Hoserdome: Picking the Olympic hockey team, while chewing on a Fellate of Fish

Mike Fisher is to Canada in 2010 as Ron Paul was to American politics in 2008. A few people really, really like him. Most people don't know who he is, let alone his qualifications.

Like a kid who swigged down a large Coke before a long car trip, it's impossible to hold this in any longer. The Fisher-for-Canada campaign has bordered on being a maple syrup-drenched Canadiana porn. The weak argument, which has had the most sway in Ottawa, won't die despite being stuck in Hockey Clichés 101 (Senators winger Chris Neil on The FAN 590 today: "Every game, he shows up, he plays hard. He does it at both ends of the ice. He'd be on my team."). It almost makes you wonder where we are as a sporting nation when people gleefully go along with such shallow jockism.

Fisher is a solid two-way player on an Ottawa Senators club which is getting on decentlypost-Dany Heatley (as prognosticated last June). He is the nice down-to-earth hockey player, truer to his roots than his VBF is on her visits to the salon. Even guys with an unblemished record of staunch heterosexuality will note he is totally man-pretty.

With all that, it is understandable why some fans want to see Fisher in Vancouver. What harm could he do as the 13th forward? It is understandable why some members of the hockey writers' tribe and CBC Sports clown Don Cherry, have played to the crowd, treating Fisher the way a public relations person treats a client.

This is not quite on a shame-on-them. You have seen Cherry's suits. You know he has no shame.

It's more of a comment on the divide between the Fish mongerers and those who would like to see sports debate in Canada -- i.e., hockey debate -- dragged out of some bygone era. It's just amusing when you have Fisher getting serious consideration in some circles, while other outside-of-Ottawa sources such as Tim Wharnsby at CBC Sports, Puck Daddy, the Kurtenblog guys don't even take the idea of Fisher seriously.

Three of five Globe & Mail writers had Fisher on their team. Two of four Hockey Night in Canada personalities, Cherry and Glenn Healy, also picked the Senator last Saturday. Oddly enough, in a Canwest News Service poll where editors, columnists and reporters made their picks anonymously, only 7% selected Fisher.

That is as it should be, since there are probably 18-20 Canadian forwards who are more eminently qualified. A cursory scan of Behind The Net shows Fisher has not exactly dominated opponents. He's benefited from playing with strong wingers, Nick Foligno, Alex Kovalev (yes, really) and the aforementioned Neil. He has averaged only 50 points per season in the post-lockout NHL. He doesn't offer much as a faceoff man, unlike other bubble players such as the Boston Bruins' Patrice Bergeron and the Chicago Blackhawks' Jonathan Toews.

Fisher being in the mix just attests to the paralysis by analysis that has gripped Canada every four years since the NHL began shutting down for the Olympics in 1998. People believe Canada needs a few role players -- cue Chris Neil, he does it at both ends of the ice! -- to play on the fourth line. Talk about a march to folly, where smart people pursue an end contrary to their self-interest (assist: Barbara Tuchman). Canada believes it can't match the offensive creativity and firepower of Russia, so its solution is to take fewer players with some serious snipe. As William Houston notes with the 2010 squad:

"Canada? An excellent team led by Sidney Crosby, but, like virtually every Canadian entry in an elite international competition, it will struggle to put the puck in the net. That's why Canadian general manager Steve Yzerman should be putting a priority on offensive talent rather than checkers. You have to assume the scorers will care enough to back check and pay attention in their own end. If it’s a choice between Martin St. Louis and Mike Richards, you go with St. Louis."

That hints at why Canada's only men's hockey medal since 1998 was aided by an all-time fluke goal, thanks again, Tommy Salo.

Who knows. Perhaps Team Canada GM Steve Yzerman will nail this and avoid the same pitfalls his predecessors did in '98 and 2006. Meantime, God only knows what is says when smart people wish to believe the No. 2 centre on a mid-pack Senators team should be one of Team Canada's 13 forwards. Ron Paul was a more legit candidate.

Enjoy the selection show on Wednesday at noon ET, presuming you can figure out which of 13 channels to watch it on.

