Hilary Knight – The River City Renegade

Let’s talk about in-your-face female athletes…Kim blah-blah-blah Mulkey…the Cult of Dumb on Hockey Night in Canada…Jack and jackasses…and other things on my mind

This just in: Female athletes cuss.

Who knew?

Moreover, female athletes also get royally PO’d and act out, waving their arms like those tall, inflatable thingies that you see on used car lots. The women holler at game officials, they screech at foes, fans and sometimes their own coaches/teammates, and some spit.

You know, just like the guys do.

Yet many among the rabble were shocked—shocked, I say!—when Iowa hoops star Caitlin Clark was observed on ESPN cameras telling unknown somebodies to either “Shut the f–k up!” or “Get the f–k up!” during a rather tense tussle with West Virginia in the madness that is NCAA March basketball stateside.

Either way, it was an F-bomb and, no surprise, social media was abuzz with chatter about improper, boorish behavior, even though it wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen or heard before.

Just last summer, for example, there was a nasty collision during a Canada-Australia women’s World Cup footy skirmish, whereby Allysha Chapman and Hayley Raso made like bumper cars while challenging for a free ball. Raso took the worst of it, prompting Matildas’ coach Tony Gustavsson to chirp Chapman from his perch on the sideline.

Sensitive off-pitch microphones failed to pick up Gustavsson’s trash talk, but there was no mistaking Chapman’s verbal volley.

“She f–king jumped into me, you tw-t!” the Canadian defender snapped back at him.

The decorous sport of curling offered another e.g. during the recent Scotties Tournament of Hearts, whereby a mic’d-up Val Sweeting of Team Einarson was overhead dropping back-to-back F-bombs about how she was having so much “f–king fun.”

So here’s what I find myself wondering: Are female athletes still held to a different standard than their male counterparts when it comes to bedside manner? Are they still expected to be prissy missies, like so many June Cleavers in sneakers or skates? Has Caitlin Clark been battered fore and aft in large part because she’s a she?

I’d like to think not, but I suspect otherwise.

As much as female sports is experiencing a considerable, long-awaited growth spurt (see: Professional Women’s Hockey League, international futbol, women’s college hoops), it comes with greater scrutiny and I’m not convinced everyone is peering into the same lens. That is, when we see Caitlin Clark acting out, do we see an athlete whining to a referee and flailing with her arms, or do we see a female athlete whining to a ref and flailing with her arms?

There should be no such distinction.

Females athletes at the elite level have the same yearnings as men. They want to win. Did anyone want to succeed more than Hayley Wickenheiser or Christine Sinclair?

Call it passion.

Watch the upcoming women’s world hockey tournament and you’ll see passion on public display, most notably when Canada and the Yankee Doodle Damsels are on the same frozen pond. No male hockey player is more “into it” than Marie-Philip Poulin or Hilary Knight.

And because female athletes are as passionate about their work as men, they’re prone to emotional outbursts. That can mean a moment of madness, or a potty mouth.

And, by god, female athletes need not make apologies for any of it.

This is their time and they’ve earned it. They’re confident, they’re proud, they’re loud (hello, Megan Rapinoe), they’re ruthless, they’ve got attitude, some of them are angry, they’re in your face, and they aren’t interested in being ladylike once inside the lines just to satisfy a dog-eared stereotype.

And, hey, keep this in mind: Between the National Hockey League and the PWHL, only one of the two has the word “Lady” in the name of an individual award, and it isn’t the women’s league.

Having said all that, few people in sports get up my nose quite like Kim Mulkey, head coach with the LSU women’s hoops team. I swear, she’s up both my nostrils. She’s a first-class boor who seems to hold to the misguided notion that it’s her world and the rest of us are allowed to participate in life only at her beckoning. She’s Bobby Knight in pumps and a clown suit. Her threat to sue Washington Post award-winning reporter Kent Babb last weekend (for a so-called “hit piece” that turned out to be a Nothing Burger) is a case in point: “Not many people are in a position to hold these kind of journalists accountable, but I am, and I’ll do it,” she said. Well, la-di-da, your Royal Haughtiness. Let us all bow and grovel.

Mulkey was at it again on Saturday, delivering another sermon and claiming that the “hall-of-famers, legendary coaches” who taught her “probably couldn’t coach in this generation.” Right. She’s better. Other talking points were sexism, requiring her players to pray on Sundays, and a Los Angeles Times article that she decided was “awful.” It was all spoken in a pontifical tone, with Mulkey trying to look and talk as tough and menacing as a school-teacher nun with a wooden ruler in her hand, but it was a pathetic piece of theatre.

Happy Easter to all. My favorite Easter-themed athlete names:
Bunny Shaw
Rabbit Maranville
Bugsy Watson
Hopalong Cassady
Bunny Larocque

True confession time: Way back when, I figured there would be palm trees, coconuts and a nightly luau at Portage and Main before Connor Hellebuyck became a top-drawer NHL goaltender. D’oh! The guy just played his 500th game for the Winnipeg Jets, and there hasn’t been a whole lot of clunkers in the bunch. A tip of the bonnet.

Ted Wyman is miffed that Rink Rat Scheifele was excused from the Jets skirmish Thursday night, a 4-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights. “The penalty to Scheifele was excessive,” Wyman wrote in the Winnipeg Sun. “They could have simply called him for roughing instead of giving him an instigator penalty and fighting major. His actions didn’t warrant being banished for 17 minutes, which would have kept him out through overtime had the game gone on that long.” Well, let’s see. The Rink Rat started a fight with Nicolas Hague. That’s two minutes. He fought Hague. That’s another five minutes. And instigating fisticuffs calls for 10 more minutes in stir. Seems to me the gendarmes got it right.

