John Tavares, Reggie Bush redux and the Gretzky no one remembers

One question du jour is whether Garth Snow will really take someone whose name does not rhyme with "avares" for the New York Islanders with the No. 1 overall pick.

Actually, it's three questions, posed the way Homer Simpson did when he and Apu met the head of the Kwik-E-Mart: Are you really not going to take John Tavares? Really? You?

Ours is not to divine the intent of Snow, who has warned he "won't be ruled by popular opinion." (Newsday.) One point that might not have been as emphasized as it should have been is that what's happened with Tavares over the past several weeks also goes back to something a young Wayne Gretzky pointed out 30 years ago.

The rules in hockey for players under the age of 20, which tend toward the one-size-fits-all, make sense for 99.9 per cent of the players. As you know, Tavares ended up with four seasons of junior before becoming eligible for the draft, instead of the standard two. He had an extra season at the front end, when the OHL let him into the league as a underaged 15-year-old in 2005. The OHL acted logically. There was no budging the age cut-off for the NHL draft, even though Tavares was clearly one player who had overcome early-year bias to become regarded as Everyone's First Overall Pick.

You likely know that Gretzky turned pro at age 17 in 1978, signing with the World Hockey Association, which folded a year later (the Edmonton Oilers and three other teams from "the Waaaaaaah" joined the NHL in an expansion which the league called a merger, but was really an expansion). What is less remembered is Walter Gretzky's version of how that came to pass, as he told it in Gretzky: From the Back Yard Rink to the Stanley Cup, a memoir published in the mid-'80s.

As the elder Gretzky put it, Wayne suggested going after his junior team, the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds, made a mid-season coaching change. He called home and asked his father to call the late John Bassett, Jr. Bassett, who owned the Birmingham Bulls, was a bit of a precursor to Jim Balsillie, a rich guy from Southern Ontario who was not above firing a shot across the bow of the NHL. In Bassett's case, that meant signing players before they were old enough for the NHL draft (at the time, the league drafted players at age 20)

"... in the very year the two leagues had agreed to go ahead and keep hands off under-age players, he'd gone and signed Ken Linseman, an 18-year-old playing for the Kingston Canadians. The way Wayne had it figured, if Mr. Bassett would sign one under-age player, maybe he'd sign two.

"He was really upset. I tried to clam him down and said I'd call Mr. Bassett. Twenty minutes later the phone rang again. 'Did you get him?' Wayne asked. 'What did he say?'

"Now, I had no intention of calling Mr. Bassett. I just let on I had while I tried to settle Wayne down. 'Stay in junior,' I said. ... 'You've got three more years of junior. You can play one year as an over-age ... In four years ou can go just about wherever you want and name your price!'

" 'If I stay here four more years," he said, "I'll never play pro. The longer you stay the more fault they'll find. Call Mr. Bassett! Please!" (Emphasis mine.)

That seems to shed light on what's happened with the public perception of John Tavares. The two extra seasons in junior gave everyone a longer window to conduct their fault-finding mission, pick at his skating, his dedication to defensive play. They simply had a better chance to build a case that he's less The Franchise than a premier offensive talent.

(It's also fair game to ask what playing a half-season for the London Knights, whom some call "The U of junior hockey," did for Tavares' rep. The Knights, in certain puckhead circles, are a bit like the Miami Hurricanes in college football back in the day. They're talented, but tend to let people know it, which doesn't play well in hockey.)

The point Gretzky made 30 years ago is something to consider as background to whatever you have/will read about Friday's NHL draft. Everyone has just had so long to size up Johnny T. the way one would an apple, and start paring off pieces. For pity's sake, even an estimable hockey writer such as Pierre LeBrun stresses, "I really don't know the gap between Tavares, (Swedish defenceman Victor) Hedman and (Brampton Battalion's Matt) Duchene other than what NHL scouts tell me," so who really knows with certainty which of them should be the first pick?

