don’t last that long without doing something right. Having said that, Tim drew a parallel between he and Sid breaking up and Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David parting ways. Uh, no. You don’t want to go there, man.

I’ve long admired James Duthie’s work on TSN. Who hasn’t? He’s witty, clever, knowledgeable and doesn’t take himself seriously. And he’s done it all without perfect hair and perfect teeth.

But when he waxed on about Tiger Woods last week…well, let’s just say he was showing his age.

“There’s not another…he’s the most famous athlete of our lives,” Duthie said of Woods in a squawk with Rod Smith. “Maybe you can make an argument Michael Jordan, Tom Brady, but there has been no more fascinating, complex character in sport in our lives.”

Good grief. Tom Brady is about as complex as Grade 1 arithmetic. He throws a football, wins the Super Bowl, then paints the town bland. The most fascinating thing he’s ever done is get drunk and hurl the Lombardi Trophy from one boat to another. Jordan? Best hoops player ever. Full stop.

Duthie wants fascinating and complex? Let me introduce him to Muhammad Ali, the boxer once known as Cassius Clay.

There were more layers to Ali than an onion. Let’s start with the name change, the Nation of Islam and the shift to Sunni Islam. Let’s talk about political activism and civil rights. Let’s talk about the U.S. government taking away his livelihood and untold millions of dollars for 3½ years because he refused to travel across the world to kill people in Vietnam. Let’s talk about his willingness to go behind bars rather than spray bullets. Let’s talk about the anger and hostility, then the warm admiration, of a nation. Let’s talk about a unanimous victory in the Supreme Court. Let’s talk about the Grammy nominations. Let’s talk about the movies and the Broadway musical. Let’s talk about whimsy, doggerel and rapping before rap was a thing. Let’s talk about the campus speaking tours. Let’s talk about the battle with Parkinson’s. Let’s talk about winning the world heavyweight title three times when it actually meant something. Let’s talk about the Rumble in the Jungle and the Thrilla in Manila. Let’s talk about media savvy. Let’s talk about showmanship and the oversized personality. Let’s talk about the multiple marriages and infidelities. Let’s talk about the irony of being meaner and more cruel to Black boxers than white fist-fighters.

Duthie is 54, which means he missed the opening act of the theatre that was Ali. He can’t relate to the Vietnam War or the civil rights movement of the 1960s, just as those who weren’t there when John Paul, George and Ringo invaded America can’t truly understand and appreciate Beatlemania.

But when he speaks of “our lives,” I have to assume that includes myself and those of my vintage.

Tiger Woods is arguably the finest to ever strike a dimpled ball. We marveled at his wizardry, how he would make the best in the game wither before they even teed it up on a Thursday. He was fascinating to watch. Gobsmackingly so. But whereas Ali allowed us inside his world, Woods tried to keep most everyone out. Except his many mistresses.

Other than his genius at golf, we knew nothing of Woods the person until caught with his trousers down and the tabloids exposed him as a raging philanderer. And, of course, he’s made headlines for getting behind the wheel of a luxury vehicle when it wasn’t wise. But cheating on your spouse and reckless driving hardly makes one fascinating or complex. It makes him one of a million guys.

So let’s put it this way: Given one word to describe Tiger Woods, it would be “golf.” Given one word to describe Muhammad Ali, it would be…sorry, can’t do it in one word. He was too fascinating and complex.

And, finally, looks like this will be a pizza-and-pebble day, because I’m hitting the couch and won’t budge until either Jen Jones or Kerri Einarson has (hopefully) won the Scotties Tournament of Hearts this evening.

Let’s talk about Bell’s bloodletting…Super thoughts and counting couch potatoes…girl talk in the board room…losing and boozing with Johnny Rotten…Coach Potty Mouth…the NHL’s second best Orr…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and the ground where I live is covered in a foreign fluffy, white substance. It bears a remarkable resemblance to snow, which I didn’t sign up for when I relocated to Victoria 21 years ago…

I know what it’s like to stir from slumber and discover you don’t have a job. Without warning. Not even a hint.

One night you’re helping put together the Winnipeg Tribune sports section, editing copy and writing headlines, and the next morning you’re informed that some suits in the Republic of Tranna have stopped the presses. Permanently.

Initially, you’re in denial. Naw. Can’t be. Surely the news reader on the radio got it wrong. It was the Ottawa Journal that went belly up, not the Trib.

So you dash downtown, expecting it to be business as usual once you step off an elevator and stroll into the fifth-floor newsroom. Then you gaze upon a collection of long faces and you see the front page headline—“Tribune ceases publication.” It’s true. After 11 years working your way from the business office to editorial copy runner to the Winnipeg Jets beat, you realize there’s no tomorrow. At least not the tomorrow you had mapped out.

Suddenly you’re searching for another job, at another newspaper, in another town. That wasn’t part of the plan. Resumé? Who needed a resumé? You were meant to retire at the Trib.

Friends and colleagues assure you that “a door shall swing open,” yet you can only think of the one that closed.

You’re still young, just 29, but you don’t share the level of confidence that others have in your ability. There’s a family to feed, a mortgage and bills to pay. The severance package is generous, but not sustaining over the long haul. The uncertainty and anxiety are gripping, if not crippling.

So, yes, I can relate to those caught up in the recent bloodletting at Bell Media.

More than 200 people are out of work, wondering what comes next after the “let’s talk” communications giant ransacked its radio and TV newsrooms hither and yon, a plundering that included pulling the plug on all-gab sports radio TSN 1290 in Good Ol’ Hometown and jock-speak stations in Vancouver and Hamilton.

Similar to us at the Trib on Aug. 27, 1980, the fatal blow was as ruthless as Charles Barkley barging his way to the front of the line at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Other than Troy Westwood, I don’t know any of the victims at TSN 1290, which is now CFRW and has gone to standup-comedy programming. (Quick question: How can we be sure that a comedian is standing up when it’s on radio?) No doubt some of the natterbugs will land another broadcasting gig. Others won’t be so fortunate, because it’s not as if radio stations are popping up like daisies in May.

Here’s the irony, though: What’s happened to them is among the very reasons they had a job squawking about sports.

Athletes, coaches and managers get fired. They go to the gallows every week, and their misfortune becomes fodder for the yackety-yack-yackers with 24 hours of air to fill.

Some see it coming, because they know the numbers or they know how to read a room.

Jeff Reinebold, for example, would have been a total doofus to believe a 6-26 record as head coach of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers was sufficient to keep him employed and playing Bob Marley tunes at practice.

Some dismissals come out of left field.

Dwane Casey was coach-of-the-year and the Tranna Jurassics set records for wins and points in 2018, but he was kicked to the curb because he had the bad manners to lose to LeBron James in the NBA playoff tournament.

