Let’s talk about shinny sinners and the impossible search for sainthood…Fibs ‘R’ Us in the TSN blab booth…Pebble People head to Montana’s…Ponytail Puck name-dropping…the Anointed One with the Vancouver Canucks…Donnie & Dahli…and other things on my mind

Mike Babcock

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.

Let’s talk about Gary Bettman and his anti-gay “distraction”…a Blue-and-Gold horror show…empty chairs matter in The ROT…Trump, Kim and fairy tale golf…the Hockey Hall and the Mogilny Mystery…and other things on my mind…

I hope Gary Bettman doesn’t think he’s fooling anyone.

I mean, he’s a smart guy, probably too bright to believe he’s pulling the wool over our eyes with his ban on all specialty warmup jerseys for National Hockey League theme nights. But on the off-chance that he figures he’s bamboozled the rabble, I’d suggest that most of us in the LGBT(etc.) community know what’s really going on here.

It is an anti-gay gambit, an astonishing example of blatant bigotry.

It has nothing to do with the military. It has nothing to do with Blacks or Indigenous peoples. It has nothing to do with battling cancer. It has nothing to do with St. Paddy’s Day. It has nothing to do with any of the NHL’s other theme events.

It has everything to do with the Rainbow. Pride. The LGBT(etc.) community.

It has everything to do with kowtowing to a minority of seven, that being the number of front-line employees who, during the just-concluded NHL crusade, refused to support a marginalized collective under increasing and systemic attack. That’s seven out of 700-plus on-ice personnel.

A “distraction” is how NHL commissioner Bettman described the now-abolished practice of players wrapping themselves in one of the unique, also quite creative, theme-night uni tops.

Funny thing about that, though: None of it was a “distraction” until people noticed Ivan Provorov of the Philly Flyers hiding behind his Bible one night in January.

Rather than slip on a Pride jersey and join his playmates in pregame exercises, the Russian Orthodox rearguard remained in the changing room, no doubt biding time by thumbing through Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in search of confirmation that Jesus Christ really did feed 5,000 followers with five loaves of bread and two fish. (And, of course, they all washed it down with the water that he’d turned into wine.)

As it turned out, Provorov was playing Pied Piper to another six players, some of whom also leaned on scripture as a way out of participating in Pride Night. Others cited dire consequences, like a lifetime in the gulag for themselves and/or their families back home in Russia if war-mongering, anti-gay Czar Vlad Putin caught wind of them wearing anything resembling a rainbow.

But Commish Gary, acknowledging the Rainbow Resistance Movement, has now spared the anti-gay constituency any additional discomfort and exhaustive Bible thumping.

“I’ve suggested that it would be appropriate for clubs not to change their jerseys in warmups because it’s become a distraction and taking away from the fact that all of our clubs in some form or another host nights in honour of various groups or causes, and we’d rather them continue to get the appropriate attention that they deserve and not be a distraction,” Bettman said in a natter with Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet.

“In the final analysis, all of the emphasis and efforts on the importance of these various causes have been undermined by the distraction of which teams, which players (chose not to wear the jerseys), this way we’re keeping the focus on the game and on these specialty nights we’re going to be focused on the cause.”

So to hell with them all. Everyone shall pay for the sins of the seven.

But remind me. Where have we heard that dirty word “distraction” before, as it relates to gays in major men’s sports?

Tony Dungy

Oh, I remember now. It was NBC squawk box and hall-of-fame coach Tony Dungy, known far and wide for his anti-gay rhetoric and campaigning to deny gays basic human rights. You know, like marriage. Dungy suggested that the very existence of an openly gay football player, Michael Sam, would become a “distraction” for the St. Louis Rams.

“I wouldn’t have (drafted Sam),” Dungy told The Tampa Tribune in 2014. “Not because I don’t believe Michael Sam should have a chance to play, but I wouldn’t want to deal with all of it. It’s not going to be totally smooth…things will happen.”

