Joe Thornton – The River City Renegade

Let’s talk about Chevy’s fishing…wedding bells and mountains…the Babe, Roger and here comes da Judge…David Letterman’s ‘tub of goo’…good reads in the Drab Slab…Joe Pop…Jumbo Joe’s beard…and other things on my mind…

Top o’ the morning to you, Kevin Cheveldayoff. Have a nice summer? Hope the fish were biting more than the black flies out there at your Lake of the Woods hideaway.

I know you fish, Chevy, but you sure don’t do much of it on land. I mean, the lads have hit the ice for another crusade—your 12th general managing the Winnipeg Jets—and your group looks strikingly similar to the Sad Sack side that stumbled and (mostly) grumbled its way through the 2021-22 National Hockey League frolic.

I don’t need to remind you that those Jets missed the boat (pun intended), and you shored up your non-playoff roster by landing a goaltender nobody wanted and an aging forward nobody wanted. Oh joy. What were you using for bait that so many others passed on? The iffy wifi or even worse weather?

I suppose it’s only fair that I point out you did manage to land yourself one big, off-ice catch, Chevy. That would be Rick Bowness, a wrinkled, good-guy coach who might have been No. 2, 3, 4 or 5 on your wish list of head knocks not named Barry Trotz. Bones’ mission is simple: Turn leftovers into a scrumptious, full-course meal that includes dessert with a cherry on top, which is to say a seat on the Stanley Cup merry-go-round and a deep run next spring.

Bones aside, Chevy, call it a Summer of Nothing, and it wasn’t your first. Is it your last, though?

Some of us think your seat should be hotter than a ticket to an Adele gig in Vegas, but the guy whose opinion matters most, Puck Pontiff Mark Chipman, has your back, and the three-year contract extension he handed you for never failing to fail is the evidence.

Justified or not, Chevy, it’s bonus time for you to finish what you and the Puck Pontiff started in 2011. Otherwise, the Gone Fishin’ sign needs to go up permanently.

Rink Rat Scheifele had a natter with Elliotte Friedman and Jeff Marek on their 32 Thoughts podcast the other day, and the Jets centre insists there’s a “tight knit” team sitting in the changing room. Ya, we saw that at the end of last season when they all got together, linked arms and held a group gripe about too many guys more interested in padding their stats than playing the right way. Oh, but wait. Apparently, a culture shift is afoot. We’re told a bunch of the boys gathered to witness Josh Morrissey take a bride during the summer, and the lads shall assemble in the Rocky Mountains next month for a 1960s-style love-in, where it’s assumed Rick Bowness will read bedtime stories and tuck them in each night. Hmmm. Wedding bells? A mountain retreat? Are they building a hockey team or making one of those hokey Hallmark movies?

I suppose some will view the addition of Sydney Daniels to the Jets’ stable of bird dogs as a “woke” hire or “virtue signaling,” but I’ll take their word that she’s got the chops to handle the college scouting portfolio. Sydney’s from the Flattest of Lands, which is a good place to start any hockey resumé, and she’s familiar with the U.S. college scene, having played and coached at Harvard. She’s also Indigenous, which makes her a double-barreled role model for girls and women. Good for Sydney and good for Winnipeg HC.

This from hockey scribe Kevin McGran in his 13 Musings column for the Toronto Star: “The Winnipeg Jets are going to be a train wreck, right?” Ouch. And Michael Traikos of Postmedia Toronto describes Winnipeg HC as “a rudderless ship.” Ouch again. Actually, I’m not surprised that they would take a dim view of the Jets. I’m only surprised that shinny scribes in the Republic of Tranna acknowledge there are NHL teams out here in the colonies.

This also from McGran: “Gotta believe the Leafs will go slowly before putting a sponsor’s logo on the front of their game sweater.” D’oh! He wrote that Tuesday. Scant seconds later, the Toronto Maple Leafs introduced their 2022-23 jerseys with—you guessed it—an advertising patch (Farmers of Ontario “Milk”) on the right chest.

No surprise that Patrik Laine and Johnny Gaudreau will be together on the left and right flanks once the puck is dropped on Columbus Blue Jackets dress rehearsals. Evidently the lineup for auditions to play centre with Puck Finn and Johnny Hockey is longer than the queue for Queen Liz’s funeral.

Always worth noting that Laine is all-in with the Blue Jackets, having signed for the next four seasons, and that’s something Puck Finn refused to do with the Jets. So it’s fair to wonder what Columbus, Ohio, (of all places) has that Good Ol’ Hometown is missing. Oh, well, his loss I guess. I mean, he’ll miss all that warm-and-fuzzy bonding next month in the Rockies.

When I was a sprig, Babe Ruth was more myth than man, someone who seemingly had sprung from the pages of a dime novel.

Elders would regale us with tales taller than a New York skyscraper about the Babe, claiming one swing of the Bambino’s bat would send a baseball hurtling from the Bronx to Baton Rouge. The Babe was Bunyanesque. His 60-home run season in 1927? Also mythical. I mean, who did that? Not Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle or Henry Aaron or Ted Williams. Only the Babe. The Sultan of Swat.

Then Roger Maris came along and we saw it actually happen.

I was 10 when Maris whacked a Tracy Stallard pitch into the right field porch at Yankee Stadium, then made his 61st home run trot of the 1961 Major League Baseball season. No, I didn’t see it live on TV. We were limited to televised games on Saturday afternoons back then, and Roger passed the Babe on a Sunday. But I read all about it in the next morning’s Winnipeg Tribune, so it had to be true.

And now we have another damn Yankee, Aaron Judge, doing Ruthian and Marisian-type things. He has 60 dingers, and there’s counting yet to be done.

Will kids 60 years from now listen to grandpa spin yarns about a larger-than-life, mythical man who didn’t have a catchy nickname? Somehow I doubt it. Aaron Judge is too real to be a myth. He doesn’t stick needles in his butt. He doesn’t call his shots. He doesn’t booze it up and consort with fancy females on the road. He isn’t into dramatic, diva-like bat flips. He just plays baseball. Hey, maybe that’s become the myth…a guy who just plays baseball.

What’s the going rate for a souvenir baseball? Well Sal Durante, a Brooklyn truck driver, caught Maris’ 61st HR ball and eventually peddled it for $5,000 to restaurant owner Sam Gordon, who promptly handed it to Maris. Durante gifted half his poke to his parents, then spent the remainder on furnishing a house with soon-to-be bride Rosemarie. They said their I do’s three weeks after Sal snatched the Maris HR ball, and they honeymooned in San Francisco, Las Vegas, Reno, Palm Springs and Sacramento, all on Gordon’s dime. Durante, now hospitalized with dementia at age 80, also received a Zippo cigarette lighter with a Yankees logo on the front and Roger’s name on the back from the Yankees slugger. The guy who hauls in Judge’s 62nd HR ball (assuming he hits it) could easily afford a three-bedroom home a block away from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, and have enough coin left over for yearly around-the-world honeymoons and a solid gold Zippo.

The cost of making a baseball is about $7, but you can buy one designed to exact MLB specifications on Amazon for $33.16 (goop and nasty toxins that Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole applies not included).

Okay, Alejandro Kirk doesn’t have the body perfect (nor did the Babe, for that matter). He’s squat, with an ample girth. Stand him next to Aaron Judge and you’re looking at an igloo beside the Empire State Building. But is the sight of the rotund Toronto Blue Jays catcher rumbling around the base paths “embarrassing for the sport” of baseball? TSN radio guy Matthew Ross thought so, and said so, on Twitter, prompting keyboard warriors to pounce with loud squawks and accusations of body shaming. No surprise that Ross delivered a mea culpa, saying in part, “defaming people for the way they look is not where my heart or intent was in this moment—or ever!” Sigh. Why do these guys always use the “that’s not who I am” copout? As the Wise Woman of the Village once said: “No matter who and what we claim to be, what we say and do is who and what we are.” So just own it, for gawd’s sake, then vow to do and be better.

