Fronts: Get well soon, Mav; venom can wait

Protocol dictates one wish Larry Mavety a full recovery, regardless of everything else which has gone down, lo, these past 11 seasons.

"Kingston Frontenacs general manager Larry Mavety is recovering in hospital after having heart surgery on the weekend. The 67-year-old has been around either the Belleville Bulls or Kingston Frontenacs franchises for most of the past 30 years. There is no doubt he has to be listed among the top 'characters' in the Ontario Hockey League." — Loose Pucks

It would be in poor taste to speculate about what this means in the long term. There is always an awareness that Larry Mavety, the old hockey lifer and nice man by all accounts, comes before all the appellations cogitated in this corner (The Royal Mavesty, general mangler, and so forth).

At the same time, this is a Frontenacs organization which puts a higher priority on silencing criticism than addressing why anyone would possibly criticize them.

(In the past few weeks, there have been a few cryptic references on Fronts Talk to TVCogeco commentator Mark Potter "only doing post-games this year." For several years, Potter has been a mainstay on an OHL roundtable intermission feature which airs on most local cable broadcasts across the province, so one has to wonder what's up, although it's doubtful traditional media would explore it since it's not of general interest.)

Doug Gilmour, with all 45 games' OHL coaching experience to his name, is assuming the GM's duties. The kneejerk response might be that there is not a lot going on in mid-July, but looking around the Internets, the Kitchener Rangers apparently pried up-and-coming defenceman John Moore away from Colorado College in the NCAA. The Ottawa 67's just signed their first-round draft choice, D-man Cody Ceci. There is a lot to do and it's in the hands of a novice hockey man.

Get well, Mav. The venom will be there when you get back. It's aimed at your boss who refuses to get with the times.

It has been 632 days since Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to bring a winner to Kingston.

Related:
Mavety will rejoin Frontenacs after recovery (Mike Koreen, Kingston Whig-Standard)

Fronts: Tired and true — Mavety between a K-Rock and a Harnden place

If one did not know better, you'd swear everyone was in cahoots to make sure the Kingston Frontenacs do not three-peat as playoff watchers.

The trade today for 20-year-old forward Zach Harnden along with Monday's move for fellow overage forward Kaine Geldart makes it pretty obvious how the season will set up for the Frontenacs. Getting Geldart and Harnden, two forwards with only a year left in the league, is right off page 125 of Larry Mavety's Big Book of Bad Hockey.

The subtext is that OHL would really like to see a turnaround in Kingston. It will be embarrassing for owner Doug "Whatever It Takes" Springer if the Frontenacs do not improve in Year 13 of Mav's five-year plan. The novelty of Doug Gilmour coaching in the OHL will soon wear off. The issue of a sweetheart arena deal for a subpar team could become hot-button during the municipal election in 2010, so it would help if they get in the playoffs.

The hope is they will. I am nothing if not a diehard fan. However, please try to see what goes along with Mavety falling back on what he knows, a reflex often peculiar to none-too-bright people. Mavety trades for "players we know," as The Royal Mavesty his ownself put it to the Kingston Whig-Standard. That means you get anyone whom another team believed had promise at age 16, since it's well-known how Mavety ranks as a talent evaluator (not very good) and how much he can impart to Gilmour (not very much). True to form, Mavety, who leads the world in trading for former first-rounders (and trading his own) is adding a player who as Loose Pucks noted, "was was Peterborough's first-round pick in the 2005 OHL Priority Selection. But his OHL numbers have topped out at 40 points during the 2007-08 season."

This is not aimed at Harnden and Geldart. They just work there, presumably (the Loose Pucks post, by the way, noted only that Harnden "could be back in the OHL for an overage year." Each could help the Frontenacs get back to the playoffs, probably more so the gritty Geldart. That is always, repeat always the hope.

However, you can see where this is headed, since it was predicted here 30 days ago:

"One can hear the spin-doctoring from nine months away. It will be framed as a great triumph if Kingston merely makes the playoffs next season. This means ignoring that 80% of the teams in the OHL get in and owner Doug Springer said at the start of last season their goal was "top four" in the Eastern Conference." — May 30, 2009

And as stated even earlier, this goes back to ...

