We can assume that L’Affaire Phone Flap has not escaped the attention of both Joel Quenneville and Stan Bowman.
The two hockey lifers carry hall of fame bona fides, except while they collaborated in transforming the Chicago Blackhawks into a Stanley Cup champion they were also pretending the sexual assault of one of their charges, Kyle Beach, didn’t happen.
It took them a decade to ‘fess up, and the coverup became a large pile of dirty laundry that landed them on the National Hockey League persona non grata heap in 2021.
Now we hear that both Coach Q and GM Bowman seek to be invited back into the Old Boys Club, but I find myself wondering if they might want to have a serious rethink about a redo.
I say that because it would place them in the same unenviable, no-win position as Mike Babcock, whose bad bedside manner had him on the ‘buyer beware’ list and kept him out of the NHL from 2019 until this past July 1, when the Columbus Blue Jackets took a leap of faith and handed him their coaching gig.
The ask of Babs was basic: Achieve sainthood (a tall task since it’s unlikely that Pope Francis knows a Blue Jacket from bluetooth).
Babcock had always walked heavy and carried a big stick behind NHL pine (a bully), but this time around it had to be walk softly and leave the big stick at home if his desire was to continue collecting a paycheque as bench puppeteer with Columbus.
Well, not going to happen.
Babcock, who was under more scrutiny than a lab rat, wasn’t permitted so much as a misstep, and he’s gone from puck purgatory to hockey hell after the Stanley Cup and Olympic champion coach resigned Sunday following some sleuthing by the NHL and the NHL Players Association.
Babcock’s folly this time around was a fondness for looking at family photos. Not his. His players’.
Apparently, it was part of his getting-to-know-you process with the serfs, an opportunity to develop warm-and-fuzzies before they all set out on another NHL crusade later this week. He asked to see pics of their families and they handed him their phone.
The players weren’t obliged to do it, of course, but they were obliged to do it. You know, hockey culture and all.
It was seen by many as a perversion, an invasion of privacy, a boss-worker powerplay to confirm class structure and remind the serfs who carries the big stick. Others, meanwhile, accepted it as a team-building gambit akin to gathering friends around the campfire, toasting marshmallows, singing Kumbaya and swapping lies.
Indeed, two of the team’s prominent players, captain Boone Jenner and Johnny Gaudreau, wondered what all the fuss was about.
“While meeting with Babs he asked me about my family and where I’m from, my upcoming wedding and hockey-related stuff,” Jenner said. “He then asked if I had pictures of my family and I was happy to share some with him. He showed me pictures of his family. I thought it was a great first meeting and good way for us to start to build a relationship. To have this blown out of proportion is truly disappointing.”
“Personally, I had a great meeting with him,” is how Gaudreau explained it to Kristen Shilton of ESPN. “We got to share things together, pictures of our family. I was a little upset to see the way it was handled and how it came out…but nothing you can do about it. We got off to a great start, had a great meeting with him and looking forward to working together.”
If any among the Blue Jackets had objected, his voice is yet to be identified.
So all the negative noise we heard came from outside the Columbus changing room, starting with the rude and vulgar Paul Bissonnette on the Spittin’ Chiclets podcast and amplified by grudge-clutching former players like Frank Corrado of TSN.
“He’s a weird guy,” Corrado told the boys on the Sekeres & Price Show. “He has a hard time kind of levelling with players. And to be honest with you, I’ll be completely honest, he does not care about your family. He just doesn’t. He’s not gonna remember their names, he doesn’t care. That’s my experience, I lived it and for me it’s a little bit phony. Even the other thing I saw, a three-part article about Babs and he’s talking about mental health again…doesn’t care about your mental health. He flat out does not care. All he cares about is himself. This communication plan thing, it’s such a bogus thing. It really is. I think the whole thing is weird, but I’m not surprised because he’s just an awkward guy.”
Corrado cited one example of the perceived Babs weirdness: Both were at a Toronto Maple Leafs Christmas party and the sparingly used defenceman introduced Babcock to his then-girlfriend, a law student. A day or two later, the coach approached Corrado and said, “Ya, you’re hittin’ way out of your league there.”