In the interest of trying to be constructive, here is a potential 23-man roster:

• Forwards: Sidney Crosby, Jarome Iginla, Vincent Lecavalier, Joe Thornton, Patrick Marleau, Dany Heatley, Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry, Rick Nash, Jonathan Toews, Eric Staal, Brenden Morrow, Martin St-Louis.
  
  (Or Brad Richards, or Mike Richards, or Patrice Bergeron, or Shane Doan, or Patrick Sharp ... well, you get the point.)
  
  
• Defencemen: Dan Boyle, Jay Bouwmeester, Duncan Keith, Scott Niedermayer, Chris Pronger, Brent Seabrook, Shea Weber. (Niedermayer and/or Pronger should be left off in favour of Drew Doughty, but this is Canada. It won't happen. Whatever happened to Mike Green?)
  
  
• Goaltenders: Martin Brodeur, Roberto Luongo, Marc-André Fleury
  

Honestly, writing this called to mind the old This Hour Has 22 Minutes bit, "The Right Answer." Rick Mercer (funny in small doses) and Greg Thomey (the actually funny one) played two wingnut talking heads who would start off arguing but were really in agreement. They would shake hands and says, "And that's the right answer."

So, if Steve Yzerman actually selected Mike Fisher, and if Canada did not win gold, and if you take smug glee in that like you did when Canada with Todd Bertuzzi lost in Turin in 2006, what would that make me? An asshole. And that's the right answer.

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 end of an era in arena anachronisms!

Brian Kilrea's coaching career ended when the Ottawa 67's were eliminated in Game 7 overtime by the Niagara IceDogs in the playoffs, but really, this would make it official:



That post from a Facebook 67's fan group seems to have raised questions; either way, change is in the air.

During the World Junior championships in Ottawa last winter, the benches were on the north side, where the Soixys normally sit. The penalty boxes and sundry IIHF off-ice officials were on the south side, which is normally the visitors' bench. It is noteworthy that such talk is afoot now that Killer is no longer the coach. There's an off chance Kilrea might have resisted the move to have the benches on the same side. That has become a requirement throughout hockey, but it's understandable that Kilrea might have resisted, since he was used to having it a certain way (here one thinks of his contemporary Don Cherry's opinion, oft-expressed over the last 20 years, about putting the benches on the same side).

The setup kept the 67's from having to make a long change during the second period, which was arguably an unfair advantage for the home team, but no more so than those 3-in-3 weekends OHL fans must abide. Granted, the impact of the Civic Centre's unique architecture, where all of the seating on one side of the ice, has worked both ways in how it impacts the game. A poster on the New OHL Open Forum (which totally gets credit for this post idea) argued it has hurt the 67's:

"The biggest problem for the 67's was the opposing team had the opportunity of looking into the stands on the high side and seeing the capacity rink. All the 67's saw from the bench was the WALL. So, when you have 10,000 people cheering you on, you don't see them; therefore, you don't get as pumped up."

If they are going to be on the south side, then that has been rectified. Visiting teams will certainly lose the benefit of having an easier time making a change on the fly when a penalty expired, since the penalty boxes have been on that side of the ice.

The crux of this, though, really goes to what's lost when teams move into new arenas. This should not be taken as a young fogey's lament for an era that he is barely old enough to remember. The pathological nostalgia is best left to baby boomers. It's the loss of the little quirks of each arena which became part of the game's lore. The Civic Centre has its square corners, which as my contractor father points out, are peculiar to arenas built in Eastern Canada. The Peterborough Memorial Centre has similar square corners.

The Kingston Memorial Centre has benches on opposite sides of the ice. There was some intentional comedy during the third-last Frontenacs game there in February 2008 when Larry Mavety started to walk on to the ice during a shouting match with the Plymouth Whalers coach. The Memorial Centre also has its 200-by-92 ice surface, which was the Olympic dimensions when that arena was built (in the 1940s, not the 1890s, as some snarkers might have cracked). It was always a kick, as an adult, to overhear a group of four 11-year-olds looking at the ice surface, "Is that NHL size?" ... "No," the knowitall of the group might reply, "It's bigger," and of course his friends would doubt that an old barn in Kingston would have a rink seven feet wider than those in the NHL.