And it works both ways. Dustin Byfuglien quit the Jets. Jim Rutherford quit the Pittsburgh Penguins. Jim Brown quit the Cleveland Browns to make movies. Barry Sanders quit the Detroit Lions. Andrew Luck quit the Indianapolis Colts. Ken Dryden quit the Montreal Canadiens. Bjorn Borg quit tennis. Annika Sorenstam quit golf. Rocky Marciano quit boxing.

Professional sports is a cold, harsh business, and that’s the operative word: Business.

Sports media is a large part of that business, and the talking heads and scribes aren’t exempt from the same fates as the men and women they talk and write about.

We don’t like to see good people out of work, of course, and I agree that gab guys Westwood, Jim Toth, Rick Ralph, Darrin Bauming, Brandon Rewucki, Brian Munz, Kevin Olszewski and the Hustler, Andrew Paterson at TSN 1290, got a raw deal. As did the others.

Sadly, it’s the way of the jock journo jungle. They’re all just one Bay Street suit’s whim away from the unemployment line.

But, at the very least, the dearly departed deserved a heads-up. Good luck to them all.

Insightful take on the Bell bloodletting from the talented Natasha Staniszewski, a casualty after close to 10 years of gracing our flatscreens: “When you get into this industry, you know you’re not getting into it for the job security,” the now-former TSN co-anchor told Sean Fitz-Gerald of The Athletic. “Media has never been safe. And throughout my whole career, there’s always been rumors of cuts here, or cuts there. You think that you should be prepared for it at all times. I will say last year, especially with COVID—when sports disappeared and there was no SportsCentre for a while—I felt that whole year was a little bit precarious. I kept telling myself, ‘Be ready: It could happen at any moment.’”

Here’s what I found myself wondering after the purge at TSN, TV division: How did the suits go about the business of picking and choosing those who stayed and those told to leave the building? I mean, I’m not sure I want to watch men’s soccer unless Kristian Jack is explaining the ins-and-outs to me, and why pull the plug on Staniszewski while Kayla Grey gets to squawk on?

Staying on the subject of blah, blah, blah, Yoshiro Mori is now former head of the Tokyo Olympic Games organizing group, because he couldn’t keep his lips zipped. Speaking at a recent gathering of the Japanese Olympic Committee, Mori suggested women talk too much: “On boards with a lot of women, the board meetings take so much time. Women have a strong sense of competition. If one person raises their hand, others probably think, I need to say something too. That’s why everyone speaks. You have to regulate speaking time to some extent. Or else we’ll never be able to finish.” He added that a woman’s perceived need to prattle on endlessly is “annoying.” Apparently Mori has never watched Terry Bradshaw on Fox NFL Sunday.

What was that sound we all heard during the fourth quarter of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 31-9 victory over Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl LV last Sunday? Oh, that’s right. Click! The couch potato count for the grass-grabber took a dip from a year ago, with 91.6 million watching on regular TV and 96.4 million when you include CBS’ other platforms. The 2020 number was 101.3 million. It’s not that 5 million folks found something better to do. It’s just that what a lot of people were saying in advance of the skirmish was true: Watching Tom Brady in another Super Bowl game was a real turnoff. Literally.

The only thing that surprised me about the Buccaneers championship boat parade was seeing Brady on one of the boats. I thought for sure he’d be walking on the water.

Hard to believe some are still debating Brady’s place among the greatest in history. I mean, the guy’s won the Super Bowl seven times. Jesus only walked on water once, and we still haven’t seen game film to confirm it actually happened.

Don’t count Lorraine Grohs among Brady’s legion of fans. She’s the daughter of Greg Grohs, the man who created and crafted the Lombardi Trophy, which the Bucs QB tossed from one boat to another during the parade. Lorraine says Brady “disgraced and disrespected” her pop’s handiwork, and she’s demanding a mea culpa. I’m thinking Brady will do what he does best—he’ll pass.

The NFL issued 4,000 fewer Super Bowl media credentials compared to last year. Breaking it down, that’s approximately 40,000 fewer dumb questions, 8,000 fewer free meals, 20,000 fewer free drinks, and 3,700 fewer poorly dressed men with ketchup stains on their shirts per day.

Not all numbers were down. The NFL set a Super Bowl record for most cardboard cutouts, with 30,000 faux fans propped up at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa. They went for $100 a pop, and now I hear the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has inquired about obtaining some for display. I call BS on that. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I say The Guess Who belong in the Rock Hall before a cardboard cutout of Ozzy Osbourne.

I understand why the NFL used faux fans, but Patrick Mahomes is demanding to know why Kansas City coach Andy Reid used cardboard cutouts instead of his regular offensive linemen.

I’m not saying Mahomes spent most of the game running for his life, but the Chiefs quarterback had more people chasing him than Dr. Richard Kimble.

Speaking of harassed quarterbacks, NFL/CFL/AAF washout Johnny Manziel says he has “zero interest, zero desire” to return to “serious” football. Great. Finally something we can agree on.

Johnny Rotten is doing his thing down in Georgia these days, playing with something called the Zappers in something called the Fan Controlled Football League, and he basically summed up his pro career after a season-opening loss: “Win or lose, we booze.”

There’s a chain of eateries and watering holes in Pittsburgh called Primanti Bros. They specialize in sandwiches. The owners say if the Steelers sign J.J. Watt to join brothers Derek and T.J., they’ll change the sandwich shop name to Watt Bros. And Steelers fans will say it’s the best thing since sliced bread.

For those of you scoring at home, I have Winnipeg Jets bench puppeteer Paul Maurice leading the field in salty talk this month, with one F-bomb, three horse shits and two pisses you offs in his natters with news snoops. That will never land Coach Potty Mouth a guest gig on Sesame Street, but it sure plays well when the audience is a gathering of (perceived) negative nabobs wielding notebooks and recording gadgets and panting for spicy sound bites.

On another scorecard, the name Paul Stastny has appeared on the tally sheet in just four of the Jets 14 skirmishes this National Hockey League crusade. He’s collected five of his eight points vs. the Ottawa Senators, a determined but over-matched outfit that’s managed three Ws in 16 assignments. That’s what $6.5 million buys the Jets? A guy who steals the 98-pound weakling’s lunch money then vanishes? Oh wait. I forgot. They brought Stastny back to keep Patrik Laine happy and for his post-season savvy. Well, Puck Finn now plays in a different country and time zone, and the jury’s still out on the Jets qualifying for Beard Season. Feel free to discuss among yourselves.

Vancouver Canucks bankroll Francesco Aquilini went on a Trump-like Twitter binge Saturday, ragging on those pesky West Coast news snoops and assuring the rabble that he has no intention of giving general manager Jim Benning and/or head coach Travis Green their walking papers. “When the media starts pouring gas on the fire, dealing in rumours and misinformation as if it’s fact, it’s time for me to speak up,” he harrumphed. He added that he’s “sticking to the path we’re on,” and he has “full confidence” in his braintrust. “I have no plans to make changes.” Which means changes are coming down in 3-2-1.