The Kirk clatter brought to mind the time late-night gab guy David Letterman went off on Atlanta Braves relief pitcher Terry Forster. Among others things, Letterman called Forster “the fattest man in all of professional sports. The guy is a balloon. He must weigh 300 pounds. He is a looaad.” Just so his national TV audience didn’t miss his meaning, Letterman closed his body-shaming bit by labeling Forster “a fat tub of goo.” That’s the way it was in 1985. People yukked it up over stuff that brings out the tar and feathers today.

Some good copy in the Drab Slab lately, starting with Jeff Hamilton’s deep dive into the matter of disgraced high school football coach Kelsey McKay. It isn’t the first time Jeff has gone into the dirty areas of sports, and he always delivers the goods. Meantime, Mike Sawatzky has a nice piece on the 1962 U of M Bisons football team, which had old friends George Depres and Jeep Woolley on the coaching staff. Jeff and Mike are the best weapons in the Freep’s toy department.

On the subject of the write stuff, you might want to check out Eddie Tait’s piece on Joe Poplawski over at the Winnipeg Blue Bombers website. Joe Pop is this year’s inductee to the Winnipeg FC Ring of Honour, and young Eddie has the background poop on a guy recognized hither and yon as one of the finest people in sports. Any sport. Any era.

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed that Montreal Larks head coach Danny Maciocia always looks as confused as a guy who’s forgotten where he parked the car?

The Larks got the better of the Hamilton Tabbies on Friday night, 23-16, and Montreal QB Trevor Harris mentioned Jesus three times during a brief post-victory natter with John Lu on TSN. Hmmm. I realize Larks legendary QB and current O-Coordinator Anthony Calvillo is revered in Montreal, but when did they start calling him Jesus?

So, who becomes the fall guy in Bytown, where the 3-10 RedBlacks looked shockingly inept in a 45-15 paddywhacking from the Toronto Argos last night? Well, it’ll be Paul LaPolice, of course. It isn’t Coach LaPo’s fault that he lost his starting QB, Jeremiah Masoli, to a dirty bit of business by the felonious Flatlander Garrett Marino, but consecutive three-win crusades doesn’t cut it. This is his second head-coaching gig in Rouge Football, and at 22-49 I believe there’s a warm seat waiting for Coach LaPo beside Kate Beirness on the TSN panel.

Nice to see Darren Dutchyshen back on SportsCentre with Jennifer Hedger while he fights the good fight against cancer. Dutchy has been a mainstay at TSN since 1995, which seems so darn long ago, .

Apparently ’tis the season to retire. Zdeno Chara, P.K. Subban and Keith Yandle all said toodle-oo on the same day last week, and one of them is destined for the Hockey Hall of Fame, another probably has a future in the gab game if he chooses, while Yandle packs it in as the NHL’s iron man, having clocked in for work in 989 consecutive games from March 26, 2009, to March 29 this year. Meanwhile, no word on Jumbo Joe Thornton’s NHL future until scientists complete carbon dating analysis of his beard.

I don’t like the term “GOAT.” It’s overused to the point of being nails-on-a-chalkboard icky, and when an unGOAT like Blake Shelton tries to use an actual goat as a prop on The Voice, you know it’s also become cheesy and Oklahoma cornball. I think “GOAT” should be banned as it relates to sports, and I certainly won’t use it, except to tell you I won’t use it. I mean, Secretariat was the greatest race horse I’ve ever seen, but do we really want to call Secretariat a GOAT? Not gonna happen.

So, does Becky Hammon’s success leading the Las Vegas Aces to the WNBA title move the needle closer to her becoming the first female head coach in the NBA, or is she now pigeon holed into women’s hoops?

The WNBA final, by the way, featured two openly gay head coaches—Hammon, who’s married to Brenda Milano and the mother of two young kids, and Curt Miller of the Connecticut Sun. More role models for LGBT(etc.) youth.

Dumb Headline of the Week, from the Sportsnet website: “Exciting developments from PWHPA won’t include new league in January.” Good grief. There can be just one “exciting” development with the Dream Gappers—a league. Everything else is last week’s baked goods. I mean, there’s nothing fresh and “exciting” about playing glorified scrimmages for a fourth successive winter. Jayna Hefford and her Dream Gappers can dress up their “friendlies” six ways to Sunday, but Team Harvey’s vs. Team Sonnet will never get the pulse racing. The PWHPA needs to be something more than photo ops with Billie Jean King and hit-and-miss weekend scrimmages if they expect the masses to take Ponytail Puck seriously.

And, finally, this week’s vanity license plate:

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 the NHL’s COVID boogie…what they’re saying about the Winnipeg Jets…one Mike drops the mic and another Mike picks it up…Citizen Kane’s latest woes…the value of a good copy editor…and no mulligans for Trump

An early-week smorgas-bored…and happy hockeying everybody…

And so it begins Wednesday night, a modified National Hockey League crusade featuring fewer games, expanded rosters, a Hoser Division, and a killer pandemic.

Make no mistake, this NHL do-si-do shall boogie along to the whims and cadence of COVID-19, which has already put the Dallas Stars in drydock and isn’t likely to play favorites. We can expect more of same, and you can only hope the coronavirus doesn’t take its biggest bite out of your hockey heroes.

We’ve seen how it works, of course, thanks to other leagues.

Every quarterback with a pulse on the Denver Broncos roster was sacked. The Cleveland Browns lost three coaches and four players in advance of their National Football League playoff skirmish v. the Pittsburgh Steelers. It took Tony Romo out of the CBS Sports blurt box. Etcetera, etcetera.

In short, COVID-19 has taken down more NFL players than Michael Strahan, Mean Joe Greene, Reggie White and Dick Butkus in their best years. Combined.

Over in the National Basketball Association, the Boston Celtics-Miami Heat joust was called off Sunday when there weren’t enough healthy bodies to put a team on the hardwood. Two games were called off Monday. The Philly 76ers had the minimum of eight players available for their match v. the Denver Nuggets. The Dallas Mavericks closed their practice facility. Etcetera, etcetera.

So, really, all bets should be off before they drop the puck on the 2021 NHL season, even as Vegas bookies are offering odds on a Stanley Cup champion (the Winnipeg Jets, for those so inclined, were listed at 40/1 on Bodog last time I looked).

Similarly, it’s folly to engage in the reading of tea leaves and/or tarot cards.

That’s Gordie Tumilson, middle front row, beside Bobby Hull.

I mean, go ahead and toss out pre-play predictions if you like, but if COVID-19 were to slay Connor Hellebuyck and Laurent Brossoit, I don’t like the Jets playoff chances with a Zamboni driver in the blue paint and Gordie Tumilson as backup.

That’s no rap against old friend and former teammate Gordie, by the way. He’s one of my favorite people, but I’m guessing the reflexes aren’t quite as rapier-like as when he stopped rubber for the West Kildonan North Stars in 1969-70 and the Jets a few years later.

Thus, there shall be no prognostications from moi, except to say I expect the Toronto Maple Leafs to top the Hoser Division. (Then, as is their custom, they’ll be excused in the opening round of Beard Season.) Otherwise, it’s a complete crap shoot that, again, shall follow the dictates of COVID, whether we like it or not.

Let’s just call it the COVID19-2021 season.

