Fronts: Harvey Rosen's big lie — Mem Centre better for RBC Cup than the K-Rock Centre

When you're buying flowers for your mum this Easter weekend, remember that a Rosen should be red (faced).

The Kingston Frontenacs might still be playing if they could shut a team down the way they have stymied the Kingston Voyageurs' RBC Cup bid.

It's a laugh-and-a-half to see the great wool-pull Kingston Mayor Harvey Rosen is engaged in as he tries to justify why the Vees must use the ancient Memorial Centre rather than the newish, costly-ish K-Rock Centre if they earn the right to host the 2012 RBC Cup. "The majority of teams in the Junior A leagues across the country are from smaller towns and they play in smaller arenas." ... "If you put three thousand fans in the K-Rock Centre, which is the most the RBC Cup could hope to draw, it's half full and you feel there's something not quite attractive about what's going on."

The Fronts' forwards should be as good at deflections. The downtown arena is losing money, in an election year, and rather than stand up to Fronts owner Doug Springer, Rosen tries to reverse course. This is a hilarious coming from someone who blamed fans when the Springer Frontenacs were drawing far less than 3,000 fans. He didn't call it "something not quite attractive going on" then. And if spectator support is such a big concern, why was the Clarkson Cup staged at the K-Rock Centre? There's no way a women's game not involving national teams drew anything close to 3,000 people.

It's understandable, admirable even that the Springer Frontenacs have put their foot down, since there is an off-off-off-off-off-off-chance they are still going in next season's OHL playoffs come May 2012. Granted, they are coming off their "best post-season showing" (the local broadsheet's phrasing) in 12 years, since it took them until Game 7 of Round 1 to bow out to Brampton.

Kingston fans and taxpayers deserve a lot better than puffery and half truths. They were told the city needed to splurge on a downtown arena to land big events and are now being told it is ill-suited for staging a big event, and that the RBC Cup is not a big event. Debate the glamour of the RBC Cup all you want, but the money out-of-town teams and their supporters spend is just as good as their major junior counterparts.

The onus isn't totally on Springer, but it's pretty clear who is calling the shots. It is not out of the realm of possibility he's seeing it as win-win if venue issues sink the Vees' bid. The Vees already had to defer it from 2011 to '12, so not to coincide with the Fronts' Hail Mary of a bid for the 2011 Memorial Cup. Some random guy hinted at this two weeks ago:

"Kingston Frontenacs owner Doug Springer will never let another team host a national championship at the K-Rock Centre, his petty fiefdom that he doesn't actually own or operate. You have to keep dates available for that huge playoff run (all the way to the second round!) that he's been promising Kingston since 1998, don't you know.

"In no way is this a suggestion Springer and his Frontenacs ... (are) actively trying to sandbag another Kingston team's bid to land a national tournament ... in no way whatsoever."

The Fronts actually have every right to do so; their 2011-12 season might be a going concern when the RBC Cup comes around in May. And Katrina Bowden might be waiting in my apartment when I come home from work tonight. Perhaps it is not politic, but Rosen should just be honest about the circumstances. It doesn't take King Solomon to see there is a compromise, where the Vees could be prepared to use the K-Rock if it's available. Common sense should prevail, even as it's getting harder to recall that exists, where Kingston and junior hockey is concerned.

Imagine having a state-of-the-art arena sit empty while a national championship takes place across town. No amount of nostalgia for old "hockey barns" will override that embarrassment.

It has been 892 days since Doug Springer promised to do "whatever it takes" to bring a winner to Kingston.

Reality Check: Sportswriter Charged With... Being a Pimp (Or, How to Generalize About an Entire Industry's Malaise)

A breaking story out of New Hampshire made all the rounds on the Internets today: A veteran, multiple award-winning sportswriter has been charged (emphasis on charged, as in innocent until proven guilty) with allegedly leading a prostitution ring using Craigslist.

Kevin Provencher -- the New Hampshire Union-Leader's go-to guy on the AHL's Manchester Monarchs, four-time winner of the New Hampshire Sportswriter of the Year Award, and a former director of sports information at an American college -- is (or rather, was) a deeply entrenched sports writer for a newspaper. In short, he's got pretty strong credentials.

Provencher, as the story claims, has also been spotted in Canada with a confirmed operation similar to the one he allegedly runs in the Live Free or Die state.

Now before we start to generalize here or even have a few laughs (and let's face it, there's going to be a few, ironic or not, in some newsrooms across North America today), let's be clear: we don't know all the facts in this case and it's far, far too easy for anyone to jump to judgment at this point. Let the facts come out first.

However, it's quite interesting that Gawker -- the flagship in Nick Denton's empire of cutting, vicious snark -- felt comfortable enough to refer to this as "a new and exciting entry for the 'Broke Journalists and Their Side Jobs" story.

Truth be told, we don't know what Provencher's motivations are, and whether it was financial desperation (if you know how well the Union-Leader pays, speak up, but if people stay there 20-plus years, it might be what used to be called a "retirement paper"). While what he allegedly did is illegal and morally questionable, it's the kind of story that really speaks to a side of journalism that no one really talks about in public.