"... a previous point that the Frontenacs are, in Andrew Bucholtz's phrasing, 'Unimaginative talent evaluators (who) tend to go with guys who are generally thought to be good by the scouting community.' They're slave to orthodoxy when it comes who to take and don't do enough to help them get better once they're there."

Nothing against the two players the Frontenacs have added, but people have seen this movie before from Mavety and it's about as fresh as a Michael Bay summer blockbuster. There is no rebuilding, just the same ol' same ol': Trade for veterans, trade for forwards, ignore that you win by drafting smart and building out from the back end, goalies and defence (it did not take that much smarts to draft Erik Gudbranson).

One can reconcile the Frontenacs being unwilling to utilize the CHL Import Draft. It is understandable that Springer does not want to spend and Mavety will not go outside of his "players we know" comfort zone. (One would point out that no OHL team has turned up its nose at drafting high-end Europeans since Don Cherry's Mississauga IceDogs when it won like 16 games across three seasons about a decade ago, but it's not a requirement for OHL success.) The organization also has other fish to fry, like trying to shut up any local media who dare to cast a critical eye toward the team instead of towing the party line.

Anyway, there is a feeling people want to get behind the Frontenacs in Gilmour's first full season behind the bench. The point in writing this is in hope people do not get the wool pulled over their eyes during the season ahead. Setting a goal of simply making the playoffs is the absolute nadir of low-bar setting. Knowing that hockey tends to be a chummy old boys club, it would not come as a shock if a few teams were open to helping Mavety patch together a playoff team, quote-unquote. They owe him after him taking advantage of him so many teams over the years by fleecing him (get it?) in trades. (By the way, who gets the other overage spot now that two of the three are presumably accounted for by the new guys? Defencemen Corbin Crawford and/or Zack Fenwick must not be coming back.

It is certainly in OHL commissioner's David Branch's interest to have Gilmour be a success in Kingston instead of being part of a long-running gong show. Meantime, Kingston's city council and Mayor Harvey Rosen, probably needs the team to start showing real progress to keep the sweetheart arena deal with Springer from becoming an election issue.

In other words, there is a lot more to this than the Frontenacs picking up a little veteran experience. Welcome aboard, Zack Harnden. It has been 616 days since Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to bring a winner to Kingston.

(Here are Harnden's stats juxtaposed against Luke Pither, the first-rounder from that same 2005 draft whom Mavety gave up on way too soon. It is apples to pears, but Pither had twice as many points last season as the great player Mavety just acquired, 72-34. A Petes fan on the New OHL Open Forum described him as a, "Slow, under-achieving guy with average hands. Thanks for the 3rd!)

David Branch out to show the 'O' does not stand for 'Omertà'

Sunaya Sapurji, of Loose Pucks fame, touched on a topic that is near and dear to junior hockey fans, noting the Ontario Hockey is "in the market for an enforcer to lay down the law for teams when it comes to the existing rules regarding hazing, draft manipulation and excess player benefits."

This is kind of amusing, with Sapurji's gum-shoeing coming out on the very day that Kingston's Scott Harrington signed with the London Knights, which he just happened to fall to at the 19th overall pick after saying he was going to college:

"A survey of 17 of the OHL's 20 general managers conducted by the Star shows 13 believe there are teams manipulating their annual priority selection. However, when asked — off the record — if their own team has participated in draft manipulation, all 17 answered 'no.' "

However, Darren Ferris, who is adviser for, wait for it, Scott Harrington, might have hit the nail on the head:

"They don't need an enforcement officer, they need a development officer to go after the teams that don't develop players."

The kneejerk reaction is to wonder how much success Branch can have making a league with such an omertà culture more transparent.

It is a noble goal, though, and it is possible that there are younger, more open-minded people coming into the league who realize it's bad for business if there's a perception of a lack of oversight. The reality of the digital age means it would be harder for the league to keep something under the rug (imagine if the Windsor Spitfires hazing scandal had occurred in 2008 instead of 2005).

Sapurji's story note this enforcer's duties would cover everything, including draft manipulation, hazing and good old-fashioned payola (far be it to say that if someone wants to buy a 16-year-old's parents a new house in order to try to win a Memorial Cup, that's their problem).

Like Ferris said, this could go one step farther. Teams should be subject to audits of their entire hockey operation, especially those who give contract extensions to general managers who are 0 for the last 11 seasons when it comes to building a team which can win a playoff series.