The gang at NHL.com wasn’t shy about delivering predictions, and six of 15 observers believe the Jets have the right stuff to qualify for the Stanley Cup tournament. Adam Kimelman has the local lads finishing third, while Dave Stubbs, Shawn P. Roarke, Bill Price, Mike G. Morreale and Tracey Myers slot them in at fourth. USA Today, meanwhile, has the Jets penciled in for a sixth-place finish, ahead of only the Ottawa Senators.

Here’s what they’re saying about the Jets hither and yon…

Ray Ferraro, TSN: “Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver, I’ve got those three kind of together (after Toronto, Montreal and Calgary). I’m not blown away by Winnipeg’s defence. That’s the one thing that gives me pause. But maybe one of those young guys is more ready than you think. Maybe you can climb a spot. Maybe you can put yourself in a different place. I don’t know, is Hellebuyck gonna do that again this year, ’cause, man, he was the best goalie in the league last year. If he can, great. That erases a lot of the shortcomings perhaps of that defence.”

Sean McIndoe, The Athletic: “The optimist’s take on the Jets is that they were pretty good last year despite lots of doom and gloom about their thin blueline, then looked like a playoff team and only lost in the qualifying round because everyone got hurt. The pessimist would point out that ‘pretty good’ isn’t all that great when you have a Vezina winner in goal, and the blueline isn’t significantly better. If Connor Hellebuyck stands on his head again, cool. If he does like a lot of Vezina winners and regresses to the mean even a little, they might fall out of the playoff hunt. I realize ‘they need their goalie to play well’ is an insight that would apply to every team in the league, but it really applies to the Jets.”

Greg Wyshynski, ESPN: “The Winnipeg Jets will ice another competitive team, backstopped by one of the league’s elite netminders in Connor Hellebuyck. But as the team looks to push for another long playoff run, dark storm clouds are overhead, as trade rumors persist involving goal-scoring wizard Patrik Laine. (Paul) Stastny can’t recapture the magic. On a contending team, Stastny is a valuable asset. He does a lot of the little things right that can make the difference in a playoff series. But the last time he was in Winnipeg, he was 32 years old and had a 0.65 points-per-game average between the Jets and Blues. Last season, in 71 games, that average dipped down to 0.54, the lowest of his career. Not a liability as a player, but maybe no longer the guy you want as your No. 2 centre. Then again, he did have impressive chemistry with (Nikolaj) Ehlers and Laine, so we could be wrong.”

Random observations: I’m not convinced it’s a given that the Ottawa Senators are destined to be Hoser Division bottom-feeders. Is it likely? Sure. Especially if bankroll Eugene Melnyk sticks his nose where it doesn’t belong. Just don’t sleep on them…The Montreal Canadiens are overrated. Ditto the Calgary Flames…When I submit that I expect the Maple Leafs to top the Hoser Division, it’s based on a belief that aligning greybeard Joe Thornton with Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner on the top line is a gimmick with a shelf life of about one week…How many people in the True North will pay attention to the standings south of the border? What the American teams do is irrelevant until the Stanley Cup tournament is down to the final four. So why tune in?…Just a reminder, the Jets were the last homebrew outfit to make it to the SC semifinals, in 2018. Seems like a decade ago, doesn’t it?

The What Was Your First Clue Sherlock Award goes to the Drab Slab for this headline on the Jets playing in an empty Little Hockey House On The Prairie this season: “Bell MTS Place won’t be same without fans.” Ya think?

So, the other shoe has finally dropped for Mike Milbury, the former player, coach and GM most noted for clubbing a New York Rangers fan on the head with his footwear. NBC Sports has decided it can get along without Milbury’s mumbled musings in the broadcast booth and/or studio this season, and they’ll hand his mic to another defrocked NHL coach, Mike Babcock. No word on what Milbury plans to do with his free time, but apparently he’ll begin a search for the real Space Needle. Hopefully, there’ll be no women on site to “disrupt” his concentration.

Evander Kane and the infamous money phone.

Remember that money phone pic Evander Kane posted from Las Vegas during the 2012-13 NHL lockout? You know, the one with the stacks of American 100 dollar bills? Well, today old friend Evander is $26.8 million in the glue, and hands up anyone who’s surprised to learn that he’s in trouble again? Didn’t think so. Kane, of course, isn’t the first high-salaried athlete to squander a fortune, and he won’t be the last. It’s just that it’s a particularly bad look for him, since a lot of the Jets faithful recall Kane flaunting his wealth with that money phone pic. Today he’d have to borrow a quarter to call someone who cares in Winnipeg, and that’s sad.

Say, here’s some good news: Add the name Hayley Moore to the growing list of women stepping into prominent positions in men’s professional sports. The American Hockey League has recruited Hayley as its Vice President of Hockey Operations, and she’ll be on the job early next month, once the National Women’s Hockey League Isobel Cup tournament wraps up in Lake Placid. At present, she’s president of the Boston Pride, after serving as team GM and deputy commissioner and director of player development for the NWHL.

There’s a very good reason why copy editors exist: They can save a writer’s bacon. Unfortunately, they were asleep on the rim when Steve Simmons of Postmedia Tranna filed this copy last weekend: “Yes, American hockey is pretty darn good,” he wrote. “And no, that’s not necessarily new. Twenty years ago, Sidney Crosby scored the Golden Goal in overtime. The opponent: Team USA, winner of the 1986 World Cup.” D’oh! Twenty years ago, Crosby was in Junior High and the World Cup of Hockey didn’t exist in 1986.

That reminds me of one of my worst gaffes, although not in a byline article. I referred to the Major League Baseball all-star game in July as the “annual Fall Classic.” Gus Collins was on the sports desk that night at the Winnipeg Tribune, and he didn’t catch the mistake. I noticed it at first light the following morning while eating breakfast. Scant seconds later, Gus was on the blower. “Did you see it?” he asked. To which I replied, “Sorry, Gus, I can’t talk right now. I just choked on my Cheerios.”

According to Maggie Haberman of the New York Times, Donald Trump is “gutted” over the PGA of America voting to remove its 2022 signature tournament from his Trump National golf course in Bedminster, N.J. Not to worry, Trumpsters. Apparently Rudy Giuliana is already on the case, arranging a press conference at a convenient Four Seasons Greenskeeper Shed, whereupon he will demand a mulligan for Trump and vow to challenge the vote in the highest Kangaroo Court he can find.

And, finally, golfers Gary Player and Annika Sorenstam accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Donald Trump last week, but New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, a one-time Trumpite, wants no part of the trinket. To get even for the betrayal, it’s believed Trump stomped his feet, shook his tiny fists, and demanded his MAGA hat back.

Let’s talk about Howie Meeker and raccoon droppings for $2,000, Alex…fake news and Leavenworth…Vlad the Gifted and Ball Park Franks…Sid and Connor say it’s okay to be gay…and other things on my mind

A Monday morning smorgas-bored…and I never realized how little I knew until Alex Trebek showed up on TV…

In honor of Canadian TV icon Alex Trebek, who left us at age 80 on Sunday, let’s play Jeopardy!

CLUE: Golly gee and Jiminy Crickets, this man was a National Hockey League rookie-of-the-year who scored five goals in one game, a four-times Stanley Cup champion, an all-star, a Member of Parliament, and a broadcasting icon on Hockey Night in Canada.

ANSWER: Who is Howie Meeker?

CLUE: Howie died at the age of 97 on Sunday, meaning this man is now the oldest living Toronto Maple Leaf.

ANSWER: Who is Joe Thornton?