Good grief. Any shlub with a babe on his arm has heard that line, but apparently it’s bad manners when Babcock says it to Corrado.
Look, Corrado’s actual beef with Babcock is rooted in his playing time with the Leafs, not words exchanged while slurping egg nog. Basically, Babs instructed him to sit in the press box and munch popcorn while the more skilled guys were in frolic on the freeze.
“The coach is the one who makes the lineup and if the coach doesn’t like you, then you’re not going to play,” he boo-hooed in December 2016.
(I suppose the coaches in Vancouver and Pittsburgh didn’t like Corrado, either, because they mostly had him munching popcorn, too. In sum, he suited up for 76 games across six NHL seasons, and played out the string with seven games in Latvia, where the popcorn probably isn’t as good.)
Guys like Johan Franzen and Mitch Marner, on the other hand, have expressed legitimate gripes about Babcock’s bad bedside manner.
L’Affaire Phone Flap is an inglorious finish to Babcock’s NHL coaching career. He’s been tarred and feathered for past trespasses in the court of public opinion, and judged guilty by former players who hold hard to the notion that he didn’t stroke their egos sufficiently. He won’t rise from these ashes, not in the NHL.
So now Quenneville and Bowman know what they can expect if they receive the okie-dokie to return from NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. They’ll be observed like lab rats. Former players might tell tales, true or false. Nothing less than sainthood will be sufficient in their quest to remain employed.
Is that something they want to sign up for? Probably.
According to GM Kevin Cheveldayoff, the Winnipeg Jets will be operating with “new purpose” this NHL season. Just curious: What was the old purpose?
The first thing I noticed while looking at the Edmonton Elks-Saskatchewan Flatlanders on my flatscreen Friday night was the swath of unoccupied seats in Mosaic Stadium. Turns out the head count was 25,304 (announced), the lowest gathering this season and the worst since July 24 last year. So why did the Resident Keith Urban Groupie in the TSN blab booth feel obliged to advise us that there was “a great crowd” at the Regina ballyard? Does Glen Suitor not realize that we can see all those empty green chairs on our flatscreens, or has lying to us become a routine part of the CFL on TSN script?
The Resident Keith Urban Groupie also informed us that Flatlanders QB Jake Dolegala heaved one pass “75 or 80 yards.” No. The football travelled 61 yards.
I found this interesting in a negative way: During the pre-game natter at the Hall of Fame Game in The Hammer on Saturday, CFL on TSN panel host Kate Beirness saluted every newly minted inductee to the Canadian Football Hall of Fame except one—Vicki Hall, the first female reporter to gain entry into the media wing. She then doubled down on the snub at halftime. I guess it only counts if you’re a guy and work for TSN. Purely shameful, Kate.
So, the Canadian men’s curling championship, more commonly known as the Brier, has a new title sponsor, Montana’s BBQ & Bar. That loud noise you just heard was Ben Hebert licking his lips. Benny, of course, is one of the planet’s elite and funniest Pebble People, and I’m guessing he hasn’t missed too many meals over the years. “I’ve never been one to shy away from a Montana’s steak,” he confirmed at the big announcement in Regina on Friday.
The Brier sponsorship has moved from a tobacco company to a beer company to a communications company to a donut shop and now a cookhouse. Put them all together and you could eat, drink, smoke and call a cab on your mobile phone if you had too many Labatt Blue in the Brier Patch.
The American sports media is overdosing on Deion Sanders. Is there a 12-step program to fix that?
Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,159: Some among the rabble are disjointed because a couple of men have been hired to generally manage Professional Women’s Hockey League outfits, and there are also three male head coaches. Hmmm. I must have missed the memo that said the PWHL is a female-only club. I mean, when did PMS become a job requirement? NHL outfits are no longer shy about hiring female assistant GMs (e.g. Cammi Granato and Emilie Castonguay with the Vancouver Canucks), coaches, scouts and player development personnel, so it follows that the PWHL wouldn’t hesitate to bring qualified men on board in Ponytail Puck. My oh my, the things we get twitchy about these days.