One final scorecard to contemplate: The Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association has dispatched a collection of its elite torch carriers to Florida for a second series of skirmishes vs. teenage boys from the United States Premier Hockey League. To date, it’s USPHL 6, PWHPA 3, with two games remaining.

Jock journos hither and yon have spent the past few hours paying tribute to Frank Orr, who went to the great misty on Saturday at age 84. Frank was the second best Orr in the NHL during the 1960s and ’70s. He became the best Orr after Bobby retired. A legend among shinny scribes and a very funny man, five minutes spent in Frank’s company would leave you with a face aching from laughter. I seldom ran with the pack, preferring to plunk myself down in a blues or jazz joint and eat at greasy spoons, but I had occasion to break bread with Frank a few times. Without fail, his one-liners would have beer spewing from my nostrils. I’d like to tell you my favorite Frank Orr story, but I don’t use the same language as Paul Maurice, so I can’t. Notably, most of the hosannas he’s now receiving mention his mentorship and his fondness for fine dining, fine drink and the theatre as much as his scribblings in the Toronto Star. Frank was one of the good ones.

I note the New York Mets have invited former football guy Tim Tebow to spring training. Which means Tebow and I have something in common: Neither of us will be in the Amazins lineup this Major League Baseball season.

And, finally, it’s Valentine’s Day. Don’t let it be the only day of the year that you give your main squeeze a squeeze.

Let’s talk about Patrik Laine’s adios…what the boys on the beat are saying…Grapes for GG of Canada…Bobby Hull dining on table scraps…Hammerin’ Hank…the Mets and their oinker GM…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and this blog is officially listed as day-to-day…

First of all, Patrik Laine wasn’t a swing and a miss for Kevin Chevldayoff and his bird dogs.

When the ping pong balls bounced their way at the National Hockey League’s 2016 draft lottery, they wisely used that good fortune to claim Puck Finn with the second shoutout at the annual auction of teenage wannabes.

The kid’s a stud, and there’s been scant second-guessing the Winnipeg Jets’ choice, even if hindsight suggests a case can be made that Matthew Tkachuk might have been a better way to go.

Laine mostly delivered as the Jets had hoped, with 36-, 44-, 30- and 28-goal crusades, plus two more snipes in the opening gambit of his fifth season, which has been temporarily derailed due to an undisclosed upper-body owie of unknown origin.

Unfortunately, somewhere and somehow, the Jets-Laine union hit a very large pothole and we’re left to wonder what went wrong.

None of the usual suspects were willing to drill down to the core of the matter on Saturday after Chevy had completed his latest bit of handiwork, sending Laine to the Columbus Blue Jackets in barter for Pierre-Luc Dubois. Puck Finn spoke. General manager Chevy spoke. Potty-mouth coach Paul Maurice spoke. Captain Blake Wheeler spoke. Trouble is, it was nothing but hollow blah, blah, blah. We still don’t know why a 22-year-old stud with 140 notches on his shooting stick was expendable.

So we speculate, and here’s my guess: Coach PottyMo and Wheeler chased him out of town.

In his sole frolic this season, Laine was given 16 minutes, 20 seconds of ice. Wheeler logged 21:27. Maurice stubbornly insists that the 34-year-old captain is a better bet at right wing, and that wasn’t about to change. No matter the numbers either player put up. So Puck Finn put a bug in his agent’s ear, whispering something about the desire for a new zip code, and he’ll now be collecting his fan mail at 200 W Nationwide Blvd., Columbus, OH 43215.

And that isn’t a good optic for Chevy.

None of us knows for certain what it would have taken to make Laine happy, but we can assume that Chevy wasn’t prepared to instruct Coach PottyMo to up the big Finn’s ice time. We can also assume that the Puck Pontiff, Mark Chipman, had a sizable say in the matter, because you don’t part company with a player of Laine’s loft without the owner signing off on the deal. Which means he’s okay with the reality that he’s now had four first-round draft picks and/or their reps walk into the GM’s office and request and receive a one-way ticket out of town—Evander Kane, Jacob Trouba, Puck Finn and Jack Roslovic.

So, rather than a mantra of draft-and-develop, it’s become draft-develop-defect.

Oh, yes, I realize that a handful of the Jets young studs have locked in for the long haul, but having four walk away is at least three too many. And, in Laine’s case, it didn’t have to shake down this way.

Rather than reward Wheeler with a ridiculous five-year extension (including a No-Move Clause) in 2018 and stunt Laine’s growth, Chevy and the Puck Pontiff should have cut the captain adrift. He would have fetched a handsome return, certainly better than he would today or two years from now given the dog ears on his birth certificate.

Instead, they opted to keep the senior citizen over the young gun, which I’m sure makes no sense to most of us outside the Jets think tank.

Hey, anyone can be traded, including Patrik Laine. And the Jets will learn to live without Puck Finn. But that doesn’t mean anyone should be traded. Chevy and the Puck Pontiff bungled this one. Badly. And if they can’t convince Dubois to sign up for the long haul, they’ll really wear it.

Remember last October when Chevy brought Paul Stastny back on board? According to the pundits, it was a move designed to put a happy face on Laine. Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab, for example, wrote this: “One thing I no longer expect to see based on this week’s events is a trade involving Patrik Laine. The Jets didn’t bring Stastny and his big cap hit in just to send their Finnish sniper packing. They brought him in to play with Laine, a paring (along with Nikolaj Ehlers) that had great chemistry during the 2018 run to the Western Conference final.” Others provided backup vocals. So how’s that working out?

I always enjoy reading what the boys on the beat have to say about these big trades. Here’s a sampling:

Paul Friesen, Winnipeg Sun: “The Winnipeg Jets’ trading of Patrik Laine to the Columbus Blue Jacks is an abject organizational failure.”

Ken Wiebe, Sportsnet: “By strengthening themselves down the middle, the Jets have taken an important—and necessary—step to widening their collective window of contention. It came at a significant cost, but this blockbuster was a risk worth taking for the Jets.”

Murat Ates, The Athletic: “What does this acquisition mean for the rest of Winnipeg’s roster? The shortest, simplest read is that the Jets want to build strength down the middle and just traded a power-play star at right wing for an even-strength star at centre. It also gives Winnipeg the best player in the trade, while acknowledging that Laine’s potential for growth is as big of a wild card as he is.”

Ted Wyman, Winnipeg Sun: “Cheveldayoff has to bear responsibility for what has happened here—the trading of a very popular young star. He was unable to get Laine signed to a long-term deal before last season and the Jets salary cap situation—based on long-term deals given to other players—made it unlikely they’d be able to do so after this season. The cost, as it turns out, is the Jets traded two first-round draft picks for a player who was taken third overall. On paper, it simply looks like too much. The pressure will be immense on Dubois to make it look more even.”