I remember sitting in the media room of the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver one night many winters ago, gnoshing on a plate of free food while having a pre-game natter with either Friar Nicolson or Sod Keilback.

Actually, it might have been both of the Winnipeg Jets radio guys. No matter.

At some point, Meeker joined us at our table and the chin-wag focused on Dale Hawerchuk, the captain and centrepiece of a decent Jets outfit. I suggested that Ducky had been off his game a bit, but Howie would have none of it.

“Ah, you don’t know a hockey puck from a pinch of coon shit,” he informed me.

I’m not sure why, but hearing Howie Meeker pooh-pooh my hockey know-how somehow made me feel good. I mean, the Squeaker was already a legend of the Hockey Night in Canada blurt box by then, so it was an absolute honor to have him break bread with a stray scribe from the flatlands and, at the same time, confirm that my grasp of the game was no better than a pinch of raccoon droppings. Never before had someone so famous told me I was full of crap.

I thought perhaps Howie was going to pull out his telestrator and draw some squiggly lines to emphasize his point, or maybe even whack me upside the head with the thing.

But no. Howie wasn’t being mean. He was being Howie. Blunt.

That was my only inter-action with Meeker, so I never got to know him in any depth. But, like so many others, I knew him from his HNIC gig, where he’d break down a play and instruct one of the boys in the truck to “Stop it right there!” or to “Back it up!” or, when a defenceman was beaten badly, he’d show the replay and, in a scolding tone, squawk, “What’s he doing down on his knees looking for nickels?”

Howie wasn’t into tap dancing, and his tell-it-like-it-isms surely livened up HNIC intermissions. He gave the show juice and made it fun.

My mom, mind you, thought Howie to be quite the noisy and annoying know-it-all, and I’m sure she would have been horrified by his table manners. But I got a kick out of the guy, coon droppings and all.

Speaking of former HNIC squawkers, Dave Hodge made me giggle with this tweet after jock legends Bobby Orr, Jack Nicklaus and Brett Favre had raised their voices in support of Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election: “Thanks to Orr, Nicklaus and Favre, Donald Trump says the only channel that doesn’t broadcast fake news is ESPN.”

Damien Cox of the Toronto Star describes Trump as a “distinctly unpopular politician.” Ya, he’s so unpopular that only 70,903,094 Americans voted for him. That’s more than Barack Obama tallied in 2008 and ’12. It beats Hilary Clinton’s total in 2016. It’s more than double what JFK received in 1960. We should all be so “distinctly unpopular.”

The Washington Nationals want president-elect Joe Biden to toss the ceremonial first pitch at their Major League Baseball home opener in 2021. To which former broadcaster Peter Young tweets: “Trump counters with claim he’ll throw out the first pitch at Leavenworth.” That made me laugh.

Just wondering: Does Trump’s election loss mean Mexico doesn’t have to pay for his invisible wall?

Speaking of money, I read something the other day about Microsoft dude Bill Gates saying his three children would inherit only $10 million each from his $100 billion-plus fortune, because giving them “massive amounts of money is not a favor to them.” Excuse me? Ten million bucks isn’t a massive amount of money? C’mon, man, that’s like saying Babe Ruth was a singles hitter.

In the past MLB season, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. couldn’t hit his own weight. Literally. He arrived at Summer Camp a whopping 282 pounds, was promptly shifted from third to first base, and hit .262. But word out of Toronto Blue Jays Nation is that Vlad the Gifted is no longer Vlad the Bloated. That’s right, Vladdy’s lost 32 pounds of blubber and now tips the Toledo at 250, give or take a side order of Nathan’s Ball Park Franks. He also wants his old job back with the Tranna Nine, at third base. That would be quite a trip: From the hot dog stand to the hot corner.

I’m not convinced that the outing of player agent Bayne Pettinger moves the needle toward acceptance of an openly gay performer in the National Hockey League, but the enthusiastic support from Sidney Crosby and Connor McDavid might carry some sway with a young, closeted gay kid who’s thinking of quitting the game. Both Crosby and McDavid are fully behind Pettinger, a former Hockey Canada operations manager now with CAA Hockey, and if the game’s greatest players say it’s okay to be gay, then it’s okay.

If the day dawns when an NHL player chooses to come out, he’d be wise to follow the Pettinger blueprint: Find a trusted news snoop to tell the story, which Pettinger did in Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic, and do it during down time, which is to say the off-season. That way, the fuss and muss and circus is dispensed with long before training exercises commence, and he can simply get on with getting on.

Like most newspaper sports editors, Steve Lyons of the Drab Slab is expected to find room in his section for female sports. “It’s not always easy,” he wrote on Nov. 5. “The reality is there are less women participating in sports and there are less women’s pro leagues. That adds up—or I guess doesn’t add up to an equal number of stories to be written and published. We can’t control how many wire stories we get each day on women’s sports, so our solution to moving the needle in this area has always been to focus on being as equitable as possible on local sports. While I did once win a national award for a series on gender equity in sports, I’m a guy—and slow sometimes—so, I admit to needing to be poked and kept aware on this subject.” Toward that end, Lyons is bringing Andrea Katz on board, and she’ll be writing about the distaff side of the playground “once or twice a month.” That’s a good thing.

Rafael Nadal didn’t triumph at the Paris Masters tennis tournament, but much was made of the fact Rafa joined the 1,000-win club and trails only Jimmy Connors (1,274), Roger Federer (1,242) and Ivan Lendl (1068) in career singles victories during the Open Era. Not true. Rafa and everyone else is still chasing the great Martina Navratilova and her 1,442 singles match victories. And before they catch Martina, they have to catch Chrissie Evert (1,309 Ws). Just saying.

And, finally, another example of the shameful Torontofication of the Winnipeg Sun could be found on the sports front Nov. 3. It was a piece on Jeffrey Knox Jr., and don’t feel bad if you’re not familiar with the name. A vagabond football player last seen in frolic with the Ottawa RedBlacks, Knox Jr. signed to join the Toronto Argos for a 2020 Canadian Football League crusade that never happened, and now he’s facing an attempted homicide rap, among other things, in the U.S. He never played in Winnipeg for the Blue Bombers. Yet one of the geniuses on the Postmedia sports desk decided that his tale of woe was what sports fans in Good Ol’ Hometown wanted to read first and foremost on Nov. 3, rather than Ted Wyman’s real-news piece on local sports facilities and rec leagues going dark for two weeks due to COVID-19. They tucked Ted’s article on Page 4. Sigh.

Let’s talk about L’Affaire Laine…Winnipeg the armpit…a Jumbo fossil in the ROT…Chelsea’s the best free agent available…Jennifer Jones and the ‘Notables’ of Manitoba’s Pebble People…’ear ye, ‘ear ye, Mike Tyson is trying to speak…the Dodgers’ two K men…a Bird named Sue…and other things on my mind

Another Sunday morning smorgas-bored…and someone told me that I really should quit while I’m ahead, but I’ve never been able to get ahead…

So, according to the pundits, the acquisition of Paul Stastny was supposed to accomplish two things for the Winnipeg Jets:

1. Fill the long-standing need for a second-line centre.

2. Put a happy face on Patrik Laine and put the skids on the galloping gossip that has hounded Puck Finn for more than a year.

Well, insofar as the first point of the equation, we can continue to debate the pros and cons of the Jets reeling in the aging Stastny—and I’m squarely on the con side of the discussion—but it’s probably best that we allow his play in Winnipeg HC’s next National Hockey League crusade to settle the argument.

As for point No. 2, good luck with that.

It took less than a week for one of TSN’s hockey “insiders” to fan the flames of L’Affaire Laine once again, and this time it isn’t a campfire. It’s a bonfire with possible gusts up to a five-alarm inferno.