It needs to be said: The PWHL website is gawdawful. Absolutely dreadful.
All six PWHL franchises remain teams to be named later, so let’s give Billie Jean King and her ownership partners some help:
The Toronto Maple Beliebers.
The Ottawa Filibuster.
The Montreal Cathedral.
The Twin Cities Doppelgangers.
The Boston Midnight Ride.
The New York Minute.
Nice to see Island Girl Micah Zandee-Hart sign with New York in the PWHL. We still don’t know where the franchise will set up shop, but if it’s in spitting distance of Gotham she’s in for culture shock. Micah, you see, is from beautiful and cozy Brentwood Bay, north of Victoria on the Saanich Peninsula. Population: 17,385. There are that many pickpockets on a Times Square street corner.
I’ll say this for the Vancouver Canucks: They sure know how to do bland. I mean, they could have waited until their home opener vs. the Edmonton McDavids on Oct. 11 for the coronation of the franchise’s 15th captain, using all the bells and whistles available at Rogers Arena. But no. They chose to go unplugged. They simply propped up the Anointed One, young defenceman Quinn Hughes, in front of a coterie of news snoops who spoke in respectful tones while documenting his respectful sound bites for a few ticks under 20 minutes. No applause, no fanfare. No fuss, no muss. It had all the pomp and pageantry of a trip to the corner store. It was as if they were introducing the newest hot dog vendor. It couldn’t have been more low key if a street mime had made the announcement. But, hey, it’s the laid-back, Left Coast way of doing things, which, we’re told, dovetails nicely with Hughes’ personality. So, ya, make the guy they call Huggy Bear available for a natter with anyone holding a recording device, then do the photo-op thing to show the rabble the nifty new needlework on his jersey. That way all sideshows are struck from the to-do list by the time the Canucks storm the shores of Vancouver Island and commence training exercises in Victoria four days hence. Works for me.
If you’re keeping score at home, Donnie and Dhali The Team took the pulse of the people not long after the Hughes appointment, and a large majority (88.1 per cent of 1,930) gave the Anointed One their official okie-dokie.
I get a kick out of Donnie and Dhali, otherwise known as Don Taylor and Rick Dhaliwal. Guaranteed at some point during their two-hour gum-flapper (Monday-Friday, CHEK TV) they’ll make me laugh, especially Rick, who’s apparently convinced that everyone in sports is a “good guy, GOOD GUY!” Taylor, meanwhile, is fond of playing the “old man shouting at clouds” role and talking about “back in the day,” which could mean anywhere from the turn of the century to Gordie Howe’s teenage years. Some days you’d swear Joe Kapp and Nub Beamer are still on the B.C. Leos roster, but that’s okay. I like back in the day, too, and I can dial it back as far as Donnie. Farther actually. What I like most about Taylor and Dhaliwal is their high goofability quotient. They recognize they’re talking sports, not trying to stop the great glacial melt, even if they sometimes detour into a non-jock issue. They’re off-the-wall fun, and we can use more of that in jock journalism.
Donnie & Dhali wonder why neither of our national sports networks gave the just-concluded Mann Cup championship series between Six Nations Chiefs and New Westminster Salmonbellies the time of day. Simple answer: No player on either outfit is named Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner or Willy Nylander. Cheekiness aside, it’s not like lacrosse is the only sport TSN and Sportsnet put on ignore. We see scads of highlights from NCAA football every weekend, but scarcely a mention of USports grass-grabbers. Our university gridirons stretch from the Pacific to the Atlantic. There are 27 teams. Twelve games were on the docket this weekend. But I guess if there’s no FanDuel betting line neither TSN nor Sportsnet gives much of a damn.
And, finally, caught SportsCentre on TSN during the small hours of Tuesday and noted that the first 14 minutes of the show were devoted exclusively to Aaron Rodgers’ owie, suffered in the New York Jets-Buffalo Bills skirmish. Then there was an additional segment, for the grand sum of 23 minutes in the initial half hour. I’m not sure the Second Coming will get that much attention. Unless, of course, Christ arrives in a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey.
The River City Renegade 
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