It is something which could only be absorbed by cultivating the habit at an early age, being a fan. You don't live in the world you were born into, though. Plus ça change!

(Thanks to Jason Cormier for the tip.)

Hoserdome 2009: Malkin from Mlodinow as Pens collect Cup

The Pittsburgh Penguins are walking around with Stanley Cup-sized hangovers and meantime, we should all be reading The Drunkard's Walk.

That Stanley Cup final which wrapped up last night is a good chance to reflect on randomness, which ruled this series. Randomness is good in sports. You don't want the odds-on fave winning all the time, it would be boring. So randomness it is for choosing a tell-all for the decider, where the Penguins beat the Detroit Red Wings 2-1. Why the hell not?

The road team won — which had not happened in Game 7 of the final since 1971. The Penguins beat the Red Wings, who almost never lose at home at the playoffs. The Pens were outscored 17-14 in the series, including 12-4 at Detroit's Joe Louis Arena. They won even though Sidney Crosby had many points in the final series as non-factor Marian Hossa. Crosby was also knocked out of Game 7 halfway through after his left knee was squished between the Wings' Johan Franzen and the boards. That should disabuse anyone of the notion the Penguins winning was some inside job orchestrated by the NHL to keep NBC happy.

The offensive hero of the decider, Max Talbot, who scored both Penguins goals, was not mentioned in a pregame Yahoo! Sports column on which listed twenty-seven potential Game 7 heroes. In the final two minutes, the Red Wings nearly forced overtime; a shot by Niklas Kronwall pinged the crossbar and ricocheted out instead of into the net and Pittsburgh goalie Marc-André Fleury made the save of his life, sliding cross-crease to deny Nicklas Lidström with one second left.

For this ass-talker's purposes, random is as much of a descriptive for this series as great. The choice here before Game 1 two weeks ago was "Pittsburgh in 7." It was not borne out of believing that Pittsburgh was the better team. It was steeped more in a passage from Leonard Mlodinow's best-seller, The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, which sports economist David Berri posted at The Wages of Wins Journal a couple weeks back:

"... if one team is good enough to warrant beating another in 55% of its games, the weaker team will nevertheless win a 7-game series about 4 times out of 10. And if the superior team could beat its opponent, on average, 2 out of 3 times they meet, the inferior team will still win a 7-game series about once every 5 match-ups. There is really no way for a sports league to change this."

It seemed like a good bit of back-pocket knowledge, especially since well before the playoffs, James Mirtle had written something along the lines of, "I'm starting to think this will be a year where we see a random Stanley Cup champion." It also provided basis for going against the grain beyond being, shudder, a contrarian for contrarian's sake.

Detroit seemed like the superior team, but not vastly superior to the Penguins, especially to someone who had no way of knowing for sure about each team's injuries. The Penguins were good enough to win a Stanley Cup and as Outliers argued, you don't have to be super-qualified, you just have to be qualified.

Berri's predictions for the NBA's conference finals indirectly (or perhaps not) illustrated the point. His analysis backed up what everyone who only half-follows hoops knew, that the Cleveland Cavaliers and L.A. Lakers were supposed to win in a pair of walkovers, five games maximum. You know the rest of the story. The Cavaliers were upended in six games by the Orlando Magic. Berri penned a follow-up called, "Fooled By Randomness," explaining,well, shit happens. As sports fans, we shouldn't run from it. We should embrace it.

"The small sample we see in the playoffs imposes an element of randomness on the outcome. This randomness makes it interesting, but it also makes decision-making complicated."

The New York Times' review of The Drunkard's Walk explains how people don't appreciate randomness when they're making predictions:

"... Anyone who has ever bought a mutual fund because it has been on a roll or bet that a racehorse will extend its winning streak has fallen into the same confusion. Chances are the champion will regress toward the mean and another will have its glory day. In all life's games, some players are better than others, but randomness maintains the upper hand.