Here’s what LeBrun told host James Duthie last Thursday:

“There’s been some scuttlebutt around the National Hockey League of late that Patrik Laine may not show up at camp if he’s not dealt by the Winnipeg Jets.

“I reached out to his representation agents, Andy Scott and Mike Liut, to get some clarity and they absolutely deny that. That Laine has not asked for a trade, he’s not threatening to not be at camp if he’s not dealt.

“Having said that, his agents also made clear that it’s fair to say that given that Laine knows his name has been in trade discussions as we’ve talked about here, and given that his usage in the lineup the last couple of years has been a constant topic of conversation, the fact that he doesn’t get consistent first-line minutes, his agents Mike Liut and Andy Scott do confirm that it probably would be mutually beneficial to both the player and to the team if Patrik Laine is traded and that there is clear communication between them and Kevin Cheveldayoff, the GM of the Winnipeg Jets, about this.

“Now I spoke to Kevin Cheveldayoff on this day. And he reiterated that he’s looking at all options when it comes to trade and that Patrik Laine remains a big part of the organization.

“What I would say, not Cheveldayoff, is that he’s not going to just trade Patrik Laine for the sake of it, that it’s going to have to be something that makes sense for the Winnipeg Jets. But I will say this, as Andy Scott, the agent for Patrik Laine, said to me, there is a clear understanding between both sides about where this is probably headed.”

Now, you can pooh-pooh LeBrun’s bona fides as an “insider” if you like, but one thing should be abundantly clear by now: Patrik Laine will remain the centrepiece of trade rumors until a) Chevy hands him a one-way ticket out of town or b) Puck Finn signs long term. Nothing else will dim the natter.

I’m just surprised that so many among the rabble and in mainstream media are surprised that it’s come to this.

I mean, I don’t have my feet on the ground in Good Ol’ Hometown, but this is how I read the room 16 months ago: “You think Patrik Laine’s agent hasn’t noticed how the (Jacob) Trouba saga played out? If it’s true that Puck Finn’s nose is out of joint, all he has to do is sign a two-year bridge deal, take les Jets to arbitration down the road, then force a trade.”

So how has it played out to date? Laine signed a two-year bridge deal, he’s eligible for arbitration after next season, and already his two mouthpieces sound like they’re trying to force a trade.

Yet I keep hearing and reading that the Jets are in control of this game of chicken. To a point, that’s true. But they can only delay Puck Finn’s departure if that’s his intent. They can’t stop him. Just like they couldn’t stop Evander Kane and they couldn’t stop Trouba.

We don’t know who or what is up Laine’s nose. His beef could be with the captain, Blake Wheeler, or the head coach, Paul Maurice, or maybe he’s bought into the silly “Winnipeg has lousy WiFi” nonsense. If it’s Wheeler, it wouldn’t be the first time two teammates refused to exchange Christmas cards. If it’s Coach PoMo, it’s not like there’s never been conflict between a bench boss and a worker (for evidence see: Bowman, Scotty). If it’s the city, he isn’t the first guy who’s wanted out of Dodge.

Whomever or whatever, I repeat what I wrote in February 2019: “I doubt Puck Finn will finish his career in Jets linen.”

But, hey, what do I know? Like I said, I don’t have feet on the ground. Except I predicted in 2012 that Evander Kane would one day walk into Chevy’s office and demand a new postal code. He did that very thing—repeatedly—and Chevy obliged, in 2015. In September 2018, I peered into the tea leaves and predicted Trouba would be gone in less than two years. He left the building nine months later. So tell me I’m wrong about Laine.

Interesting read from Scott Billeck of the Winnipeg Sun on the challenges Chevy faces in attempting to lure top-drawer free agents to Good Ol’ Hometown, and also navigate his way around no-trade clauses. “There’s no happy ending for this,” he writes. “It’s an ongoing problem for the Jets. What it does underscore is the need to ensure the team is a winner, by whatever means possible, and in spite of unfavorable geography. And it means the organization needs to be that much more creative when it comes to recruitment. Getting players in the door begins with a pitch that centres around winning the Cup. For most, that’s the dream. If you can show a pathway to that dream, you can probably get folks into the house. And that’s when perceptions die and new ones are made, and the word spreads. Winnipeg’s advertising comes via word of mouth. There just has to be something enticing other than frigid winters. And it may be as simple—and as difficult—as putting a winning product on the ice.” That’s fair analysis, but it’s worth remembering that the original Winnipeg Jets lineup was crafted 100 per cent on guys who chose to play in Good Ol’ Hometown, including the most significant free agent signing in pro hockey history—Bobby Hull, at the time the game’s glamour guy. Every player on that team came to River City without kicking and screaming. So can anyone tell me exactly when Winnipeg became the armpit of hockey? I’d really like to know.

When I hear the San Jose Sharks have signed Patrick Marleau, it tells me that they’ve already tapped out on next season.

And what is Kyle Dubas trying to prove in the Republic of Tranna? The Maple Leafs haven’t won the Stanley Cup since 1967, so the kid GM thought it would be a swell idea to sign Marleau’s former running mate Jumbo Joe Thornton who, coincidentally, broke into the NHL that same year. Okay, okay. Jumbo hasn’t been around quite that long. But Dubas seems to be setting up a Fossil Factory in the ROT, with Jumbo Joe, 41, and Jason Spezza, 37, on board.

Scant seconds after becoming one of the newest Maple Leafs, Wayne Simmonds did the Zoom thing with news snoops and warned foes that “I can punch your head off if need be.” He calls what he does on a hockey rink “functional toughness.” Back it the day we called it “goon.”

I keep hearing about all the free agents still available in the NHL, but the top free agent in sports right now is Chelsea Carey, champion curler without a team to call her own. We don’t know how this season will shake down for our Pebble People, but it’s hard to imagine a two-time Scotties queen being stuck on the outside looking in with her nose pressed against the window.

Jennifer Jones, Kaitlyn Lawes, Jill Officer, Dawn McEwen.

On the subject of our fab provincial Pebble People, the deep thinkers at the Manitoba Curling Hall of Fame want to know what you think. They’re looking to name the Most Notable Team in local lore, and that’s where you come in. The MCHF is accepting votes until Dec. 5 for its 25 Most Notable Teams and, really, this should be a no-brainer. I mean, it doesn’t get more “notable” than winning Olympic Games gold, so Jennifer Jones and her gal pals Kaitlyn Lawes, Jill Officer and Dawn McEwen have to be at the top of the heap. It doesn’t hurt that they were also Canadian and world champions, and they had longer sustained success than any foursome I can recall. Next in line would be the Digit, Don Duguid, and his gang from the Granite—Bryan Wood, Jim Pettapiece and the Arrow, Rod Hunter—who went 17-0 to win back-to-back world titles in 1970 and ’71. Completing my top three would be Bronco Braunstein and his team of brother Ron, Moose Turnbull and Jack Van Hellemond. Still just school kids, the teenagers copped the Manitoba men’s title then fell one game shy of winning the 1958 Brier in Victoria, losing to Matt Baldwin of Alberta in a one-game showdown.

Fans of fist fighting were shocked to hear Mike Tyson on Good Morning Britain last week. In a natter with hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid, the former heavyweight boxing champion was muttering unintelligibly and slurring his words badly. Hey, cut the guy some slack. It can’t be easy to talk with your mouth full of Evander Holyfield’s ear.