Has there been a bigger swap involving local jocks than Laine-Dubois? I can think of just one—Dieter Brock to the Hamilton Tabbies for Tom Clements in 1983. Hall-of-fame quarterback for hall-of-fame quarterback. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers won the Grey Cup with Clements behind centre one year later, beating Brock and the Tabbies.

This is rich: Rebel News has started a petition to have disgraced hockey-talker Don Cherry succeed the disgraced Julie Payette as Governor General of Canada.

“He’s a loyal monarchist, perhaps the most loyal monarchist in the county!” the far-right wingnuts at the Rebel write. “And he upholds our Canadian values. Unlike Payette, he represents what it means to be Canadian. There is nobody more dignified and worthy of filling this historic and noble role for Canadians than Don Cherry.”

Hoo boy. That’s a whole lot of stupid.

When last seen and heard, Grapes was on Hockey Night in Canada, demonizing “you people that come here” (read: immigrants) because they enjoy “our milk and honey” but have the (apparent) bad manners to not wear poppies for Remembrance Day. After decades of similar rants peppered with bigotry, zenophobia, misogyny and anti-Quebec sentiments, they finally took away the Lord of Loud’s bully pulpit, yet now the Rebel would have him become Queen Liz’s official rep and take up residence in Rideau Hall. What next? Ron MacLean at 24 Sussex Drive?

I’m sure Queen Liz has enough worries with the royal litter without having to explain Don Cherry and his wardrobe to her loyal subjects loitering outside Buckingham Palace.

Big tidings from the Toronto Blue Jays camp last week, with the addition of outfielder/slugger George Springer, late of the cheating Houston Astros. Apparently Springer leaked the news of his signing by banging on the lid of a trash can.

There’s a fabulous anecdote about Bobby Hull, his boy Brett and Kelly Chase in James Duthie’s book Beauties, whereby they let the wolf loose after a game one night in Chicago, returning to the Drake Hotel at 2 o’clock in the a.m.

“The Drake has this elderly gentleman working the elevators, all dressed up with white gloves on,” Chase says. “He recognizes Bobby right away and says, ‘Mr. Hull, pleasure to meet you.’ Bobby says, ‘Good evening, young man. Could you press floor one for me?’ And Brett goes, ‘No, dad, we’re on three.’ Bobby says, ‘Goddamnit, I said press one!’ And out he goes on the first floor.

“We go up to our room, and a few minutes later, in walks Bobby with this food tray. He’s got a quarter of a clubhouse sandwich, a piece of pizza and a couple of chicken wings. I’m like, ‘What the…?’ And Bobby says, ‘Wasteful bastards! This is how Stan Mikita and I ate in the old days. He took the even floors, I took the odd!’

“This is my idol! Then they bring the cot up, and Bobby is insisting on sleeping on the cot. Well, there is no way I am letting Bobby Hull sleep on a cot, so I take it. Bobby goes into the bathroom, comes out, whips the rug off his head, hangs it on the bedpost and gets in bed. The first time I meet my idol, and he’s eating off food trays left outside people’s doors and his hair is hanging on the bed!”

Ya, that sounds about right.

Can’t let the day slip away without mentioning Henry Aaron, because the home run champ’s death on Friday meant another chunk of my youth has been snatched away.

Hammerin’ Hank, you see, was my older brother Richard’s favorite baseball player. Mickey Mantle was my younger brother Mick’s main man. Mine was Sandy Koufax. We’d squabble the way kids do, nattering about who was the best of the three—the rakish Black man from Mobile, Ala., the brawny Okie who spent his early off-seasons working in lead and zinc mines with his dad, or the soft-speaking Jewish kid from Brooklyn.

None of us budged from our positions. Still won’t.

I do, however, concede and conclude that Aaron traveled a more challenging path to baseball immortality because, whereas both Mantle and Koufax wrestled with chronic ailments, it was death threats for Hammerin’ Hank. Not just to him, but his family.

The nearer Aaron came to reeling in Babe Ruth and laying claim to the greatest record in sports—714 career home runs—the greater the peril for the Atlanta Braves outfielder. Not all of America was prepared to accept a Black man usurping the Sultan of Swat. Not in the 1970s. Yet Aaron soldiered on, swatting dingers and chasing the larger-than-life Bambino until the night of April 8, 1974, when he sent an Al Downing pitch over the left-field fence and into the Braves bullpen. He had touched ’em all for the 715th time.

“What a marvelous moment, for baseball, what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia, what a marvelous moment for the country and the world. A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. It’s a marvelous, wonderful, enjoyable moment here in Atlanta,” is how legendary broadcaster Vin Scully described it.

Shortly thereafter, I made my way to the Winnipeg Tribune building, anxious to lay out and design the next day’s sports section. Even though the Jets had opened a playoff series vs. Houston Aeros that night, I relegated them to the inside pages. The sports front was reserved for the great Henry Aaron. Every inch of it.

Jared Porter has been outed as an oinker of the highest rank and, thankfully, the New York Mets squandered nary a nano-second in defrocking their creepy general manager.

Mind you, it’s not like the Amazins had any choice.

I mean, Porter’s one-man crusade to bed an unidentified female reporter while overseeing the Chicago Cubs stable of scouts in 2016 was as relentless as it was disturbing. More than 60 times he hounded the woman with come-hither texts and pics, the last of which brought an erect penis into focus, and it doesn’t matter that he claims the erect-penis pic he sent wasn’t a pic of his erect penis.

“The more explicit ones are not of me,” Porter assured ESPN. “Those are like, kinda like joke-stock images.”

Oh, ya, unwelcomed graphic porn is a real knee-slapper, Jared.

Listen, most women I know appreciate a man with a healthy sense of humor, but some scuzzball visiting porn sites and playing copy-and-paste with images of boners doesn’t qualify as giggle-worthy.

It’s sad, pathetic, dangerous and no one’s idea of slapstick.

Fortunately, the Mets did every female news snoop a solid by kicking Porter to the curb, and I can’t imagine any other Major League Baseball team bringing him and his baggage on board.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve grown weary of Postmedia treating the Winnipeg Sun like the red-hair, freckle-face step-child of the chain. When I call up the Postmedia tabloids in the Republic of Tranna, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver, I normally find seven or more pages in the sports section. In Good Ol’ Hometown it’s usually four pages. Some days just two. Other days there’s two pages of sports near the front of the rag and two more near the back. Ridiculous.

And, finally, I don’t like to say I told you so, but I did. At least six times between February 2019 and last week, I warned you that Patrik Laine would not finish his career in Good Ol’ Hometown. Moreover, I posed this question in June 2016, days before the Jets drafted him: “Is the Flamboyant Finn and his loose lips a fit for the Winnipeg Jets or will he give them fits?” Puck Finn conceded on Saturday that “it wasn’t the right fit for me and for the team.”