There is a profound difference between reasons for committing crimes and using those reasons as excuses for a crime. The distinction is vital, for determining the guilt of an offender is not an exercise in black-and-white, morally self-righteous thinking. It's a far more subtle, complex process than the public (and journalists) desire, given that a lot of people prefer to use snap judgments (and precious column inches) to assuage their sense of outrage. It's a form of pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Make no mistake, though: there's going to be a lot of stories out there over the next few days that will tout off all the usual moral heavy-handedness that's part-and-parcel of this kind of story -- Provencher's exploiting women for financial gain, he's contributing to a twisted culture of violence and abuse, etc. All of those claims may be true. However, this is not the kind of forum for those kinds of topics (it would require a far more reasoned and informed sociologist/women's studies/criminologist's perspective to get to the heart of those issues, and none of us are that).

But at the risk of being the devil's advocate (remember, reasons are not the same as excuses), it bears considering that whatever his motivations are, Gawker's inference -- Broke Journalists and Their Side Jobs -- does make for an interesting side note discussion on what journalists are doing -- including illegal, criminal acts -- to supplement their income in an industry that's facing a truly desperate economic crisis. It's a sad state of affairs that even esteemed journalists are allegedly committing crimes like pimping, but it also speaks to a sense of legitimate fear that's plaguing journalism among those who work in it.

While no one ever goes into journalism for the money, this is the darkest time in the profession's history for jobs and a reasonable, living wage. Many journalists I know haven't seen raises in years, while job security is becoming an increasingly loose term.

Bear in mind, this is no rationalization for what Provencher stands accused of, but you can bet that any mirth drawn from this will be ironic at best.

UPDATE: While we're not normally the kind of site that links to Gawker, here's some more information on Provencher's case. It's definitely eye-brow raising.

Woody Hayes never thought of this!

There's a great scene in North Dallas Forty (well, there really isn't a bad scene in it) where Phil Elliott says apologetically, "I learned all my social graces from football coaches."

Things have changed, but Jeff Pearlman had an amusing post about a Division III coach in the NCAA who vowed to bar the student paper from talking to his players. He recanted within the course of a day, but the point was, he still went on his power trip, and Pearlman got off on a pretty good rant.

"So this morning I read about Lance Leipold, the head football coach at the University of Wisconsin—Whitewater, who has banned the student media from covering his team next season. Leipold was angry about an editorial in the college newspaper that accused three football players of acting arrogantly. (College football players … arrogance … noooooooo!)

"I' ve had myriad chats with my wife about why I never, ever want my kids to play organized football. It has nothing to do with injury/bodily harm, and everything — absolutely everything – to do with men like Leipold. Put simply, I hate football coaches. Not all of them obviously. In fact, not most of them. But there’s a certain breed that, well, just irks the hell out of me. They bark out inanities like, 'Real men eat steel!' and 'Be the ball!'; call their teams 'programs'; think sensitivity is for wimps. They lack any sort of world view, seeing only the green grass (or turf) that covers 100 yards of glory."

It is not unheard of and you can see where a coach is coming from: He's sticking up for his guys, pure and simple. Still, he's a university employee and his team represents the university, so he can't stiff the campus paper.

This is as good a time as any to advance a personal theory that the football coach stereotype Pearlman was touching on seems less prevalent in Canada. There are yellers and screamers, the same as there are with any team in any sport, but it's a little different in Canada. The personality type up here, seems tilted more toward someone who's a teacher, patient and stern, trying to help guys learn a very complex game. Who knows why, maybe it's because coaches in Canada don't take mass participation for granted, so they have to be sensitive while working with who they do have. Meantime, the stereotypical coach down in the States can't understand why the kids are down at the skatepark instead of putting on the pads, like a man.

Related:
The really, really, really misguided Division III college football coach (Jeff Pearlman)
Type rest of the post here

Phantom Power: Sometimes in February

A jaded journo should not feel tears stirring afterwriting a headline; you're supposed to be cool and detached.

Still, there they were yesterday, after typing in, "Long live the Boys in Red: Bathurst ballers triumph over tragedy" for a a small item in today's Ottawa Sun, right below the SUNshine Girl. Apologies in advance for getting caught up in a story about perfect strangers.

The thread which runs through the story about the Bathurst Phantoms is knowing that in every small community in Canada, there's a group of boys who live to have their fingertips caress the pebbled surface of a basketball. There's no one catch-all explanation, just like there isn't for why kids in the suburbs listen to L'il Wayne. Give them a ball, a basket, enough room to manoeuvre, and they're happy, whether it is playing one-on-one in the driveway, two-on-two or three-on-three at the small court with 8-foot-high goals behind the public school.

The victory belongs to a team, a town and the Boys In Red, of course. The Bathurst Phantoms should know that there is a lot "there but for the grace of" to go with their victory. You know most of the details about the Phantoms, whose team name, randomly enough, is derived from a local legend that you can see a sailing ship in the waters north of Bathurst. Similarly, one suspects that after yesterday, the Boys In Red will live forever.

One can only assume to know what it's like to have a basketball jones in Bathurst. The just-the-facts is that the Phantoms, led by Bradd Arseneau (pictured), a survivor of the crash which took seven of his teammates and a teacher 13 months ago, Elizabeth Lord, won the New Brunwick AA championship yesterday. Arseneau, who scored 25 points in yesterday's final while wearing the No. 7 of his late teammate, Nathan Cleland, suffered four broken ribs and a bruised lung in the crash, and his mom, Lucy O'Neil-Arseneau called him the "lucky one," which only hints at the horror.