Hardest of all for our blinkered brains are cases involving Bayesian statistics, where one must gauge how the probability of one event hinges on that of another."

One event hinging on that of another? That sounds much like the hockey media's tendency to form an opinion of what's going to happen in the next game based on the last game, or the last one in the arena of the team which has home ice. The way the Stanley Cup final played out certainly left everyone covering the series totally bumfuzzled.

The Red Wings won the first two games in Detroit, which was taken to mean that the Penguins were too young and and immature. The young and immature Penguins bounced back by winning the next two games, which indicated the Red Wings were old and tired. The old and tired Red Wings then blew the Penguins off the ice in a 5-0 rout in Game 5 last Saturday, chasing Fleury halfway through the game, hence the Penguins were done. At that point, the Anna Faris character from House Bunny (oh, don't act like you didn't download it) would have chimed in, "Ya, hence!"

Of course, Pittsburgh won three nights later at home to force Game 7. No one really knew what to believe anymore. It's not clear if the predictions for the winner-take-all game broke down along any blogger-vs. MSM lines. Puck Daddy surveyed eight hockey guys who write mostly for a web audience and five chose the Penguins.

Maybe everyone was just tired of Detroit winning. There are also straightforward hockey explanations. For one, Pittsburgh's rookie coach Dan Bylsma made some adjustments in Game 6 (James Mirtle, From The Rink). Marc-André Fleury had one hell of an evenout in Game 7 after struggling terribly in his previous outings in Detroit.

Secondary scoring also helps. Scratch a hockey coach whose team just lost a tightly contested series and he'll often tell you it could have been different if someone off the second and third line could have just popped a couple goals. The Penguins' winning goals in Games 6 and 7 came from Tyler Kennedy (15 goals and 35 points in the regular season) and Talbot (12 and 22). Meantime, the Red Wings also had five forwards who were, in hockey parlance, squeezing the stick exceptionally hard. Hossa, Tomas Holmström, Hart Trophy finalist Pavel Datsyuk (who was dealing with a foot injury), Jiri Hudler and Mikael Samuelsson all went goal-less in the final, finishing with scoring droughts ranging between eight and 19 games.

There's a randomness to that. Could anyone have foreseen Talbot scoring four goals in the final after scoring two in the first three playoff series? Could have anyone have predicted all five of those players going stone-cold at the same time? Likely not. Mlodinow's point about what can happen when one team should beat the other 55% of the time seems to apply.

It would be nice to say yours truly had the courage of his convictions throughout the past two weeks, but I turtled. On Kinger's sports talk radio show on CFRC 101.9 in Kingston, I stuck by the Pittsburgh pick, simply saying, "I'm going to ride it out, like George Costanza when he had that bad stock." It turns out that was the smart play (and in that Seinfeld episode, George ends up with a financial windfall after deciding to "go down with the ship.")

The Penguins were full value for their effort. Writing this is just a way to point out that while everything is so black-and-white in how sports are presented, with winners and losers, really it's not. There was some randomness to how this went down; that's one simplification among dozens.

At the very least, it is one way to disabuse anyone who says the Red Wings are over the hill when, as Mirtle says, "Detroit's got the top minds in the game in the front office and behind the bench, and I have no doubt they'll be back in the finals in the near future."

In sports, sometimes the winning team is the one that executes when an opportunity comes along. It can be completely random, like outcomes in everyday life. It sure made for a hell of a series.

P.S. Did anyone else have an issue with Hockey Night in Canada's Don Cherry referring to the season as "nine months of war" last night? War metaphors in sports are usually a no-no and it seems kind of hypocritical coming from someone who's always talking about Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan. It's almost like Cherry, a smart man, should be more aware of the distinction.

Related:
Playing The Odds (George Johnson, The New York Times, June 8, 2008)

Lost Classic: George Plimpton's 'Open Net' back in print

It always seemed like people weren't aware the late George Plimpton penned a hockey book after attending Boston Bruins training camp as a goaltender and playing in an exhibition game.