The Scheifele-Hague punch-up is part of NHL rot. One guy, Hague of the Golden Knights, flattened a foe, Vlad Namestnikov, and a third party, the Rink Rat, was so mortified at the sight of his comrade laid out on the freeze that he bared his knuckles and sought retribution. To fight for no reason is, of course, the NHL “code,” except the NHL “code” is a con job that players like Scheifele swallow whole, even if it means taking dumb penalties when a game hangs in the balance. Really, about the only thing dumber than the “code” are NHL players dumb enough to believe that a bodycheck is a command to open a can of whoop ass on an opponent. So when Kevin Bieksa and Kelly Hrudey go on Hockey Night in Canada to inform us that Scheifele’s brain fart was “admirable” and “honorable,” they’re merely reminding us that they’re also card-carrying members of the Cult of Dumb.

Saw this thread on X the other day:
“I don’t expect xG and G to track as closely at 5v4 as at 5v5.”
“NST showed a modest xGF/60 bump during the hot streak—but their GF/60 went bananas.”
“Depends on the xG model. Some are trained with state taken into account, some are not.”
That’s what passes for hockey talk with the kids these days. Bless ’em.

Dumb headline on the Sportsnet website last week: “Darryl Watts and PWHL Ottawa are heating up at the right time.” Say again? The “right time?” I must have missed a memo, because I thought Ponytail Puck had shut down for three weeks and Ottawa won’t crank it up again until April 20.

Just wondering: Am I supposed to care that golf great Jack Nicklaus pals around with Donald Trump? I mean, sure, the former U.S. president tells fibs (real whoppers), he paws and gropes women, he mocks men for their disabilities, he sends his stooges to storm the Capitol, odds are he’ll spend some time in an orange jump suit, he’s a grifter like we’ve never seen and is now peddling bibles to prove suckers are born every minute. He’s total cringe, a rancid human being. But, last time I checked, none of us, including the Golden Bear, requires permission to put on a red MAGA cap and act every bit the Trump toady. Nicklaus’ political leanings won’t change my life any. But, damn, it’s still kind of sad to see ol’ Jack playing the fool instead of playing golf.

If there’s a Jackass of the Year Award, UFC fighter Julian Eroso is the clubhouse leader, and I suspect he’ll still be at the head of the pack nine months from now. I mean, how else do we explain his wacko rant after beating Ricardo Ramos last Saturday, except to say he’s a jackass? If you missed it, for reasons known only to himself and the voices emanating from inside his tin foil-lined cap, Eroso thought his post-fight natter with news snoops was the proper time and place to challenge Lia Thomas to a fight in the octagon. Yes, that would be law student and former collegiate swimmer Lia Thomas, a transgender female. The way Eroso has it sorted out in his vacuous brain pan, he would make the transition to a woman while Thomas would skip a few law classes in order to hone her mixed martial arts skills. They would then get it on in the octagon, whereupon Eroso would kick “the dude’s ass.” Good grief. How many nights did Eroso lay awake coming up with that bit of dimwitted blather? But, then, Eroso also confirmed that he’s “not the smartest crayon in the box.” None among his audience disagreed.

But, wait. Closing fast on the inside as Jackass of the Year is Chris DiMarco, who has his fingers and toes crossed in the hope that Saudi-backed LIV Golf purchases Old Fogey Golf, which is to say the PGA Tour Champions. That way, he and the rest of golf’s 50-plus fossils can start making “real money,” rather than settle for the Monopoly money available to them on the geriatric tour. “We don’t really play for much money,” he moaned to the boys on something called the Subpar Podcast. “It’s kind of a joke.” Excuse me, but it’s not like the ol’ boys are playing for beads and trinkets. There’s $67 million available to them this year, including a $2.2 million purse at this weekend’s Galleri Classic. One of the fossils, a dude named Steve Alker, has pocketed $555,707. For three months of work. DiMarco pleading poverty is like Streisand begging for singing lessons.

For the record, DiMarco has cashed cheques totaling $22,656,443 as a PGA golfer, placing him 94th for all-time loot. Unless he has Homer Simpson for an accountant, $22-plus million should have been enough to make him nice and comfy as he greys at the temples. Golf should be a hobby by now. But, no, he’s still out there hacking away, and “hacking” is the operative word—he’s earned $36,591 this year. So it’s quite simple: If DiMarco wants more coin, shut the hell up and play better golf.

On the subject of coin, if you’re bored and want to prove there’s a sucker born every minute, you can make tracks for Arlington, Texas, where Mike Tyson and Jake Paul promise to throw punches at each other in a cash grab disguised as boxing on July 20. The sticker price to watch the con job at AT&T Stadium is anywhere from $359 to $16,097. I’m guessing Chris DiMarco can’t fit that into his budget.

And, finally, interesting post on X from Paul Samyn, editor at the Winnipeg Free Press: “HIRING ALERT: Come join a newspaper that wants to grow rather than gut the newsroom. Opportunities include the chance to work in our legislative bureau.” This is terrific news. Now, if only he’d recruit a female sports scribe and a sports columnist, then they’d be up to speed.

Let’s talk about the NHL’s “holy” hockey players and bogus ballyhoo…hey, what about Wick?…wagering $222,000 to win $2,000 on Tiger losing…digging the long ball…a gay man is the world curling champion skip…calling old West Kildonan North Stars…and other things on my mind…

What are we to make of the growing Rainbow Resistance Movement in the National Hockey League?

Well, in the grand scheme of things, a hockey jersey seems like a piffling talking point when there are more than 60 countries on our planet where it’s a crime to be gay or transgender (punishable by death in 11 locales), and a mind-numbing 400-plus anti-LGBT(etc.) bills have been introduced in statehouses across the U.S.A. this year.

So, ya, petite pommes de terre.

Except Pride nights in the NHL have become a talking point because it shouldn’t be a talking point.