The teams are franchisees and if the way they're running things are not up to snuff, the league should be able to take action. It is the same principle Harlan Sanders used to work on when he was building Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Meantime, feel free to interpret this as if the situation with Harrington was a last straw. Draft manipulation is nothing new in junior hockey and it's not even clear if it's completely negative.

The players and their parents deserve some say in where their little Dylans and Conors end up playing. Some might say the teams who pay the price are those who won't pay the price to get top-end players. The onus is a two-way street.

However, this is business and the league is right to worry about fallout from another Windsor or a feeling that the games are not on the level. After Harrington just happened to fall to the London Knights, there was an enough's-enough feeling.

Related:
OHL plans crackdown on teams breaking rules (Sunaya Sapurji, Toronto Star)

Fronts: Now that was a Super Sunday

Sunday was a good one for a follower of the whole durned human comedy which is the Kingston Frontenacs. They owned the Ottawa 67's in an 8-6 win, while their no-account owner and GM got owned by the out-of-town media.

In between periods, coach Doug Gilmour had a sort of cryptic, kind of cocky response to question about the team's appearance before Kingston city council about its (wink) marketing plan. "It was all a miscommunication," he told Rogers TV, breaking eye contact with the interviewer. "And something that, uh, you know we – we have a lot of pride (in) how we want to build this team and the fan support and everything else that we had. So, uh, we stated our case. It was easy. It's over with. It will never happen again." (Emphasis mine. This is a team which has still yet to win two games in a row all season.)

Meantime, the out-of-town media went to town on owner Doug Springer and ceremonial GM-for-life Larry Mavety for not taking questions from Kingston city council last week. Ed Hand, the host, wouldn't even let Lee Versage hedge one bit, saying, "It doesn't look good. The owner should have been there and the general manager should have been there answering the questions – and they weren't."

Versage added, "I thought, unfair to put those two guys (Gilmour and marketing director Jeff Stilwell) in that situation ... The owner and the general manager, they kind of weren’t there and deflected it off.

"It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that the owner and the general manager should have been there and they’re trotting out the marketing guy and the coach because he's a big name," Versage added a few moments later.



It is not necessary to reiterate the argument about Springer and Mavety that have been made here since the tailend of the 2006-07 season. It is hilarious to see announcers in another OHL market criticize the owner and GM unaccountable, and Sunaya Sapurji of Loose Pucks call Kingston "the capital of OHL crazytown."

There is a phenomena involved when one's hometown junior hockey club is cursed with tragically bad management. It is like one has to wait until they're playing for pride before he's able to abandon himself to cheering for them. Fortunately for a Frontenacs fan, that point arrived before the official start of winter this season. It was obvious by late November that all that was at stake was how high their draft position would be (no worse than No. 2) and how many season-ticket holders they will lose once it became known Mavety will be back. At least Gilmour said "it wouldn't happen again" with respect to being frog-marched in front of city council.

In other words, watching Sunday's game from seats behind the Frontenacs bench was so choice. It started well, with rooie Erik Gudbranson beating two forecheckers to launch a scoring rush for the first goal. It was capped with the Limestone City's Light Brigade scoring five goals in the third period to send Ottawans home crabby. Ethan Werek was all over the ice and was rightly named the first star despite having only two points, albeit one of them coming on the go-ahead goal with 4:01 left in the game. Big defenceman Taylor Doherty delivered some huge hits and Mavric Parks, even though he gave up six goals, made some huge saves to keep his team in the hunt after it went down 3-1 early in the second period.

The afternoon was catered to Kingston. Ottawa had only 10 forwards and was playing its third game in three days. The goal which tied the game 5-5 in the third period came about thanks to a chintzy delay-of-game penalty when an Ottawa defenceman flipped the puck over the low glass, putting Kingston on a 5-on-3 power play.

That was just details. It was one of those games where both teams went up and down for 60 minutes and pretty much yielded to the flow of the game. It was nice, for lack of a better word, to see your hometown team lighting it up, as was the case in December when Kingston blew out the 67's 7-3 at the Civic Centre, also on a Sunday afternoon. (From the strange but true files, both of Kingston's highest-scoring games this season have come with yours truly in attendance.) It made someone prone to overthinking banish any thoughts of Doug Springer and Larry Mavety for 2½ hours, which you readers will know is saying something.