Like LeBrun says:

"The average hockey fan has been hearing about Tavares for a few years, the same way fans were warned repeatedly of the eventual arrivals of Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby and Patrick Kane in recent years.

"If Snow doesn't select Tavares, he better be sure of himself. The backlash in his market, I think, would be sizable; Isles fans have been talking up Tavares since Christmas."

One does wonder how analogous this might be to the lead-up to 2006 NFL draft and what happened with USC teammates Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart. The average football fan heard more than her/his fill about those two from 2004 through '06.

There was talk Leinart might have been a No. 1 overall pick after his junior season. In the fall of 2005, as he led USC to a 12-0 regular season, it became evident Leinart was little more than, "a gutsy Heisman winner who doesn't have the physical ability to succeed when the guys on defense get bigger and faster." (Josh Lewin, Slate, Oct. 17, 2005.)

The talk became that Bush, who ran like like the second coming of Gale Sayers for three seasons at USC, was the drop-dead No. 1 pick. The above-linked article concluded, "in a few years, the accountants will be lining up outside Reggie Bush's door." All the wiseguys were making Bush Bowl cracks when the Houston Texans and San Francisco 49ers, who were vying for the worst record in the NFL, met in a late-season game.

You know the rest of the story. The kneejerkers howled when the Houston Texans took Mario Williams, a pass rusher from North Carolina State. Doing so meant passing on Bush, not to mention a Texas Longhorns QB named Vince Young, who was a Houston native. (Leinart, meantime, dropped all the way to the 10th overall pick.) Meantime, three years on, Williams is an All-Pro defensive end. Bush, who went No. 2 overall to the New Orleans Saints, has gained fewer rushing-receiving yards in his first three seasons than the Minnesota Vikings' Adrian Peterson has in his first two. Young is a head case. Leinart is a punchline.

That might be an apples-to-pears comparison. Different sport, eh. There are a few common threads. One is that fans and by extension the media had heard a lot more about one player than another. Another is that both involved a franchise struggling to build an identity and brand awareness. The Houston Texans were (and are) an expansion franchise which has never made the NFL playoffs and they share a state with the Dallas Cowboys.

The Islanders are so lost in the shuffle in the New York media market that, as George Vecsey reflected in a great piece for The New York Times last month, it's reasonable to wonder if "hockey has come and gone on Long Island."

Anyway, who knows what Garth Snow is thinking going into the final 96 hours for draft night. Chris Botta, the team's former public relations staffer turned blogger, has been a first explainer, hinting that something crazy might go down on Friday night. Again, who knows. The point is the obvious, the longer a player is in the spotlight, the greater chance to disprove the hype. It will probably happen next season with Kingston's Taylor Hall, who like Tavares had to wait an extra year to be drafted due to where his birthday falls.

That is why it keeps coming back to what Wayne Gretzky supposedly told his dad three decades ago. It turned out No. 99 had nothing to worry about, but he sure was on to something about the folly and wisdom of talent evaluators, though.

(As for the NHL draft, the main interest for this site is when the Kingston Frontenacs' Ethan Werek is taken. Bob McKenzie has him ranked 41st.

Morning with Mr. Canoehead...

Stuff that bounces off your head like raisins off an Oldsmobile ...

The logic of those attack ads aimed at Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff basically meaning that Wayne Gretzky isn't an authentic Canadian. He's spent too much of his life outside the country, too.

Any guilt over not caring about major junior hockey's Memorial Cup unless you live in the city of a participating team. It's not your fault the Canadian Hockey League takes two weekends to decide a championship that can be done in one (OHL champ plays the QMJHL champ in the semi-final, winner plays the WHL in the final, over).

The sneaking suspicion that Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston's refusal to have Lyle Overbay pinch-hit for Kevin Millar against right-handed pitchers can be traced back to at-bat music. Overbay's song is Creed's One. You deserve to be spot-welded to the bench for that.

