About the Winnipeg Jets at the halfway mark…Acts II and III of the NHL season…Chevy’s next move…trading Puck Finn for Matthew Tkachuk…the awfulness of Twitter and NFL replays…’oddly compelling’…Yahoo searches…and sharing oxygen with the giants

Monday morning coming down in 3, 2, 1…and if NFL replay guys don’t know a catch from a fumble or where to place the football, how are we supposed to know?

These Winnipeg Jets are an interesting study.

They have arrived at the midway mark of their regular-season crusade where many of us figured them to be—atop the Western Conference table—but they seem to be something of a tease.

Clearly among the National Hockey League elite, they go about their business in a very workmanlike manner, determined and purposeful, yet it’s as if they’re holding something in reserve, offering only hints of what might be.

They have strut, but they fall noticeably short of cock-of-the-walk arrogance, which is a good thing. It’s as if they know they’re damn good, but they also seem to know they aren’t damn near good enough.

Perhaps that’s the lesson learned from their dizzying ascent and subsequent comeuppance in last spring’s Stanley Cup runoff, when they were found to be a brick or two short of a load and eventually bowed to the upstarts from Las Vegas in the tournament semifinals.

Let’s face it, the NHL season is a three-part play: Act I is October-November-December hockey, Act II is January-February-March hockey, Act III is the beast known as the playoffs. You can get by with good in Act I. You need to up your game in Act II. Only great is acceptable in Act III.

And lest there be any doubt, it has become all about Act III for Winnipeg HC, not the regular season.

Puck Finn

Given that our hockey heroes have stared into the maw of the playoff beast, it follows that they surely recognize what lies in front of them will be contested at a higher in-your-face intensity. The grit quotient required to achieve the most favorable playoff seeding is amped up. It takes Blake Wheeler kind of grit. Does Winnipeg HC have enough of it? Well, every time I see Patrik (Puck Finn) Laine floating aimlessly about the freeze, I think not. Then I see Mathieu Perreault busting his hump along the wall and I think, “Ya, man, that’s how it’s done. Puck Finn take note.” Never thought I’d say it, but les Jets need more Perreault and less Puck Finn.

Chevy

Forty-one games in, I harbor the same concerns that I had in early October—centre ice and defence. I didn’t expect general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff to tinker with his roster pre-Christmas, but, as I wrote before they dropped the puck, he’ll have to do something before crunch time. I don’t think this Jets outfit is as good as the group that bowed out vs. the Vegas Golden Knights last spring. Mind you, at least one pundit begs to differ. “I think it is. (They’re) very much as good as last year,” says TSN talking head Mike Johnson. Except he then mentions the need for an upgrade at—you guessed it—centre ice. “Ideally” Bryan Little would be on the third line and Chevy would go out and grab someone to slide into the No. 2 slot. “That’s the one spot the Jets might want to try and address,” Johnson suggests. So if I’m hearing him correctly, Johnson figures les Jets are as good as before, except they aren’t. Sure. And Milan Lucic is the same beast he was in 2011, except he isn’t.

Blake Wheeler and Rink Rat Scheifele

Hightlight of les Jets’ first 41 skirmishes for me? Rink Rat Scheifele and Blake Wheeler. They just keep getting it done. And, unlike a lot of folks, I’m not convinced that Scheifele is the most valuable player on the Jets. I still say it’s Wheeler.

Question to ask yourself, Part I: Would you trade les Jets roster even up for the Golden Knights roster? I wouldn’t either, so why did Vegas get to the Stanley Cup final last spring and why does it have more wins and points than Winnipeg HC today (after a horrendous start to the season)? Could the reason be found behind the bench? Just asking.

Matthew Tkachuk

Question to ask yourself, Part II: Would you trade Laine even up for Matthew Tkachuk? I think I might. All that glitters with Puck Finn is goals. The rest of his game? Meh to disastrous. Tkachuk, on the other hand, brings a more complete package, including serious snark. Just turned 21, he’s already an assistant captain with the Calgary Flames, and I don’t think Keith’s kid takes a shift off, let alone a month. He has the kind of jam you need in the post-season, and his 49 points tower over Puck Finn’s 32. Nobody’s saying Chevy coughed up a hairball in choosing Puck Finn second overall in the 2016 NHL auction of freshly scrubbed teenagers, but, based on career growth to date, Tkachuk might have been the better choice. I wouldn’t have said that a year ago.

Latest sign that the world has gone stark-raving mad: Cody Parkey flubs a field goal attempt that eliminates the Chicago Bears from the National Football League playoffs, and he receives death threats on Twitter. That’s some kind of scary stuff.