Sticking with boxing, I stayed up well past my bedtime Saturday to watch Teofimo Lopez and Vasiliy Lomachenko chuck knuckles in a lightweight title bout. At the end of the night, Lopez had four belts. Hmmm. Four belts—sounds like the Rat Pack at closing time.

So, the Houston Astros have been drummed out of the Major League Baseball playoffs (karma, baby). Some teams run out of pitching, some teams run out of hitting. Some teams run out of time. I guess the Astros ran out of trash cans.

Is there a Baseball Hall of Fame pitcher with a worse post-season record than Clayton Kershaw of my Los Angeles Dodgers? Kershaw will be in Cooperstown one day, but it won’t be due to anything he’s done in the World Series or playoffs. The guy’s 175-75, .697, 2.43 ERA in the hum-drum of spring and summer ball, but a dismal 11-12, .478, 4.31 ERA when it matters most. And, to think, some people have compared him favorably to Sandy Koufax. Ya, like a box of Timbits is fine dining.

Some good reads in the past week: Paul Friesen’s series on the Winnipeg Blue Bombers’ journey to the Grey Cup; Freezer’s running mate at the Winnipeg Sun, Ted Wyman, dishes on Hockey Hall of Famer Serge Savard; Luke Fox’s Q&A with Brian Burke on the Sportsnet website.

When the National Women’s Hockey League restructured its business model and assigned founder and commissioner Dani Rylan Kearney to a lesser role last week, shouldn’t it have been a big deal in the media? No women would be drawing pay to play shinny if not for Dani, who gave the NWHL its jump start in 2015, but her removal from the big office was a blip at best in most newspapers, websites and on air. Seems to me the story, and Dani, warranted better play than that.

Speaking of not getting their due, it’s about Sue Bird: Not many hoopsters can boast of her bona fides. When Seattle Storm won the Women’s National Basketball Association title recently, it was her fourth. You know, the same number as LeBron James has won in his NBA career. Sue also has four Olympic gold medals, four FIBA World Cup titles, five EuroLeague titles, two NCAA titles, one national high school title, five Russian National League titles, two Europe Super Cup titles, she’s the all-time WNBA assists leader, she’s started the most games in WNBA history, she’s an 11-time WNBA all-star, a two-time EuroLeague all-star and a former Naismith college player of the year. She’s the High Priestess of the Hardwood, but somehow manages to fly under the radar of most mainstream media. Shame that.

And, finally, this is the 50th anniversary season for the Manitoba Major Junior Hockey League, and I’d say that calls for some sort of special feature piece in either or both of the Winnipeg dailies. So why hasn’t either the Sun or Drab Slab done something about it?

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

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

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

You know what that means, don’t you?

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

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

But wait.

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

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

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

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

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

Just like this whole house-divided business.

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

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

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

His evidence…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

About homophobia and the NHL…a Nobel Prize for Kyle Dubas?…no gay voices on Canadian sports TV…Fozzy Armstrong on Hockey Central…a Guinness for the all-St. Patty’s Day team and a lineup for Assiniboia Downs…WHA Jets were the real road warriors…a players share for Uecker…Wheels and Jumbo Joe…taking note of the WHL…and so long to a Twitter maestro

Another Sunday smorgas-bored…and happy St. Patty’s Day to the Irish and Irish wannabes (and I plan on keeping my lifetime record of never drinking green beer intact)…

Morgan Rielly knew he didn’t say what he didn’t say. Others remain convinced that he did say what he didn’t say.

And, as social media exploded like a fourth of July sky, a mystery voice at a National Hockey League game last Monday became the most talked-about sound bite since Timothy Leary told kids in the 1960s to “turn on, tune in, drop out.”

So was l’affaire Rielly much ado about nada?

Well, like most questions in life that don’t include a simple 1+1=2 answer, it depends on who you ask.

Many took to Twitter to suggest (rather dismissively, abruptly and rudely) that it matters not if Rielly or any player/fan shouted “faggot” or “rag it” or “maggot” during a Toronto Maple Leafs-Tampa Bay Lightning skirmish at Scotiabank Arena in the Republic of Tranna. “They’re just words. Don’t be such a snowflake. Get over it, you annoying SJWs. Move on.”

Media pundits, meanwhile, have lauded les Leafs Harry Potter doppelganger GM, Kyle Dubas, and Rielly for stepping forward to confirm the young defenceman’s innocence, rather than push the mute button and allow the tempest to expire of natural causes. They insist that the hastily organized Dubas-Rielly joint session of meet-the-news-snoops was a “teaching moment.”

If so, I’m having trouble determining what lesson was learned.

As a member of the LGBTQ collective, you see, I lean a keen and attentive ear toward any dialogue dealing with gays and homophobia in sports. Call it my “queer” ear, if you will. And it’s often what I don’t hear that catches my notice because, yes, words are important.

The one word I didn’t hear from Dubas in his more than 16 minutes of chin wagging was “accept.”

Make no mistake, the GM scored when he talked sincerely about providing a “safe” and “welcome” environment for gay, bisexual and transgender fans at les Leafs’ lair. He added that any player grappling with his sexual orientation can “feel safe here, they can be themselves here.”

Dubas did not, however, say a gay player would be universally “accepted” in les Leafs boudoir. He couldn’t.

Dubas, you see, cannot get inside the heads and souls of the men who occupy the changing room, any more than Geoff Molson could get inside the heads and souls of his Montreal Canadiens when he issued similar sentiments in 2014.

“Not only with our team, but also with our fans,” the Habs bankroll told news snoops when asked if his storied franchise was prepared to embrace a gay player. “Everyone and everybody is welcome in the Montreal Canadiens organization. Any opportunity to be inclusive is a good one, and that starts from the top down.”

Nice thought, but a Habs skater with anti-gay leanings might not be so keen to share the bunker with a guy who shares his bed with another dude.

That said, it’s apparent by Rielly’s thoughtful responses to queries last week, also his documented support of the LGBTQ collective, that he would “accept” a gay teammate without condition. But what of his fellows in the blue-and-white linen of les Leafs?

Consider:

In autumn 2015, USA Today asked 35 NHL players if they would accept an openly gay teammate in the changing room. One said no. Small sample size, I know, but if we do the math that means there were at least 21 anti-gay members of the NHL Players Association. I’d submit the true number is higher. Even if not, how many sit in les Leafs’ lockerroom?

In January 2014, TSN ran a terrific documentary on the NHL and gays. They reached out to 12 teams across a nine-month time frame, seeking players willing to discuss gays and hockey on the record. In the end, only three were willing to be interviewed on camera. That’s it. Just three of 750 players were comfortable discussing the gay issue and homophobia. If they can’t even talk about gay men, how can they accept them?

Again, Dubas gets full marks for initiating the discussion last week, but if it was a “teachable moment” I’m still uncertain what I supposedly learned. Given that Molson said the same thing five years ago and nothing has changed, it was same old, same old.

I’m always fascinated when straight male sports scribes and talking heads weigh in on the gay/homophobia issue. They really can’t offer anything of substance because, well, they aren’t gay. So they simply recite the standard blah, blah, blah about offensive words, often punctuating their commentary with “this is 2019,” as if that proves they know where it’s at. Which explains why many of them inverted the Rielly situation, turning it into a testimonial to the Maple Leafs’ rapid response rather than the likelihood that someone shouted “faggot” during an NHL game. Dubas was lathered in lavish praise, and I’m surprised the talking heads and essayists stopped short of nominating him for a Nobel Prize. But, hey, Nobel nomination forms aren’t distributed until September, so there’s plenty of time to get his name out there.