Well, good news: Open Net will be back in print in September, along with the late author's four other participatory sports tomes, with identical cover designs (The Bogey Man, Paper Lion, Out Of My League and Shadow Box). Come on, you owe to yourself to read a book that has this description of playing goal:

"With the puck at the other end, it was not unlike (it occurred to me) standing at the edge of a mill pond, looking out across a quiet expanse at some vague activity at the opposite end almost too far to be discernible - could they be bass fishing out there? - but then suddenly the distant, aimless, waterbug scurrying becomes an oncoming surge of movement as everything - players, sticks, the puck - starts coming on a direct line, almost as if a tsunami, that awesome tidal wave of the South Pacific, had suddenly materialized at the far end of the mill pond and was beginning to sweep down toward one."

Presumably, the reason Open Net hasn't endured in memory the same way Plimpton's other books has to do with the fact it was essentially a late-'70s Sports Illustrated magazine article which he fleshed out to book length in 1985. It probably wouldn't have anything to do with hockey fans having very little appetite for an outsider's irreverent take on their sport.

However, the Bruins players accepted Plimpton as one of their own, for the most part. Some of them are still familiar names, since Don Cherry has name-dropping with Stan Jonathan and Wayne Cashman for the past 30 years.

Plimpton's portrayal of Cherry was also a far cry from Grapes' TV persona. Cherry came off as much less of a blowhard, with far less singularity to his personality than his critics and his defenders alike see in him three decades later. It's worth a read, for sure.

Here's what The New York Times had to say when Plimpton's book was published.)

CBC Sports: The sticks are composite; Cherry's entrance was wooden

Don't ask how CBC Sports can reconcile Don Cherry ripping Alex Ovechkin for doing stuff that's "not part of hockey" and then waste airtime on something that's not part of hockey. At least Ovie's shenanigans are mostly kept to the regular season.



Far be it to say last night's Dos Equis parody was a bad idea, executed very poorly. It was actually a good diversionary tactic. It's more water cooler-worthy than Cherry's "claim Saturday that hockey players 'do not take drugs,' " (Chris Zelkovich, Toronto Star), which was either blissful ignorance or grossly irresponsible.

It was also pretty much exactly what Jeff Blair predicted would happen when news came out last week about a guy who'd been busted for selling steroids claiming he sold them to Washington Capitals players.

Anyway, here's what Blair said last week:

".. it will be fun to see how the NHL turtles in response to a report out of Central Florida that a man is claiming he's sold steroids to members of the Washington Capitals and Nationals. This is how baseball was ultimately outed. This is how the code of silence or more likely lack of interest or moral ambiguity on the part of those of us who covered the game was broken and the whole steroid mess unravelled. Considering how much of the stuff that goes on the ice smacks of good old-fashioned 'roid rage, my guess is there's some fire behind this smoke.

It would not come as a shock. Hockey players would not be any more immune to juicing up than their counterparts in baseball, basketball, soccer, football, mixed martial arts, cycling, the Olympics, and on, and on. The NHL doesn't drug-test in the off-season. There is plausible deniability, though:

"Al Strachan topped (Cherry) a period later. After blasting those who say hockey players just haven't been caught, he added, 'Using that logic, I guess, Mother Teresa was a mass murderer. They just never caught her killing people.' Ron MacLean rightly called that 'ridiculous.' "

The NHL, give it credit, seems aware that the public wants to see leagues at least say they're trying to get rid of the scourge of steroids, even though they help make it possible for players to put on such amazing performances over an eight-month-long season.

Anyway, back to the Dos Equis parody. Not to be Buzz Killington on this, but one would think one of those 553 middle managers at the CBC could have found a voice-over person who at least remotely sounded like the narrator in those commercials.

Those commercials are damn entertaining, but people are aware that they're a rip-off of something else, right?

"Improbable one-liners describing an allegedly interesting man flooded pop culture in 2005, with 'Chuck Norris Facts.' Chuck Norris can kill two stones with one bird. He sweats Gatorade. His tears cure cancer ... Too bad he's never cried. Etc., etc., etc.

