Jusssst a bit outside: the Los Angeles Angels preview

Duty calls to preview the MLB season, 30 things somewhat about each of the 30 teams. At bat: the L.A. Angels.

1. If these trends continue: The Angels have outperformed their Pythagorean record for six years in a row, winning 29 more games than their run differential would suggest they should have. The bills for that must come due eventually, right? Right?!
   
   
2. Not so fast: A lineup with a Bobby Abreu-Torii Hunter-Hideki Matsui-Kendry Morales-Juan Rivera core (the 2 through 6 spots) is good by the standards of five out of the six divisions.
   
   Throw in forever underappreciated Mike Napoli jacking 25 homers from the bottom of the lineup and the Angels do not lack for empty spots in the lineup.
   
   
3. Although: Erick Aybar in the leadoff spot. Really?
   
   
4. Over-under on wins: 83½
   
   
5. Take the ... Over. They at least stay above .500. Manager Mike Scioscia typically seems to find enough pitching. There is a risk of taking their ability to adjust for granted.
   
   
6. Middlemen: The Angels are a June-July juggernaut, or have been the past two seasons. They played .704 ball from June 1 to July 31 last season (.546 before and after) and won at a .686 clip in 2008 (.586 before and after). Of course that's also the portion of the season that includes interleague play.
   
   
7. Why they're being written off again: They bid adieu to two No. 1s, leadoff man extraordinaire Chone Figgins and his .395 on-base and top starting pitcher John Lackey. It need not be reiterated this is one of the game's solid franchises, and it's hilarious that they've completely knocked the dysfunctional Dodgers off their perch in SoCal.
   
   
8. The other reason: Turning over late-inning leads to Fernando Rodney and Brian Fuentes with Abreu covering scarcely little ground in right field is dangerous. Given the Angels' stability since 2004, it calls to mind the Cheers episode when Frasier Crane started running with scissors to prove he could be a bad boy.
   
   
9. The purgatory rotation: The initial reaction to a group of Jered Weaver, Scott Kazmir, Ervin Santana, Joe Saunders and Joel Piñeiro is "not bad, but not great."
   
   
10. Suck on it, left coast: The Yankees will get their 2009 World Series rings on April 13 while playing the Angels, one of the teams they beat in the playoffs.
    
    
11. In other words: They could have traded for Roy Halladay if (a) they weren't paying Torii Hunter so damn much and (b) they had prospects to offer.
    
    
12. They have karma: Owner Arte Moreno has nearly tripled the value of his franchise over what he paid for it without jacking up ticket prices or holding out for a new stadium when the old one didn't need to be replaced. He's also rarely quoted in the media, which is a breath of fresh air from the perspective of someone in a sports market where the NHL team's owner can't shut his yap.
    
    
13. Free Napster: It's always tempting to think what power numbers Mike Napoli would put up if he wasn't catching and could get 550 at-bats in a season.
    
    
14. Waiting in the wings: Catching prospect Hank Conger will be along sooner or later to break up the Napoli-Jeff Mathis job share behind the plate.
    
    
15. Epigraph for the erratic one: Scott Kazmir has a lot of great three- to four-inning runs, but still hits 100 pitches by the sixth inning.
    
    
16. Paging Joe Crede: Their third-base options include Brandon Wood, who's getting a little old to be a prospect (26), and Maicer Izturis, who is a space-filler.
    
    
17. Modest nickname suggestion: In honour of a recent headline, minor-league lefty Trevor Reckling shall henceforth be known as Precocious Reckling. No one colourful has ever been named Trevor.
    
    
18. Try not to look so shocked: Fuentes is guaranteed his 2011 contract if he finishes 55 games this season, so if at some point Rodney will be promoted to the closer's role. Better yet, there's the younger option, Kevin Jepsen.
    
    
19. History might be repeating itself: The Angels had a run of good teams in the 1980s followed by some lean years since they focused on free agents and trades. In 2010, they're coming into a somewhat shaky season. Their only representation among Baseball Prospectus' top 50 prospects is 18-year-old outfielder Mike Trout, who is starting the season in single-A (which is actually amazing for someone who graduated high school less than 12 months ago).
    
    
20. Slight revision: Second baseman Howie Kendrick is still a batting title waiting to happen. It would just have to be a National League batting title with a team which is too bad to care about secondary skills like bases on ball or power. It's too bad for him the Pittsburgh Pirates are trying to be all serious.
    
    
21. Next year could be too late: The regulars include 36-year-old Abreu, Matsui (36 in June) and Hunter (35 in July). Only one of them is signed past 2011.
    
    
22. Why articles with question marks should be banned: An ESPNLosAngeles writer actually typed an article titled "Are the Angels missing Matthews?" as in Gary Matthews Jr., who had MLB's worst contract west of Vernon Wells until he was traded to the Mets. The Angels are paying $10 million of Matthews' $11-million salary, so there's your answer. Thanks for comin' out.
    
    
23. For those still into arbitrary round numbers: August 4 marks the silver anniversary of former Angel Rod Carew's 3,000th career hit.
    
    
24. Shouldn't he throw out the second pitch? Former outfielder Tim Salmon (he was in the California/Anaheim era) is throwing out the first ball on Opening Day. He is second on the Angels' all-time list in on-base percentage and slugging percentage behind a couple guys named Carew and Guerrero.
    
    
25. Nothing beats a good hate-on: Angels fans hate going to Dodger Stadium more than Ottawa Senators fans hate having Leafs and Canadiens fans take over Scotiabank Place.
    
    
26. The other oldish ballplayer from New Brunswick: Former Angels all-star pitcher Jason Dickson is making a comeback in the New Brunswick Senior Baseball League. He's actually five years younger than fellow New Brunswickian Matt Stairs.
    
    
27. What are these bases on balls you speak of? The Angels drew just 547 walks last season, 101 from the departed Figgins. The rub is most of their hitters aren't necessarily undisciplined, they just don't earn many walks.
    
    
28. A sad statement about our society: Former Angels pitcher Frank Tanana's Wikipedia page includes the groaner of a nickname Chris Berman gave him 20-some years ago. Who needed to know that? It is not nostalgic when it is best left forgotten.
    
    
29. PECOTA says: 78-84, fourth AL West, 796 runs scored, 835 against.
    
    
30. In English, please: Short-term dip ahead.
    

Senators attendance drop should raise red flags

... but have you seen many displayed on cars lately?

The Sens Army is lying pretty low.

There's a malaise in Hockey Country, no question. Ottawa Senators attendance is down more than 1,100 fans per game compared to the same point last season. (The average is 1,191 after Tuesday's game vs. Edmonton.) Take a look around the next time you're out, in a non-sports context. You could shoot a cannon through a Tim Hortons during the noon rush and not hit anyone wearing a Sens hat or hoodie in some parts of town.

(Update: Forbes magazine NHL valuations are out: Note which team lost money.)

There was "grumbling" (Ottawa Citizen) about the $14 cost for the tickets to the game the club's American Hockey League farm team played at Scotiabank Place last weekend. Two seasons ago, after the run to the Stanley Cup final, parents would have paid twice that to give their kids a Bag O' Glass if it had the Senators logo.

At the very least, though, the Senators' fall from grace is an issue. Will anyone write about it in this town? In Ottawa, make the barest inference the hockey team's doing poorly and you'll taste hemlock in your chicken shawarma. You're either a naysayer, a hater or a Leafs fan — theres always a label small minds fall back on. Plausible deniability, don't you know.

The media here is understandably in the tank for the organization. It's the city's only claim on major-league status. Pointing out anything negative is a sure ticket to the shit list. So, no one is going to suggest that the Senators can only be profitable and fill the arena when they're winning even though that's a bad business model in a salary capped-league. They only will if the Senators end up cap-in-hand again like they were in 1999 and 2003 and, personally, let us hope that does not recur.