Words fail at imagining what it must have been like, so it was no shock that Bradd Arseneau "declined interview requests" after the game. It's a failure of conventional journalism that anyone would even think he would take questions. It was way too heavy for an 18-year-old.

The bond you get playing basketball can be unlike no other in any team sport, not better, just unique. Bathurst had that ruptured, and yesterday completed some healing.

Bathurst High has about 700 students. That means fully 1% of its student body was lost, in one weekend. This also comes in the shadow of great stress for the community. On Friday, the day before the championship game, a mining company which is a major local employer was in court to obtain creditor protection. Within the next two weeks, the owner of the local major junior hockey team, the Acadie-Bathurst Titan, will probably file papers to relocate the team.

No game can transcend all of that, but the Bathurst boys touched the hearts of people who might never visit their town. It's part and parcel with having grown up, in the country, as they say, and having played basketball avidly, if not athletically, as a teen.

There is some major memory burn of how back in 1994, '95, '96, when the temperatures rose, we didn't despair that we would be unable to play pond hockey. A winter thaw was an opportunity for my friend and teammate, Wegs, to get on the horn and get some guys together to play on an outdoor court in Bath, Ontario, behind the elementary school that I went to for junior kindergarten.

Wegs,would carry a push broom from his house to sweep the court clear of slush and gravel. It would be January, in Canada, four guys playing an endless game of 2-on-2. Once in a while, you'd have 5-on-5, but the court was really too small. You would start out wearing your tearaway track pants, a thick sweatshirt, toque and gloves. As you got moving and started to heat up, you would shed a couple layers.

We were not good at the game; Wegs was the sixth man for the Ernestown Eagles and we did make it to OFSAA, somewhat by guile by mostly by Smart (Rob had transferred from Napanee to Ernestown, starting the chain reaction that found its way to the Carleton Ravens a few years later). It was was a misnomer to say I was the 10th man, since if we had had a 53-man roster, I would have been 53rd.

Nevertheless, looking back it felt pretty Canadian to be out there, blind to the time of year and you ran up and down the court, jockeying for rebounding position, reaching out for a rebound, throwing in the little half-assed runner that I had developed to compensate for being too slow and lead-footed to get to the rim, even in a pick-up game. Like a one-time Ernestown student named Gord Downie later sang, "You're never more hot then / when you've got something on."

That was my hoops experience. It never left. The burn always flares in late February when high school and collegiate are down to the one-and-done, balls this close to the bandsaw portion of the season, which is probably a confession on my part that I'm pretty immature. Everyone's trying not to go home. It doesn't define you as a person, not by a long shot,

There has been some sniping about the fact Bathurst, a Triple-A team, was allowed to drop down a division for this season (their opponent for the final, Campobello Island, is Single-A), or why this story should get such play in the media. Well, Bathurst's win, which did so much for them, brought home what it was like to have basketball on the brain, as a Canadian. It's not our place to suggest it, but one hopes they get a tribute to herald their accomplishment. A pregame tribute at the next Raptors home game would hit the spot.

Related:
Basketball team 'did the impossible'; Tragic accident constant shadow (Richard Foot, Canwest News Service)

Whose game is it a part of anyway?

This doesn't quite meet Neate's less than 5,000 views rule, and it certainly won't in a day or two more, but it needs to be watched by anyone that claims to love the game of hockey in this country.



Sadly, you can likely find similar videos out there. When watching I was reminded of a situation in the Madoc, Ont. arena many years ago. A young referee was walking off the ice after officiating an atom DD league play-off game (yes, DD. And don't mistake league play-off with OMHA playoff. This was a game involving teams that had been eliminated from meaningful -- as meaningful as 10-year-olds play, anyway -- games and that were playing out the string).

Said referee had called a penalty with about two minutes left in the then tied game (slashing. Although the referee was not the most skilled in the world, he had never been more sure of a call than he had been of that one). The visiting team scored on the power play to win.

When leaving the ice surface the official was met by a father, possibly drunk, who shoved him hard. Losing his balance (he was on skates, on land, after all) the referee fell backwards, slamming into the boards. Although the official's partner quickly stepped in between to prevent further damage, the man wasn't done. He waited several minutes for the official to come out of the dressing room before arena staff asked him to leave. Then, he stood by the referee's car until he left the rink.

Have I mentioned that the official was 17?

Upon seeing the man standing by his car, the referee swallowed his pride and went back into the rink and did something that he had never done before and would never have the misfortune of doing again -- he called his dad to come help.

Only after his father -- a police officer -- arrived was the referee allowed to go home and enjoy the rest of his day. It would be his last year officiating.

I'm sure by now you've figured out who the official was. It's good to see, he says sarcastically, things haven't changed in the last 15ish years. The great game is still ruined by the morons.

The most telling part of the above video is the voices of those not on the camera. They are quick to place blame on what's happening. Clearly, they are yelling, it's the officials fault they were attacked because they let the game "get out of control" ) something that usually means that their kid's team wasn't getting the calls they wanted to see.

Writing this I'm fully aware that I'm preaching to the choir and that it doesn't matter what I, or anyone else, says about the inherent violence that surrounds the game at all its levels. That violence is on the ice and all too often in the crowd.

And, you know, it's all part of the game. What game, it's hard to say, but it's not the game I fell in love with.

FNL: Burning for you, but not enough of you

Friday Night Lights does the slow burn so well.