Let’s talk about Patrik Laine the happy camper…Puck Finn still playing second fiddle…pooping and the puckstopper…glorifying goon hockey on Sportsnet…brain farts and tripe-bogeys…Ponytail Puck set for a faceoff in Lake Placid…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and you’re advised to read this blog with an abundance of caution…

Kevin Cheveldayoff and Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman have one task. Just one: Put a happy face on Patrik Laine.

Do whatever it takes.

If that means putting Puck Finn first in the pay queue, back up the Brinks truck. If he wants to skate alongside Rink Rat Scheifele, tell Paul Maurice to join them at the hip. If he wants to challenge Twig Ehlers to a rousing game of Fortnite between shifts, set up a PlayStation gizmo at the end of the bench.

Just get it done.

Unless, of course, it’s irreparably undone

Maybe there’s no longer a way for Chevy and the Puck Pontiff to sell Laine on the merits of Winnipeg and the Jets. Maybe the Tour de Finn we witnessed last Thursday night at the Little Hockey House On The Prairie—two goals, OT winner, one assist, one scuffle in a 4-3 victory over the Calgary Flames—was a prelude to what the faithful will be missing once the big winger swans off down the road.

Whatever the case, this is a crossroads moment for the Winnipeg franchise.

Make no mistake, short of a Stanley Cup parade, how Chevy and team co-bankroll Chipman handle L’Affaire Laine will be the defining moment for the tallest thinkers in the National Hockey League’s smallest market, and time is already an adversary.

Puck Finn is a restricted free agent this summer, and if he and Chevy/Puck Pontiff can’t find common financial ground, an arbitrator will do it for them and that’s an exercise that seldom lends itself to warm-and-fuzzy pillow talk. Laine will listen while someone in an expensive suit informs him of his many misgivings, at the same time emphasizing that his goal totals (36, 44, 30, 28) are already in decline. And whatever he delivers this season will be dismissed as the sketchy product of a runted crusade due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

If the kid wants out now, imagine how he’ll feel after hearing from a team rep that he’s barely a beer-leaguer, so I’m assuming that’s a path the Jets aren’t anxious to travel.

In the meantime, pundits hither and yon continue to laud Chevy for the deliberate, slow-moving manner in which he generally manages the Jets.

And it’s true. Chevy has the patience of a man who genuinely believes the cheque is in the mail.

Players march into his office and inform him they desire a new postal code, or an agent beaks off to news snoops about a client’s dissatisfaction and the need for a fresh start, but Chevy doesn’t flinch. His knees never jerk. Oh, they might twitch a mite, but not so you’d notice.

He waits and waits and waits, patiently, refusing to be bullied.

But then someone tosses a track suit into a tub of ice water and Chevy budges, recognizing he has no option but to tell a 30-goal scorer to leave the building. Evander Kane is then shuffled off to Buffalo. Similarly, Chevy took a measured tactic with Jacob Trouba, not moving his top-pair defender to Gotham until the free-agency clock was soon to strike midnight.

Now we have the only GM in Jets 2.0 history confronted with the stiffest challenge of his watch, and all I can see is Chevy standing in a corner with a can of paint and a brush, looking for a way out.

And that’s not to ignore Jack Roslovic’s pout.

Chevy’s allowing Roslovic to rot at home in Columbus, with no inclination toward granting his young forward’s wish for opportunity elsewhere. Chevy can move him on a whim, on his terms and on his timetable, and the longer the Roslovic Rot lasts the more likely it is that he becomes a forgotten man. Few among the faithful will be bent out of shape at the loss of a player who might fit in as a top-six forward in other colors, but not in Jets linen.

It’s different with Laine.

Puck Finn is their signature selection through a decade of draft-and-develop. He’s a star performer, a game-changer who, were he to commit long term, would become the face of the franchise.

Chevy and the Puck Pontiff are already 0-for-2 with young studs who’ve demanded a one-way ticket out of Dodge, and Laine’s performance v. the Flames was a not-so-subtle hint that they should move mountains to prevent it from being 0-for-3.

What will it take to put a happy face on Puck Finn? None of us knows. But, surely, Chevy and the Puck Pontiff have an idea, and that begs one question: Why aren’t they doing it?

Got a giggle out of pundits suggesting Laine’s show-stopper v. the Flames snuffed out swap talk. “Laine silences the trade rumors” and “Laine mutes trade talk for now” were the headlines in the Winnipeg Sun. Ya, good luck with that. If anything, it ramped up speculation. I mean, what was Eric Duhatschek scribbling about in The Athletic the following morning? That’s right, a potential Laine trade. What were Gino Reda and Craig Button nattering about on TSN two days later? That’s right, a potential Laine trade. What were David Amber and Brian Burke prattling on about on Hockey Night in Canada last night? That’s right, a potential Laine trade. Trust me, L’Affaire Laine will linger until one of two things happens: 1) Puck Finn commits to Good Ol’ Hometown for the long haul; 2) Chevy and the Puck Pontiff tell him to pack his bags. I’m still betting on the latter scenario—and we’ll know for certain if he signs another bridge deal this summer—so don’t expect the whispers to go away anytime soon.

So, you’re Paul Maurice, the Jets potty-mouth head coach. You have a 22-year-old right-winger, Laine, who shredded the Flames, and you have a 34-year-old right winger, Blake Wheeler, who’s doing his best to keep up with the pace of play. Who you gonna call on? I agree, it should be Laine. But Coach PottyMo still had Puck Finn playing second fiddle to the aging Wheeler, on the ice for a whopping 21:27, including 4:50 on the powerplay, in the opener. Laine was limited to 16:20 and 2:53. Any wonder why Puck Finn’s agents believe it would be “mutually beneficial” for him to move on? Curses to you, Coach Potty Mouth.

Took a dive into James Duthie’s book Beauties last week, and I was giggling four paragraphs into Roberto Luongo’s forward, whereby the former Vancouver Canucks goaltender describes an in-game bout of poopy pants. “I never get stomach aches during a game,” he writes. “Before the game is a different story. I go to the bathroom five times on game day. I’m talking number two here. I may have been a number one goalie most of my career, but I’m all about number two on game days. I go once in the morning when I get up, once at the morning skate, once after I wake up from my nap, once after the pre-game meeting, and once after warm-up, just in case. I don’t want any accidents during the game. It’s a skill. The guys on my team all know about it. They see my big-ass toes sticking out from under the stall door and say, ‘Lui’s goin’ again.’” That probably falls under the category ‘too much information,’ but Luongo goes on to explain missing the start of overtime in a playoff series v. Anaheim due to the runs, and it’s more than a one-yuk-per-page read. I’m 68 pages into the book and only the Paul Bissonnette yarn is a yawn. Overall, a highly recommended read.