People who are not beholden to the Senators for access are starting to ask these questions about owner Eugene Melnyk's plaything. Some mental red flags went off in October when there were 2,000 empty seats for a home game vs. the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins. Around the same time, James Mirtle made a parenthetical comment the Sennies "could lose millions this year if they miss the playoffs."

All told, the Sennies are down an average of 1,141 fans from the same point as last season (from 19,484 to 18,343 after nine home dates). Late last night, you could have gone on the team's website and reserved four 100-level tickets for Tuesday's home game vs. Edmonton without having to sit behind the net, even with the game a little more than 36 hours away. FOTB Jean-Pierre Allard reports, "The Orleans SENS Store has closed its doors with Christmas just around the corner."

It would be glib to say this points to a downward spiral that will end with the franchise becoming the Mississauga Senators between now and the next time the Leafs make the playoffs. To be clear, it's nowhere near that point. (Granted, that might explain why the Eunibomber lashed out at Jim Balsillie back in the summer when he was trying to move a team into Southern Ontario.)

There are outside influences weighing on the franchise. The NHL is a mess. Gary Bettman's NHL is designed to make all 30 teams semi-watchable about half the time. That has hurt the Senators, who had a stacked team from 2003 through '06, more than some franchises.

Many passive sports consumers who got on the Senators bandwagon might be backing another team. Most sports consumers in any city are fluid in their tastes. It's the nature of the beast, not matter how it angers the diehards who are there for all 82 games, since getting a life is not an option (GAC).

What's happened?

It's a combo of discontent with how the team has fallen (7-7 this season vs. a suspiciously spongy schedule), the economy, Ottawa's demographics and the city's cultural paternalism.

Ottawa is not a town of front-runners. You typically hear, "this city loves winners," when someone is trying to make an argument about bringing a CFL team back to town (and I do hope it works). That's off.

It is a town of followers which loves whatever maintains the status quo. People claim the CFL teams died because of poor on-field performance. However, the Rough Riders had decent support throughout the 1980s, when they didn't have a single winning season. It took a solid decade of losing, a league-wide crisis in the CFL and owners from (affects scary voice) out of town before people started staying away.

Institutions govern so much of life in Ottawa that people fall into herd mentalities. It happens to the best of us and most of us are nowhere near the best, present company included. Those government-town stereotypes are true to some extent. This is one of the few places where a team could even use a slogan as militaristic as "Sens Army" and "A Force United" (which some culture-jamming bloggers altered to "A Farce United" last season) without getting some media outcry.

Ottawa is like a city composed of insecure teenage girls. The analogy fits Toronto, too, except in T.O. the creature has sharper claws. If Toronto is the character Rachel McAdams played in Mean Girls, Ottawa is the one played by Lacey Chabert. Fitting in and doing whatever is popular at that moment is everything, because they know they can be cast out and won't be missed.

That seeps into sports. "Hey, let's get the CFL back! ... "Hey, Toronto has a World Series baseball team, so let's get a Triple-A club one year before a strike devastates the professional baseball industry and accelerates the death knell of the closest MLB team, the Montreal Expos." They were late to the party.

When the CFL comes back, people will attend because Roger Greenberg, Bill Shenkman, John Ruddy, Jeff Hunt and whoever becomes mayor after Legal Suit Larry O'Brien say they should. The culture is that top-down.

The Senators are not as much of a thing to do among people who only get into sports when it's part of a socially approved mass movement, the ones who are needed to sell out the building and make impulse buys. It's of a piece with having a well-educated populace which has spent a tremendous amount of time in institutions like universities, which are paternalism in a can.

Never mind that mindset has actually put the team behind the 8-ball since the early days and that they've managed to make it work as much as they can. Institutionalized NIMBYism (in the form of the National Capital Commission) eventually led to the Senators building an arena way out yonder in Kanata in the mid-1990s, far from the city's population core. In Toronto, the teams might (might?!) suck and blow, but at least you're downtown once the Blue Jays, Raptors, or TFC are through indulging their flair for mediocre public display.

In Ottawa, you're stuck waiting a half-hour to get out of the parking lot before driving home. People in the public sector were willing to trade sleep for seeing enthralling, winning hockey, as opposed to what they're getting.

That should hopefully help explain there are somee small warning signs are there. It's certainly fair game at a time whe the Canadian hockey mafia start speculating whenever any U.S.-based team has a small crowd (granted, we're talking less than 10,000 in some places), but oh no, you couldn't possibly suggest Bettman's idiotic-times-eight business practices will impact a small-market franchise in Canada playing in a poorly located arena.

As for the Senators organization, as someone who's interested in successful group dynamics and leaderships — call it compensation for some career-related issues — one does wonder who keeps Melnyk in line. (This is speculative, to be sure.) Former GM John Muckler and former president Roy Mlakar were old-time hockey guys. One can imagine them telling Melnyk to shut up and that the only thing he knows about ice is that it's needed to make diaquiris. You wonder who's there to tell Melnyk he's not going to recover that $4-million bonus he had to pay Dany Heatley since it was a binding contract, or that suggesting fans and critics should "get a bomb and blow themselves up" is unbecoming.

Deny, deny, deny, all you want, but the Senators have some issues off the ice (as for on the ice, let's leave that to the professional sportswriters). The easy way out is to say it's the economy, calibre of opponents or people staying home to save local television by making sure they watch all 3 CSIs on CTV.

It will get harder to ignore if the Senators keep sliding. No one can stand here in 2009 and tell you where the NHL will have teams in 2019. Just don't be too smug.

(For anyone doubting the 1,191 figure, I counted. Bear in mind it's a small sample size and there are variables such as day of the week and opponent. For instance, last season's 10th home game was on Saturday afternoon, this season it was Tuesday:)

Opponent '08-09 '09-10 Total
Det/NYI 20,182 18,075 -2,107
Phx/Atl 20,179 19,360 -819
Bos/Pit 19,318 17,014 -2,304
Fla/TB 18,952 17,732 -1,220
Ana/Nsh 19,762 18,970 -792
Wsh/Bos 18,485 20,154 +1,669
Phi/Atl 18,938 17,297 -1,641
NY/TB 19,061 17,511 -1,550
Mtl/NJ 20,475 18,971 -1,504
NYR/Edm 19,619 17,977 -1,642

Avg. 19,497 18,306 -1,191

Allard: Could it be that Heatley was right?

Jean-Pierre Allard shares some thoughts about the Senators, their ownership and the local media corps in the wake of the Dany Heatley debacle now that the snivelling sniper has been traded to San Jose, where the man-to-woman ratio at bars is typically 4:1. (Good thing he's a got a girlfriend in California, if that story is true.) J.P. also warned in July that the Good Ship Melnyk is sailing into some choppy waters, with a broken rudder.

I've gone back and read all the microfiches of the Heatley era here in Want-out-tawa and have not found one single critical comment written by, the Ottawa Six Scribes (TOSS) (other than he failed to score 50 goals or is a lousy shootout driver). It cannot be that Dany Boy wanted out for the "Uh Oh" Corvo factor. Nor was he ever verbally promised a renegotiation if he scored 40 goals for a truly lousy team in a season where they had a junior coach, Craig Hartsburg, so it can't be explained by the "Yashin-Sexton line."

Nor was Heater ever embarrassed by the team dressing him in a nurse's outfit, so forget the Daigle angle. There is no way that he is pissed at the team for re-signing three-goal man Chris Neil or for not trading Jason Spezza before his no-trade clause kicked in July 1, though these would explain everything about him uninviting himself from the Spezza nuptials. I could not find anything to the effect that Heatley was miffed that the team had a parade for winning a big fat can of air, before playing the Ducks in the 2007 Stanley Cup final.

Nowhere was there anything about him voicing his displeasure about the team taking Ray Emery's job away from him when he was hurt and bad-mouthing him around the league. I thought I had seen something about Heatley pleading with John Muckler, whom owner Eugene Melnyk later fired for finishing second in the a 30-team league, to keep Zdeno Chara instead Wade Redden in 2006, but that was in a non-confirmed blog of twits and two-facebookies.