That's the best stab at a segue into what makes FNL so "critically adored." (Its return to network TV was last week, after the full season ran on DirecTV.) Characters' emotions come out the same way you would expect it to in real life. It's the iceberg analogy: The show keeps seven-eighths of the emotion hidden until an appropriate time.

A slow burn is tough to bring across on TV. No doubt Mad Men pulls it off, but that's for someone else to say. Friends who are FNL devotees have often said they can relate Dillon, Texas, to any number of small Canadian towns where everything rotates around junior hockey (a subculture which has never been fictionalized particularly well).

A great case in point of how in the season opener came when a mortified Tyra Collette, the femme fatale played by Adrianne Palicki, watches her mom and older sister Mindy, a stripper, dance closely with some questionable dudes at a questionable bar. It ends with Mindy's boyfriend, Billy Riggins -- older brother of Tim Riggins (the Taylor Kitsch character), getting up on stage so he can drunkenly propose marriage.

It was supposed to represent trivial people, but there was no gawking or look-down-the-nose judgment. Watching it, as someone who grew up in the country, there was the sense that someone who works on the show gets that vibe. They've seen the desperation of a dive bar at closing time. They might have attended the Texas equivalent to a buck-and-doe, which in rural Canada is a party that's held to raise money for a couple who's getting married. (Generally, they tend to be all-time pissups.)

Any other show would have had Tyra make a face and stomp off on those long legs of hers. In the FNL universe, she stayed put, but you could read her like a book, the sense of someone seeing her future if she didn't get the hell out of Dillon.

Someone who grew up in a major city, which is most of us (especially in Canada, a country of big cites) might not fully understand. Those who have that background might not want a reminder of that decrepit Hooterville where they were raised.

Obviously, there is more to FNL. Others who write professionally about entertainment can better talk about its acting, how its characters don't come from affluence or wealth, unlike most popular prime-time dramas and how there are real consequences for bad decisions. One gets the sense that Smash Williams' situation, a former all-everything running back with a bum knee working at an ice cream parlour, is more commonplace than the media would ever care to let you know.

For a fan, the show is on such a level that reading the plot summaries on IGN.com (not to mention the spoiler for Season 4 hinted at by Variety, assuming there is a Season 4) before the series came back on network TV was practically a requirement.

For one thing, it allows one to zero in on how the actors and writers are going to pull it off. Secondly, it opens up awareness to the show's subtleties. Like The Simpsons, one is rewarded for paying attention.

For instance, in the season debut, Riggins/Kitsch goes to the ice-cream parlour to talk Smash/Gaius Charles into not giving up football. There's no hints dropped that in Season 1, there was tension between the white fullback and black running back(mostly personal, perhaps somewhat racial). Viewers are expected to know.

During the scene, there's a close-up on Smash standing behind the corner, and in front of him is a placeholder with the number 20 on it -- his jersey number. It was there, if you cared to notice.

It happened again in the final scene. The Panthers had just won their opening game. There was a postgame party, drinks flowing, band playing (both kinds: country and western). Riggins was telling Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly's character) that he didn't mind if she didn't want to come out as a couple. Prim, proper Lyla, the one-time one-half of the school's power couple going out with Riggins, who was best friends with her ex, Jason Street? It would not do.

Lyla, won over by Riggins playing the role of the concerned guy, moves in for a kiss. The shot switches to an overhead view and as the band twangs, "help me find my daughter," there's Buddy Garrity, Lyla's dad, standing there slack-jawed because he's been watching the entire drama unfold.

That alone is not going to make you check out the show. Most people make up their mind about a show in its first season, although thankfully advances have meant that's no longer possible. For a fanboy type, though, it illustrates FNL's appeal -- you want to know what's coming, just to be able to notice the little nuances.

And you're waiting for the next slow burn to hit its boiling point.

Related:
Why Matt Saracen got surly (Slate)

Plucked from the transactions: The year of living vicariously

It's not as if Troy Bodie's progress as a hockey player has been a major obsession, but seeing him pop up on The Canadian Press list of transactions was a gas last night.

ANAHEIM DUCKS–Recalled RW Troy Bodie from Iowa (AHL).

Poz, at some point, has probably covered how the "Transactions" listing in the sports section is one of the best parts of the newspaper. It basically compacts man's accomplishments and failures into very short sentences, printed in tiny type. It might seem as alien as the yearbook from a high school you didn't attend. For a beyond-saving sports nut, poring over the hirings and firings, the trades and demotions, seeing a familiar name pop out from time to time – the former major leaguer who's now managing in the low minors, the guy who played junior hockey in your hometown who's been called from the ECHL to AHL – is brain candy.

Bodie, a big winger who has been called up the NHL by the Anaheim Ducks, was a rookie as the same time as yours truly, so to speak. Bodie's first season in the WHL with the Kelowna Rockets, 2002-03, coincided with someone else's first full-time job in print journalism at the Portage la Prairie Daily Graphic. Troy Bodie was a Portage kid and having a local boy in the Dub was a big deal for a town of 13,000 people, so we did stories on him from time to time.