I’m a big fan of replay in sports. I’m not a big fan of replay officials. I mean, some of the decision-making in Sunday’s NFL wild-card skirmishing was as ridiculous as the gown Lady Gaga wore to the Golden Globe Awards gala. (Seriously. The train on that thing was longer than most of the passes Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson tossed.)

Kawhi Leonard

This from Cathal Kelly of the Globe and Mail: “After only four months in the country, Kawhi Leonard has become the most oddly compelling athlete in the country.” I really wish sports scribes working in the Republic of Tranna would stop telling those of us who live in the colonies what we’re thinking. It’s rude and offensive. I read all of Canada’s major dailies, and I don’t see any of our flowers of jock journalism (outside The ROT) writing about Leonard or the Raptors. Leonard and the Tranna Raptors are not a topic of conversation where I live. Of the athletes most searched on Yahoo! Canada in 2018, Leonard is nowhere to be found. Genie Bouchard is there. Brooke Henderson is there. Erik Karlsson is there. But not Kawhi Leonard. Among the top 10 sports searches, the Raptors fell into the seventh slot, behind soccer’s World Cup, the Tranna Blue Jays, Maple Leafs, Winnipeg Jets, Edmonton Oilers and Montreal Canadiens. Leonard and the Raptors are a “thing” in The ROT. Nowhere else.

Genie Bouchard

If we do have a most “oddly compelling” athlete, it has to be tennis diva Bouchard. I mean, aside from flashing a great amount of flesh in the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, she did nothing of note in 2018. She’s short on charisma and seemingly long on sourpuss-ism. So how is it that she was the second most-searched athlete on Yahoo! Canada, behind only Tiger Woods? I guess it’s not how many tennis matches you win that counts, it’s how many pieces of clothing you remove. Here are the Yahoo! Canada search lists for ’18:

Overall
Donald Trump
Tranna Blue Jays
Tranna Maple Leafs
Justin Trudeau
Meghan Markle
The Canadian dollar
Doug Ford
Melania Trump
World Cup
Winnipeg Jets

Athletes
Tiger Woods
Eugenie Bouchard
Serena Williams
LeBron James
Cristiano Ronaldo
Brooke Henderson
Erik Karlsson
Conor McGregor
Ronda Rousey
Roger Federer

Sports
Word Cup
Tranna Blue Jays
Tranna Maple Leafs
Winnipeg Jets
Edmonton Oilers
Montreal Canadiens
Tranna Raptors
Vancouver Canucks
Australian Open
U.S. Open (tennis)

Matty

And, finally, as a follow-up to comments I made Sunday about old friend Paul Friesen’s superb, thoughtful and touching piece on legendary broadcaster Bob Picken in the Winnipeg Sun, I must mention how fortunate and blessed I was to have worked with, and against, some of the men from what Paul F. described as the “golden age” of sports media in Good Ol’ Hometown. It was a treat and privilege to rub shoulders with Pick, Jack Matheson, Don Wittman, John Robertson, Hal Sigurdson, Jack Wells et al. I certainly didn’t belong in their class, but it was kind of them to share the classroom with me.

About Planet Puckhead and social media…another WTF Tranna scribe is up my nose…have a thought for Pick…Burkie at his best…Grapes and karma…Ovie’s hangover…more dumb stuff from the East…and CFL free agents

The first Sunday smorgas-bored of the year…and so far 2019 doesn’t feel any different from 2018…

Back in the day, when people actually paid me to write this crap, I scribbled something about the intense pressure placed upon pimple-face teenagers wearing our Maple Leaf on their chests and hearts on their sleeves.

I didn’t think the expectation and suffocating scrutiny was fair in 1999. Still don’t today.

I mean, okay, I get it. This is Planet Puckhead. We do hockey like Criss Angel does magic. We expect to win. All…the…time. At…every…level.

But, hey, sometimes a Criss Angel illusion or magic trick goes kaflooey. Sinatra didn’t always sing on key. Not every Beatles or Rolling Stones tune is a classic. Not every episode of Seinfeld was belly-laughing, knee-slapping funny. And sometimes we lose at shinny.

Like in the just-concluded World Junior Hockey Championship.

Our teenagers were found wanting in the 10-nations tournament. They didn’t earn a gold, silver or bronze trinket. Nada. They finished sixth. In our own bailiwick. That’s like the Pope skipping Sunday mass at the Vatican. So there’s hand-wringing, navel gazing, considerable gnashing of the teeth, autopsies performed in print and on airwaves, with perhaps a royal commission into the state of Canadian shinny affairs to follow.