Apparently, Heatley almost did a spit-take with his Starbucks coffee when he read that Mike Fisher was crowned King in this town with the astronomical salary he was given to score 13 lousy goals. This has not been confirmed either but he absolutely loathed hearing "shutdown defenceman" and "Chris Phillips" in the same sentence.

So my guess is that when Professor Bryan Murray heard that Inspector Cory Clouston was gonna wait to see the white of Dany's eyes before deciding if he was a type-A personality (as in alternate captain), he figured he better talk to him the day before "tanning camp" opened.

When he saw Heatley's lazy eye had not perked up, he had no choice but to tell the Hogtown Horseman (Melnyk) that he had to trade him. Never mind that Heater would have been an Oiler for two freaking months by then, had he decided to play on the NHL's best ice surface and for the worst GM.

Before pulling the trigger on a trade that did not include Patrick Marleau, Ryane Clowe or one of those, what are they called, defencemen (19-year-old Erik Karlsson will instantly become the Eastern Conference's answer to Nicklas Lidström, I forgot), he sent his two loyal lieutenants to have a cheap breakfast at IKEA with the ingrate. Heatley quickly asked Captain Alfie if he could piggyback on him when he rides his skidoo to practice next winter. When Daniel said no to his brother Dany, the soon-to-be Shark then turned to Phillips if he could ride shotgun in his SUV and number 4 said: Don't even think about it.

That's when the differences became "irreconcilable."

Seriously, judging from the Senators organization's dubious track record in money games, plus all the tasteless promotions, questionable personnel decisions and horrendous mismanagement of its star players, could it be that maybe, just maybe Dany Heatley took a long and profound look at the big picture and decided he wanted no part of this team while his career was still in its peak years?

Who knows. Here's hoping that some astute member of the media will pull the story from him one day.

This is the one and only time I will be chiming in this season. On the advice offered by CBC Sports boss Scott Moore during last spring's playoffs and decided to take up gardening. Apparently, this sport is less hectic and physically easier than watching NHL, especially when you have to get up and change the channel every time Don "Disgraceful" Cherry comes on or an Ultimate Boxing Event breaks out.

Where have you gone, Davey Keon?

The NHL moves the goalposts, and maybe a whole team it was sworn to defend

Honestly, this was just a joke!

"If you want a short and snappy answer about where the Phoenix Coyotes will play, just say Kansas City." — Aug. 6

Then it gets out that the NHL's Hail Mary play to buy the Phoenix Coyotes would only keep the team there for one season before they would try to move it. They have to protect those expansion fees, don't you know (and Eric Duhatschek's put-the-Coyotes-in-Toronto theory actually makes a lick of sense, keeping in mind this is coming from a newspaper which is part of the same corporate family as TSN):

"In an about-face, the league's bid to purchase the Coyotes out of bankruptcy court specifically mentions it is open to relocating the team.

" ... Since the NHL states in its bid that it 'does not anticipate there would be a net profit upon a resale of the team to a Glendale buyer,' its own interests, and those of the creditors, would likely be best served by relocating the team to a market where its value could be maximized beyond $140-million.

The league’s apparent openness to relocating the Coyotes flies in the face of its commitment to Glendale, dating back to when the team’s troubles surfaced last season and throughout the league’s four-month fight with Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie ..." — globesports.com

"... the NHL’s plan (to buy the Phoenix Coyotes) is nothing but a stay of execution. In the short term, it will give Glendale one last chance to lure a local investor or bring (Jerry) Reinsdorf back into play. If it doesn’t work, the Coyotes will be off for greener pastures." Arizona Republic

In the words of a Kurt Vonnegut character, "I had to laugh like hell." Make It Eight, Eh dug out a great quote from NHL deputy commish Bill Daly from just last month.

"Daly stressed the new terms would not allow the Coyotes to break the lease in a year or two and move elsewhere.

"The NHL must fight for the bankrupt Coyotes to stay in Glendale long-term, he said, to send a message to other cities that have spent money attracting or retaining hockey teams.

" 'If we want communities to continue investing in our franchises, we need to work arm in arm to protect their investments,' Daly said."

Whoopsy-doodle. It turned out those "communities" are not actual communities where people live and pay taxes, but groups of really, really rich guys. There is, for instance, L.A. Kings owner Philip Anschutz, whose company owns an arena in Kansas City which needs a tenant from a big ball-and-stick league. (This just a personal opinion.)

Meantime, it's behind the times to portray this as Hamilton vs. Phoenix (Puck Daddy). Never was. Gary Bettman and Bill Daly know who they work for, and it's whoever needs a hockey team as a front for Hoovering back scads and scads of corporate welfare.

Plus, for the Bob Loblaw Law Blog devotees, there is the whole issue of the NHL violating an important legal principle. Sub judice restrictions don't apply in the U.S., let alone in civil court, but it still doesn't mean it's not jerkass arrogance:

"Confident that the fans and the sports media would back them up ... the NHL circled their wagons and put on a Balsillie Is Rotten campaign.

"The pinnacle of NHL hypocrisy came in remarks recently made by Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk. Melnyk is often deservedly ridiculed by the outside-of-Ottawa hockey press for his allegiance to a lame-duck general manager (Bryan Murray). Ottawa's recent run of personnel crises has been reflected in league and playoff results.

"Melnyk, as the sports press seems so quick to forget, was the subject of an Ontario securities commission inquiry which alleged misleading and untrue statements made in the financial statements of Melnyk’s company, Biovail Corporation. Melnyk, before the OSC chastised him, blamed his staff! He settled the charges in 2007, was fined $1 million and ordered to cease being director of his company, Biovail, for one year. The OSC record is no credit to Melnyk.

"What pricks the conscious of caring lawyers is the NHL pre-emptive strike against Balsillie even while the bankruptcy proceedings are sub judice in Phoenix. By sending out their general counsel Bill Day to media outlets to spin doctor the rejection of Balsillie by the NHL board based on, apparently, Balsillie’s lack of integrity and character, not only offends the rule of sub judice, but seems to be the epitome of hypocrisy.

"The media is lapping it up too. The venerable Sports Illustrated published an article which actually quoted Melnyk’s self-serving drivel.

Long story short, this is ugly. At least we now know where the NHL was coming from. It never really made sense why they were so gung-ho about Phoenix, other than Bettman's ego. As Make It Eight, Eh says:

"The NHL and the Reinsdorf group were looking to relocate this team either now, or within five years to another centre that fits the plan of the NHL.

" ... The NHL has shunned the fans of Canada, and is quickly shunning the fans of Phoenix.

"Jim Balsillie has a brighter future in the NHL than Gary Bettman, and let’s see who is around in 10 years.

"Jim Balsillie, despite being voted against, has been approached by other struggling franchises, and is the true white knight to help the destitute owners."

Who knows what will happen. There's a fatigue at this point. It is perfectly rational and understandable if you have shunned sports radio and probably will until it gets resolved, since the Howard Bergers of the world are way in over their heads with this story. It has been fun, though.

DanyWatch Day 28: More great moments in Melnyk-mollification

Given a choice between Ottawa and the KHL, Alexei Kovalev chose the warmer climate. He was misinformed.

Trite jokes aside, it is understandable if Senators fans see this as a sop to getting Dany Heatley back in the fold. The Senators are apparently over the salary cap, but teams can stickhandle around that $56.8-million figure. They can be above it by 10 per cent for one year and can always bury players in the AHL, which means Jason Smith was awfully prescient to get a Skype account in the 607 area code.

After a decade and a half in the league, Kovalev, like his homeland, a riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma, but he can still get it done every once in a while. Montréal Canadiens fans taking to the streets to lobby for Habs GM Bob Gainey to re-sign him, so Senators fans can relish the signing for that reason.