It's not as if there was a lasting bond, just the standard jock-reporter conversation, one person trying to pull teeth and the other being polite but tight-lipped. We spoke when the Edmonton Oilers took him in the ninth round, 278th overall in the 2003 draft. The draft doesn't even have a ninth round anymore. He eventually owned up to the fact that around the age of five or six, his first replica jersey had been an Oilers one. It was a story that had to be done, but it didn't seem like a big deal. He was an 18-year-old who had played in only half Kelowna's games, and it he been drafted by the one-time NHL team of the Rockets coach, Mark Habscheid.

The following season, when Kelowna made its only visit of the season to Brandon to play the Wheat Kings, off I went to get a couple photos of Bodie to go with a feature story Keith Borkowsky was writing for the following Saturday.

Going to a game to get photos of just one player can be feast-or-famine. Earlier that summer, I'd driven to Winnipeg to get photos of a local girl named Haylee Irwin who was playing in a Canadian women's fastpitch championship. She was playing third base, which meant taking a position on the first-base side, in hopes of getting a shot of her snagging a hot grounder and coming up throwing. Wouldn't you know it, Haylee Irwin got one ball hit to her the whole game – and it was foul. She made a great backhanded catch on it, jumping up against the screen in front of the dugout for the third out of the inning, but the photo was no good. The one Keith ran was actualy of her taking a warmup throw.

In the second period that night, though, I was positioned in the right wing corner of the Wheat Kings zone when Bodie, in his capacity as a big-bodied third-line grinder, collided with a Brandon player. Another Wheatie jumped in, the gloves came off, right in camera range. Seconds later, there were 5-6 half-decent photos on the card. None of them had a snowball's chance in hell of making it to print since the Daily G did not run photos of hockey fights as per the publisher's edict, but it chased away any fears of letting Keith down by coming back with lousy art. By the game's end, there was something in the can that was usable, and Bodie had picked up a goal and an assist to complete the Gordie Howe hat trick.

He only scored eight all season, but hey, shallow people believe in luck. Bodie sniped seven in the playoffs to help Kelowna win the Memorial Cup that spring – you could look it up. There are thousands of pro-calibre hockey players, though, and once the chance came to leave "the Mighty Plap," to move up the media food chain, Troy Bodie faded into the vast benign landscape of professional sports. Even with all the attention Puck Daddy has lavished on the Iowa Chops for their gimmicky logo and nickname, it never dawned that there was this tissue-thin, tangential connection to my old sports beat.

You move on, eh? Getting a blast from the past is a reminder that Portage was a very good place to be at the age of 26 and 27. The same goes for Simcoe and the Reformer from ages 27-29, although it requires the most accurate six-word coda going – it wasn't funny, at the time.

Who knows where any of us are headed. Troy Bodie is going to The Show. The Ducks play tonight in Pittsburgh and assuming he dresses, that means he'll have his name in the NHL Guide & Record Book. That alone should not put a smile on someone's face on the coldest night of the year, but it does.

The Boys in Red, one year later

Please spare a thought today for the people in Bathurst, N.B., as it's the one-year anniversary of the crash involving the Bathurst High basketball team.

There is no bringing back Javier Acevedo, Codey Branch, Nathan Cleland, Justin Cormier, Daniel Hains, Nick Kelly, Nickolas Quinn and Beth Lord. It seems like there is a little a stranger two provinces away can offer that won't sound cheap, but as someone who grew up in a rural area and played a little (very little) high school hoops, it certainly resonates.

It is just important to realize that every weekend, there all number of sports teams driving around the countryside. Just this weekend, the University of Massachusetts women's hockey team was involved in a 59-vehicle pileup; fortunately no one was injured.

The high school coaches who take a group of teenagers to a weekend tournament, well, you can't thank them enough. A commenter at CBC.ca a while back sort of touched upon how stressful it is:

"It is absolutely perplexing that among the recommendations made following this accident, there was none that would disallow coaches and teachers to drive their teams to and from competitions. Win, or lose, a good coach would be so emotionally involved with the game and the team's performance that his/her ability to drive safely might well be compromised."

That is probably a non-starter in many cases. Spots in vehicles can be at a premium; parents can't always get away from work if a team is leaving on a Friday. It does hit upon how much of a debt is owed to the coaches who take teams on the road.

Related:
Service marks anniversary of Bathurst crash (The Canadian Press)

From the just-threw-up-in-my-mouth department

Far be it to give any nimrod out there is a blog obsession or relentless pursuit going on with David Frost.

It is just sporting for a seasoned ass-talker to note that Frost is "whole heartily" (his word) getting on the web with his Hockey God Online website ("hockey's most knowledgeable source"), as detailed by the Ottawa Citizen.

This is not a cavalier approach: If Frost is home maintaining a blog that he promises he will be "updated daily," then he's not out in public, which is where he tends to run into problems, although of course with him it is always someone else who's to blame, like the media.

Frosty is off to a pretty auspicious first week. Some men who were just acquitted on sexual exploitation charges would be lying low, but Frost has already put out the call to women with low self-esteem, offering them a "time to shine as the Hockey God Online’s Hockey Hottie of the month. We want you to email us a photo of your hottie wearing your favorite team sweater!"

The knowledgeable source has gone out on a limb by proclaiming the Stanley Cup-winning Mike Babcock is one of the league best "coach's" has a team that "lives and breaths the game."

Jarome Iginla, we are told from the insider, has a skill set can't be "found any where else." Frost is also promising Pro-Line picks. Today, he counselled people to take the New York Rangers at home over Florida "since they are use to" early games. That nugget was promptly deleted after the Panthers won 4-0.