It has 475 days since Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to bring a winner to Kingston.

Related:
Cuma out, 67's fall to Fronts (Chris Stevenson, Sun Media)

With the Fronts, the 401's a highway to the crazy zone

Taking a cue from Sunaya Sapurji at Loose Pucks, one would expect to see Rod Serling's ghost host the next Kingston Frontenacs telecast on TV Cogeco, instead of Kinger.

There are some major media outlets starting to echo the popular opinion that, quoth Sapurji, "when did Kingston become the capital of OHL Crazytown?" She also threw in a reference to the Twilight Zone, which was awesometacular.

Serling's catchphrase, "Submitted for your approval," is obviously lost on Frontenacs owner Doug Springer (left in photo, obviously). The movie/TV quote which comes closest to summing up Springer's tenure in Kingston is, "You'll get nothing, and like it!" a la the Ted Knight character in Caddyshack. Anyway, pent-up anger subliminated through cheap references aside, there is a growing clamour that something is rotten with the state of hockey in K-town. Mike Koreen, sports ed. at the hometown Whig-Standard, also started beating one of Kinger's favourite drums: What's going to happen to the team's season-ticket base, especially, as Springer told Koreen, "there's no reason to think otherwise" that GM-for-life Larry Mavety is going to return next season?

At least these questions are being asked by those with a larger forum. It will not help Kingston win any more games or achieve its first two-game win streak, in Game 50 of the season, tonight when it faces the Brampton Battalion, a very strong team. It won't cause Springer to smarten up and it will not bring fans back in the hometown, but at least it's getting harder to avoid the tough questions. Here's the best from Koreen and Sapurji, noting that the spoken word folk such as Kinger, Tim Cunningham and Mark Potter at TV Cogeco were early adopters:

Sapurji, Loose Pucks: if a team's owner isn't a qualified enough expert to talk about his own team, then maybe he isn't qualified enough to own the team?

Koreen, The Whig: The team is not going to have an easy time convincing some of its season ticket holders to renew next season, which could cause further attendance concerns at the beginning of next season. Expectations were high this year after Springer came out and said he expected the team to challenge for a top-four spot in the conference.

Those are welcome words to read, but not as welcome as "Frontenacs up for sale." It's a start. Kingston will continue to be the town that dreaded sundown, but only when the Springer Frontenacs have a home game that night.

(Ethan Werek, by the way, didn't look out of place in the OHL All-Star Game last night, scoring a goal as he and five Belleville Bulls skated for the winning East team. It follows that he wouldn't look out of place if coach Doug Gilmour put him in a shootout.)

It has been 471 days since Doug Springer said he would do "whatever it takes" to bring Kingston a winner. The worst part is we still don't know who stole the strawberries.





Related:
Fronts developing an identity: Gudbranson (Doug Graham, Kingston Whig-Standard)
What a waste of time; City council's grilling of Fronts achieved nothing (Mike Koreen, Kingston Whig-Standard)
K-Town moves into Twilight Zone (Sunaya Sapurji, Loose Pucks)

Fronts: All hail president Kang (and that Tavares guy)

The diaspora in Dougie! land is fully on.

Matthew Kang, the overage forward, has been traded to the Brampton Battalion for a fourth-round pick in 2010 (and this is as close to an OOLF exclusive as it gets -- he just left the K-Rock Centre not 15 minutes ago). The gang over at the New OHL Open Forum says the Frontenacs also got the rights to overage forward John Hughes.

Loose Pucks has confirmed that the Kingston Frontenacs got 17-year-old goalie John Cullen from the Niagara IceDogs for a fifth-round pick in 2010.

Frontenacs GM-for-life Larry Mavety is aware that Hughes is playing in Austria, one would hope. He's already traded once this year for a 20-year-old player who was out of the league.

One wishes Kang all the best with Brampton, which is near the top of the Eastern Conference (and no doubt noticed that Kang had seven points in five games back in 2007, the last time Kingston was in the post-season). If he heats up at the right time, it can turn the tide in a particular game or even a playoff series. Generally, he tops out as a second-line forward on a good day, third line most of the time, but used right he can be one of the 20 finely meshed gears that comprises a good junior hockey team.