"Some of those one liners, I have to say, are funny. But the larger theme under which they are generated is extremely tired. Chuck Norris Facts were spun off, and in some cases stolen from, the Vin Diesel Fact Generator (which also generated facts about Mr. T And Bob Saget). And the Vin Diesel Fact Generator was clearly a rip off of the 1996 Saturday Night Live sketch, Bill Brasky, which involved a couple of alcoholics sitting around reminiscing about their superhuman friend. Bill Brasky inhaled a seagull, scissor kicked Angela Landsbury, and sweated Gatorade, by the way."

In other words, Hockey Night in Canada was way late to the party with Cherry's entrance. Forgive them, though. Look at how long it took to face facts that Jim Hughson should supplant Bob Cole as their No. 1 play-by-play man. As a great man once said, that's the CBC for you!

You kids out there, don't use that word

Irony: On Saturday night, CBC showed Pulp Fiction with the F-word edited out, but some are saying Don Cherry said it on-air earlier that night during the post-game wrap of Game 2 of the Vancouver-Chicago series.



In all honesty, it seems pretty innocuous and it's only being pointed out because it was amusing the Ceeb cut the swears out of a late-night movie that aired right after its preeminent puck personality polluted the airwaves.

Cherry was commentating over a series of clips that showed how the Canucks forwards were sagging down low in their own zone and then rushing out to try and block shots, inadvertently screening goalie Roberto Luongo. It starts at about the 1:10 mark.

"I mean, why would you run out like that? Fuck, look the guy's gonna run out again."

The fact it took several days for the clip to get YouTubed suggests it was pretty benign. It happens. There's a scene in The Boys of Summer when Roger Kahn describes his father, a college professor, insisting profanity is superfluous to good English. Kahn, having heard the way ballplayers talk, says it is the other way around in sports: Good English is superfluous to profanity. It's going to happen in sports broadcasting and we should be grateful that it can be laughed off instead nailing someone for it.

Coming up next, Curling For Loonies

It's no "Oh, you'll win her back, eh, and b) we're closing in 10 minutes," and it can't hold a candle to Bart and Milhouse being on the Canada Olympic basketball team ("Wow, that was close — you can be centre"). However, The Simpsons referenced Canada right off the hop in last night's episode.



A Mid-Atlantic Hockey League conference semi-final do-over game. Nice. It's a total coincidence, but Canadian curler John Morris dropped a Simpsons reference into an interview today about being recognized in public:

"There are some nights when you just want to put on the ’Guy Incognito’ costume and go in and no one knows who you are and you can just go have a beer with your buddies."

Related:
What if Don Cherry were an animated French Canadian? (Bitter Leafs Fan; clip via Awful Announcing)

Pat Burns at peace ...

Pat Burns' interview with Hockey Night in Canada is probably worth a view on a lazy Sunday afternoon. His is an unlikely story, from police officer to Stanley Cup-winning coach. As a coach, he came off the way fans hoped they would if they ever got to coach a NHL team: Nasty, a little dictatorial, but sharp-tongued.

Meantime, on the hockey front, there are some pointed words for Don Cherry after his editorial reply to Alex Ovechkin's "hot stick" 50th goal celebration. At least Cherry's first rant had a point; this was all over the place.

Much obliged to crazieman76 for the video capturing.

Brunt blunt about Cherry's act

Just to totally belabour it ... it would be remiss not to pass on what Stephen Brunt had to say about a certain high-collared hockey commentator: "... what (Don Cherry is really saying is that not just hockey, but life was better back when nearly every player in the NHL was Canadian."

Brunt, as you can see, can sift out the political and keep this focused on sports.

"For the moment, however, consider only how that logic applies to the world of sports. Consider any other game, and just try to imagine a similar line of argument.

"The English can occasionally sound a bit xenophobic when they discuss the sport they invented and the pervasiveness of imported talent in the Premier League, but no one could seriously argue that the global talent pool, the wildly varying styles of play, haven't made soccer stronger, more popular, more fun to watch.