Unless I missed it, neither TSN nor Sportsnet brought an LGBTQ voice on air to discuss the developments in l’affaire Rielly. They’ll recruit “experts” to dissect everything from Auston Matthews’ bowel movements to Mitch Marner’s eating habits, but they aren’t interested in a gay voice when homophobia is the hot-button topic. What, they don’t know any gay male athletes who’ve been in homophobic dressing rooms? Or do they think gay guys don’t speak English? Trust me, when the subject is homophobia in hockey, the last people I want to hear from are meatheads like Nick Kypreos and Colby Armstrong, who delivered about five minutes of total gobbledygook on Hockey Central At Noon.

Speaking of Colby Armstrong, I must confess that he’s begun to grow on me, perhaps because I like the Muppets and he’s got a Muppets kind of head—you know, really thin-to-no lips, goofy grin, interesting nose, eyes that seem to spin and rotate. I think perhaps Colby and Fozzy Bear were separated at birth. That’s the ticket—Fozzy Armstrong.

My personal all-St. Patty’s Day team: Kathy Ireland, St. Patrick Roy, Patrick Ewing, Danica Patrick and Patrik O’Laine. Oh, and Sir Alec Guinness, of course. No St. Patty’s Day is complete without a Guinness.

If the ponies were running at Assiniboia Downs, the ideal St. Patty’s Day card this afternoon would include a Pot O’ Gold Stakes race with this field: Lookin At Lucky, Lucky Debonair, Irish War Cry, Smokinpaddylassie, I’ll Have Another and Flat Drunk. And, yes, those are the names of actual race horses.

So, the Winnipeg Jets recently completed their longest junket of the NHL season—10 days, four games. Drab Slab scribe Mike McIntyre described it as a “doozy.” Well, Mike Mac doesn’t know from doozy. During their 1978-79 World Hockey Association championship crusade, the Jets had a tour of duty in February that had them play 10 games in 16 days (eight on the road, including five in a row). Now that, my friends, is a doozy.

Interesting to note that the Milwaukee Brewers voted play-by-play broadcaster and funny guy Bob Uecker a full players share ($123,000) after the Major League Baseball playoffs last October. Hmmm. For the record, the Jets did not vote me a full players share after their final WHA title in 1979. No problem, though. I didn’t need the $57.48 at the time. Mind you, I could use it today now that I’m a pauper. (By the way, Ueck donated his $123,000 windfall to four different charities.)

Ryan Dixon of Sportsnet tells us that Blake Wheeler’s contract extension, which kicks in next season at $8.25 million, is “money well spent by the Winnipeg Jets.” He knows this how? Well, because of Joe Thornton. Dixon figures if Jumbo Joe can score 82 points as a 36-year-old, so can Wheels. Good luck with that. I’m a big fan of Blake Wheeler (the player, not the boor who believes news snoops are pond scum), but if he’s an 82-point guy at the butt end of his five-year deal, I’ll eat a hockey puck and wash it down with raw sewage from the Red River.

The Kootenay Ice play their final game in Cranbrook this afternoon, then they become the Winnipeg Ice (please, change that name). So if anyone in Good Ol’ Hometown is looking for the skinny on the Western Hockey League, take note: The go-to website is old friend Gregg Drinnan’s blog Taking Note. Nobody does the WHL better than the Greaser, who earned his nickname while writing about fast cars, Bison Dragways and people like Big Daddy Garlits for the Winnipeg Tribune.

And, finally, sad to hear of the passing of Randy Turner, longtime scribe at the Winnipeg Free Press. Never got to spend much time with Randy (different newspapers, different beats, I skipped town), but I do know he was one of the good guys. And a funny guy. He was a Twitter maestro. Ashley Prest wrote a wonderful tribute piece on Randy in the Drab Slab.

Kevin Cheveldayoff: Translating the Winnipeg Jets GM’s Chevy-speak

That was quite the deliverance from Kevin Cheveldayoff earlier this week. Say this for the man who generally manages the Winnipeg Jets, he does not cut to the chase.

Fear not, though, kids. I have a PhD in Applied Linguistics and, during my 30 years in mainstream jock journalism, I developed a fool-proof method of translating shinny dialect into plain, ordinary, everyman’s English. Chevy-speak is a tough nut to crack, but I’ve managed to reduce his 28-minute chin-wag with news scavengers down to approximately 1,000 words.

Here, then, is what Chevy said and what he really said…

Have you finalized your pecking order for next Friday’s National Hockey League entry draft?

What Chevy said: “The list is getting pretty much in ink. Unless something really dramatically makes a shift that you just don’t see, our minds are very set.”

What Chevy really said: “Listen people, there’s an ink eraser on my ball point pen, so—whoo boy!—if the Toronto Maple Leafs pull a page from the Edmonton Oilers’ draft manual and royally screw up (hello, Nail Yakupov!), we’ll be all over Auston Matthews like chin whiskers on Joe Thornton. But I suspect we’ll be selecting Patrik Laine with the No. 2 pick.”

Are you actively trying to trade young defenceman Jacob Trouba?

What Chevy said: “This is an interesting time of year. I’ve seen lots of different scenarios out there of teams that are pushing hard that I haven’t even heard from and I’ve talked to different teams that have asked different questions that I’ve certainly asked myself. I’m not trying to trade anybody. I think in this game there’s a distinct possibility that anybody can get traded. And again we’ve got some good young players here. We’ve got two of them that are up for contracts in Trouba and (Mark) Scheifele and we’re going to do our best to get those contracts done and in the books. So trying to trade him? No.”

What Chevy really said: “If Trouba thinks he’s going to get $7 million a year out of me, I’ll ship his ass out of here faster than you can say ‘Have fun in Edmonton.’ ”

Will your first pick in the entry draft, No. 2 overall, be able to step directly into the Jets’ lineup next season?

What Chevy said: “I think there was a lot of reference as to having…there’s the three players mentioned in the same breath all the time…those players each and every year differ, sometimes a player can step right into your lineup, sometimes they can’t. I think the players at the top end of the draft this year look like they’re ready to step in. How much they contribute, what type of role they play, all those kinds of things are really left for them to determine. That’s what training camp’s about. We’ll see how it goes.”

What Chevy really said: “Well, duh! If Patrik Laine doesn’t take a job away from Chris Thorburn or Anthony Peluso, I’ll personally buy all my friends in the media a steak dinner at Rae and Jerry’s.”

Have negotiations with Jacob Trouba and his agent been difficult?

What Chevy said: “The rumors and stuff that everyone hears, it’s interesting, because they don’t come from inside the negotiation room. They come from imaginations and different scenarios that this time of the year just naturally brings. In this game here, you just don’t know. In the National Hockey League there’s things that happen very quickly, there’s things that take time, there are scenarios that present themselves that maybe you do look at a trade, there are scenarios that present themselves that you look at signing a guy long term or short term. So, sitting here, standing here today there’s nothing that’s not on the table, but it’s good to have options to try and move forward with.”

What Chevy really said: “I repeat: If Trouba thinks he’s going to get $7 million a year out of me, I’ll ship his ass out of here faster than you can say ‘Have fun in Edmonton.’ ”

Patrik Laine sounds like a cocky kid, claiming he should be the No. 1 overall pick ahead of Auston Matthews. Any concerns about Laine shooting from the lip?

What Chevy said: “I think anybody that goes out there and plays and goes into the forum and into the ice surface and competes at the highest level has that level of confidence in themselves, and well they should. They’re all very good hockey players and, again, you get a short period of time at the combines to get a glimpse of it and…again, that’s why you do a lot of due diligence behind the scenes and other opportunities to talk to friends, school teachers…”

What Chevy really said: “We all know what happened to the last player who thought his stuff didn’t stink. I think Evander’s track suit was still wet by the time he arrived in Buffalo. Don’t worry about Laine. Give us a week and we’ll have him spewing the same old boring cliches as the rest of the guys.”