Ya, “things” like those pesky news snoops wanting to turn the National Football League’s first openly gay guy into a sideshow. They wanted to talk to him. To probe. At least one insisted on discussing shower arrangements in the Rams changing room. Hell, even Oprah wanted in on the act (not the showering but the sideshow).

Well, of course Sam was bound to be a “distraction.” And, what, Aaron Rodgers with his wackadoo notions about hallucinogenic drugs and spending a weekend in complete isolation and darkness isn’t? The New York Jets QB is a one-man three-ring circus. Let me know the next time Rodgers goes a week without doing something off-the-wall and I’ll alert the media. Film at 11.

Jackie Robinson

I can think of another athlete who was a “distraction.” That’s right. Jackie Robinson, a Black man in a purely white man’s world.

Jackie was such a “distraction” from 1947 to ’56 that the Brooklyn Dodgers only won the National League pennant six times and the World Series once. His six all-star selections and rookie-of-the-year/MVP awards were also quite a “distraction.” Hell, Robinson is still a “distraction.” Every player, coach and manager in Major League Baseball is required to wear his uniform No. 42 every April 15.

Black guys in baseball stopped being a “distraction” about the same time the Dodgers won the ’55 World Series, and gay guys on the gridiron stopped being a “distraction” the moment Carl Nassib proved he could strip sack a QB, just like the straight guys.

But I digress.

We were discussing Gary Bettman and his rainbow ban.

Commish Gary didn’t want Pride jerseys to be a “distraction,” so what does he do? He makes it a “distraction” by shutting down 700-plus players who want to support the LGBT(etc.) community. It’s an ass-backwards directive, also poorly timed given that this is Pride Month, and it totally debunks the NHL’s Trademark Big Lie of “Hockey is for Everyone.”

Commish Gary

For his next trick, Commish Gary will reinstate the disgraced Joel Quenneville and Stan Bowman, both of whom looked the other way when one of their players, Kyle Beach, was sexually assaulted by a Chicago Blackhawks male coach. He’ll explain the resurrection of their NHL careers in lawyer-speak, and he won’t even bother holding his nose to ward off the stench.

But that’s the NHL way: Out with the rainbow, in with the rot.

From the archives, March 19, 2023: “I think we all know where this thing is headed: Pride nights will remain on team calendars, but players no longer will be paraded in rainbow-themed warmup garb. Thus, anti-gay players on NHL rosters (I like to think they’re in the minority) won’t be required to hide behind the Bible anymore. They can keep their religion and anti-gay bias on the QT. Sigh.” And so it has come to pass.

Here’s a question worth a moment of ponder: Why is it that gays are a “distraction” in male sports, but not in the female portion of the playground? There’s yet to be an “out” player in the NHL—while active or after the cheering stopped—yet there is an abundance of gay players at the elite level of women’s hockey, many of them Olympic and world champions. In fact one of those lesbians, Caroline Ouellette, just the other day was named an inductee to the Hockey Hall of Fame, where she’ll join other gays Angela James, Jayna Hefford and Angela Ruggiero.

A guy named Max Park recently set a record for solving a Rubik’s Cube at an event in Long Beach, Calif. His time: 3.13 seconds. If you think that’s quick, wait till you see Chicago Blackhawks GM Kyle Davidson race to the podium to shout out Connor Bedard’s name at the NHL Entry Draft on Wednesday.

A Zach attack.

Yikes. I turned on the flatscreen to watch some Rouge Football the other night and a horror film broke out. I mean, B.C. Leos 30, Winnipeg Blue Bombers 6? That’s Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price kind of scary, kids. Zach Collaros wasn’t a quarterback, he was a pinata. How bad was the Bombers O-line? Let’s just say the large lads won’t be getting a call from the U.S. Secret Service to work the presidential detail. Lincoln had better protection. Meantime, there was so much space between the Leos receivers and the guys in the Bombers D-backfield that I thought social distancing was back in vogue. And those penalties! We haven’t seen that many flags in Good O’ Hometown since the 1999 Pan-American Games. So whoever stole the real Bombers, please bring them back. No questions will be asked.