If root, root, rooting for the home side isn’t exhausting, the fallout from failure surely is.

Maxime Comtois: No goal.

Worst of all, of course, is the cauldron of rot known as social media, which exploded like Noah Dobson’s hockey stick during added time in a 2-1 quarterfinal misstep vs. the plucky and, yes, fortuitous Finnish teens. (Seriously, they tied the game when the puck took more turns than the magic JFK bullet.) This reality that Finland was the beneficiary of more luck than a leprechaun with a fistful of four-leaf clovers was lost on the cyber bullies who assailed our reps, most notably Maxime Comtois.

Young Max, who wore the ‘C’ on his black True North jersey, had the bad manners to: a) perform a series of Neymar impersonations in the early skirmishing of the event; b) flub a penalty shot in OT vs. Finland; c) be born French-Canadian.

Add it all up and, apparently, he’s the worst captain since E.J. Smith steered the Titanic into that big ice cube near the shores of Newfoundland.

It is, of course, a load of hooey.

Neymar

Comtois’ misguided play-acting like a Brazilian soccer star aside (we’re Canadian; we don’t dive on frozen ponds), the avalanche of abuse heaped upon him was as exaggerated as it was unfair. Yes, he coughed up a hair ball on that penalty shot, but not because he calls the opening between a goaltender’s pads “le cinq trou” instead of the five hole. He missed. Stuff happens. In both official languages.

Post-ouster, we’ve learned that Comtois was playing with a separated shoulder, and I can already hear the braying of the jackals: “Did he hurt it taking one of his dives?”

I’m sorry, but I don’t hold with the crucifixion of kids playing a game. Especially when wearing the Maple Leaf.

Look, our guys tried. They came up short because, in case you hadn’t noticed, the other guys are good. It’s been that way since the Russkies paddywhacked the best of our best (sans B. Orr and B. Hull) in Game 1 of the Summit Series in 1972.

We’re no less a nation of puckheads today because of this WJHC result. We can just hope we do better next time—on the ice and, especially, on social media.

Next time one of our genius jock journos tells us that women’s hockey is a joke because of lopsided scores, remind him of these results from the world junior tournament: 14-0, 11-2, 8-2, 8-3, 7-4, 6-1, 5-0, 5-1, 5-1. Denmark played six games and scored in just one of them, a relegation skirmish vs. Kazakhstan, which was outshot 69-13 in one round-robin game and 57-10 in another. They surrendered an average of 56 shots per match in their four prelims.

Canada’s gold medal curlers at the 2018 Olympic Games.

Speaking of genius jock journos, you wonder why scribes from the Republic of Tranna get up my nose? Because they write rubbish like this item from Cathal Kelly of the Globe and Mail: “Canada’s never won a major international team tournament at anything that wasn’t hockey.” That’s not just incorrect, it’s ignorant. It’s a total WTF comment. I mean, last time I looked, Winter Olympic Games curling was a “major international team tournament,” and Canada has been on the top step of the podium six times! We’ve also won 18 global men’s and women’s curling championships since 2000. If you’re scoring at home, that’s 24 wins at a “major international team tournament” that “wasn’t hockey.” But, hey, Kelly is a Tranna-based writer and curling rates somewhere between tiddlywinks and rec-room ping pong on the scale of importance in The Rot. He writes about our curlers only when they gag at the Olympics or get drunk at a weekend bonspiel and, based on his scribblings from the Winter Games last year, he doesn’t know a burned rock from burnt toast.

The legend Bob Picken.

Wonderful piece from Paul Friesen of the Winnipeg Sun on broadcasting legend Bob Picken, who’s bedded down in his River Heights home in a fight for his life against the dreaded cancer. I don’t know how much time Pick has left, but I do know you’ll not meet a nicer man and you’ll not hear a better set of pipes. Pick’s always been one of those glass-half-full people, forever armed with a kind word and sage counsel. He’s an absolute treasure. And when he’s gone, it will close the book on what Friesen aptly describes as the “golden age” of sports media in Good Ol’ Hometown. I doubt he’s in a hurry to join Matty, Cactus Jack, Witt, Siggy and Coconut Willie on the other side, but you can be sure they’re anxious to see him.

Brian Burke

Brian Burke continues to be the best hockey voice on TV in the Great White North, if not North America. Burkie was in peak harrumphing form on Hockey Night in Canada on Saturday night, taking aim at bellyaching player agent Allan Walsh for his whining tweets about client Michael Frolik’s ice time allotment with the Calgary Flames. “Put a sock in it,” Burke barked before describing Walsh’s antics as “clownish behavior.” He added: “Nobody’s gonna pay the slightest bit of attention to this. This will be ignored by management. Agents don’t advise teams on how to run teams, trust me. Go have a meeting with the GM, get behind closed doors, air your differences and see if you can work something out.” Good stuff.