That is to say, I always hold out hope that those of us in the LGBT(etc.) community are past being told we don’t belong. We are, after all, 23 years into the 21st century and I wouldn’t expect a prominent business that trumpets ‘Hockey Is For Everyone’ to tell us we aren’t welcome.

Yet, when Ilya Samsonov refuses to put a Pride decal on the back of his goalie mask; when James Reimer, Eric and Marc Staal, Ivan Provorov, Ilya Lyubushkin, Andrei Kuzmenko and Denis Gurianov decline to don rainbow-themed apparel and/or stick tape for 15 minutes; when the New York Rangers, St. Louis Blues, Chicago Blackhawks and Minnesota Wild keep their Pride sweaters in storage—that’s what many in the LGBT(etc.) collective hear. We aren’t welcome.

Some naysayers suggest that’s selective hearing rooted in our own insecurities, but I suggest those people have never been required to justify their very existence while looking for lodgings, service, employment, a marriage licence, the opportunity to adopt children, etc. You know, basic human rights.

So I posit that it’s more accurate to say what some in the LGBT(etc.) collective are feeling is the fallout from many lifetimes of indignities.

A number of years ago, for example, I was shopping in a funky clothing boutique, searching for a gift. An employee approached and, in a harsh tone loud enough for others in the shop to hear, barked at me: “We don’t want your kind in here!”

Since that day, I’ve been harassed, maligned, ostracized, assaulted and bullied based strictly on sexuality and/or gender identity. It hurt like hell. And most, if not all, the people I know in the LGBT(etc.) community have experienced similar affronts meant to make them feel like lesser-thans or disenfranchised.

Thus, as much as a small group of hockey players/teams declining to support a marginalized community under increasing attack is a trivial matter to some, it serves as a haunting echo to myself and others. It saddens me and exposes the NHL’s broad-stroke claim of inclusiveness as bogus ballyhoo.

So let’s talk about “Hockey Is For Everyone.”

If it’s women’s shinny, yes, it appears to be for everyone.

Elite female hockey has featured Black players, Indigenous players, Asian players, gay players, bisexual players and transgender players, and we see it in the faces in the stands. If aliens were to touch down and inhabit our blue orb tomorrow—and some of them could skate and shoot a puck like Marie-Philip Poulin—I’m sure there would be room for the extraterrestrials in Ponytail Puck.

If, on the other hand, it’s the NHL we’re talking about…well, gays are the extraterrestrials.

The NHL trotted out its Trademark Big Lie about “Hockey Is For Everyone” in February 2017, at which time there had never been an openly gay player. Ever. That box still hasn’t been checked off. Not even by someone who’s come out in retirement. Which is astoundingly illogical, since that takes in approximately 8,000 men and 106 years. Nary a gay man? Right. And there are no Catholics in Rome.

It is, however, one thing for elite gay male hockey players to remain closeted, but it’s another matter to tell the LGBT(etc.) community that there’s no room at the inn.

Two reasons have been advanced for this: Russia and Bible scripture.

We’re told there’s a fear, real or imagined, among Russian players that wearing Pride gear is in conflict with Vlad Putin’s anti-gay propaganda law, and the wrath of the dictator’s henchmen shall descend upon them or their families back home should they play along with Pride initiatives.

Well, I can’t speak to that fear because, thankfully, I don’t live in Russia, nor have I ever visited. I just know it to be an untrustworthy nation, a feeling that took root for me in the late 1950s/early 1960s when it was the Soviet Union and Nikita Khruschev was threatening to lob his nuclear weapons at us and blow us all the hell up. The Cuban Missile Crisis and air raid drills, those were the fears I knew, and I can’t say anything’s different today. I still don’t trust the comrades.

Religion, meanwhile, is a different head of lettuce. I have an acquaintance with the church.

I was baptized and raised Roman Catholic.

I had confirmation and received my first Holy Communion at age 7.

I spent time in the confessional, often feeling obliged to ‘fess up to sins I actually hadn’t committed.

(True story: I’d whisper through the screen window between myself and the parish priest to inform him that there was a black blotch on my soul because I had stolen a candy bar from the corner store, which was a lie. So I’d then confess to lying, which was the truth. My penance was usually five Hail Marys, and I always walked out of the confessional feeling cleansed and not at all bummed out about lying.)

I attended mass every Sunday and on the first Friday of every month, which was mandatory for students at my Catholic schools.

I was taught by nuns through Grade 8, always wary of their 12-inch, wooden knuckle-rappers (you probably called it a “ruler”), and time was devoted each day to Catechism, which is when us sprigs learned of the miracle man Jesus and his 12 hangers-on.

And, my oh my, such stories we were told: Raising the dead, stilling storms, walking on H2O, hocus pocus involving fish and bread, turning water into wine, selling out a dear friend with a kiss, healing the lame, the sick, the deaf and the blind with the touch of a hand, wandering the wilderness for 40 days and nights without so much as a snack. That stuff was better than anything on TV. It left me gobsmacked.

The nuns with the 12-inch, wooden knuckle-rappers would regale us with these, and other, biblical tales that seemed more fable than fact, and we were expected to accept them as the gospel truth, no matter how far they stretched the boundary of reason.

We were a captive audience, awash in naiveté and prepared to believe anything those nuns, or the parish priests, told us. If they informed us Jesus fed thousands with no more food than what we had in our school lunch boxes, then it was true. If they told us Catholics are the only people who qualify for entry into Heaven (they did) or that we’d literally burn in a place called Hell if we committed a mortal sin (they did), we bought it, lock, stock and Bible scripture.

Odd thing, though: My strength of recall (which, admittedly, has ebbed) fails to recapture a single moment (not one) when the nuns/priests of my youth gave us the Bible’s, or Jesus’, take on the (apparent) evils of homosexuality.

But, based on “Sacred Scripture,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that gay sex acts are “of grave depravity” and “intrinsically disordered” and “under no circumstances can they be approved.” The inclination toward gay tendencies, meanwhile, is “objectively disordered.” Gay people have a “condition.”