"No one who loves basketball seriously laments the arrival of Europeans and Africans and Asians in the NBA. No one thinks it was a dark day when Hakeem Olajuwon or Dirk Nowitzki or Yao Ming brought their talents to North America (and no one believes that a flamboyant dunk ought to be punished by cutting the dunker's knees out from under him).

"... baseball's increasing diversity is viewed as a huge plus. Who pines for the days before Ichiro and Dice K, before Latin players arrived on the scene, before African-Americans were allowed to play in the big leagues? To do so wouldn't just make you a racist, it would mean you were blind to the fact those players made the sport in every way better."

One point made yesterday was that if the content is the audience, then, "Cherry reminds us of the Canada we would rather not be so much anymore. He's an atavism, a ghetto hoser." Brunt has that covered too, without actually coining a term such as "ghetto hoser" (although a million points if you get the reference, the author and the novel):

"(Cherry's) most enthusiastic customers are those who must find the streets of Toronto or Montreal or Vancouver very alienating indeed. He imagines Eden in the mythical, homogeneous Parry Sound that gave birth to Bobby Orr.

"... But when the act becomes truly embarrassing, you have to wonder how many people really think like him any more? How many living in what has forever been a land of immigrants are really so flummoxed by anything deemed not sufficiently Anglo-Saxon?"

That's the size of it, really.

Retail:
It's a small world, according to Cherry (Stephen Brunt, globesports.com)

The great Grapes squashing; chickens come home to roost

It seems like there was a coordinated offensive against Don Cherry today in the wake of his "soccer goofs" comment which Duane diced up on Saturday.

Bruce Arthur in the National Post said the legendary hockey commentator has gone from "from straight-talkin' sensation to walking caricature." There is an editorial today in the Vancouver Province ("Cherry totally out of touch") and sassback from a good Carbonear, N.L., boy Dan Cleary from the Detroit Red Wings team which purportedly no one wants to watch because it has too many Europeans, but which is also the biggest road draw in the NHL: "He's getting up there. Who won it all last year? Perhaps he's forgotten." Arthur, though, takes the cake:

"Cherry has done a lot of good for hockey, and for charity, and for the CBC's bottom line. But popularity aside, Don Cherry has almost become the George W. Bush of hockey: Ignorant, ideological, dismissive of the facts, governed by his gut. The crotchety grandfather act can still be fun, but overall, the CBC looks worse every year for his presence."

Please set aside that Dubya comparisons are a no-no (too easy, too obvious, too painful a reminder) and ignore that those links are all from papers in the same chain. It is worth asking how long Cherry has left on his CBC Sports contract. People have taken up rhetorical pitchforks against Cherry before and so long as people have trouble separating their own leanings from what's real, it will be hard to tell if this amount to much, especially since CBC Sports digs in every time.

Cherry actually reached the point of caricature at least five years ago. It seems like the media might feel more emboldened this time around. Who knows, perhaps the Feb. 3 Macleans article by Charlie Gillis which detailed how Cherry used Mike Sanderson, the father of the late Don Sanderson, to advance his agenda has had more impact than it did when it appeared one month ago today.

" 'Other people won’t understand this,' Don Cherry told his coast-to-coast audience after attending Donald Sanderson's memorial service in Port Perry, Ont. 'But Mike is a hockey guy.'

" ... So if you’ve been gathering your information on this slow-moving controversy from Coach’s Corner, it may surprise you to learn that Michael Sanderson would in fact love to see fighting eliminated from the game. You may be shocked to hear he supports measures that would suffocate the practice. Automatic ejections? 'Helluva rule.' Requiring players to keep their helmets and visors on during fights? 'Great. If they know they’re going to be punching plastic with their bare hands, they’ll eventually stop.'

"... Oh, and one more thing: he’s no friend of Don Cherry, with whom he says he has 'issues.' 'He said we sat there like we were buddies [at Donald's funeral],' Sanderson says tightly. 'I'm, like, no we didn’t.' "

It is understandable that some people might say Cherry is being scapegoated at a time when it's an in-thing to seem progressive and sensitive, but that's just obfuscation writ large. This all comes back a core principle of the late, great Fire Joe Morgan: Someone who paid to offer informed commentary on a sporting event is professionally obligated to keep up with what's current in terms of analyzing the sport.