The more things change, the more things stay the same. An example would be Anthony Stewart’s analysis of last week’s Montreal Canadiens-Toronto Maple Leafs skirmish on Sportsnet. Stewart, of course, is the least insightful among the natterbugs on Hockey Night In Canada and, like Brian Burke, he tends to glorify goon hockey. Thus it was no surprise to hear him cite Wayne Simmonds as the difference-maker in the Leafs’ 5-4 victory, simply because he exchanged bare knuckles with Ben Chiarot of the Habs. It was 3-1 Montreal when the lads dropped the mitts, and Stewart informed us that the Leafs scored “right after” the tiff. Wrong. The game turned when the Habs took three consecutive penalties and the Leafs scored twice with the man advantage—7½ minutes after the Simmonds scrap. But, hey, why let facts get in the way of a false narrative? Meanwhile, over at TSN, Craig Button was asked what shifted the game toward the Leafs. “Power play,” he said. Two nights later, he added, “the Leafs’ skill bailed them out.” Correct.

The search was on for Bryson DeChambeau’s ball.

So now we know why Bryson DeChambeau was feeling woozy and bombed out at The Masters in November: Brain fart. “The frontal lobe in my brain was working really, really hard,” the bulked-up golfer explains, adding a combination of things “escalated my brain, overworking and just giving out.” And here I thought it was that lost ball and a triple-bogey seven on the third hole at Augusta that made him sick. Silly me.

Interesting that quarterback Aaron Rodgers is among the notables to land a gig as celeb host on Jeopardy! once the Green Bay Packers are finished playing football. Frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t hire ESPN squawker Stephen A. Smith. He believes he has all the answers.

Speaking of celebrities, the Pebble Beach Pro-Am golf tournament will have no pro-am component this year. Which makes it what? The Pebble Beach Bill Murray Has To Go Somewhere Else To Act Like A Complete Jackass Open?

Quitter James Harden of the Brooklyn Nets described himself as “an elite leader” at his introductory natter with New York news snoops the other day, just scant hours after mailing it in one more time and informing his former Houston Rockets teammates that they’re a bunch of scrubs. Ya, that’s an “elite leader” like Kareem Adbul Jabbar is a jockey.

Montreal Impact of Major League Soccer are now Club de Foot Montreal. Seriously? A soccer side with “club foot” in the name. They might want to send that one back to the marketing department. It’s like a brewery branding its newest product Flat Warm Beer.

On the subject of peddling product, if you’re scoring at home—and I’m sure you aren’t—a Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association team wrapped up a six-game series v. teenage boys in Florida the other day, and they left the Tampa hub with a 2-4 record. All but two games (5-0, 7-2 losses) were competitive, but I fail to see how losing to teenage boys advances the cause of Ponytail Puck.

Speaking of which, Kevin McGran of the Toronto Star found room for Ponytail Puck in his Pucks In Depth notebook on Friday, which is a good thing. If only he wasn’t so thin on facts and short on insight.

“Women’s professional hockey ramps up this month,” he wrote. “The NWHL, with its Toronto expansion team The Six (I like the nickname, but I have been programmed by our Olympians not to root for the NWHL) will play its entire season, playoffs and championship in a bubble in Lake Placid, N.Y., with some games televised (and most streamable if you know how to do that). There’s something coming out of the ashes of the CWHL, with the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association (which I’m programmed to root for since it’s basically the national teams of Canada and the United States). The women now represent cities, and have big sponsors. So that sounds positive. I believe COVID is getting in the way of their plans, which leads to some confusion. Are they a league? Is it tournament-based? Weekend exhibitions with grassroots ourtreach?”

A few things to peel away here:

The National Women’s Hockey League’s Isobel Cup tournament runs from Jan. 23-Feb. 5 in Lake Placid, with the semifinals and final to be broadcast live on NBCSN. Why McGran chose not to share those pertinent details with readers is a mystery.
I don’t know if he was writing tongue-in-cheek when admitting he’s been “programmed by our Olympians not to root for the NWHL,” but, if true, shame on them and him. (Given that PWHPA membership spent its first year of existence trash talking the NWHL, I’m guessing it’s true.)
The PWHPA and its Dream Gappers emerged from the ashes of the Canadian Women’s Hockey League in 2019, so it’s not new. The makeup is different, in that there are now five hubs—Calgary, the Republic of Tranna, Montreal, New Hampshire, Minnesota—but there’s no “confusion.” It is not a league. The people at Secret Deodorant have diverted a portion of their attention and dollars from smelly armpits to Ponytail Puck, sponsoring a 2021 Dream Gap Tour to the merry tune of $1 million. The plan is a series of six weekend showcase tournaments (dates and sites to be determined), and the players will share prize money and award the Secret Cup to the top team at the conclusion of their barnstorming frolics.

All that information is readily available if you know where to look, or pick up a phone. Mind you, not a word has been posted to the PWHPA website since before Christmas, so a visit there is a waste of time. If you’re interested in all things Ponytail Puck, check out The Ice Garden, the Women’s Hockey Tribune or The Victory Press.

And, finally, nice off-the-beaten-path piece on Kerri Einarson from Jason Bell of the Drab Slab last week. Jason caught up with the reigning Canadian curling champion on the planet’s largest curling rink—Lake Winnipeg—where she and rinkmate Shannon Birchard have been working out the kinks in preparation for defence of their title, Feb. 19-28 in a Calgary bubble.

L’Affaire Laine: Are Paul Maurice and Blake Wheeler chasing Puck Finn out of town?

Top o’ the morning to you, Patrik Laine, or as I call you, Puck Finn.

So much for that gag order, eh kid?

I mean, the Winnipeg Jets wanted you to stuff a sock in it on Day One of their training exercises, but there you were on the witness stand on Monday, with news snoops poking and probing and expecting you to confess, like a shifty-eyed scofflaw crumbling under a withering Perry Mason cross-examination.

“Okay! Okay! I admit it! I admit it! I want out of this hellhole of a town!” they expected you to say.

Then, again, perhaps some of them were looking for the exact opposite.

“You’ve got it all wrong! You’ve got it all wrong! I love this city! I love the Jets! There’s no place I’d rather be! Don’t you remember what I said about Winnipeg in The Players’ Tribune?”

Either way, you didn’t crumble, did you, Patty?

Oh, there were moments when you had the look of a fidgety guy battling a fresh batch of hemorrhoids, rocking from one butt cheek to the other in considerable discomfort, but you gave them nothing more than a pocketful of hem and haw. Three times your interrogators demanded to know if you desire a new postal code, and three times you answered like a politician trying to justify a Christmas vacation on foreign soil during a pandemic.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” was your dismissive parry to their initial thrust.