This from TSN’s Dave Naylor on Toronto Argos QB Chad Kelly: “Excuse the perspective from the Centre of the Universe. But no matter your vantage point, it should be clear that Toronto Argonauts quarterback Chad Kelly is the most important player in the Canadian Football League right now. Not the best, at least not yet. Just the most important. And it’s really not that close. As much as fans across Canada may not like it, Toronto matters. The prospect of having a lively and substantially full BMO Field nine times a season—whether that’s experienced in person or on television—versus scads of empty seats, matters.” The Argos mattered to just 15,967 people in the Republic of Tranna last weekend. I guess the 11,489 empty chairs didn’t think Chad Kelly was important enough to matter.

Bo Levi Mitchell

From the archives, Nov. 20, 2022: “So, the Hamilton Tabbies have surrendered two draft picks and future goodies for the privilege of pitching woo to Bo Levi Mitchell, the Calgary Stampeders defrocked QB. But wait. Bo says he’ll lend an ear to all other suitors before agreeing to pitch his tent in The Hammer. Fine. Wherever and whenever he lands, it’s a matter of Buyer Beware. This isn’t Cadillac Showroom Bo. It’s more like Used Car Lot Bo. Teams will have to be cautious when they kick the tires, because something might fall off.” And so it has come to pass. Two Ls and zero Ws into his life in black-and-gold, Bo landed in sick bay with an owie below the waist and was unavailable for his third start (also a loss), and I have to think the Tabbies might be wondering why they agreed to spend half a million bucks on a guy who’s become as brittle as a piece of burnt toast.

I’m sorry, but the new-look CFL stats pages are a complete gong show. Not to worry, though. Commish Randy Ambrosie assures us that software designers Larry, Curly and Moe will have it up and running long before the Tabbies actually win a game.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, New York is sinking. Geez, I didn’t think the Yankees were having that bad a season.

Things that make me go hmmm, Vol. 2,158: For those of you keeping score at home, former U.S. President Donald Trump claims he’s had seven holes-in-one in his life. “Legitimately,” he says. Hmmm. Maybe Trump is confusing his aces with his legitimate and illegitimate kids.

What’s the difference between a “legitimate” and an “illegitimate” hole-in-one? You use a golf club and Trump uses a pencil.

I’m not sure what it is with politicians and fairy tale golf. I mean, Trump says he’s had seven aces and former North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is said to have scored five aces in the only round of golf he ever played, at age 52. As the fable goes, Kim didn’t card worse than a birdie on any hole on the 7,700-yard Pyongyang Golf Course, and no one was anxious to dispute his 38-under-par 34 score. He had 17 witnesses and they all had guns.

Anybody have a problem with the Hockey Hall of Fame Class of 2023? I imagine there’s a bit of quibble about one or two of the seven inductees—Henrik Lundstrom, Mike Vernon, Tom Barrasso, Pierre Turgeon, Caroline Ouellette, Ken Hitchcock and Pierre Lacroix—and it’s not wrong to wonder about the Mogilny Mystery. I mean, Alexander Mogilny’s bona fides are dazzling: World Junior, World, Olympic and Stanley Cup champion; a 76-goal season; better than a point-a-game guy in more than 990 NHL skirmishes. So where’s the beef? What is it about Mogilny that turns off the 18-person selection committee that has given him the cold shoulder since 2009? Certainly it can’t be because of his birth certificate. I mean, unless they’ve discovered that he’s been helping Vlad Putin lob bombs at Ukraine or sending gays to the gulag, being born in Russia can’t be an impediment. I’d suggest he peed on someone’s Corn Flakes, but since the methodology of the Hockey Hall’s Chosen 18 is less transparent than a jar of peanut butter, how could he possibly know whose Corn Flakes to pee on?