The problem with the Springer Frontenacs is that the team is run in such a way that it becomes about what a player cannot do. Kang became a Spezza-esque scapegoat since he wasn't a physical player and was a good but not great scorer. Put him in a good organization under Stan Butler and see what happens. Players perform to expectations.

As for Cullen, he could be called "Mavric II." He is at the same point that the Frontenacs one decent goalie, Mavric Parks was last season -- a 17-year-old rookie who needs a good environment to help him develop, which likely is not what he'll get in Kingston. One wonders how Parks feels. The team might be stuck on 1-2 wins instead of eight without him, and they basically hand the No. 1 job to the new guy.

That said, Cullen has potential. USA Hockey has had him on his radar, so he's not a bad pickup, notwithstanding the Frontenacs have much larger problems than goaltending. Since it involved a fifth-round pick, it's basically Cullen for Anthony Peters.

This is a patented move for Fronts GM-for-life Larry Mavety -- make a minor deal that owner Doug Springer and the local cheerleaders can point to as proof Mavety is an astute hockey man, even if it only amounts to a patching job. Meantime, you watch a player who could have been part of the solution -- if Springer had dumped Mavety a long time ago like he should have -- go off to try and win a championship someplace else.

(John Tavares is headed to London, and were we not fools to think it would have played out any other way. There is a lot of stuff on the go today, so keep an eye on Loose Pucks if you're curious who and what the Knights sent to the Oshawa Generals. It's all right here -- NHL first-rounder Michael Del Zotto was included in the deal.)

Related:
Tavares traded to London Knights (Sunaya Sapurji, Toronto Star)

Fronts: Springer's snow job; meet the other Doug

Doug Gilmour has a favourite Christmas carol: Walking In A Winter Blunderland.

Or it could be Decoy To The World.

For anyone in the GTA or around Ontario who sees Gilmour's post-loss quotes today (The Whig-Standard's story was picked up by The Canadian Press, and Loose Pucks has a post), please understand that this is not a garden-variety junior hockey story. Anything that Gilmour, now 2-10-1 as rookie coach of my hometown Kingston Frontenacs -- my team, he just works there -- says about his players' effort or lack thereof ultimately amounts to a diversionary tactic.

Simply put, the chickens have come home to roost for Frontenacs owner Doug Springer:

"City council will call representatives of the Kingston Frontenacs onto the carpet to explain why their marketing plans aren't pulling in the number of fans they projected when the K-Rock Centre first opened.

"Figures presented to city council this week show that the arena posted a net income of just under $66,000 for the nine months ending in September, far below the projected income of $431,000 that was predicted in business plans last year."
-- Kingston Whig-Standard

There were apparently only 800 people at Kingston Taxpayer Arena (as the K-Rock Centre might as well be called) last night. From the looks of it, there was absolutely no one there as the Fronts lost 5-2 to Mississauga St. Michael's.

It's not about Gilmour. It has never been about Gilmour nor will it ever will be about Gilmour.

The Frontenacs have an owner who is too small-town cheap to bother bringing in a modern management team so the Kingston fans who basically bought him a a $43-million downtown arena can at least watch a competitive team. The Springer show in Kingston can't even called pitiful, because it would insult the memory of whoever first coined the word pitiful. At least today he's feeling some heat, although some would say the pig already got out of the barn.

"Councillor Vicki Schmolka deferred acceptance of the 2009 business plan for the arena -- a rosy document that projected a net income for the centre of nearly $1.2 million -- until council has heard from representatives of Arcturus/ SMG (the arena's private operator) and the Frontenacs. The presentation is expected to take place in January.

" 'It's hard to have confidence in this (business plan) until we have heard from the Frontenacs,' Schmolka told council."

Attendance is down in most OHL markets this season, but a crowd of 800 people in a taxpayer-funded building that opened just 10 months ago is beyond the pale. Springer long ago forfeited any of benefit of the doubt, mostly due to his retention of GM-for-life Larry Mavety. The general mangler has steadily let the team's talent base erode since a fine regular season in 2005-06 (81 points).

The examples just blur together.

• The recently traded Josh Brittain was the fifth straight first-round pick of Mavety's who will not finish his junior career in Kingston.
• They don't have a single player left from the 2005 draft year, which should have provided some key cogs for 2008-09. It sure as hell has in Belleville. The Bulls drafted their top scorer, Eric Tangradi, the OHL's best goalie, Mike Murphy, and defenceman P.K. Subban, a two-time member of the Canadian world junior team, that season.
  