So if I read it correctly, gay sex is a sin while gay people have something akin to dandruff, which can be treated and remedied.

I suppose this is what the NHL players believe when they tell us they love LGBT(etc.) people yet their religion doesn’t allow them to use a rainbow-themed jersey for a welcome mat.

I hesitate to question the depth and sincerity of anyone’s faith, but those outriders leave themselves open to accusations of hypocrisy. They cannot support the LGBT(etc.) community because gay sex is a sin? Fine. Yet how many among them have lusted after a woman who isn’t their wife?

The Sermon on the Mount Carl Bloch, 1890

In the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7), Jesus told the people: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

It’s the seventh commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery. It’s considered such a grave sin that it’s mentioned 52 times in the Bible.

I know male hockey players. Trust me, they lust after women, and many of them act on that lust. According to Jesus, that’s a sin long before clothes begin to come off. Yet I’ve never read or heard of a player, or talked to a player, who denied or turned away a teammate based on adulterous behavior.

In other words, the sinners condemn the sinners (gay people) but not the sinners (adulterers).

Sounds positively unChristian to me.

So, again, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

Faith can be a beautiful thing. To this day, I carry a rosary with me, I wear a medallion of the Virgin Mary and a cross of Jesus, I believe in angels and anticipate the day they come and carry me to the other side of the river.

But I don’t pick and choose scripture to serve an agenda that disenfranchises a beleaguered and oppressed people. It appears to me that’s what the “holy” hockey players are doing.

Matthew 23:28: “Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.”

Amen.

Whenever an LGBT(etc.) issue in sports becomes a topic du jour, I look and listen for gay voices in mainstream jock journalism to bring perspective and personal insight to the discussion. Alas, other than Devin Heroux of the CBC, those voices don’t exist. Maybe there are LGBT(etc.) news snoops on Our Frozen Tundra that I don’t know about. If so, I wish they’d join the conversation. Allies are wonderful, but I’d rather read or listen to someone with skin in the game.

Interesting read on Ponytail Puck from Hailey Salvian in The Athletic. She took the pulse of women’s hockey by asking 30-plus elite players from Canada and the U.S. their views on the game, and she included this question: What is the biggest issue facing women’s hockey? One answer: “We need to get back to having a league with a real season where we can play hockey.” I don’t know if that’s arrogance or ignorance from a member of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, but it’s definitely stupid. There is a league with a real season—the Premier Hockey Federation, which crowned the Toronto Six champion on March 26.

So who’s the best female player of all time? Gotta be Hayley Wickenheiser, no? No. According to Hailey’s poll, Marie-Philip Poulin is numero uno (62% of the vote), with Hilary Knight (21%) and Cammi Granato (9%) next in line. Jayna Hefford, Cassie Campbell-Pascall also received votes. And the great Wickenheiser? Nary a vote. Go figure.

No surprise that the TV talking heads continue to fawn over Tiger Woods, as if he’s still leaping tall buildings in a single bound. Apparently, his making the Masters cut is undeniable evidence that his Superman cape is not torn and tattered, and it doesn’t matter that 63-year-old Fred Couples qualified to play the weekend with a better score. Woods finished Saturday last on the leaderboard, but the squawk boxes couldn’t make it all about him today because he withdrew.

That was some kind of scary stuff during second-round play at the Masters golf tournament at Augusta National on Friday, when stormy weather and high winds brought down three giant trees. Fortunately, the area was clear of patrons, thus no injuries.

Actual BBC headline: “Trees fall at stormy Augusta.”

How TV announcers described it: “Boy, that was quick-thinking and fast-acting by Tiger Woods, who prevented a disaster by moving patrons away from 17 tee and out of harm’s way just seconds before those giant trees toppled to the ground. No one saw it coming except Tiger, and we can only imagine how many lives the great man saved today.”

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,147: Would you wager $222,000 on Woods to not win the Masters? Well, one bettor did that very thing at Circa Sportsbook before the boys teed off on Thursday at Augusta National. The payout when Tiger comes up short? Just $2,000. Hmmm. Sounds like my last grocery bill.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,148: According to researchers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, there’s been a jump in dingers in Major League Baseball due to our shifting climate. In a paper published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, scientist and co-author Justin Mankin writes, “Global warming is juicing home runs.” Apparently, more than 500 HRs since 2010 are the fallout from “historical warming.” Hmmm. And here I thought it was due to syringes and butt cheeks.

To arrive at their conclusion, the Dartmouth climate nerds pored over data from 100,000 games and 200,000-plus balls swatted into play, as well as weather, facilities and other pertinent points. I don’t know if chicks still “dig the long ball,” but Greta Thunberg disapproves.

What’s that Yogi Berra line about attendance? Oh ya: “If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.” And no one in Oakland is stopping the rabble from attending Athletics games. The head count at Oakland-Alameda County Colisum last Tuesday was 3,407. Twenty-four hours later, 4,930 took in the ol’ ballgame. Imagine that, less than 5,000 fans. Or, as the Arizona Coyotes call it, “a near sellout.”

Real nice read from young Taylor Allen in the Drab Slab last week. He tells us all about local volleyball player Averie Allard, who’s now playing pro in Italy. Good stuff.

Our women won a bronze medal at the world curling championship and our men collected silver Sunday in Bytown. So I ask: Do the alarmists still demand a major overhaul of our entire system, or have the flaws in the program been greatly exaggerated?

Chalk one up for the LGBT(etc.) community: Skip Bruce Mouat of the freshly minted world champion Scottish team, which whupped Brad Gushue and the boys 9-3 in the men’s final Sunday afternoon, is an openly gay man.