Often the NHL is a copycat league, so is there any urge to follow the lead of the Pittsburgh Penguins?

What Chevy said: “I think everyone looks at what’s going on, but I think you have to look from within. It’s kind of like, you don’t just change direction of a semi or a tanker or anything like that. You can’t just say we’re going in this direction. I think it has to be a philosophy that works for your organization. You have to look at what you have, what you have coming, what you have available to yourself, and every team is not going to have the same type of mix. So I think it’s a real dangerous, dangerous thing to sit here and say, ‘Well, just because Pittsburgh or just because Chicago or just because L.A. won the Stanley Cup that this is the direction. I think that the greater you can forge your own identity and grow that organically I think is what’s majorly important. And, again, I think it takes understanding what you have and not trying to shoehorn things into the wrong positions, and that’s what a good coach and coaching staff does.

What Chevy really said: “Give me Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Kris Letang and I’ll copy cat the Pittsburgh Penguins; give me Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith and I’ll copy cat the Chicago Blackhawks; give me Anze Kopitar, Drew Doughty and Jonathan Quick and I’ll copy cat the Los Angeles Kings.”

How will an expansion team in Las Vegas affect your plans?

What Chevy said: “Again, the reports are the reports. It’s presumptuous on anyone’s part to talk about facts until they become facts, or if they become facts. The Board of Governors is coming up and certainly that will be when anything definitive will come out. I’ll just go back to our last general managers’ meeting when we were given a brief overview that if expansion did happen what the parameters might look at. The good thing is, we were told that if there is expansion it would not come until next season, so there’s a planning element that could be involved if the vote does happen.”

What Chevy really said: “Please, please, please, let there be an expansion team and let the Las Vegas Snake Eyes or One-Eyed Jacks or Royal Flush draft Ondrej Pavelec.”

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

About hockey greats…self-indulgent, unnecessary sports writing…Lebron James’s legacy…Kerry Fraser’s gaffe…Jimmy Hoffa…and other things on my mind

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

I witnessed my first live professional hockey game in the mid-1950s at the old barn on Maroons Road in Winnipeg, which was razed to rubble five decades later.

I watched my first televised hockey game in the 1950s, when our TVs had rabbit ears (sometimes with tin foil wrapping on the tips to enhance the quality of our black-and-white reception) and we would join a game originating from Toronto or Montreal already in progress (most often in the second period). That’s when I learned to truly dislike Rocket Richard.

I covered my first hockey game for a newspaper in 1970 and my byline first appeared on a hockey article in June 1971.

I wrote about, and commented on, hockey in mainstream media for 30 years and have written freelance articles and blogged on hockey for the past 17 years.

Do the math: I have been watching hockey for 60 of my 65 years and writing about it going on 47 years, long enough to draw conclusions.

So, were I to start a National Hockey League franchise, drawing from players I have witnessed—either in person or from my living room floor/sofa—which player would I choose to build around? No. 4, Bobby Orr.

Orr is the best hockey player I’ve ever seen. Still. Probably always.

Here’s my all-time dream team…

GOAL: Glenn Hall, Dominik Hasek

DEFENCE: Bobby Orr, Doug Harvey, Nicklas Lidstrom, Viacheslav Fetisov, Ray Bourque, Valery Vasiliev.

FORWARDS: Gordie Howe, Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier, Peter Forsberg, Bobby Hull, Mario Lemieux, Alexander Maltsev, Valeri Kharlamov, Jean Beliveau, Stan Mikita, Anatoli Firsov, Sergei Makarov.

Interesting take from Paul Wiecek of the Winnipeg Free Press on the death of Mr. Hockey, Gordie Howe. “You’re going to be reading lots of ‘Here’s what Gordie Howe means to me’ stories over the next week,” he writes. “Most will be self-indulgent and unnecessary.” Let’s face it, much of what sports scribes scribble is self-indulgent and unnecessary, but the storytelling is neither. When someone of Howe’s or Muhammad Ali’s loft goes to the other side, the storytelling is essential to the narrative, otherwise all we’d have are lists of statistics to describe and define them. Without the storytelling, we know the athlete but not the person. Wiecek spun a terrific yarn about Howe that was far more interesting and insightful than spewing career scoring numbers.

Speaking of self-indulgent, one of the first columns I wrote for the Calgary Sun was about Gordie Howe. He was in town for a minor hockey promotion, the details of which now escape me, and we met at the CTV studios and spent the better part of an hour wagging our chins about all things shinny. The following morning, our editor-in-chief, Lester Pyette, approached me in the newsroom and said, “Great piece on Gordie Howe. Loved it. I’m a big Gordie Howe fan. But the publisher didn’t like it. He wants me to tell you that we brought you here to write about the Flames and Stampeders, not kids hockey and retired players.” I was gobsmacked. “Lester,” I told him, “if I find out that Mr. Hockey is in town, I’m writing about Mr. Hockey.” So I did. As mean and as ruthless as he was on the ice, Gordie Howe was as gracious and down-to-earth off the freeze. Wonderful man.

The notion that Lebron James needs to add a third National Basketball Association title to his resume before being granted all-time-great status is beyond absurd. How many World Series championships did Major League Baseball legend Ted Williams win? Or Carl Yastrzemski? Zero. Jim Brown, arguably the greatest running back in National Football League history, was 1-2 in championship games. How many times has the name Bobby Hull been inscribed on the Stanley Cup? Once. The great hoopster Jerry West was 1-8 in NBA championship series. James doesn’t need to set foot on the hardwood ever again. He’s already and all-timer.

Okay, Kerry Fraser has ‘fessed up. The former National Hockey League referee admits in The Players’ Tribune that he blew the call when he failed to banish Wayne Gretzky to the brig for slicing and dicing Doug Gilmour’s chinny-chin-chin in Game 6 of the 1993 Western Conference final between the Toronto Maple Leafs and Los Angeles Kings. It should have been a major penalty. “It was missed. Period,” is how Fraser puts it. Now, can Leafs Nation finally stop whining about something that happened 23 years ago?

If Connor McDavid’s name isn’t called when the NHL announces its top rookie for the 2015-16 season, he shouldn’t lose any sleep. Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe, Guy Lafleur, Marcel Dionne, Chris Chelios, Steve Yzerman, Borje Salming, Stan Mikita and Patrick Roy weren’t at the head of their respective freshman classes, and each is in the Hockey Hall of Fame.

Is Jimmy Hoffa hiding in one of those beards?

So, legendary flying Frenchman Guy Lafleur isn’t fond of facial foliage. He looks at the unruly shrubs sprouting from the cheeks and chins of Joe Thornton and Brent Burns of the San Jose Sharks and declares them “a disgrace for hockey.” This from a guy who went through two packs of cigarettes a day and actually smoked in the dressing room between periods when he played for the Montreal Canadiens.

Just wondering, when the Stanley Cup tournament concludes and Thornton and Burns finally reach for the razors, what are the chances of Jimmy Hoffa falling out of one of those beards?

Aside to Steve Simmons of the Toronto Sun: You’ve cranked out some quality copy re the deaths of Muhammad Ali and Gordie Howe, but do yourself a favor—stop writing about Phil Kessel. We get it already. You weren’t a fan of his game or his eating habits during his tour of duty in the Republic of Tranna. Let it go, man. Move along.

Just for the record, this entire article has been self-indulgent and unnecessary. But I had nothing better to do when I awoke at 2:30 this ayem, so I started typing.

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