  More remarkably, none of them were taken in the first three rounds. All of them have since been drafted by NHL teams.
  
  None of Mavety's 2005 draft choices have been taken by the NHL, even though the Frontenacs drafted fourth overall, and had five of the first 66 selections.
• At the start of this season, Mavety had the option of acquiring an overage player from the Kitchener Rangers to complete an earlier trade. He took Yannick Weber, even though 19 other GMs knew he was moving up to the American Hockey League and would not be back in the OHL.
  
  One player they could have taken off Kitchener's roster was Brandon Mashinter, who is a forward with size (6-foot-4, 232 pounds) and scoring touch, something Kingston is lacking.
  
  Guess where Mashinter ended up? Belleville.
• Around this time last season, Mavety received three players from the Brampton Battalion in the Cory Emmerton trade and in a separate transaction. None of those three are still with the Frontenacs -- in fact, two of them, Kevin Christmas and Justin Levac, are now with the Kingston Voyageurs in the Provincial Junior A League.
• Mike Murphy, as noted, is the best goalie in the league. Mavety passed on him in the draft twice. The goalie he took before Murphy in '05, Daryl Borden, is no longer even in the OHL.

Despite all this, Springer insists that The Royal Mavesty is a "great hockey man" and this franchise's first refuge is to blame the players for not trying hard enough. That, not any lack of marketing, is why people don't go to the games. Attendance would go up if all traces of Mavety were scrubbed from the organization. Springer could also improve his public image immensely if he put the team up for sale, no reasonable offer refused.

It's hard to fault the players for not trying when there is so little evidence of accountability and aptitude among the big brains of this so-called organization.

Mavety has also effectively undermined Gilmour -- raising fears this is part of a plot to make him the fall guy for when they miss the playoffs -- by trading Brittain and Peter Stevens, two players who can hold their own in a fight. Like it or not, this means the rest of the players are vulnerable. The degree to which teams are taking liberties with Kingston's smaller players has become almost comical. Forward Kelly Geoffrey found out the hard way on Wednesday (right around the 1:10-2:00 mark of this clip).



One can take Gilmour's efforts to become a coach at face value. Regardless, five Stanley Cup-winning coaches, never mind one Cup-winning ex-player, could not overcome the colossal cluelessness in the cloud cuckoo land of the Kingston Frontenacs.

At any level of athletics, it is impossible to fool yourself into giving your best when you know you're out of your depth. The Frontenacs have been exactly that on most nights this season -- largely because of Mavety's laughably dated coaching style -- and wil continue to be until the ownership and management changes.

By the same token, opponents know they do not have to bring their best effort when they play Kingston. You can see a bit of this in every game. Teams know they just to have to do the bare minimum to get out with two points in the standings.

As the above story indicates, this is not just a Doug Gilmour story. It's about an owner killing the OHL product in the Kingston market, because he doesn't care.

The city of Kingston is trying to make amends for that sweetheart deal it gave Springer. It budgeted for 3,500 fans per game and four home playoff dates to meet revenue targets. There was talk last week that would downgrade expectations to 3,000 people a game. As my friend Tyler King put it, this is effectively means that even if you're not buying Frontenacs tickets as a taxpayer in Kingston, you are buying Frontenacs tickets, since the city is sudsidizing bad hockey.

You want to focus on Doug Gilmour, go ahead. If anything, he's a sympathetic figure for being dragged into this gong show, and hopefully he'll find his coaching salvation.

Meantime, above all else, there is Doug Springer, who's fast running out of immunity cards. He is the emperor with no clothes and if you've ever walked around downtown Kingston in January on a day when the wind is howling in off the lake, that's not a good thing.

The powers-that-be in Kingston have finally caught on. It's about time people across Ontario woke up to the fact, too. Gilmour's definitely not the problem and he might not be the solution.