It does fairly smack of Bryan Murray doing the equivalent of taking one of those Senators logo pacifiers which were recalled last week and sticking in owner Eugene Melnyk's gob. (British expressions, really?)

Meantime, you might have read, via Puck Daddy, a report about "projections that the poor economy will cause the salary cap to dip from $56.8 million to as low as $50 million for 2010-11." It might be important to keep in mind that is a worst-case scenario and a lot of NHL teams are taking the stance they'll come to the bridge when the cross it vis-à-vis the salary cap.

Last and not least, a good question for Senators fans: Would you rather have 36-year-old Alexei Kovalev, or 28-year-old Martin Havlat, who signed with the Minnesota Wild?

Kovalev's stats:



Havlat's:

Hoserdome 2009: Clouston 1, Heatley 0, and why this works for the Sennies

Don't cry over Dany Heatley.

The larger story is that Heatley's Denis Lemieux moment is a call for Senators fans to do some fact-facing. Accepting what is gone is gone, as a sports-liker, is never easy. It wasn't for a Toronto Blue Jays fan in the mid-1990s. The Senators had their shot at the Stanley Cup, in 2003 losing to New Jersey in Game 7 of the conference final and in 2007, losing to the Anaheim Neidermayers in the final. It looked good, there was so much promise, so much excitement, but it's over.

The Senators are at the start of new cycle. Parting with a winger who has a $7.5-million US cap hit, doesn't want to be play in the East and whose 5-on-5 effectiveness dropped markedly from the '07-08 season to this one which should end tonight will help wipe the slate. Otherwise, they could become Tampa North, with too much payroll tied up in three forwards.

It seems best to put the rational ahead of the emotional. Bigger and better media outlets have the emotion covered. Some would say you're better to save your venom. Reading Heatley wants to leave the Senators so he can "get more of an opportunity to play his style of game," (Bruce Garrioch, Sun Media) is a major eye-roller: What's your game again, Mr. Heatley, scoring 40 goals for an also-ran team? However, he is somewhat overrated. Sending Heatley out-of-conference would go a long way toward keeping expectations low for next season, which let's be honest, could be the best thing for the Senators.

This is a franchise in a bit of an uproar. President Roy Mlakar, the Mighty SOPO himself, is probably headed out the door, two years after John Muckler was ousted. They have had three coaches in two seasons. The first two, in hindsight, were in over their heads. John Paddock, let's face it, is a hockey lifer whose best skill is staying employed. Craig Hartsburg is a fabulous junior coach, not so much at the NHL level. Cory Clouston seems to have the chops but needs time and needs the longer-tenured players to opt in to what he's doing. Meantime, the owner, Eugene Melnyk, has taken some hits to his reputation in the business world. No wonder the commenters over at Sens Chirp see the sky is falling.

"If this story is true, I think we're looking at the implosion of the Ottawa Senators.

"Quite frankly, if you have talent, why would you want to be part of the Sens? The owner is always under investigation with the law. The GM has never won anything. The new coach is more or less unproven. The stars are constantly bashed by the inept media. And the long-time President, who has a great reputation for doing a good job, is about to be thrown out.

"In short, in Ottawa of late, the talent gets thrown under the bus while the mediocre elements are rewarded."

The jumping-off point is that the Senators fanbase is going to have to shift their thinking. The belief in past years that the Senators had more talent on paper than the teams they were losing to in the playoffs was the ultimate vanity. The NHL is now a salary-capped league. The new rules are finally allowing skilled players to do their thing. It's a great leveller.

Coaching probably is no more important than it was in 1999, but there's a different type of coaching which has become more valuable. The game seems to have swung more toward younger career coaches who prepare their teams well and are mentally limber. Mike Babcock, who's about to win his second Stanley Cup in succession with the Red Wings, is the prototype. Clouston, the 39-year-old boy wonder, fits right in with Dan Bylsma (38) in Pittsburgh and Peter DeBoer (40) in Florida.

Clouston has put in the time learning his craft and rates every chance to prove he can coach a NHL team. He needs a longer grace period than 34 games in a low-leverage situation, which is what he got after Hartsburg was canned. He also needs to have the longer-serving Senators onside or else he won't be coach of anything. Just now on Prime Time Sports, Nick Kypreos was saying that Heatley feels Clouston had it in for him. Out of sight is out of mind, so it's better not to have him around, possibly griping to impressionable reporters that Clouston isn't doing things the way other coaches did when the Senators were winning more.

The reality is the Senators must start rebuilding, even if Eugene Melnyk would sooner buy a CFL season tickets than say it. Conventional wisdom might say having a 50-goal scorer is important. There's research which shows that Heatley struggles at what is truly important in the NHL, being able to play both ends of the ice at even-strength. Throw in a damaged and/or non-existent relationship with the coach and well, it's better to get him out of here..

The way it might work, if the Senators are smart, is that they trade Heatley. It's better to be doing it now. After all, you have a $7.5-million player who wants out in a league where more and more teams are feeling a financial crunch. Also, Darryl Sutter is still in charges of Heater's hometown Calgary Flames, and wouldn't that be hilarious if Heatley goes from not being able to play for Clouston to playing for Mike Keenan Sutter.

(Keenan's not coaching in Calgary, or anywhere. Nor is he selling real estate in Vancouver. That's another Michael Keenan.)

Trade Heatley. Everyone writes the Sens off for 2009-10. They try to play an aggressive forechecking game, similar to the one Bylsma has installed in Pittsburgh. The media in Ottawa have always shown they will go along to get along, so Clouston can win in the court of the public opinion while the franchise tries to get some stability among the highers-up with a new president and/or general manager.

Meantime, Heatley will get the treatment any player who has made it known he prefers anyone else's company to the their exclusive company. However, sometimes it is true. There will be questions about how long Jason Spezza will be for Ottawa, although he's younger than Heatley and a playmaker is harder to find than a finisher. One irony is that Daniel Alfredsson will probably be able to remain captain of the Senators for as long as wants. Three years ago, there were people who wanted to see him traded after the playoff loss to Buffalo and his slow start the following season.

However, instead it's Heatley who seems set to leave, Spezza who could be part of the solution and Alfredsson who is a Senator for life. Point being, Heatley going might be necessary. He's a good finisher down low, but he's not exactly Mike Bossy. That reference was to make sport of the big brains who believe, perhaps in jest, the Senators could ship Heatley to the Islanders for the No. 1 overall pick so they can draft John Tavares. Even Leafs fans find that funny. If only Mike Milbury was still running the show down there, eh?

The Senators can play this well and in time, rise again. Meantime, as is the nature of the game for small-market teams, their fans will have to accept you won't have a shot every season. The Senators had their time in the NHL sun. The '07 playoff run, coming closer to the Cup than Ontario's other NHL team has since the end of the six-team days, was the most exciting time in Ottawa probably since the 1995 Quebec referendum.

However, those days are done. Onward and upward.

(For a good laugh, here's Denis Lemieux:)

Getting Canadian Clubs to the MLS

Joey Saputo recently went on record saying that "Montreal's entry into MLS is no longer a question of if, but when." Vancouver already has a guaranteed spot in the 2011 MLS season. Toronto is currently the home to a financially successful MLS team for a third season. Eugene Melnyk has been quoted as saying that getting an MLS team to Ottawa is "a no-brainer". Most recently Edmonton has been throwing around the idea of an MLS bid.

The idea of whether or not the MLS is the best way forward for Canadian clubs to develop is up for debate, but what is not up for debate is that the MLS is the future of the sport in this country. The MLS is bringing in the money, is catching audiences from across Canada, and is "the only league" in many people's eyes.

You could go on debating the quality of the MLS compared to the USL for hours, and believe me its been done. The simple fact is for Canadian teams to gain the national recognition they need from a mainstream audience they need to be competing in the MLS. The USL just doesn't have the exposure and as long as the MLS continues to maintain its status as the top league financially the USL will always be a second option to the MLS.