You then went on to invoke the name Wayne Gretzky, reminding all assembled for the Zoom natter that even the Great One was not so great that he went the distance in one locale. And, hey, if the Edmonton Oilers, Los Angeles Kings, St. Louis Blues and New York Rangers could learn to live without No. 99, surely the Winnipeg Jets would get along without you and your 30-plus goals, right Patty?

That’s not to say the Jets are anxious to peddle you to the highest bidder, but it sure sounds like you’re giving them no choice, just like Evander Kane and Jacob Trouba before you. It might not happen this year, but, as sure as Paul Maurice has a potty mouth, what’s left of your shelf life in the Manitoba capital appears to be shorter than Brian Pallister’s.

So never mind if you do or don’t want out of Dodge. Here’s the real question: Why, Patty, why?

All of us remember the cheery, lanky, freshly scrubbed kid from Finland who arrived in River City in 2016 and put goaltenders on notice with 36 snipes as a National Hockey League freshman. You followed that up with 44 and joined the Rocket Richard Trophy discussion, along with Auston Matthews and Ovi.

You were the darling of the rabble, Patty (give or take Big Buff), and they loved your gosh-darned innocence and quirky quips. Heck, the flock even forgave you your unfortunate bread-butter-and-eggman chin whiskers. The same could be said of news snoops. You were their gift from Sound Bites ‘R’ Us.

Yet something has soured you and, since you aren’t prone to full disclosure, we’re left to wonder what or whom has gotten so far up your nose that the jaws of life can’t pry it out.

Here’s my guess: Head coach Paul Maurice and captain Blake Wheeler, with perhaps a small side order of Rink Rat Scheifele.

I’m just spitballing here, Patty, but I’m thinking that you just might be thinking what I’m thinking about Coach PoMo and Wheeler: Their bromance is kind of creepy. As far as I can tell, albeit from a distance, it’s the only thing keeping you relegated to second-line duty, skating on greybeard Paul Stastny’s right flank rather than beside the in-his-prime Scheifele.

I’m no Toe Blake, but I’d want my potential 50-goal winger (that’s you, Patty) collaborating with my top centre-ice man (that’s the Rink Rat), and I wouldn’t be doing it just to keep you happy. I’d be doing it because I want to win hockey games.

I could be wrong, of course. Maybe everything’s cool between Coach PoMo, Wheeler and yourself, Patty.

I just shudder to think they might be chasing you out of town.

Let’s talk about Winnipeg Jets young studs skipping town and training camp tardiness…fresh Chevy-speak and what it means…Tiz the Stud…a Twitter hissing contest…no radio/TV in the colonies…heavenly baseball…where’s the money?…and other things on my mind

The first Sunday morning smorgas-bored of 2021…and I can’t say how many more are to follow…

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed a trend with the Winnipeg Jets? Consider:

Evander Kane wanted out.

Jacob Trouba wanted out/tardy to training camp.

Josh Morrissey tardy to training camp.

Patrik Laine tardy to training camp.

Kyle Connor tardy to training camp.

Jack Roslovic wants out/tardy to training camp.

All young. All first-round draft picks.

Of that bunch, only Morrissey and Connor are locked in longterm with the National Hockey League club. Kane and Trouba vamoosed. Laine’s agents believe it would be “mutually beneficial” for Puck Finn and the Jets to part company, and if they’re saying it we can assume Laine put the notion in their noggins. Roslovic, meanwhile, will likely sign, then bide his time playing third- or fourth-line minutes—or eating popcorn in the press box—for a very modest wage until his wish for a new postal code is granted.

Losing four young studs isn’t how draft-and-develop is supposed to work. But when—yes, I said when—Laine and Roslovic are gone, it will have become the Winnipeg way. That’s not a good look.

But, hey, Blake Wheeler will still be there to ride shotgun for Rink Rat Scheifele, and I sometimes think that’s all that matters to the Holy Trinity of Jets co-bankroll Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman, general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff and head coach Paul Maurice.

That’s not a good look, either.

Just a thought: Would the Holy Trinity ever part company with captain Wheeler the way the Boston Bruins discarded Zdeno Chara, the greybeard who wore the C for so many years? Not bloody likely. I say it’s even money that Wheeler is still captain of Winnipeg HC—and playing right wing on the first line if Maurice is still behind the bench—when he’s 43.

Always get a giggle out of Chevy’s gum-flappers, and he was in peak form last week during 40-plus minutes of to-and-fro with news snoops. The thing is, Chevy-speak usually requires de-coding because, when asked the time of day, the GM is apt to tell you how to build a watch. But that’s why I’m here. To translate his natter.

On Laine’s status and trade rumors lingering into the season…

What Chevy said: “I think, again, everybody is a professional and certainly, you know, I was a professional trying to do my job this summer in looking at all the different options, you know, to improve our team, and I think, you know, we have done that. As far as, you know, with Patrik, you know, again, I assume he’s probably gonna have one of the best years of his career, you know, given the group of players that we have and the professionalism that is there and the maturity level that, you know, that all players gain, you know, year over year over year, I think just, you know, helps us move forward.”

What Chevy really meant: “Sure other clubs called and asked if Patty’s available, but do the names Teemu Selanne and John Paddock mean anything to you? What do people remember John for? That’s right, for trading Teemu. You think I want them remembering me as the doofus who traded Patty for a couple of used jock straps? If he’s gonna score 50 goals, it’s gonna be here, not in Philly or Carolina.”

On the Jets maligned blueline, which has added only Derek Forbort…

What Chevy said (take a deep breath, kids): “Well, you know, again, we’re excited, you know, the opportunity to have him. You know, he’s someone that when he was in L.A., he put up some top minutes before he had an injury, put up some, you know, really good years playing against some good players, playing, you know, some shutdown roles, you know, he relishes the penalty kill, which is, you know, something that we, you know, look at improving. Obviously we’re excited that Dylan DeMelo, you know, chose to stay with us, you know, from a free agent standpoint. I’m sure there was…I know there’d be lots of opportunity for him elsewhere, you know, judging by the phone calls I got after, you know, we got him signed, so, you know, again, excited about having that. Really excited about, you know, again, just the continuity of, you know, Josh taking another step and Neal Pionk taking another step. Tucker Poolman, you know, now got a year, you know, under his belt, Sami Niku, just, you know, really hope that he can, you know, just take, you know, use training camp as an opportunity to springboard because there’s so much I think more, you know, in his game that unfortunately through, you know, injuries and the like…I guess we just have to make sure he doesn’t drive to training camp so he doesn’t get in a car accident and, you know, to kick things off. And then, you know, we’ve got some young players that, you know, looking forward to seeing. Dylan Samberg has not had the benefit of coming to an NHL training camp yet, so we really have, you know, we’ve kind of been frothing at the mouth for a couple years to get him into the pro ranks and, you know, now the time is here. Ville Heinola has had the benefit of playing over in Finland, you know, so his game, you know, hopefully will be at a level that will, you know, turn heads here, you know, right away. Obviously he had a great training camp last year and, you know, we’re just looking for, you know, obviously for him to come in and have matured that much more, you know, over the course of time. And a player like Logan Stanley, who’s had the opportunity to play two years of pro, you’re looking for that development and you’re looking for those guys to take that next step. We think we’ve got great depth and we’ve got a couple of guys that we think there’s a lot of room to grow with.”