And, finally, the Stars are aligning for a big reunion bash on April 15 at Shooters Golf Course in Good Ol’ Hometown. I’m talking about my old outfit, the West Kildonan North Stars, and organizer Gord Homenick is looking for more former players to join in the fun. If you wore the colors, coached or worked with Westkay in the Manitoba Junior Hockey League, get in touch with Gord, at ghomenick@shaw.ca or 204-782-1884.

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 the yin and yang of Ponytail Puck…English soccer women hit the mother lode…local treasure Jennifer Botterill…Mike Tyson’s meal ticket…the CFL arms race…Chevy and the Arctic ice melt…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and the days are getting longer and so is this blog…

A “shambles.”

That’s the word Kendall Coyne Schofield used to describe the state of women’s hockey in 2019, and it was a harsh truth.

The mostly ignored Canadian Women’s Hockey League had shuttered its doors permanently, giving rise to a group of malcontents demanding, among other things, a living wage, preferably from billionaire owners in the National Hockey League. Rather than sign on with National Women’s Hockey League outfits and form one super league, 150-200 orphaned players chose to participate in mostly ignored pickup games hither and yon, pose for photos with Billie Jean King, and trash talk the NWHL, which was wrestling with its own credibility demons in its fifth season.

“The women’s professional game is in shambles,” Coyne Schofield, the brightest star in the female shinny galaxy, told the San Francisco Chronicle in December 2019. “I dream of the day a young girl can dream of one day being a professional hockey player, and we’re nowhere near that.”

So, fast forward 15 months, and it’s fair to wonder if that dream is any nearer. Is Ponytail Puck any less in shambles?

Well, let’s take inventory:

The NWHL emerged from its COVID cocoon in January and assembled in Lake Placid for a two-week frolic meant to determine an Isobel Cup winner. Alas, the pandemic put the kibosh on that. The semifinals and final were aborted, but the NWHL returned to the freeze to complete its unfinished business on Friday and Saturday in Boston, declaring the Boston Pride as champions, and all three skirmishes were broadcast live on NBCSN.

Coyne Schofield and friends in the PWHPA, meanwhile, cranked up their second Dream Gap Tour last month, first strutting their stuff in a true sporting cathedral, Madison Square Garden in Gotham, then shifting their barnstorming showcase to the United Center in Chicago. Both friendlies were broadcast live on NBCSN, a first in the United States.

Finally, there’s loud chatter about the NWHL adding a seventh franchise, in Montreal, for its seventh season, and the planet’s elite are scheduled to gather in Nova Scotia for the 20th Women’s World Championship, May 6-16, and TSN will be all-in for the global showcase.

Thus, it sounds like the women are gaining traction. Or not.

As much as the national TV exposure is boffo, certain among the Dream Gappers can’t resist the urge to slag the NWHL, indicating that Ponytail Puck is as much a house divided as in late December 2019, when Coyne Schofield talked about an enterprise “in shambles.”

“I don’t think you’ll get the PWHPA and the NWHL together,” Cassie Campbell-Pascall informed Tim Micallef early this month on Sportsnet’s Tim & Friends.

The former Canadian Olympian and current Sportsnet squawk box suggested it would be “awesome” if the NWHL survives, and that it might one day be “a great league,” or grow up and become “a feeder system” to a Women’s NHL featuring Dream Gappers. But it’s “not the future of women’s hockey,” she harrumphed. So there.

“I think the PWHPA is gonna go down as that moment in women’s hockey, that group in women’s hockey, that really, truly made a difference in providing a professional women’s hockey league,” Campbell-Pascall tooted. So there again.

It should be pointed out that Campbell-Pascall is not a member of the PWHPA board. Nor is she an official adviser. But she’s thrown in fully with the Dream Gappers, and Sportsnet continues to provide a pulpit for her unchallenged propaganda. She uses her position for divisive dialogue, sometimes spewing inaccuracies about the NWHL, other times accusing former NWHL commissioner and founder Dani Rylan Kearney of “ulterior motives” without naming her and without introducing evidence.

Others among the Dream Gappers have shown an inclination toward schoolyard banter. Hilary Knight branded the NWHL a “glorified beer league” and former board member Liz Knox tsk-tsked the NWHL for having the (apparent) bad manners to add an expansion team during a sports-wide pandemic shutdown, even as every other jock operation was plotting strategy for a return to the playing fields.

“There is a lot of history there that is uncomfortable,” Tyler Tumminia acknowledged in a natter with Jeff Marek and Elliotte Friedman on their 31 Thoughts podcast three weeks ago.

Tumminia became a fresh voice in the discussion after stepping forward as interim NWHL commissioner last October. She earned her executive chops in the boardrooms of baseball (she’s named after Ty Cobb), and she’s attempting to apply lessons learned to Ponytail Puck. Not just the NWHL, understand. The big picture. Which explains her sweet tweet saluting the PWHPA for its landmark appearance at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 28.

“To me, (the tweet) was saying, ‘I value and I see you and I applaud what you guys are doing for the women’s game, for women’s hockey in particular.’” she said. “I shouldn’t be commissioner of a women’s hockey league if I didn’t applaud that. I’m not dismissing the fact that there’s some raw emotions around it. What I’m saying, is that, you know, some of that narrative is actually outdated now, so let’s sit at the table and have a true sense of what is actually going on here and how we can get to where everybody wants to get to. We all want to get to the same spot. So how can we get together. But, ya, I think that there needs to be some therapeutic conversation, and I’m open to that of course. Now, I don’t have much history there, but I’m open to having those conversations of what had happened but, mostly, what can we do going forward.”

The difference in tone between Tumminia and Campbell-Pascall is startling. One is reaching out with an olive branch, the other is swinging a wrecking ball.

Their views on the direction of Ponytail Puck are just as conflicting.