Assuming Mogilny cares about induction into the Hockey Hall, it must be extremely hurtful to be snubbed for so long, especially since he has no way of knowing why he’s still on the outside with his nose pressed against a window. If it isn’t his nationality, did he put other noses out of joint? Is that the determining factor? The right people simply don’t like him? Sorry, but that isn’t a good enough reason. Mogilny delivered the goods, and personal pettiness should have no bearing on the worthiness of a candidate for induction into a hall of fame. Seriously. You don’t like the way someone combs their hair or the color of their skin or their place of worship or their gender so you leave them standing in the cold? Rubbish.

On the subject of gender, the Chosen 18 are permitted to induct two (maximum) female players each year. Caroline Ouellette got the call last week, but you can’t convince me no one else is worthy. Like our own Jennifer Botterill, who collected gold medals the way kids used to collect bubble gum cards. Or Caroline’s wife, Julie Chu.

And, finally, thousands of people went to Stonehenge to watch the sun rise on June 21, the Summer Solstice. How poetic. I mean, those same people can make the short trip from Stonehenge to Wimbledon and watch the sun set on Venus Williams’ tennis career next month.

.

About the Winnipeg Jets and the Nashville Model…the Blue Bombers and soccer…the Puck Pontiff going into hiding…and what the women on the tennis tour think of our Genie

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

Mark Chipman, the Puck Pontiff.

When the Puck Pontiff, Mark Chipman, purchased his new play thing in 2011, he turned his eyes due south, directly toward Twang Town U.S.A., and found himself a role model for his team to be named later.

“The Nashville Predators,” he mused. “I wanna be just like those pesky Predators.”

Now, it’s quite unlikely that the Puck Pontiff spilled those exact words, but he did confirm that the plan for the outfit he later named Winnipeg Jets was (still is?) to follow the blueprint laid out by Nashville, now in its 18th National Hockey League season and still winners of exactly nothing.

“That may sound strange to people in Winnipeg,” he supposed.

Yup. Strange like hiring Justin Bieber as a life coach strange. Strange like wanting to dress like Don Cherry strange. I mean, Nashville is like that Dwight Yoakam song—guitars, Cadillacs and hillbilly music. With a whole lot of Hee Haw and the Grand Ole Opry tossed into the mix. But hockey? Come on, man.

“They’ve done it methodically,” the Puck Pontiff advised news snoops in springtime 2012, “they’ve done it by developing their players and they’ve done it with a consistency in management and philosophy…I think but for a couple of bounces that team could have a Stanley Cup banner hanging under their rafters.”

“That team” he spoke of so fondly failed to qualify for the next two Stanley Cup tournaments, but let’s not let facts get in the way of a misguided notion.

The point is, the Puck Pontiff likes to think of his fiefdom as Nashville North sans Dolly, Carrie and Little Big Town, so, with the Predators awaiting a dance partner in the Western Conference final for the first time in club history, let’s take a look at them to see if they tell us anything about the Jets.

• The Predators were built from scratch, as a 1998 expansion team. They missed the playoffs their first five crusades.
• The Jets were a pre-fab outfit built in Atlanta, but the Puck Pontiff operated it like an expansion franchise, gutting the management side down to the studs. They’ve missed the playoffs in five of their six seasons.
• The Predators have known just one general manager, David Poile, who learned at the knee of Cliff Fletcher in Calgary then earned his chops as GM of the Washington Capitals for 15 years.
• The Jets have known just one (official) general manager, Kevin Cheveldayoff, who apprenticed under Stan Bowman in Chicago and has done the Puck Pontiff’s bidding for six years.
• The Predators have had two head coaches, Barry Trotz and Peter Laviolette. Poile didn’t ask Trotz to leave the building until 15 years had passed.
• The Jets have had two head coaches, Claude Noel and Paul Maurice. It only took about 15 months before Noel was asked to leave the building, but it’s apparent that the Puck Pontiff is prepared to stay the course with Coach Potty-Mouth for 15 years.
• The Predators, under Poile’s direction, preached the draft-and-develop mantra from the outset.
• The Jets talk about nothing but draft-and-develop.
• The Predators can be found in the lower third of the pay scale.
• The Jets can be found in the lower third of the pay scale (if not at the bottom).