Don Cherry

The Lord of Loud, Donald S. Cherry, weighed in on Canada’s demise at the world junior tourney during the Coachless Corner segment of HNIC, suggesting that our guys were beaten as payback for running up the score (14-zip) vs. Denmark. “You don’t beat them down like that or you pay the price,” he said. “I’ve said it before, the hockey gods will get you or karma will get you.” If karma has anything to say about it, Grapes will be wearing nothing but a loin cloth in his next life as punishment for those gawdawful suits he exposes us to on Saturday nights.

Mitch Marner

There are a few things in life that concern me. Whether or not Kevin Hart hosts the Oscars and whether or not Madonna has had butt implants are not among them. Nor is Mitch Marner’s exclusion from the National Hockey League all-star soiree, which Sportsnet refers to as the “great snub.” I believe Marner put it best when he said: “There’s bigger things in the world to think about than that.” Agreed. But I doubt opinionists in The ROT will let it go.

Alex Ovechkin is taking a pass on the all-star game because his chassis needs a rest. Is that the real reason, or is Ovie still hungover from his Stanley Cup celebration?

There’s stupid and then there’s Eastern Canada kind of stupid. “The Alouettes’ slogan (indeed the slogan of the entire CFL) should be “Fans?—What Fans?” writes Jack Todd of Postmedia Montreal. Excuse us? The entire Canadian Football League? Don’t think so. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats, Saskatchewan Roughriders and Bytown RedBlacks played to 96.8, 96.1 and 94.4 per cent capacity in 2018. Attendance for playoff games (in Hamilton, Regina, Bytown and Calgary) was 91.4 per cent of a full house. It was SRO at the Grey Cup game, with 55,819 wedged into Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton. The average head count for the Eskimos was 31,107. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Calgary Stampeders were well above the league attendance average. What part of that does Todd not understand? The CFL has three trouble spots: Montreal, the Republic of Tranna, and Vancouver. The other six markets are doing just fine, thank you.

Mike Reilly

If I’m Ed Hervey, general manager of the B.C. Lions, I’m calling for an all-out blitz and going after both Mike Reilly and Adam Bighill when the CFL free-agent market opens next month. And if I’m Leos’ bankroll David Braley, I’m letting him do it. Guaranteed that would put people in the pews at B.C. Place Stadium.

Is Kyle Walters doing his job as general manager of the Bombers if he doesn’t go after Reilly, assuming the Eskimos QB doesn’t choose to stay in E-Town? Nope. I like Matt Nichols, but Reilly would be a serious upgrade behind centre and Walters must pursue him.

And, finally, this blog reached an all-time high for reads in 2018: 23,801. My thanks to all who stopped by for a visit. Let’s all meet again at my place every Sunday in the new year. Drinks are on moi. But, remember, if you’re going to drink, don’t drive.

About the Secretariat of clay court tennis…a delight named Jelena…time for Chevy to get to work…and angry, old Grandpa Simmons is shaking his fist at clouds again

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

Let’s make something perfectly clear: Stan Wawrinka is very, very good and what he does.

Unless your name is Roger Federer, Stan the Man is the best tennis talent ever produced in Switzerland. He is just one successful Wimbledon fortnight short of a career Grand Slam, having already claimed the singles titles at the Australian, French and U.S. Opens. He is ranked No. 3 among all racqueteers on the third rock from the sun.

Yet Rafael Nadal made No. 3 look like No. 303 in the men’s final at the French Open on Sunday in Paris.

It was like watching Secretariat win the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths. Seriously, 6-2, 6-3, 6-1? In the championship match of a Grand Slam tournament? We haven’t seen a rout like that since Custer threw down on Crazy Horse at the Little Bighorn. Or at least since Rafa paddywhacked Federer 6-1, 6-3, 6-0 in the 2008 championship match at Roland Garros.

But that’s what Rafa Nadal does. Put him on a tennis court made of clay and you have Secretariat.

Rafa Nadal

The wedgie Rafa delivered to Wawrinka on Sunday reminded me of something Yogi Berra mused about Sandy Koufax, scant seconds after the legendary Los Angeles Dodgers lefthander had whiffed 15 New York Yankees in Game 1 of the 1963 World Series:

“I can see how he won 25 games,” said Yogi, the Yankees catcher. “What I don’t understand is how he lost five.”

