It's only fitting that a team named for a governor of New France would impart a new appreciation for the concept of c'est la vie.Only the Mavine comedy which is the Kingston Frontenacs could have this happen. Thursday, the Fronts had a player score the winning goal for the other team into his own net, and Friday, had the same player break a 0-0 tie early in the third period. Were ours a just God, Corbin Crawford's goal would have stood up as the game-winner, but this is the godforsaken Frontenacs, so you know better than to even ask.
Meantime, announced attendance for the OT loss to Owen Sound was 2,282. Incidentally, you remember that post from the other day about a low-level junior team in Illinois calling itself the Frontenacs. There's a reason both teams might want to use something else: Its connection with slavery.
Seriously, slavery -- and not the relatively benign kind, where teenagers play a professional-length schedule for $60 a week and a three hots and a cot and Larry Mavety threatens to trade them 300 miles away if they don't want to play. Doing some Wiki-ing on the Frontenacs' colonial namesake turned up this nugget:
At the time of his second appointment as Governor in 1689, France authorized the importation of slaves to Quebec from the West Indies.With no apologies to Ron James, there's some Canadian history they don't teach in schools. It would be silly to think a name change would be contemplated; this is framed more in the context of most of us Canadians are unaware of our brief but shameful involvement in the slave trade, let alone that one of its progenitors would be the namesake of a major junior hockey team.
Quebec's most famous building and landmark, the Château Frontenac, is named after him, as is the Kingston Frontenacs ice hockey team.
Incidentally, a poster at the New OHL Open Forum had a great suggestion for how this case with the Illinois team could be solved:
"Instead of taking Kingston's logo, this Jr. C team should take Mavety, so he'd be at his proper coaching level."Well, that is is just mean. The Fronts have a northern swing coming up -- Sunday at Sault Ste. Marie, Tuesday at Sudbury. They fired Bruce Cassidy in the middle of that trip last season; his Royal Mavesty can't really fire himself.
Related:
Kingston, Illinois play name game (Mike Koreen, Kingston Whig-Standard)
Frontenacs' craptacular logo stolen? (Sunaya Sapurji, Loose Pucks)
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2 comments:
Little off-topic, Neate, but I remember reporting on the Wolves last season and that Fronts' roadie. Kingston pulled into Sudbury with Cassidy as head coach, and the next night it was Mavety behind bench.
The Wolves earned their first home win of the season, I recall. And it's worth taking a look at what's happened to those at-the-time cellar dwellers since then. The Fronts managed to finished 13 points better than the Wovles, but they still missed the playoffs in the Eastern Conference. As far as rebuilding process goes, we all know the score this year, with the teams looking to be headed in completely different directions.
Sounds like an "O Doctor" post waiting to happen.
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