What Chevy really meant: “Fingers and toes crossed. It’s all on Connor Hellebuyck to, you know, give us Vezina Trophy goaltending again or, you know, we’re up Schitt’s Creek without a paddle.”

Why are news snoops referring to it as the 2020-21 NHL season when all games will be played in 2021?

I agree, after his lengthy tenure with the Bruins, it’s going to be weird seeing Zdeno Chara in Washington Capitals garb this winter. It’ll be kind of like Pope Francis holding mass in Wrangler jeans, Tony Lama snake skin boots and a Stetson instead of his robe and pointy hat.

Is it too much for Sportsnet to tell Elliotte Friedman to drag a hair brush across his scalp? The man looks absolutely disgraceful and, again, there’s no chance a female broadcaster would be permitted to appear on camera looking like she spent the night sleeping in a back-alley dumpster.

Social note: Lindsey Vonn and P.K. Subban won’t be exchanging wedding vows after all. Engaged in 2019, the sports power couple called the whole thing off last week, and it’s hard to figure. After all, P.K. is one of the NHL’s most notorious divers. And now he’s not willing to take the plunge? Go figure.

Belmont Stakes winner Tiz the Law is now Tiz the Stud, and if you want the great bay stallion to service your mare the price tag is $40,000. Imagine that, $40,000 for sex. Tom Brady must feel ripped off. I mean, he screwed the New England Patriots and never got a dime for it.

This is rich: In a Twitter hissing contest, Damien Cox of the Toronto Star scolded musician/actor Stevie Van Zandt, who had the (apparent) bad manners to trash talk news snoops for the lame questions they ask athletes. “Don’t criticize things you’ve never done,” the pompous Cox harrumphed. That just might be the dumbest tweet…by anyone… ever. It’s a hot, steamy pile of stupid. Unless, of course, I was sleeping during those years when Cox played in the NHL, MLB, NBA, NFL and MLS. Seriously. The guy’s made a career of crapping on athletes, coaches, managers, owners and officials. He’s a recreational golfer and wannabe tennis player who pooh-poohs pros of all stripes. He’s never spent five seconds in the White House, let alone presided over an entire nation, but he’s spent the past four years crucifying Donald Trump. But, hey, don’t you dare trash talk Cox or other news snoops unless you’ve held a notebook or microphone in a post-game scrum. As if. Like I said, a hot, steamy pile of stupid, and the Star continues to publish his alphabet farts.

Speaking of TorStar, it’s added former NHLer and current TSN gab guy Dave Poulin to its stable of sports scribes. That would be the same Dave Poulin who, in 2018, left Connor McDavid off his all-star ballot, even though the Edmonton Oilers captain was the NHL scoring champion and winner of the Ted Lindsay Award as the best player in the world. Note to self: Cancel Toronto Star subscription first thing on Monday.

It’s about Becky Hammon: Rock on, girl. Becky became the first female to coach a National Basketball Association team last week, taking the wheel of the San Antonio Spurs after bossman Gregg Popovich was told to leave the building in the second quarter of a skirmish v. the Los Angeles LeBrons. She joins a list of impressive “first” ladies in sports that includes Kim Ng, Katie Sowers, Kathryn Nesbitt, Callie Brownson and Alyssa Nakken, so don’t tell me that nothing good happened in 2020.

I don’t know about you, but I get a kick out of jock journos and others in the rag trade listing their top 10 or 20 articles/columns from 2020. Never mind that it’s a rather arrogant exercise in ego-stroking, it seems to me that it’s the readers who should decide something like that.

I can’t remember 10 of my posts from last year, let alone 20, and I doubt the five or six people who read this blog can either. So I’ll spare one and all my greatest hits.

Sean Fitz-Gerald of The Athletic lists his “top 10 Canadian sports media stories of 2020.” Nos. 9 and 10 are strictly about radio in the Republic of Tranna. Sigh. Only someone from The ROT would presume to believe those of us who live/work in the colonies actually give a damn. Oh, and apparently we haven’t been introduced to radio and TV, because not one of the “top 10” stories targets a Western Canada market. Or anywhere east of The ROT, for that matter. Double sigh.

There’s an old Righteous Brothers song with the lyrics “If there’s a rock and roll heaven, well you know they’ve got a hell of a band.” Well, we can say the same about baseball, because the Big Ballpark In The Sky gained a helluva team last year. Included among the legends leaving our mortal coil were Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver, Whitey Ford and Phil Niekro, and how would you like to go into a World Series with those four as your starting rotation? Backing them up would be an infield of Bob Watson at first, Joe Morgan at second, Tony Fernandez at shortstop and Dick Allen at third, with Al Kaline, Lou Brock and Claudell Washington patrolling the outfield. The only position the Grim Reaper didn’t tap on the shoulder was catcher.

Canadian Football League outfits are busy getting signatures on contracts for a 2021 season, and that’s good news. The not-so-good news is that nobody has explained how Rouge Football works without people in the pews. As you know, commish Randy Ambrosie went panhandling on Parliament Hill last year, hoping for a pogey cheque to cover the costs of an abbreviated season, but the CFL fell off the grid when Trudeau the Younger and the feds rejected the beg. So how can it be doable this year? Even with a COVID vaccine available, head counts will be limited. Every skirmish will look like a Toronto Argos home game. And what’s left of rainy day funds can’t possibly cover operating costs of a full season, especially for community-run franchises like our Winnipeg Blue Bombers. Some players across the dominion have rejigged their contracts, but where’s the revenue to pay Bo Levi Mitchell $541,000, Mike Reilly $525,000 and Cody Fajardo $405,000, to name just three high-salaried quarterbacks?

Count me as shocked when I called up the Winnipeg Sun this morning to see an article about girls high school volleyball on the sports front. The tabloid doesn’t do local, other than the pro teams and curling. It doesn’t do women’s sports. So it was a pleasant surprise. Having said that, the Drab Slab continues to wallop the Sun in female sports coverage. Here are the numbers for exclusively female content in the 30 publishing days of December:

Free Press
Sports front: 7
Articles/briefs: 32/11
Days with female sports coverage: 27 of 30.

Sun
Sports front: 1
Articles/briefs: 8/2 (plus one sentence on Sarah Fuller)
Days with female sports coverage: 10 of 30.

And finally, I keep reading and hearing people write and say if 2020 has taught us anything it’s to be kind to one another. Seriously? You needed a killer pandemic to learn that?

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