Anyway, godspeed to David Frost with his new hobby. There is no use in getting worked up over this latest development. Like I said, anything is better for all concerned than him being in a position of influence over young people ever again.

Related:
I'm a hockey God: Dave Frost (Gary Dimmock, Ottawa Citizen; via From The Rink)

Blog blast past: The hockey establishment should not skate on David Frost

As you heard, ex-hockey coach and agent David Frost was acquitted this morning in Napanee on four counts of sexual exploitation stemming from incidents that occurred when his coach the defunct Quinte Hawks team in the 1990s. The presiding judge says the case "exposed a dark and very unhealthy side of hockey" that is "extremely offensive and must be denounced." It's pretty clear that the prosecutor failed to understand that reality. and that Frost, even in victory, is has inspired a new word, "scumball." From Nov. 4, here is the site's take, after the trial concluded.

The hockey mafia, quote-unquote, will easily be able to put some plausible deniablity between itself and David Frost's criminal trial in Napanee, Ont.

Frost, plain and simple, is a grotesque -- the figure whom by his mere existence highlights the hypocrisies of the society than shuns him.

The hockey establishment, though, will get off and that's a shame. Some of the stuff that came out in court happened as far back as 1996. Let's be honest, most media outlets and most sports fans would rather read about who's in first place or who's leading the NHL scoring race than what has amounted to a "very thin case against a very creepy defendant," to quote today's National Post. This ties in with what the late David Foster Wallace once wrote about the insular world of the modern elite athlete: Sometimes it's better not to know.

Perhaps people do know and don't want it staring back at them over their morning coffee. This suggests deeper examination is needed. Player agent Gilles Lupien told the Globe & Mail today, "The culture of junior hockey has to change."

Hockey goes through a bout of hand-wringing every decade or so. Ten years ago there was a national summit over in the wake of Canada losing to Kazakhstan at the 1998 world juniors and failing to medal at the Nagano Olympics. We can have a royal commission over losing some gold medals, but not over the damage that is potentially being done to young men and women for the sake of the chosen few who break into the NHL and the a couple of thousand armchair coaches in the stands..

Sick is probably too strong a word for that syndrome. There are other pressing concerns in society in general, but people should not bury their hands in the snowbank now that Frost's trial is done and he will soon crawl back under his rock as soon as the fraud charges he is also facing make it through the system.

The game is forfeiting its right to, as they say, police itself. Granted, who has the legitimacy and unimpeachable credibility to stand up and reform it? (Sit down, Dick Pound.)

"I found too many cases where the 'justice' system propped up the hockey mythology and abandoned girls, blind to the cyclical nature of sexual abuse because such ugliness could not be part of hockey. In a subculture presided over with an iron fist, where, as players testified earlier this month, garbage and garbage cans were thrown over players who didn't play well, and players were even punched in the face, everyone became a victim." -- Laura Robinson, Oct. 31

"A lack of oversight by the powers-that-be in the hockey world allowed (Frost) to run roughshod over players. Sure, there was disciplinary action and a court appearance after he allegedly assaulted one of his own players in full view of hundreds of spectators, but at the end of the day, the courts and the hockey people didn't seem to do enough." -- some fat, dumb and bald guy, Aug. 9, 2006

A big plank in the defence lawyer Marie Henein's argument is that what happened at Room 22 is commonplace enough in hockey world. In effect, it's like a society unto itself, with its own mores, conventions and rules and anyone who enters into is consenting -- even at 16 or 17 years old. Her job is to create enough reasonable doubt that her client goes free, bottom line.

"She argued that group sex goes on commonly in the hockey world, not just around the Deseronto team.

" 'Hockey is not on trial,' Henein said. 'It may not be a good thing, it may not be a nice thing, but it happens, and Mr. Frost didn't invent it.' " -- Kingston Whig-Standard

Fair enough. It should not happen again. Thinking it will not is naive by a factor of 10. The other side of the coin is that, on balance, junior hockey, from the OHL all the way down to Junior C, offers something positive in a lot of smaller communities in Canada. It fills in the gaps during the long winter.

Sometimes you have to compartmentalize, not unlike the anonymous commenter who weighed in here yesterday.

Here is my two cents. I played under Frost for several years.

One of the Best Coach's.

Bad Roll Model.

However, he did give me some tools in life which have helped me excel.

Thanks Dave

That might be truer than anything that has come from the chattering class during the past couple weeks. Change is coming in these small Canadian towns. Robinson writes of how hockey is a ticket out for boys in small communities, but there is nothing commensurate for females. One irony is that this very week, Napanee happens to be hosting the Canadian under-18 women's hockey championship. Girls hockey in the community was only started a few years prior to Frost's arrival in the area. Now it's seen as a tourism draw.

Changing is coming, in some ways. It's just not happening fast enough.

Related:
Sex, lies and hockey tape (Patrick White, Globe & Mail)
Hockey's seamy side on display (Father Raymond J. De Souza, National Post)
'Hockey is not on trial,' judge told (Kingston Whig-Standard)
What about the girls? That the women testifying at the David Frost trial are not considered victims tells us a lot about sex, power and junior hockey (Laura Robinson, Ottawa Citizen, Oct. 31)

Calling Larry Mavety a 'great hockey man' is stranger than fiction

Larry Mavety: Great general manager or greatest general manager?