Related:
Frustrating times for Fronts (Sunaya Sapurji, Loose Pucks)
Lowly Fronts have some explaining to do; Horrible start by K-Rock Centre's main tenant is said to have cut into revenues (Ian Elliott, Kingston Whig-Standard)

Fronts: As we settle in for another winter of discontent, a new voice in the wilderness

The anger is reaching Critical Mavs, so to speak, down in our beloved K-Town. Over the weekend, the diehards at Fronts Talk discovered a new blog, Save Our Kingston Frontenacs (savethefronts.wordpress.com)

The fans behind this site want to see owner Doug Springer sell the team, or at the very least get rid of coach-GM Larry Mavety and bring in coaches and management who aren't late in joining the 21st century. This is the second blog that has been started targeting Springer and Mavety. Has any other OHL owner and GM even been the target of one?  Junior hockey fans are usually pretty loyal (in this case, their loyalty is to each other and the players who are caught in this whole shootin' gong show).

It could be some of the same fans who were behind Fire Larry Mavety last season, but that is beside the point. There is a deep, deep well of anger toward the Frontenacs, as you can see from the symposium culled from Fronts Talk, New OHL Open Forum and the Kingston Whig-Standard collected after the jump. The aim of posting this here is to capture the spirit of the thing, in hope that others who have the proper outlet — local journalists, elected officials — will start to ask hard questions about just what the hell is going on with this franchise. 

The estimable hockey writer Sunaya Sapurji is scoring off us over at Loose Pucks: "Just letting you know, if I win a large jackpot (highly unlikely) I promise to buy the Kingston Frontenacs and run the franchise into the ground. I'm guessing fans won't even notice the change in ownership."

On with the symposium!

"Good God Mr. Springer, even you must see Mavety just can't handle it anymore. But then again, if you dont care why should we. Kingston, your gonna NOT have a team in the near future if this keeps up."

"My family has been season ticket holders for 17 years and I have never felt the way that I feel now.... I actually go to the arena and sit in my seat and I hope beyond all hope that we lose 10-0 every game.

"I have nothing bad to say about any player anymore until serious changes are made. It's plain to see that if these kids pulled together and played they could easily make the playoffs but .... no one on earth would put forth an effort for an organization that clearly cares nothing about them."

"This debacle won't be fixed until the team is sold. Personally, I would like to see the City send a bill to the Springers at the end of the season for any short fall in revenue caused by lower than expected attendance at the Frontenac games. The popular break even number seems to be 3500 per game, if the team falls short of that mark the Springers should ante up. City Hall and the local media has to turn the heat up on the Springers to sell the team."

"It's to the point now where you have to ask the question, do they WANT the fans to stay away? It's painfully obvious to anyone with even a modicum of common sense, that the fans of Kingston are sick and tired of Larry Mavety, and won't be attending games so long as he's around. But yet Springer refuses to do the right thing ... the common sense thing.

"You want a new tenant at the Krock Pot, then don't spend a dime at the rink (not even the ATM machine, which they get 50% of revenue). Then, perhaps they'll go bankrupt & the City can then say goodbye to the Frontenac organization. Here is the contract between the City & Frontenacs. Read the whole thing & see where you can make a difference in the team going bankrupt. Bankruptcy is the only way I can see Kingston getting a new tenant. Cut & paste this url & have a look. http://www.cityofkingston.ca/pdf/council/agenda/2006/A14_Rpt73B.pdf."

"... I used to love watching OHL hockey. Now, Springer and Mavety have gotten me to the point that I'm beginning to loathe even turning on the television to view a game."

"Anybody think (Sunday's 4-1 win over Guelph) this is a sign of a turnaround? (Goalie Mavric) Parks had to make waaaay too many miracle saves for me to see this as anything other than one of the many John Murray wins we had last year."

"Well, today's outcome saved Larry Mavety's job for the next twenty or so games. After all, Springer only expects mediocrity from his team. One win in 8 games sounds about right. Mavety should get down on his knees and thank Parks for that performance today."

"20th PP ... 20th PK ... 7 Game losing skid....and counting

"Where in hockey do you see stats like that with NO changes? And they wonder why people in Kingston won't support the team.

"Let the 'Jerry Springer Show' continue..."

(Editor's note: "NO changes?" Taking the 'A' off Josh Brittain and having Jesse Brown on a new line every game does not count?

"Fronts are playing 20/20 hockey ... 20th PK, 20th PP How bad does it have to get until Springer wakes up? Kingston needs a coach like (the Kingston Voyaguers') Evan Robinson who holds his players accountable. You don't skate you don't play! One way Kang, I never shut up Moon and others would never see the ice. Springer, please for the fans of this city stop thinking you know how to run a hockey team and Mav, stop thinking you know how to coach a hockey team, step aside and let someone who does. Windsor did it, why not Kingston?"