With all that in mind getting as many Canadian clubs into the league has to be the top priority. With Toronto and Vancouver already there the obvious next step is Montreal.

For a USL team Montreal has a solid fan base getting a sell out of over 12,000 out to their home opener last weekend and of course bringing 55,000 people out to the Big O for a CONCACAF Champions League game. The fans want the MLS, the organization is ready to make the jump and the only thing that stopped them in their 2011 bid was Joey Saputo's arrogance, refusing to pay the $40 million entry fee.

What needs to happen in order to get Montreal to the MLS is to get back on commissioner Don Garber's good side and for Joey Saputo to get off his high horse. According to Saputo these things are going well, they are in talks with MLS and a franchise looks inevitable in the near future.

The next prospective site is Ottawa. I think for Ottawa it's a case of "If you build it they will come". Getting an agreement with the city to build a 20-30,000 seat soccer specific stadium in downtown Ottawa is the only way this bid is going to get going. Melnyk is convinced that building a stadium near the Scotiabank Place (home to the Ottawa Senators) would work, but I doubt the city would allow this considering the mess that the location of the Scotiabank Place created.

Garber has said he speaks very highly of Ottawa and if a viable stadium plan is in place I think an MLS team in Ottawa is the future.

Edmonton Oilers owner, Daryl Katz is the newest billionaire to consider the MLS north of the 49th. Although at the moment he is just considering, The Edmonton audience has shown the interest in soccer is there time and time again. People point to poor men's national team attendances, but the U-19 Women's World Cup drew excellent crowds as did an L.A. Galaxy - Vancouver Whitecaps friendly. With relatively little advertising for these games these attendances are all the more impressive.

Although Commonwealth Stadium isn't really an option, because of its enormous size so a new soccer specific stadium would have to be built in Edmonton to accommodate an MLS franchise.

Getting Canadian clubs into the MLS will help the sport in this country more than anything else could right now and making sure this happens should be these club's number one priority.

[Cross-posted to The Canadian Stretford End]

Ottawa's stadium debate — Roger Greenberg wants to see the colour of their money

Time will tell whether Lansdowne Live lynchpin Roger Greenberg is bluffing.

(Update: Here's a load off for the CFL fans. The wheels are in motion to write a motion to enter into negotiations with Lansdowne Live.)

That might mean it was not such a risk on Friday:

"(Greenberg) said council has to make a 'decision in principle" to support his group's proposal when it meets next week. He said if council postpones a decision and asks for more studies as city staff recommended, his group will walk.

" 'We want a decision now from council. If council approves another study for six months we are out,' Greenberg said.

" 'What is a deal breaker is if our proposal is rejected.'

"Greenberg, who has teamed up with a group of Ottawa businessmen to redevelop Lansdowne Park for a Canadian Football League franchise, said he is not interested in playing football at the proposed soccer stadium in Kanata, which is being promoted by Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk." — Ottawa Citizen

It's understandable that Greenberg would go that route, although it seems possible the Citizen might have picked up the ball and run with it just a bit. (It's early in the game, so perhaps Greenberg takes it down a notch between now and next Wednesday, you never know.)

Ottawa residents, knowing how things are run in this city, probably are right to fear that a largely dysfunctional city council might make Greenberg, et al., take their ball and go home. This also kind of does lay bare that Lansdowne Live is really about big business than recapturing the glory days of Tony Gabriel going deep for a long bomb from Tommy Clements, but you knew that already. That's not an anti-CFL sentiment, it's just an acknowledgment this is business first, sports second. The CFL is not that high-dollar a league.

Meantime, Greenberg seemed more even-handed when talking with the Ottawa Sun. He described the one compromise the city has floated — put a stadium in Kanata and a hockey arena at Lansdowne Park — "a win for (Eugene) Melnyk, it would be a win for our group financially ... it would be a loss for the city of Ottawa."

In all honesty, and this a personal opinion, an arena at Lansdowne and a stadium at Scotiabank Place sounds like chasing two rabbits and catching none writ large. The point is Greenberg's ploy, if that was what it was and not someone talking his words out of context, is justifiable. People are also right to worry the city might get its back up, but surely they realize this is bigger than them.

It's come to the point where one humble suggestion from a no-doubt frustrated netizen on the Paper of Record's website was that Ottawa could save the $100 million it would be throwing toward the CFL and save it up in case they have to pay Siemens damages in the lawsuit over the cancelled light-rail project. That way, he reasoned, we'd only be out about $100 million, "sort of."

That's the kind of cynicism everyone will have to work to overcome when the city does get a summer team (baseball, football, soccer) again.

One more poinis that as much as the NIMBYers want to call a stadium a luxury, Ottawa cannot afford to not build something. The Regina Leader-Post's Rider Rumblings noted a comment from Saskatchewan premier Brad Wall, with regard to a new stadium that would house the Roughriders:

"Now is the time to do it, with steel prices low and construction costs a little bit low. There's interesting things around the world. In Stockholm, they're building a stadium like the University of Arizona or University of Phoenix. It's smaller — 30,000 seats with a retractable roof — for around $350 million, which is a lot of money, but the costs are coming down." (Emphasis mine.)

(Apparently, they haven't started building yet in the Swedish capital, but a point is a point.)

Related:
Indecision and a lack of vision (Chris Stevenson, Sun Media)
Lansdowne stadium group confident (Shane Ross, Sun Media)
Take our Lansdowne proposal now or we walk: developer (Mohamed Adam, Ottawa Citizen)

The W.C.E. is in like with Lansdowne, not in love

It seems best to pass the conch with regard to the latest on Lansdowne Park. It has been a popular topic.

The Globe figures MLS took a body blow to the solar plexus while the CFL bid only had the wind knocked out of it. Perhaps this forces Eugene Melnyk and the soccer people to call Roger Greenberg and the CFL lobby and start collaborating, as D. Rollins wondered.

The worst fear, of course, is that a city which hasn't done anything about this for a decade, won't do anything. A functional sports stadium is for some other city, not the capital of a G8 nation.

Again, who knows what will happen in 15 days' time, especially since it is up to the W.C.E. under the Joker, Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien.

A more pressing concern is that the ballpark on Coventry Rd., the former Lynx Stadium. City councillor Rainier Bloess mouth was ahead of his mind yesterday when he lumped it in with Lansdowne Park as one of two "white elephants." He is, no disrespect, speaking ignorance. The baseball stadium, in Carl Kiiffner's words, is "entirely paid for -- every last penny." It had a tenant for 16 consecutive summers until last week. Meantime, Lansdowne Park, counting this summer, has lacked one for 10 of the past 13.

A personal stance is that as someone who is will be not be around Ottawa for much longer has no claim on saying what's best for the city. It really falls to people who are more personally invested, so have at 'er.

Related:
Preserving part of our souls at the heart of the city (Earl McRae, Sun Media)
Stadium dreams put on ice (Shane Ross, Sun Media)
Councillors skeptical of 'big ticket' spending on stadium (Patrick Dare, Ottawa Citizen)
Ottawa's great stadium debate continues to simmer (David Naylor, globesports.com)

Lansdowne Dead?

Metro's Ben Rycroft, my colleague at It’s Called Football, is reporting on a leaked document regarding the Lansdowne Live development proposal. The report suggests that the site is in far worse shape than originally thought and that “large scale renovations of the stadium's north end stands are going to be needed just to bring it up acceptable standards.”

Rycroft has taken this information as a hit to Ottawa’s MLS bid. With all due respect to Ben, I don’t follow. See, Lansdowne is the proposed site of the CFL team. Eugene Melnyk wants the thing built out in Kanata beside the hockey rink. If anything this is good news for the MLS bid because it could make the stadium renovation at Lansdowne cost prohibitive. Many in the Glebe aren’t thrilled by the idea of a stadium there anyway. They would be perfectly happy with alternative development plans that don’t include large amounts of sports fans interfering in their idyllic urban lives.