Rogers Sportsnet's Mike Toth ripping Roy Halladay for, in Tother's twisted logic, "not promoting baseball" in Toronto. This from someone whose ant overlords at Rogers Communications, Inc., sold off Blue Jays telecasts to TSN2, meaning fans can't watch some big games.

Newspaper publishers being crybabies about Google even though Google is willing to show them how to keep their pages from being indexed. The last thing anyone wants is for their content to be easily found.

The Rogers/TSN2 flap has continued to put the screws to NBA fans in Canada (the few, the proud) even long after the Raptors' season ended. TSN was scheduled to show a few games of the NBA conference finals, but it's got the NHL and the the Blue Jays-Red Sox series next week.

Lastly, great line from last night's 30 Rock: "We should go to a Yankees game. I have seats in the section between the players' wives and the players' mistresses ... I never go on Bat Day." At least the Yankees are going to start letting people into the good seats during batting practice.

Sympathy for the devil ...

Seeing the Guy Who Traded Gretzky up on fraud charges touches on the validity of ultimate charity.

The erstwhile Peter Puck has spent the last 30 years passing the buck, usually leaving someone else to do the clean-up — like the Canadian Deposit Insurance Corporation had to do in the 1980s when it forked out $359 million after Fidelity Trust Co. went under (Brent Jang, reportonbusiness.com, Dec. 23, 2008), or when the Alberta government spent more than $200 million during the 1990s on a bailout for his meat-packing company. That's the ugly side of his self-styled, free-wheeling entrepreneurship. Another truth is that it was capitalists such as Pocklington, Ben Hatskin in Winnipeg, Marcel Aubut in Quebec and Howard Baldwin in Hartford who, as the owners of the World Hockey Association teams which came into the NHL in 1979, helped make over a staid sport, for a time. There's forgiveness, we're just arguing how small a degree.

What Peter Pocklington is accused of doing — hiding assets during a bankruptcy proceeding. It is relatively penny-ante, compared to say, Bernie Madoff, but keep in mind that such malfeasance don't push people's buttons like violent crime.

The kicker, though, is that Pocklington's financial pinch was reported exhaustively by The Globe & Mail 10 weeks ago. It opened on with a recollection of the day last July when a burned former business partner named Naomi Balcombe and three U.S. marshals seized several of his assets, leaving his condo "as bare as Whoville in the wake of the Grinch." Thing is, few sports junkies, present company included, took much notice. It was two days before Christmas and the public appetite for seeing the mighty having fallen probably wasn't what it is today.

Today is really an epilogue. It sort of speaks to the amusing side of this, that it's actually hard to put down feelings of sympathy toward Peter Puck. He's 67 years old, he might end up doing hard time and he's reaped the whirlwind of the greed-is-good mantra that's permeated our society for the past three decades. Now we're in a fix and he's in a worse one. It looks good on him, but don't forget how we, by our actions, turned a blind eye to such behaviour for so long. Ultimately, to hell with him, it's okay to enjoy seeing him taken down. It's part of a great cleansing.

Related:
Ex-Oilers owner Pocklington charged with fraud (Canwest News Service)
Peter Puck's last stand (Brent Jang, Globe & Mail Report on Business, Dec. 23, 2008)

Going down with the ship

Sorry about the lack of posts lately. The DeRo contract situation at TFC has taken a lot of my attention...As information is drying up there, I anticipate having more time here...

You have to admit. There is something fitting about seeing Wayne Gretzky standing behind the bench of the dying Phoenix Coyotes. The Great One, after all, has always been front and centre with the NHL's sunbelt push. Not only with his trade in 1988, but also in later years when he would defend the league's plans. Spiritually, he never really returned to the north, even after he moved away from LA to St. Louis and the Rangers.

The Wayner has been gone for 20 years now. We aren't far removed from the day hen he will have lived in the US longer than in Canada. The footprint strategy is Gary Bettman's, but Gretzky has always been its highest profile face.

So now he stands, alone (seemingly) behind the Phoenix bench as reports swirl about the impending death of the franchise.