"This is a most unhealthy environment for young athletes to try to develop their careers and if my son was one of them, I'd want him out of there toot sweet."

"I have no problem with how the Springers run their business but what I do object to is being so disingenuous to the taxpayers and the fans ... .They are responsible for Mavety and all the other mistakes that have taken place including making public pronunciations of doing whatever is necessary to make this team a winner. Doug you set the bar and you are responsible for this collossal mess. Fixing it is simple. Hire a top notch hockey people to run the organization and step away."

Say this much: Following the Belleville Bulls is nowhere near as entertaining.

Fronts: The whole durned human comedy just keeps perpetuatin' itself

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.

Quebec's most famous building and landmark, the Château Frontenac, is named after him, as is the Kingston Frontenacs ice hockey team.

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.

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)

Fronts: No I in 'team,' but there's two in 'infuriating'

The response to the Kingston Frontenacs owner Doug Springer's confirming everyone's worst fears that Larry Mavety would coach this season fairly demands a best-of compilation from the feedback at thewhig.com, Fronts Talk and New OHL Open Forum.

It's good that people are voicing their decision over what's a blatantly antifan decision, especially since the City of Kingston has co-opted taxpayers as stakeholders in the Springer Frontenacs. The best advice is to get the anger out and support the players this season, for this season.

It's been known for more than two months that Mavety would stay (if you listened to Tyler's show Offsides, you'd have known). The season is too close for anyone to have expected a change, but that doesn't deny anyone the right to be upset, as you'll see:

"Let's see if we've got this right -- parlaying a 23 and 33 record after Mav took over into something special is the reason for announcing his continuation as coach??!!!!"

"It takes a lot of b....s to tell the loyal paying fans and a community that just spent $40 million-plus on a new arena that after 8 years of failure that they should be satisfied with a coach with a winning percentage of .410 because you think that is a positive move forward."

(That second comment was the most positive thing anyone has said online about Springer.)

"I have been a season ticket holder for the past 8 years, but I have not renewed yet because I wanted to see the direction the team would be heading this season. Thank you Mr. Springer as you have helped me make my decision.

"I will not be renewing. I will be placing my order for Bulls season tickets today."

"I have spoken with at least a dozen Fronts players and they would all love to see (Mavety) replaced. They think he is a nice guy, but they feel there are better coaches out there."

"This club will remain an absolute joke for as long as Doug Springer owns the club. He doesn't care about winning, or having a successful hockey club. He just cares about money. And the fact he retained Mavety, instead of bringing in someone who can truly turn this team around, confirms this."

"Springer must love less than mediocre results."

"Confirmed -- Mav back behind the bench in Kingston. Also confirmed -- disgruntled Fronts fans walking away, shaking their heads in disgust."

"Doug Springer...you are an utter embarrassment to junior hockey and do us all a favour and make the rumour the truth.....sell the team to someone who cares more about the team than they do about lining their pockets and keeping old friends employed."

" 'How do you feel about this Fronts fans? Good or bad move?' You can't honestly be serious when asking that."

"No way 'the kids wanted him back' at least not the ones pursuing hockey as their livelihood."

"Just when you think it can't get worse Doug and Mav always come through."

"Now that Kingston taxpayers are subsidizing the hockey team ... the current owners should take their profits and sell the team to someone who has a clue."

"After this latest slap in the face to the citizens and hockey fans of Kingston, (Mayor) Harvey (Rosen) ought to be having a serious heart-to-heart with Springer about his lack of interest in doing anything about icing a winning club. (Springer's) latest announcement merely underlines how uninterested he is in improving the franchise and by continuing Mavety's hapless reign of mediocrity he is telling council and the eople of Kingston, 'I have my sweetheart deal, you folks learn to live with it.' "

"Really, what can you say that hasn't been all said before?"

To quote Sunaya Sapurji atthe OHL blog Loose Pucks: "I'm starting to believe that Kingston's front office is operating in some weird parallel universe that is hidden from the world outside."

It's ironic that an organization whose arena bears the name of a radio station is so tone-deaf. If it makes you feel any better, there is a Fire Larry Mavety petition.