His Royal Mavesty now has more players from his 2005 draft playing for the Brantford Golden Eagles Junior B team than for the Kingston Frontenacs, the team he works for, at least nominally. Daryl Borden, who was the first goalie taken that year, has signed to play with his hometown Junior B club, where his new teammates include Matt Reis, Mavety's fifth-round selection.

This is being written apologetically as possible. For starters, it is running over the same old ground. As well, one has to be balanced and owner Doug Springer's declaration that "Larry Mavety is a great hockey man," and that the Frontenacs are looking to the future should get the full consideration that it deserves.

Come on, people. Springer said they were looking to the future. No one should have needed any more convincing to slug back the Killer Kool-Aid (Save The Fronts' phrase, not mine) and just forget the past 10 seasons. It is just nitpicking to point out that, if it takes three years to properly get the measure of a draft, Kingston made five picks from the second through the fifth rounds that year. None of them are playing major junior hockey.

Please don't be a smartass by saying, "Well, how many are playing for the Frontenacs?" The answer to that is also none.

Editor's note: This probably would have gone by uncommented upon, were it not for that fact that Borden is displacing an 18-year-old goalie named Thomas Shelley.

Thomas Shelley, no word of a lie, might have saved my life one day.

December 2004 it was. A stranger in a strange town, the sports editor at the local paper decided that rather than go to the office he would walk the two blocks from his apartment over a computer store to cover a high school hockey game. Ostensibly, it was to get an early story for the next day's paper, but really, four months into a new job in a town where he didn't know anyone outside of the other people at the paper and local coaches, he just was not quite ready to face the world that day.

Standing for a hour in a nearly empty arena on a Wednesday afternoon, watching high school boys glide around on skates, that symphony of blades cutting the ice that Canadians hear in their sleep, letting loose that primordial roar when they scored, well, that was a way to ease back into life piecemeal.

High school hockey, in most of Ontario, basically comes down to who goes to your school. The game, Waterford vs. Holy Trinity was a mismatch. Trinity was the county's spanking-new Catholic high school in town that had opened within the past five years, and whose success in sports was much resented among the town's old guard. Families who prized education and status as much as their faith sent their daughters and sons to Trinity. They had a lot more boys with competitive hockey experience to choose from. Waterford was smaller and rural, full of boys who played hockey more for fun.

Most of Trinity's skaters wore gloves and hockey socks that corresponded with the local rep teams -- it was almost a game to count them up, the St. Louis blue and gold (Delhi), the Leafs' triple white stripes (Simcoe) or the pre-Ovechkin Washington Capitals blue and black (Port Dover).

Waterford had fewer players, probably not enough for three forward lines and two defence pairs and seemed to move with a little less zip. He might not have been there that day, but one of their star football and rugby players was on the team, and the assessment of him was, "He hits like a ton of bricks ... skates like one, too."

In goal, was this Grade 9, barely standing above the crossbar, clearly way past his team in talent. It should have been a blowout, but Trinity was slow to get into it, giving Waterford an opening to score on a completely random play. After that, it got ridiculous. The rest of the afternoon was Thomas Shelley standing up to a unrelenting tsunami of vulcanized rubber. He played every minute of this ridiculous game like it was the third period, tie game, Game 7 of Earthlings vs. the Klingons. He stoned Trinity's swiftest players on breakaways. The high, hard shots that he couldn't catch, he would juggle for just an extra beat, almost like he was teasing the forwards going to the net before they went careening past empty-handed.

There was no Penny Lane in Almost Famous to snatch the pen away from the stooge who was dutifully keeping his own shots-on-goal tally at rinkside, so he could stand back and listen and watch with his eyes. Starting the second (and final) period, down a goal, Trinity took 16 unanswered shots. The question became how much longer Shelley could keep this up? With about three minutes left, Trinity finally got one, not a cheapie, but a good goal, and the game ended in a 1-1 tie. Final shots on goal, according to the stooge's tally: 49-9. The second total might have been a bit generous.

Shelley, of course, wished he could have had that one back, but a tie game seemed more symbolic. The Waterford coaches laughed the laugh of someone who had got away from something: "There's no I in team, but there is a T and it stands for Thomas," one of them said.

It was just a high school game in a small town. Hockey-wise, it was not evidence of anything other than a 14-year-old having a very good game. It was also proof that life was not all black. Thanks, Tom.

Let the Eagles soar, while ruminating on a perfectly good game of FOOTBALL

U of T went 49 football games without a win. That's nothing.

Ernestown Secondary School went forty-eight years without a victory on the gridiron. Well, that status changed today. In the Things That Are Sad, Kind Of department, the Eagles' 23-22 win over the Loyalist Lancers gave at least one mid-'90s grad reason to change his Facebook status: "Neate is glorying in a team triumphant ... Ernestown 23 ... Loyalist 22." It calls for a celebration.

That being said, within a few minutes, four other K-Town Facebookers had shown the common courtesy to comment. Then an Out of Left Field contributor who's also a K-Towner and thus stood a chance of actually getting the joke, got a voice mail delivered in an incredibly poor imitation of the former Richardson Stadium public address announcer, CKWS sports anchor Doug Jeffries.

"A couple of out-of-town scores to pass along ... in the Kingston senior high school football league, Er-nes-town 23, Loyalist ... 22 ..."