So there are your commonalities: Methodical, consistent, patient, steady-as-she-goes, loyal (to a fault for the Jets) and frugal.

Where do the Predators and Jets part company? In the GM’s office.

David Poile

Poile is unafraid to deliver bold strokes. He dared to send a first-round draft pick, defenceman Seth Jones, packing in barter for Ryan Johansen, the top-level centre he required. He shipped his captain, Shea Weber, to the Montreal Canadiens in exchange for flamboyant P.K. Subban. He somehow pried Filip Forsberg out of Washington in exchange for Martin Erat and Michael Latta. His captain, Mr. Carrie Underwood, and James Neal came via trade. Yannick Weber is a free-agent signing.

By contrast, Cheveldayoff is only allowed to make significant troop movements when backed into a corner (see: Kane, Evander; Ladd, Andrew).

So what do the Predators teach us about the Jets? Well, if the locals follow the Nashville Model to the letter, we can expect to see meaningful springtime shinny at the Little Hockey House on the Prairie as early as next season. As for arriving in the Western Conference final, put in a wakeup call for 2030.

In rooting through archives, I stumbled upon a most interesting discovery: Once upon a time, the Puck Pontiff spoke to his loyal subjects. Honest. Chipman actually stood at a podium and did the season-over, chin-wag thing with news snoops in April 2012, at which time the city was still in swoon and the rabble didn’t much care that there’d be no playoffs. He has since become Howard Hughes, hiding himself in a room somewhere, no doubt eating nothing but chocolate bars and drinking milk. I found one remark he made at the 2012 presser to be rather troubling: “I don’t want to give the impression that I’m managing our hockey team, ’cause I’m not. That’s what our professionals do.” I wish I could believe that he allows the hockey people to make the important hockey decisions, but I can’t.

I note the Winnipeg Blue Bombers are looking to branch out into another sport and secure a franchise in a proposed Canadian pro soccer league. Ya, that’s just what Winnipeg needs—more dives.

Carolina Hurricanes have had goaltending issues. Ditto the Dallas Stars. Double ditto the Jets. So ‘Canes GM Ron Francis uses a third-round draft choice to acquire the rights to Scott Darling, then signs him to a four-year contract. Stars GM Jim Nill uses a fourth-round pick to secure the rights to Ben Bishop, then lock him in for six years. The Puck Pontiff and Cheveldayoff, meanwhile, do nothing. Don’t you just hate the sound of crickets?

I look at the Ottawa Senators, who ousted the New York Rangers from the Stanley Cup derby on Tuesday night, and I mostly see smoke and mirrors. Yes, they have Erik Karlsson, the premier player on the planet at the moment, and Craig Anderson often provides the Sens with stud goaltending. But beyond that, it’s largely a ho-hum roster. Where is the stud centre? You don’t win championships without a stud centre. At least not since the New Jersey Devils. My guess is that the Senators’ fun is soon to end.

Here’s one way of looking at this year’s Stanley Cup tournament:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Genie Bouchard proved nothing with her win over Maria Sharapova at the Madrid Open this week, except that she can beat a player who had been away from elite tennis for almost a year and a half. And that she can’t win gracefully. I don’t like rooting against Canadian athletes, but our Genie has become increasingly difficult to embrace. Branding Sharapova a “cheater” and suggesting she ought to be banned for life due to a drug violation is good copy, but surviving a second-round match and acting like you’ve just won Wimbledon because you have a hate-on for your opponent is bad form.

Bouchard claims that a number of players on the Women’s Tennis Association tour approached her on the QT prior to her match with Sharapova, wishing her bonne chance. Simona Halep of Romania was not among those women. “I didn’t wish good luck to Bouchard because we don’t speak, actually,” Halep advised news snoops. “She’s different, I can say. I cannot judge her for being this. I cannot admire her for being this. I have nothing to say about her person.” Ouch.

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