If you talk to anyone in Ottawa they will tell you that it's not a matter of if the city will build a new stadium, only where. Any problems with the Lansdowne site make the probability of building elsewhere more likely. Since the Kanata site is the only one that promises to have a tenant attached to it, this seems to be good news for Ottawa’s soccer hopes (and not so good for its CFL fans).

Related:
Lansdowne will cost extra $20 million over 10 years (Patrick Dare, Ottawa Citizen)

Committing to nothing ... totally Ottawa

It would just be cherry-picking to say it's true to form for Ottawa city council to come to a decision which doesn't tie them to coming to a decision.

C'est la vie. The latest seems to be that they're going to give priority to the Lansdowne Live proposal from the Jeff Hunt group and Eugene Melnyk's footy fantasyland way out wonder in the wilds of Kan-a-ta. Please don't jump to the conclusion it's an either/or, since as the Paper of Record notes, "city manager Kent Kirkpatrick repeatedly said this is not the case. He said the process will help determine whether either proposal shows enough merit to continue developing further before final decisions are made."

Uh-huh. It seems sporting to let our commenters, if they so see fit, have it out over whether this plays more into Hunt's hands or into Melnyk's. The first group had the jump on Mr. Eugene, and it probably has a better reputation than the Senators owner, who's taken some hits in the last six months, more so for his hockey team's fall from grace than over Biovail.

Melynk's critics would charge that he's playing a game of Calvinball, changing the rules and the objectives as he sees fit. Some, a minority mind you, would the Hunt group's plan would be same ol', same ol', except Lansdowne would go from public space to private space, on the public's dimes.

The upshot, though, is the city isn't even really saying it's going to commit to something April 22, near as one can tell. A glass half-full person, tough as that is to be in this city, would say perhaps they're ultimately going to look at the Bayview/Lebreton Flats area and force the principals to swallow their pride, hold their noses and work together. Or is that too pie-in-the-sky by half?

Related:
Kanata and Lansdowne stadium proposals get priority, council decides (Jake Rupert, Ottawa Citizen)
Maybe the CFL isn't such a bad idea: Eugene Melnyk (The 24th minute)
Proposed soccer stadium could host CFL team: Melnyk (Derek Puddicombe, Sun Media)
Soccer would thrive in Kanata, Melnyk vows to councillors (Jake Rupert, Ottawa Citizen)

Football squared in Ottawa.

Initially.

Ottawa MLS bid COO Cyril Leeder slipped the word into the conversation subtly, but it was there. “That would seem unlikely going into an initial proposal...” he said when asked if a future Ottawa MLS team could share a stadium with a future CFL team.

He preformed his understated magic in a wide ranging interview on It’s Called Football last Saturday. Have a listen in its full here (the interview starts at the 17 minute mark – the audio is low off the top, but it gets fixed).

The thing about “initially” is that it isn’t “never.” Leeder didn’t say that there would never be a shared stadium in Ottawa.

This battle isn’t so much about a stadium, or sport even. At its root it’s about power and money. Eugene Melnyk wants to control the stadium in Ottawa and he’s enlisted MLS to help him do it. The league has shown time and time again that it will let teams share stadiums if the ownership is strong. Don Garber likes Melnyk (one source told me that the two hit it off like long lost fraternity brothers) and wants him in the league. The Ottawa bid has always been about 2013. Garber is making enough noise about requiring a soccer specific stadium to help his new buddy win the battle locally, but if it doesn’t work out and the two groups are forced to work together to build a football squared field of dreams...MLS will still be interested in 2013.

Ottawa deserves both teams. And it’s not likely to build both stadiums. If I were in Ottawa I’d be a little leery of going the MLS route when I knew that the CFL was coming regardless. But, without getting into a peeing contest about which league is more viable moving forward, there is little doubt that soccer is a growing sport that often attracts a different audience than Canadian football. In an ideal world fans of both sports could be served.

So why not make it happen? If you build it....

Brampton and Bollywood goes together like aloo gobi

A winning major junior hockey team smack dab in the middle of a huge South Asian enclave is brain candy for a sports obsessive, or at least the ultimate how-not-to from Marketing 101.

Toronto Star junior hockey reporter Sunaya Sapurji, over at Loose Pucks, is calling on the OHL's Brampton Battalion to have a Bollywood night next season in an attempt to get out new fans, just as Hockey Night in Canada telecasts are now available in Punjabi. The suggestion sort of hits on the mild obsessions with the OHL's endless expansion experiment in Toronto and the question of whether major junior hockey can be sold to a to people whose cultural frame of reference doesn't involve ice, snow and skates.

Brampton is a perfect storm in those regards, although there is no one catch-all for why it struggles to get fans out consistently despite being a solid team year-in, year-out under coach Stan Butler. (The Battalion did have a very respectable official attendance of 3,975 last Sunday, when they, ahem, lost 3-2 to the Belleville Bulls and Kingston-born Mike Murphy in a matchup of first-place clubs.) It has been touched on here, first by the bald guy in in November and by the other bald guy -- face the facts, Sagert -- in in January.

Sapurji is challenging this notion that junior hockey teams should only concentrate on the core audience of middle-class white parents and their hockey-playing daughters and sons, since those with roots in non-HPNs (hockey-playing nations) cannot be won over:

"Sorry, but that argument is lazy. If anyone is to blame it's the marketing people who either can't think outside the box, or have neither the desire nor the funds to reach out to said community.

"My Indian grandmother, who had never seen snow before moving to Europe in the late 60s, was a die-hard Montreal Canadiens fan. I'd find her watching Habs games all the time (mostly on French CBC) and I remember asking her why she watched them, since she didn't speak French and it was clear she had no clue what going on.

"She said she liked the Habs because they were fast and because they were 'fair'-- which I guess meant they weren't always penalty box. If my 70-year-old Parsi gran can fall in love with hockey, anyone can.

" ... In order for people to buy your product, they first have to know that product exists. Take out ads in the magazines and newspapers geared towards the South Asian community. Buy an ad during one of the 1,000 Indian TV shows on cable. Make an effort.

" ... Newcomers to Canada want to fit in. Kids in a new country want to be just like their Canadian friends.

"That's how I started going to OHL games, back when the Marlies played out of Maple Leaf Gardens. At that time you could go to Becker's and get coupons for discounted tickets. All my friends went, so I went. And I loved it. Hook the kids and you'll have fans for life.

"Next year when JK Gill and the Sudbury Wolves come to Brampton hold 'Bollywood or Bhangra Night in Brampton.' Invite local vendors to sell samosa and pakoras (if they're allowed), invite the local South Asian community, play Panjabi MC during the stoppages and get ex-OHLer and current Vancouver Canucks scout Harkie Singh to drop the puck for the ceremonial faceoff."

Sapurji is bang on (and, so much the better, her post referenced a 2007 Toronto Star article that our own Neil Acharya wrote about NHLer Manny Malhotra, whose dad is Indian). The Battalion have never been marketed properly. It's a huge market; ask Rupert Murdoch what reaching out to the Indian market has done for the English Premier League.

It's shortsighted not to make any effort to reach out to a visible minority group which has dollars to spend. (Part of the reason the Blue Jays were the first MLB team to draw four million fans was that they were very ahead of the curve when it came to appealing directly to female fans; Stephen Brunt noted in one of his books that the Jays, back in the '70s, even considered a marketing campaign aimed at the gay community, which many teams even today wouldn't do on a bet.)

At least these questions are starting to get asked by some journalists with a good-sized platform.
Of course, another suggestion for getting more fans out to OHL games in the GTA is to have play out of Maple Leaf Gardens again, like Eugene Melnyk wanted to do years ago with the now Mississauga St. Michael's Maors, but that's another post.