The numbers are staggering. They are $80-million US in debt and already tapping into league revenue set aside for 2009-10. There are now 18 people looking for work, as the Coyotes were forced to lay off 10 per cent of its front office.

Troubling still, the Coyotes apparently need the NHL's approval for any major player or financial transaction. This isn't quite the final days of the Expos yet, but it's getting damn close.

And there are likely more Phoenixs out there - Atlanta, Miami, Tampa and Nashville for sure. Who knows about Raleigh. Even more traditional markets have to be hurting.

Yet the band plays on. Bettman tells us that all is well and Gretzky is still standing there like the Louis Mountbatten of the NHL's Operation Sunbelt. The situation is hopeless, but the league just keeps pushing ahead anyway.

Of course no Canadian fan need to be reminded of where the Coyotes came from. That's just another painful coincidence of this mess for the Canuck puckhead. Maybe we could buy into the long-term plan when No. 99 was ripped from the heartland. Perhaps we might even try to understand when little Winnipeg lost its team. But, not when the endgame looks like this. It isn't what was promised. It isn't right.

Apparently the lease in Glendale is such that it can't be broken. So, it's foolish, really, to suggest the obvious. But, everyone is thinking it anyway.

The solution to Phoenix is staring us in the face. It's time for the team to come home. And if the world is fair, Gretzky will come with it.

Is it too early to start obsessing about the Olympic hockey team?

"The pressure will be great – and so is (Hockey Canada president Bob) Nicholson's challenge to assemble a management team (with the emphasis on team) that can diffuse and deflect that pressure away from the players.

No one does that better than Wayne Gretzky, who ran the show in 2002 when Canada won the gold in Salt Lake City, and then reprised that role with a victory two years later in the World Cup. The magic was missing in Turin, however, as Canada failed to win a medal at the 2006 Games and generally couldn't get anything going for reasons that baffle Nicholson to this day."

--Eric Duhatschek

There will be pressure on Canada to win hockey gold in Vancouver? In other news, Scarlett Johansson is pretty, Jack Layton looks a bit like a ‘70s porn star and Calgarians don’t care for the City of Toronto. Contrary to what many in this country are likely to think there will be more to Vancouver 2010 than a hockey tournament. But, that won't mean that there won’t be weeping in the streets if the boys in red and white don’t reaffirm our collective self-worth on the last day of the circus.

Canada could actually win the medal race—own that damn podium—and Doug from Swift Current is still going to view the Olympics to be an abysmal disaster if Canada takes silver in the shinny tournament.

So, Bob Nicholson might want to wrap his head around what went wrong in Italy (a tournament where Switzerland shut us out, it should be remembered). He might want to start with—GASP—the deity he had running the show there.

The Wayner might be good at “diffus(ing) and deflect(ing) that pressure away from the players,” not that anyone will be able to deflect pressure away from our hockey heroes in Vancouver, but he sure as hell hasn’t shown that he knows how to pick a hockey team.

Yes, he was in charge in 2002. Yes, Canada won gold at that Olympics. But, it was hardly a dominating performance. Actually, if Tommy Salo ducks we are probably taking about a 58-year drought.

And, have I mentioned that Switzerland shut us out in Turin.

Remember that when Paul DiPietro was busy tearing the heart out of hockey fans in his homeland, Sidney Crosby was watching at home on the tube while Todd Bertuzzi, Shane Doan and Kris Draper—F.O.Gs all--were getting regular turns on the Italian ice. Oh, and Bryan McCabe.

Hell of a hockey player that Gretzky. Probably the best ever. Mediocre, at best, manager/coach, however.

Gretzky will probably light the flame (and I’m good with that. Hell, have Orr hand it off to him after taking it from Lemieux. We do hockey here. Well. There is no sense ignoring it). Give him some figurehead role as part of the entire Olympic team (like, say, Pele with FIFA). Just don’t let him near the hockey war room, least we end up with a first line of Messier, Yzerman and that young pup Sackic.