Here’s Campbell-Pascall: “I think the next step is an announcement, the NHL to step up and make an announcement. ‘This is what we’re gonna do, here’s how we’re gonna do it, and this is when we’re gonna do it.’ That’s the only logical step and the only thing in my opinion that makes sense. Ya, I’m putting pressure on the NHL, because I’ve sat in meetings and worked with them for a long time and talked and discussed this for a long time, and it is time. They know it’s time. They have the infrastructure. Obviously COVID has hit the league hard and they’re losing money as well. Obviously timing is not ideal, but the time is now. The time is now for them to step up and make an announcement about how they want to support women’s hockey.”

And now Tumminia: “I think it’s kinda unfair on the NHL’s part for me to say, ‘Hey, they should take it on themselves and, you know, help this all out.’ Meaning, we’re in the middle of a pandemic, everybody’s hurting financially. For them to take on the entire business model, I don’t know. I think that would be a little unfair at this time to ask them to do that. That’s a little bit tough to ask at this point. Now, in a couple years that might be a little bit different. Right now what I think it should look like, is you get a business model that’s strong in a league that goes past a couple of years, in combination with other parties involved and kinda go in the direction where it’s sustainable on its own. And at the time there’s market share, there’s viewership and there’s tribal fandom in these markets, and the markets are actually showing there’s growth and it’s sustainable and it’s fueling and funding revenue streams that are consistent. Then I think at that time, you know, I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s something they take on.”

We can only speculate what’s ahead for Ponytail Puck, but I submit the cause can use a lot less of Campbell-Pascall’s militant mutterings and a lot more of Tumminia’s reasoned rhetoric.

Let’s put it another way: I know which of the two women I’d choose to represent me in a boardroom. (Hint: It isn’t the one making demands of NHL owners who aren’t fishing for fresh ways to squander money.)

Here’s a reason the NWHL and PWHPA need to get their crap together: The English Women’s Super League just hit the mother lode, signing a three-year TV deal with BBC and Sky Sports. Total value: 24 million English pounds, which translates into $33M in U.S. greenbacks. The BBC will show 22 matches and there’ll be as many as 44 more on Sky. Our practitioners of Ponytail Puck will drool at those numbers. That’s where they want to be, visible and with substantial TV revenue. And if it’s doable in English soccer it ought to be doable for shinny in North America, especially in Canada. How do they arrive at that point? Simple: Follow Tumminia’s lead. Sit down and talk. Hash out differences. Clear up misconceptions. Grab an oar and row in the same direction. Campbell-Pascall has said more than once that “this isn’t about one league versus the other league,” but that’s exactly what the Dream Gappers have done to Ponytail Puck. They’ve turned it into a family feud. Now they have a chance to grab an olive branch. We’ll see.

Every time I see and hear Jennifer Botterill talk hockey on Sportsnet, I’m reminded what a local treasure she is and how the decision-makers got it right in making her the first female player inducted to the Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame. One of the all-timers in local shinny lore, Jennifer is an Olympic champion, world champion, two-time winner of the Patty Kazmaier Award as the top player in NCAA women’s hockey, team captain at Harvard, CWHL scoring champion, CWHL all-star, and now a respected voice on hockey TV. It’s just too bad Jennifer had to leave home to do all that heavy lifting. Wouldn’t it have been nice if the final notation on her career read: Played professional hockey in Winnipeg?

Having said that, I wonder if the Puck Pontiff, Mark Chipman, harbors an appetite for bringing a women’s team under the True North umbrella. Has anyone asked the Winnipeg Jets co-bankroll about it? If not, why not?

This is an example of what Ponytail Puck is up against in terms of coverage in mainstream media: The Toronto Six met the Boston Pride in an Isobel Cup semifinal skirmish on Friday. Number of column inches devoted to the match in the Toronto Sun pre- and post-game, zero. But, hey, they managed to squeeze in a full-page Sunshine Girl. Meanwhile, both TSN and Sportsnet used the Boston-Minnesota Whitecaps championship joust as bottom-feeder filler on their highlight shows Saturday night/Sunday morning. The Isobel Cup final was a 52nd-minute afterthought on SportsCentre and a 47th-minute snippet on Sports Central, scant seconds in front of two NASCAR mud-racing pickup trucks.

Mike Tyson takes a chomp out of the champ’s right ear.

I note that cannibal boxer Mike Tyson, who once ate Evander Holyfield’s right ear for a late-night snack, won’t be fighting his former foe for a third time, thus losing out on a multi-million-dollar payday. Guess that means Iron Mike will have to find himself a new meal ticket.

Apparently negotiations between the greybeard boxers broke down when Tyson scared off Holyfield by arriving at one bargaining session with a knife and fork.

Here’s a transcript from the final Tyson-Holyfield verbal to-and-fro:
Tyson: “We have an offer you can’t refuse, Evander.”
Holyfield: “Talk to me, Mike…I’m all ears.”
Tyson: “No you’re not.”

There was also a hangup over the marketing slogan for the proposed Tyson-Holyfield III at Hard Rock Stadium. The two sides agreed it should be something catchy like Rumble in the Jungle or Thrilla in Manila, but Holyfield balked when the Tyson camp insisted on Finger Lickin’ Fightin’ ‘n’ Late Night Munchies In Miami.

The Winnipeg Jets lost Jacob Trouba, Tyler Myers and Ben Chiarot from their blueline in June/July 2019. Dustin Byfuglien disappeared in September that year. So we started discussing the pressing need for a top-four defenceman 18½ months ago. Question is, why are we still talking about it a year and a half after Big Buff and the boys bailed? What, general manager Kevin Cheveldayoff hasn’t noticed those four guys are missing? Of course he has. Yet we still await his next move. It’s official then: Chevy actually moves slower than the Arctic ice melt.

According to the 2021 World Happiness report, Finnish people are the happiest on the planet for the fourth straight year. Hmmm. Did anyone think to ask Patrik Laine about that?

There’s a large cargo ship stuck in the Suez Canal and, after a week of failed attempts to free the vessel, the captain and crew are desperate to get out. You know, just like anyone who plays for the Buffalo Sabres.