Related:
Bring Bollywood to Battalion (Sunaya Sapurji, Loose Pucks)
NHL play-by-play in Punjabi scores big time; Hockey Night in Canada experiment so successful it's likely to be expanded (Raveena Aulakh, Toronto Star, Feb. 16)

MLS in Ottawa: Eunibomber drops the big one

The race to get to the trough is on and we'll see who finishes first.

"Eugene Melnyk's company, Senators Sports and Entertainment, wants to build on to its existing recreation hub — Scotiabank Place and the Sensplex nearby — by seeing the city build a stadium that would house a Major League Soccer franchise, creating an 'entertainment village' that would attract something in the order of four million visits a year." — Ottawa Citizen

Please bear in mind that just because Mr. Eugene says he's going to do it doesn't mean it will happen. Never, ever underestimate the incompetence and foot-dragging of Ottawa city council.

It is understandable if people see this is a body blow to the Lansdowne Live! plan, especially since Roger Shenkman, John Ruddy, et al., could end up cutting friendly neighbourhood frontman Jeff Hunt out of the picture to get a piece of action. Don't be so hasty; Duane and others on It's Called Football (you can access it through The 24th Minute) pointed out that MLS commish Don Garber tends to praise every potential expansion city to the skies, and the local media in each city tend not to notice the "pillow whispers" (Ben Knight's term) he's giving to each of the other cities.

The ballpark village is, in good friend Pete Toms' phrase, is "all the rage" in the U.S., since it is a way to dress up the fact that sports magnates are sucking at the public teat. Pete wrote an extensive piece, "When Stadium Financing and the Recession Collide" (The Biz of Baseball, Jan. 20) that covered the subject very thoroughly.

There is a huge scramble on, especially since the federal governments in both the Canada and U.S. are ready to throw money at projects which are, wait for it, "shovel ready." Melnyk can also sell this as part of Canada's push to host the 2015 Women's World Cup, a point which seems to have sailed past a lot of people, with Duane as a notable excpetion.

Please keep in mind that a lot of these stadium village projects are having trouble taking form. That's a big unacknowledged part of this story. The Wiki for the ballpark village in St. Louis next to the current Cardinals baseball stadium refers to it as "a big embarrassing turd right in the middle of the city." (It will probably get more attention this summer when the Cardinals host the baseball all-star game.)

Oakland Athletics owner Lew Wolff "heard crickets" (Examiner, Feb. 14) when he pitched a ballpark village for Fremont, California. (Wolff might have switched his sights to San Jose, where he owns , wait for it, a MLS team. Another proposed for Arlington, Texas has never got off the ground.

Beyond that, anyone who wants to build one of these has to have financing. They need tenants for any retail development. They also need developers willing to build homes in the area.

The bottom line is you cannot predict where this is headed, especially considering the rot of incumbency that permeates Ottawa city council (how are you coming along with light rail, everyone?).

In the short term, it means that two of Ottawa's irreplaceable amateur sports institutions, the Hunt's 67s in the OHL and the Ottawa Gee-Gees in CIS football, are in a bit of flux. However, and this is just coming from an outsider, it seems like Ottawa has had a blind spot with this for a good 15, 20 years, and it's caught up to them. A lot of people want something new.

The irony is original Senators owner Bruce Firestone, Cyril Leeder and co. wanted to do this two decades ago out in Kanata; they had projections of "profits that would scrape the sky," and everyone doubted them. It seems like were information rich, but cash poor.

(Incidentally, Duane pointed out the B.C. Place project for footy is a "disaster," which runs counter to what the Paper of Record said last Saturday.)

Related:
Melnyk plans ‘entertainment village’; Project would include offices, restaurants, bars, apartments, hotels for area near Senators’ arena (Patrick Dare, Ottawa Citizen)

The Ottawa soccer question: Part 2

Part two of four of the Ottawa soccer question below the jump

What's in it for MLS?


There was girl like her in every high school. She dressed a little frumpy, wasn’t all that popular and had mousy brown hair (to be fair to the fairer gender there was a boy in every high school too – wearing flood pants a size too small, awful in gym class and a member of the AV Club). When people looked at her – actually people didn’t really look at her, they barely knew she existed. But if they did, they wouldn't give her much thought.

Unless you looked really closely. If you did that you might see that under those frumpy clothes was actually a pretty fit body. Add a few highlights in the hair and, well, she’d be pretty damn hot. Once you figured that out you might realize that she would become quite popular in her freshman year of college. By then she would have blown off your one stop town and forgotten those awkward high school years. If only you’d have paid her more attention when no one else was...

When it comes to MLS expansion, Ottawa is mousy brown hair girl.

No one is taking this bid seriously. The city is too small, there isn’t an established soccer culture, the only people that would go are soccer moms, it’s in Canada, where the hell is Ottawa again? It doesn’t take long to find someone willing to dismiss Ottawa outright, with next to no thought.

Except for one guy. Don. And he’s the guy that all the girls are trying to impress, which makes you wonder what he sees in her.

Maybe it’s because her daddy is pretty rich and a big fan of Don. He’s likely do whatever Don asked him to do and he’s always sucking up. Did I mention he was loaded?

Then there is the neighbourhood she lives in. It’s in a perfect location, really close to a lot of other kids. If Don starts hanging out there he knows that a lot of people would come from out of town for her parties.

Another thing that Don might find important is that he doesn’t have to share her with anyone else. A lot of his other lady friends are involved with richer guys. He knows that if he gives her some attention that he could be her one true love.

Having taken the analogy about as far as I can, let me put it this way. Ottawa is big enough. It isn’t the largest centre, but it is in fact big enough. So scratch that off your can’t list.

It’s size might actually be an advantage. If Capital City FC is born, it will be the only game in town all summer (with apologies to whatever minor league baseball team is in town at the time). It would be another chance for Ottawa to compete with other major cities in North America

But, the biggest thing the Ottawa bid has going for it is Eugene Melnyk. The MLS loves the guy and they think he is exactly the owner they want. If Ottawa gets the stadium plan approved, there aren’t any other major problems with the bid because, really, when you break a MLS bid down it comes to two things – stadium and ownership. Don’t underestimate the importance of Ottawa‘s leadership.

A lot of people laughed when they heard that Don Garber said that a team in Ottawa was all but a sure thing if the stadium plan is approved. Surely, they thought, he was just talking out of his rear-end again. But what, really, does he gain from that? Maybe he’s actually telling the truth because if you look past first impressions Ottawa’s actually kinda hot.

I bet ya didn’t see that coming.

Snark break...

Hey, we'll always have cheaper beer at the ballpark ...

Doug Smith, on the endless (and ignored by the media) Raptors/Rogers/TSN2 controversy: "Where to look next? How about the sponsors? How about letting them know that, say, you won’t shop at whatever store the omnipresent Galen Weston owns? Or you won’t get your car serviced by whatever bailed out auto giant buys an ad?

"Where to look next? How about the sponsors? How about letting them know that, say, you won't shop at whatever store the omnipresent Galen Weston owns? Or you won’t get your car serviced by whatever bailed out auto giant buys an ad?" That would be Loblaws, and Ford, to name but a few.

Former Buffalo Sabres tough guy Larry Playfair (1,812 PIMs), to ESPN.com's Pierre LeBrun: "I think, in my lifetime, there will be no more fighting in the National Hockey League. I think the day is coming. And that's OK. The game is so much better than when I played. The game is skill on skill. It's fun to watch."

Perish the cynicism over Edmonton Oilers owner Daryl Katz buying the city's Golden Baseball League team. Some would say he made made $400,000 investment in the Cracker Cats in hope Edmonton will build him a $600-million arena.

Doesn't Katz know that the owner of a Canadian-based NHL team (if not a Canadian-based owner of a NHL team) should be trying to build a soccer stadium miles from the city core, where most of the footy-minded folk live? That's how you do it.

Remember, death is not an option: Who's more credible, Gary Bettman talking about the Phoenix Coyotes or Eugene Melnyk talking about the Senators' prospects?