It’s the same with Rafa Nadal. He’s won the title at Roland Garros 10 times, collecting 79 victories against two losses. How in the name of Philippe Chatrier did he lose twice?

Robin Soderling (2009) and Novak Djokovic (2015) are the only foes to vanquish Rafa on the red clay of Roland Garros, and I have to assume French Open officials demanded that both men pee in a bottle immediately after their matches. I mean, you don’t beat Nadal in Paris unless there’s something funny in your drinking water.

Most people go to Paris for the food, the wine, the art, the culture and the romance. Nadal goes to search and destroy. He’s relentless, ruthless and has the steely-eyed focus of an assassin.

Wawrinka mentioned something about playing Rafa on a clay court being the stiffest challenge in tennis, and evidence supports that notion. Nadal has lost only twice at Roland Garros. In 13 years. He’s 102-2 in best-of-five matches on clay.

But Wawrinka is also selling the Spaniard short. It isn’t just tennis. Playing Rafael Nadal on clay is the greatest challenge in the entirety of sports.

Jelena Ostapenko

There’s hope for the future of women’s tennis, and her name is Jelena Ostapenko, the Latvian lass whose dashing and daring ruled the day at Roland Garros. The winners and unforced errors come in equal number from Ostapenko, but if she brings her service game up to the level of her groundstrokes (she hits her forehead harder than world No. 1 Andy Murray) the 20-year-old could become the face of the ladies’ game the moment Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova take their permanent leave. If Serena ever stands down, that is.

While watching the French Open this past fortnight, I found myself wondering this: How did Steffi Graf, Chrissie Evert, Martina Navratilova, Billie Jean King and other legendary ladies’ champions win all those Grand Slam titles without the orgasmic shrieking and grunting that we hear today?

I heard a rumor that the National Hockey League season is over. If that’s true, someone give Kevin Cheveldayoff a nudge and tell the Winnipeg Jets general manager to “wakey, wakey.” It’s time for him to go to work.

I note that Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press has been tabbed for induction into the Manitoba Sportswriters & Sportscasters Roll of Honour in October. Good choice. Wiecek is the best sports columnist the Drab Slab has featured since Hal Sigurdson signed off in 1996, even when he’s writing about rock climbing.

Steve Simmons has become the Jose Bautista of sports writing: Tedious, tiresome and time to move on. I mean, it’s one thing for a columnist to be opinionated and rub the rabble the wrong way. That’s a large part of the gig. And Simmons surely has mastered the art of getting up noses with his alphabet farts that appear on sports pages of Postmedia sheets from one flank of the True North to the other. But…the Toronto Sun scribe has grown increasingly nasty and mean-spirited, if not cruel, in his commentary. He is Grandpa Simmons, shaking his fists at clouds and screaming at kids to get the hell off his lawn. A case in point is Simmons’ take on mixed doubles competition in Grand Slam tennis. When our girl Gabriela Dabrowski advanced to the mixed doubles final of the French Open last week, Mark Masters of TSN delivered this tweet: “No Canadian woman has won a mixed doubles grand slam title. Ottawa’s @GabyDabrowski has a chance to change that on Thursday.” To which Simmons responded: “Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.” I’m not sure if that was supposed to be funny, witty or clever, but it was none of the above. It was classless, tacky and totally unnecessary, as were a series of insensitive follow-up tweets belittling Dabrowski’s and partner Rohan Bopanna’s achievement.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that Simmons is pooh-poohing yet another event in sports. It’s become his shtick. Last year he was “bothered” by the selection of Rosie MacLennan as Canada’s flag-bearer for the Olympic Games in Rio, because trampoline is “a marginal pursuit” that “seems more backyard and gimmicky that it does Olympian.” He’s also advocated the elimination of women’s hockey at the Olympics, writing: “Women’s hockey is the least competitive, least interesting, least Olympic of all sports in the Winter Games. There should be a cry to end this Olympic charade of imbalance.” And he once told the Ryerson Review of Journalism that “I don’t believe there’s a demand from the public for women’s sports.” I’ll remind you that he writes for a newspaper that’s best known for the tits and ass it displays on Page 3 and, to this day, continues to objectify women with its Sunshine Girl.

Thanks to a study by neuroscientist Tara Swart, we now know what we’ve suspected all along: Journalists’ brains function at a sub-par level. For evidence, see: Simmons, Steve. (See, I can stoop to gratuitous, mean-spirited and nasty comments, too. You know, just like a real sports columnist at a real big-city newspaper.)

Patti Dawn Swansson has been scribbling about Winnipeg sports for 47 years, which means she’s old and probably should think about getting a life.