Details of how the coach Lou Bilkovski's gridiron yearlings, the first group of Eagles to grace a gridiron, are left for tomorrow's Kingston Whig-Standard. (Loyalist is not exactly a football powerhouse, but it had at least had a team before.)

An explanation is probably due for why someone who's past age 30 would get so excited over a high school football game that he did not see, played in a city that he has not lived in since 2000. It is a little sad and lacking in self-awareness, yes?

Hardly. Well, Doc, it was always a hold-your-manhood-cheap, secret shame to be such a fanboy when it came to football, while having graduated from a high school which did not field a football team. It was like a living a lie. It's not for nothing that last sentence had football in it twice -- overcompensate, much?

Napanee District Secondary School, which offered football, was about the same distance from the Sager homestead as ESS. Back in 1991, just as now, if you went to Bath Public School, you had a choice of the two high schools. A few kids from Bath tried out both. A few did, multiple times.

In our home, though, it went without saying that you would attend Ernestown. Thus as a promising career as a quarterback running back starting linebacker, how about backup offensive lineman (see artistic approximation at right), was sabotaged. (Thanks, Mom.) Instead, a career in sports writing was born. (Thanks again, Mom, for knowing your sensitive son was better off at a smaller school.)

Other people who passed through ESS have gone on to lead happy, productive lives without caring that the school had this football void forever unfilled. Oh, Ernestown has had its moments on the court in basketball (some of its grads have done very well) and volleyball. More importantly, people went on from there to get good educations and lead happy, productive lives.

Sorry, but I'm Mojo Nixon on this (not sure on Elvis, though)

That is all well and good for some, but it could it make up for the lack of football? No, it could not.

Perhaps that was one reason for becoming such a nut for the sport -- typical geek-love for something you knew full well you would never be able to get. Over the ensuing years, it honestly meant feeling envious of anyone who had played the glorious game in the way that God had intended for football to be played, with helmets, pads and the forward pass.

Rugby and soccer are nice enough games, too. They just demanded way too much running for too little tangible reward, aside from the orange slices you got to have afterward. For a kid who hated running, it was best to treat them as peculiarities, better left to the weirdos over in the United Kingdom, Europe ... Asia ... Africa .. Australia ... pretty much all of Central and South America, really.

You can imagine what it was like to carry that inside, all these years, until today. It meant putting up with a lot of ribbing from people who went to other schools in the area. The legend held that ESS had a statue of a kicking horse instead of a football team. That "persisting urban legend," by the way, has permeated the local youth culture to the point where it has to be debunked on the school website.

Thanks to an Ernestown fan who was pressed into service as a stringer (thanks again, Mom), it can be reported that Bilkovski's boys did give up the first TD of the day. However, they came back with three touchdowns, including majors from tailback Dustin Teal and tight end Kody Turner, that staked them to a big enough lead to hang on for the W. It should have come as no surprise.

The majestic Eagles even pulled off a fake-kick fumblerooskie. The long snapper dribbled the ball along the ground instead of firing it crisply back to the holder. A teammate picked it up and swept around the end .

In a one-point game, that stratagem loomed large. The Minnesota Vikings should be so inventive when they're in the scoring zone. Really, they should.

Teal, Turner and the rest of the lads might not understand why one win would make the day, hell week, for someone who passed through the same school a decade and a half ago.

They will, in time. From the kicking horse, to kicking a little arse. It won't get headlines like U of T did, but then again, I never went to that school.

Que Sarah, Sarah ...

Lest anyone is questioning Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's bona fides as a hockey mom.

Rest assured, she does bring to mind any number of unpleasant memories of the small-town power-trippers whom you might have had the misfortune to meet in your travels, right down to the propensity for money mismanagement and narrow-minded nastiness tinged with racism.

There's no plan to post about the U.S. election, or the Canadian election. This is a blog about sports. It's presumed people want a little respite when they turn to sports, which in the big box store of life, still is just the toy department.

Related:
Palin's Hockey Rink Leads To Legal Trouble in Town She Led (Wall Street Journal)

Canucks d-man Luc Bourdon killed in crash

The news that Canucks defenceman Luc Bourdon, just 21 years old, was killed in a motorcycle crash in his native New Brunswick makes anything else seem a little trivial by comparison.

Sympathies are due to the sports community in New Brunswick, which is barely removed from the fatal crash involving the basketball team at Bathurst High and now has to deal with the loss of one of its two active NHLers (presumably also the only Acadian in the league). Bourdon was from a community of about 3,000 people. Just imagine what it would feel like if a town such as Gananoque or Napanee lost its most famous son.

There's a post up at Mirtle. This isn't the time or place for moralizing. In the days ahead, some people will wonder why NHL teams don't have riders in players' contracts prohibiting them from driving motorcycles. The motorcycle lobby, no doubt, would have statistics showing that a motorcycle isn't that much more dangerous than four-wheeled travel. Let's stress that the circumstances of the crash haven't come out. A young man is dead. That's enough.

(UPDATE: More details have come out; the sanctimony is being left to others. Get over yourself, Scott Morrison. Puck Daddy has plenty of condemnation.)

You know it's a small town when ...

... a local woman making the Minnesota Vikings cheerleading squad not only rates a story in the paper, but the headline identifies her by her high school graduation year.

Related:
2003 Willmar High School graduate selected as cheerleader for Vikings (West Central Tribune)