Seems to me that the Ottawa Senators might become an NHL force once all their players are old enough to shave. Then, of course, Eugene Melnyk will sell them off like used tupperware containers at a yard sale.

Go figure the Canadian Football League. One week commissioner Randy Ambrosie is talking tall about a budding bromance with Dwayne (The Rock) Johnson and his XFL, and the next week he’s pleading poverty (yes, again) and asking players to take an across-the-board hit at the pay window (yes, again). So let’s no longer wonder why Commish Randy and the Lords of Rouge Football would consider an iffy alliance with a fly-by operation south of the 49th, let’s instead wonder why The Rock would consider a partnership with a bunch of guys whose sole game plan appears to be begging. I don’t know if Commish Randy and his bosses are embarrassed, but they should be.

The CFL has become an arms race, and it has nothing to do with quarterbacks. It’s all about how many needles medics can poke into fans’ arms. Rouge Football isn’t doable without patrons in the pews, so what’s the over/under on the number of COVID-19 vaccine shots required before the faithful can flock into ball yards hither and yon? Is it 20 million? Twenty-five mill? Is Vegas offering odds?

And, finally, the other day I watched a replay of Secretariat’s gallop in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, and I must report that it remains the most gob-smacking, astonishing individual athletic performance I’ve ever witnessed. And that’s taking in a lot of turf, because I started watching sports in the mid-1950s. I suppose some folks might get emotional gazing upon the Mona Lisa or the Shroud of Turin, but I get teary-eyed watching Big Red romp to the wire in the Belmont. It’s very spiritual.

Let’s talk about whistleblowers and the NHL…talking heads…with this ring, P.K. does wed…the Chris Streveler pub crawl…beer league hockey meets Ponytail Puck…the Tranna Maple Beliebers…D’oh boys…and other year-end award winners

Back by unpopular demand, one final Sunday smorgas-bored for 2019…and if you haven’t had your fill of turkey, here’s another one for you…

It’s time for the inaugural RCR Year End Awards, which are not to be confused with the Oscars, the Grammys, the Emmys, or the Tonys. Nor should they be mistaken for something significant. They are nothing more than the simple musings of a little, old lady who has too much time on her hands.

The Turkey Shoot Shield: To Akim Aliu and other National Hockey League whistleblowers.

A day of reckoning has arrived for NHL coaches, and there appears to be no statute of limitations on racist/sexist/homophobic language or bullying behavior, leaving us to wonder how deep a dive into the tombs they’ll take in a quest to root out the ghosts of wrong-doings past.

Bill Peters lost his job as head coach of the Calgary Flames for racist comments he made 10 years ago in another league, and for something he did a few years ago in the NHL.

Mike Babcock might never pull puppet strings from behind a players’ bench again because he did something stupid to Mitch Marner a couple of years ago.

Marc Crawford remains on forced leave from the Chicago Blackhawks today because he might have gotten physical with players in Los Angeles more than a decade ago.

We don’t know what Jim Montgomery said or did, or when he said or did it, but he’s no longer coaching in Dallas because of it. The Stars have only told us that Monty was dismissed for “unprofessional conduct,” a blanket statement that could cover everything from aiding and abetting Lee Harvey Oswald to piddling on the Grassy Knoll while intoxicated.

Whatever the case, the year closes with NHL coaches dropping out of sight faster than stoolies in a mobster movie, and by the time the turkey shoot is over no one but Sunday preachers and choirboys will qualify to fill vacancies behind the bench.

The thing is, I’m not sure Christ and his disciples could pass the sniff test today, because they were known to spend time with tax collectors and women of sketchy character..

The That’s Telling It Like It Is Trophy: To Scott Campbell, one-time Winnipeg Jets D-man and all-round good guy. Scotty took note of news snoops pumping Paul Maurice’s tires as the NHL’s top bench boss, and offered this tweet: “Thinking seriously about a Jets blog about Maurice, listening to some fans and national MSM that he’s a top candidate for coach of the year. Just because they have a job talking doesn’t make them right.” For evidence, see: Poulin, Dave.

The With This Ring I Thee Promise To Wed Wreath: To Lindsey Vonn, who no longer slides down icy mountainsides for a living. The former champion ski racer did a very 21st century thing by proposing to her main squeeze, hockey guy P.K. Subban. No word on whether Lindsey got down on bended knee, but P.K. said “yes.” Ya, that’s a real shocker. P.K. Subban taking a plunge.

The 99 More Bottles Of Beer On The Wall Plaque: To Chris Streveler. The Winnipeg Blue Bombers backup quarterback might become the first player in history to go directly from a pub crawl to four-down football. It’s been reported that Streveler has some workouts lined up with National Football League outfits, but they might want to have him take a breathalyzer test before he takes his first snap. Does he even know the Grey Cup parade has ended? Has he put his clothes back on?

The Pour Me Another One Medallion: Again, to Streveler. He’s been named the South Dakota Sports Celebrity of the Year, as if he needed another reason to celebrate. At this rate, he’ll show up at his NFL workouts with a blood-alcohol reading higher than Tom Brady’s career passing yards total.

The Hissy Fit Diploma: To members of the Professional Women’s Hockey Players Association, who believe glorified scrimmages and mean-mouthing the National Women’s Hockey League is the best route to creating a one-size-fits-all operation for Ponytail Puck. The PWHPA prattles on about not having a league in which to play, even as the U.S.-based NWHL is comfortably into a fifth season that mainstream media chooses to ignore, and that makes zero sense. But, hey, a year ago at this time there were two non-sustainable women’s semi-pro leagues. Now there’s only one for the media to ignore. Maybe that’s the PWHPA’s idea of progress.