Honestly, not a headline about Bernard Madoff, but about basketball: "Boomers lick their wounds."

The unspoken scandal about the teenage camera operator in Oshawa who was reassigned for talking to Don Cherry: That so many city-owned OHL arenas are run by private American firms. Ask everyone how that arrangement is working out in Kingston.

OK, so NCAA hoops won't be on your radar screen for another month, but Duke had its worst loss in almost 20 years last night. Hey, you look happier already.

Sennies: Hartsburg's gone, but Murray leaves heartburn

Like everyone and their cat said, it's not for nothing the Senators tied the can to coach Craig Hartsburg on Groundhog Day

That seems to be a general consensus after today's news. The Eunibomber might have to consider that perhaps Bryan Murray is no longer such a mastermind. The paper bag champions are done, have been for some time now, but the beauty of the NHL is you can be rebuild and restructure very quickly.

Honestly, a couple of Washington Capitals goals on Sunday were scored so easily that it was unintentionally hilarious. The Sens will rise again, though.

Michael Farber, SI.com: "Maybe (owner Eugene) Melnyk should have just told the assembled media to go retrench itself, because even if he refuses to accept it, the window of opportunity for Cups in the near future closed last year.

"Murray, among our favorite men in the game, built Anaheim's 2003 Cup finalist, but his touch has gone ice cold in Canada's capital. He's made bad bets on personnel, signing centre Jason Spezza and winger Dany Heatley -- superb talents at best but coach killers at worst -- to long-term deals."

Amrit Ahluwalia: "Shame, shame, shame."

From The Rink: "Scapegoating is a good description of what's gone on, and it's something that's plagued both the coaches and goalies in the organization. Ray Emery and John Paddock were run out of town last season only to watch this current group of underachievers (including the GM) continue to underachieve to an even greater extent."

The Universal Cynic: "What does an eighth-place finish in the East get you this year? Your precious two-game homestand gate receipts? Repeated nostalgia from all those post-season sweeps of yore? Way to pump up the masses, Mr. Eugene. Enjoy your season ticket base of 8,000 people next season, and by the way -- pass the C-4. Some of us are smart enough to realize that not everything can be fixed with bandaids, rotating personnel and kids from Colgate University."

Puck Daddy: "If (Hartsburg's) job was to light a fire under every player not named Dany Heatley, Daniel Alfredsson or Jason Spezza, he failed; hell, according to one Columbus Blue Jackets player, Spezza basically quit, too. The team was an unmitigated disaster, and when Hartsburg wasn't exacerbating its problems he was also helpless to fix them.

Eric Duhatschek, globesports.com: "... one could legitimately examine the Senators' line-up and ask how good are they really? The goaltending has been unsettled, virtually forever. The defence gets thinner, year after year – first Zdeno Chara goes, then a fading Wade Redden, then a youngish Andrej Meszaros. Spezza and Dany Heatley both have the capacity to put up big numbers, but no one is going to confuse their all-around games – or commitment – to the way, say, Henrik Zetterberg or Pavel Datsyuk play for the Detroit Red Wings. Or Jarome Iginla for the Calgary Flames."

Snark break ... drop the hockey shtick and walk away, Renée

The Florida Panthers are rolling with Pete DeBoer and Jim Hulton behind the bench. Meantime, in the 613, the teams which respectively could be employing them, the Ottawa Senators and Kingston Frontenacs, are third-last and dead last in the NHL and OHL, respectively. (It's like their owners, Eugene Melnyk and the Fronts' Doug Springer, are on the same Ork cloud.)

One suggested nickname for the Senators' owner: The Eunibomber.

One sportswriting trope which must be allowed to die is segueing into a feature on a Canadian athlete by referencing his hockey experience. It was cute once and now it's just tired, like Renée Zellweger's acting shtick.

Not to nitpick, but the "grand total of the Canadian content in Super Bowl XLIII is wrapped up in the well-travelled right leg of Pittsburgh punter Mitch Berger?" The Cardinals' Sean Morey makes his off-season home in Toronto with his spouse, who played hockey for the Brampton Thunder (she was known as Cara Gardner) before "she broke her femur in a snowmobile accident and decided to have a family." (New York Times.) It doesn't get any more Canadian.

If MMA training can help the Minnesota Vikings' Tarvaris Jackson improve as a quarterback, then it should be legalized in Ontario.

Two words which can never again appear together in print: "Star punter."

A Yale student was taken aback that author Buzz Bissinger "swore often" during a talk he gave there recently. It pisses the shit out of me to know some people are so well-adjusted that they don't follow sports obsessively, thus missing out on Bissinger-Leitch.

TSN's Gord Miller and Pierre McGuire are great on most nights and McGuire's anti-fighting stance is admirable, but then there's the times when, no doubt by some producer's edict, they have to jazz up a mid-season game, like the Panthers' pounding of the Habs.

The low boiling point was reached somewhere between McGuire describing a play as "fantastically good" (forgetting Rick Reilly's ASS rule, Adjectives Sorta Suck), praising a referee for having the "courage" to award penalty shot after a (uh, he made the correct call, and it favoured the home team) and Miller saying, "These are not your father's Florida Panthers," and repeating it during the next intermission.

Of course they aren't your father's Florida Panthers. When my pops was the age I am today, it was 1984. The Panthers did not exist.

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting

• An online sportsbook had to close betting on Bruce Springsteen's setlist for the Super Bowl halftime show.
  
• Argos coach Bart Andrus' son, Travis Andrus, has committed to play wide receiver for the Montana Grizzlies, who are coincidentally Kinger's favourite Football Championship Subdivision team as of this morning.
• The XMp3 radio got another solid review, this one from Sun Media. Incidentally, XM channel 27 (The Bridge) is pretty sweet.
• Charlie Murphy (the funnier Murphy brother) is going to publish an autobiography later this year.
  

Please tune in to hear Kinger's sports show, Offsides, today at 4 p.m. on CFRC 101.9 FM and cfrc.ca elsewhere. The campus radio station is in the middle of a funding drive. Don't make them have to send in the muscle. Kinger hates it when he gets his knuckles all lined up for nothing.

Afternoon snark break ...

Today's theme, "You'd be excused for thinking ..."

... Senators owner Eugene Melnyk and the crying Giants fan are one and the same. ("Anybody that says we should blow up this organization should get their own bomb and go blow themselves up." Brutal.)

... Nothing Doug Gilmour — Dougie! — did before he played for the Leafs matters . It's forgotten that he was nails in the greatest hockey series ever played, the 1987 Canada Cup, which seems to have been left out of the official hagiography (give Steve Simmons credit for noting he was just as good in Calgary as he was in Toronto).

... The biggest Super Bowl story is how many or how few middle-aged sports columnists have been sent there by their newspapers. No disrespect to the heroes on Prime Time Sports who chewed this over for far too long yesterday, but it's a non-issue. Super Bowl coverage is paint-by-numbers pack journalism and the best stories are found someplace else.

... All the sportswriters who referenced John Updike's famous essay about Ted Williams probably never read any of Updike except his famous essay on seeing Ted Williams' last home run. Poz is a glorious exception. Anyone who would call it "the Ted Williams article" (Maclean's) needs to do more reading.

... the shorter version of CBC's defence of Mike Milbury using the word "pansification" was that, "People are so stupid they don't even realize it's a gay slur."

... Everything about the Detroit Lions organization has to be changed, but they must not touch the Honululu blue colour scheme.

... Friday Night Lights is the one prime-time show which is most willing to dig into the effects of the recession on average Americans, but it will probably be cancelled before it can.

... The reason the press conference announcing the end of Ottawa's 51-day transit strike was delayed was because everyone had to walk. Apparently, the drivers' union reps left for the press conference in a 40-foot-long limousine — well, they couldn't take the bus!

This post is worth nothing; this is worth noting

• Check out The Tao's thoughts on William Houston leaving The Globe & Mail.