The Trash Talking Trinket: To Hilary Knight. The American Olympian and outspoken PWHPA member labelled commish Dani Rylan’s NWHL “a glorified beer league.” And what, PWHPA scrimmages aren’t? Fact is, the PWHPA boycotters are delivering the very definition of beer-league shinny. You know, get a bunch of players together, toss the sticks into a pile, pick sides, have at it, and hope someone notices. So far, Billie Jean King and little girls have noticed, but not mainstream media or the masses.

Biebs and the boys: Auston Matthews, the Biebs, Mitch Marner, Tyson Barrie.

The Tranna Maple Beliebers Bauble: To pop guy Justin Bieber, who somehow convinced Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner and Tyson Barrie of les Leafs to drive down to Stratford for a bit of Boxing Day shinny. The boys played 4-on-4 with the Biebs and some of his childhood chums, and here’s the shame of it: Their pickup game is attracting more internet attention than the PWHPA or NWHL. Even longtime CBC news anchor Peter Mansbridge scribbled an article on it. Ponytail Puck can only wish.

The Gay Pride Plaque: We end this year and decade with Sports Illustrated anointing Megan Rapinoe—an out, proud and loud lesbian—its Sportsperson of the Year, and Time magazine sharing a group hug with Rapinoe and the U.S. women’s national soccer side, naming the lesbian-laden Yankee Doodle Damsels its collective Athlete of the Year. That’s serious gay power.

The What Part Of Anti-Gay Speech Do They Not Understand Trophy: To organizers of the Australian Open, who plan to salute Margaret Court next month. Ol’ Maggie, be advised, is a noted gay-basher. She would prefer to live in the type of illusory world created by Hallmark Channel’s makers of saccharine-sopped movies, where there are no Megan Rapinoes or Sue Birds or Elena Delle Donnes celebrating things like birth, marriage, parenthood, family and Christmas. Gays do not exist in Hallmark’s hokey, happily-ever-after world. Ah, but tennis legend Maggie knows that’s pure Pollyanna. She acknowledges that she if forced to share oxygen with gays, and she likes it about as much as Donald Trump likes witch hunts and whistleblowers. So she scrunches up her prunish face and tells us that there are far too many lesbians on the women’s tennis tour, that they’re kin to Hitler and Satan, and that there’s a global-wide gay lobby similar to communism, whereby the LGBT(etc.) collective is trying to steal the minds of your children. And the Aussie Open plans to shower ol’ Maggie with hosannas next month? Sigh.

The Gender Bender Give Your Head A Shake Shield: To the tall foreheads in the ivory tower at World Athletics (nee International Association of Athletics Federations). They don’t think South African runner Caster Semenya walks, talks or looks femme enough to run against the other girls, at least not at 800 metres, so they argued (successfully) that Semenya is “biologically male,” even though their own decade-long poking and prodding of the Olympic champion’s body confirmed that she’s a she.

The Flip Flop And Don’t Tell A Lie Laurel: To Mad Mike McIntyre of the Drab Slab.

Here’s what Mad Mike wrote about the Winnipeg Jets on Dec. 17: “Not having another alpha male like (Dustin) Byfuglien around to compete with would make anyone breathe a little easier. And that’s a sentiment I’ve heard this year from several people around the team, and around the NHL. Byfuglien can be a polarizing individual, one who marches to his own beat and pretty much does whatever he feels like. On the ice, the Jets haven’t missed Byfuglien nearly as much as people thought. The absence of one former superstar on the back end may have been a surprising catalyst for some much-need change.”

And here’s what Mad Mike wrote on Dec. 26: “A healthy, well-rested and motivated Byfuglien could be a difference-maker, especially to a Winnipeg blue-line that has undergone no shortage of turnover. It could be the ultimate trade deadline acquisition—without having to give up any assets in the process.”

So, if you’re scoring at home, Big Buff was a disease on Dec. 17 but, nine days later, he became the cure for whatever might ail the Jets. Double sigh.

The D’oh! Boy Bauble: To Postmedia. This country’s rag trade goliath is, of course, best known for sucking up to Andrew Scheer, pinching pennies, destroying newspaper competition in the colonies, and kicking quality news snoops to the curb. But it achieved unparalleled levels of dopiness by anointing Vasek Pospisil top male jock in the True North. I’m sure young Vasek is a lovely lad. He smiles frequently. And he did boffo work for our side in Davis Cup competition. But he wasn’t our best dude tennis player (hello Felix Auger-Aliassime and Denis Shapovalov), let alone the top jock.

The They Made Me Do It Scroll: To Scott Stinson, the National Post columnist. He was obliged to scribble an essay explaining Postmedia’s choice of Pospisil. I’m guessing Scott did so while holding his nose as he typed, which is a boffo trick on its own.

The Old Man Shouts And Waves His Fist At Clouds Cup: To Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna. As usual, the year was a massive bitch-a-thon for Simmons. He bitched about Marcus Stroman not saying enough during spring training. He bitched about award winners making political statements. He bitched about Canadians not buying books written by his friends. He bitched about name-calling “idiots” on Twitter by calling them (you guessed it) “idiots.” He bitched about the subdued salute the Tranna Boatmen gave retired QB Ricky Ray. He bitched about Canadian Football League teams not making certain players available for chin-wags during the season. He bitched about Kawhi Leonard not saying thank you to enough people, or the right people. He bitched about Todd Bertuzzi being included in the Vancouver Canucks home-opener celebration. He bitched about Andrew Harris playing in the Grey Cup game. He bitched about Mitch Marner’s dad and agent. He bitched about Blue Jays manager Charlie Montoyo sitting Vlad the Gifted on Victoria Day. He bitched about TV talking heads growing mustaches for Movember. He bitched about scribes at The Athletic promoting their work, even as he promoted his own work and that of his Postmedia colleagues. Other than that, he was a happy camper.

And, finally, The Auld Lang Syne Trophy: To you. Happy new year to you all.

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