Cherry has not done that in quite some time. During the Stanley Cup final last spring, he insisted Gary Roberts was the most important player in the series when he was getting third-line minutes. He was nowhere to be found after the decisive game when he should have been eating crow and congratulating Nicklas Lidstrom for becoming the first European to captain a Cup winner.

Throw in the fact that it's a big small-l liberal love-in during the first days of the Obama presidency, and it's bad news for Cherry. There is probably no literal connection between the two, but not so long ago you wouldn't have heard Canadian sportswriters rising to the defence of soccer players, like Arthur did on Monday:

"But it was the way Cherry presented his case that left the usual sour taste. Besides the usual anti-European bile ... Cherry showed a montage of soccer players celebrating, and as it showed a group of four enthusiastic black players dancing close to the camera, Cherry said, 'Now watch this, look at this - this is what we want our hockey players to act like?'

"The charge of racism has been thrown at Cherry over his treatment of Europeans and Francophone Canadians, but because those aren't traditionally identifiable minorities, the charges don't seem to stick. But intentionally or not, this looked for all the world like a more familiar brand of racism." -- Arthur

Some might argue that is a little strong, but the gloves are off with CBC Sports for having allowed it to reach this point, Ron-and-Don are bigger than the franchise. Rank-and-file fans in Marmora might not care, but it's held Hockey Night in Canada back (and it's an affront to the legacy of Ralph Mellanby, who always wanted a show that was cutting-edge).

Cherry, in his heyday, brought some levity and a sense of fun to Hockey Night in Canada, but it has long reached the point where it's consumed the man entirely. Things have kind of caught up him in the last little while. Of course, assuming anything is about to change presumes the CBC has its finger on the pulse of the country, and that's a bigger leap of logic than claiming Red Wings attendance has more to do with how many Swedes they have than the Michigan economy.

Ovechkin is better without the Cherry

Picking on Don Cherry is too easy by half, but sometimes...

Moments ago we were treated to several shots of “soccer goofs” celebrating goals (at least they lead with a TFC goal...). This offends Don. It’s not the Canadian way to show joy, I guess. It’s best not to stand out.

Cherry used this rant to spin into a criticism of Alex Ovechkin. Cheery thinks he’s a bit too much like a “soccer goof” (The unspoken here, of course, being that Canadians don’t play soccer. They play soccer).

Somebody is gonna get him and somebody is gonna get him good. You just watch it...don’t you Canadian kids act like this.

Good God. Wouldn’t that just be great. Let’s hope that some talentless hack “gets” Ovechkin. That’ll stop him from having fun. Hopefully, he’ll stop being so damn entertaining. That’s what hockey needs. Less flair.



(deep breath)

Cherry is an old man. He’s stuck in his ways. But, he’s dead wrong about so much that it’s difficult to even comprehend just how out to lunch he is. It’s pretty much pointless to point out how idiotic this idea that a “real” player (i.e. Canadian) needs to be colourless. There is a saying about urination and weather patterns that comes to mind. But, what the hey.

The best thing to happen to the NHL in the last 10 years is Ovechkin. He plays the game with such joy and skill that it’s infectious. If the league is to ever overcome the fools that run it we’re going to need 25 more Ovechkins. The last thing it needs is for someone to “get” any of them.

Everyone loves the crusty old uncle that gets away with saying obscene things that would have been offensive in a frat house in 1972. But no one takes them seriously. Too many hockey people listen to the crusty uncle and continue to base the game's mores on his ramblings. Enough.

Hey Canadian kids, don’t be afraid to play the game outside of the rotten little box that Cherry and company are desperate to keep it in. Remember that the greatest Canadian players of all-time – including, ironically, Cherry’s hero Bobby Orr – played waaaaay outside that box. Gretzky, Lemieux, and Richard didn’t become legends by keeping their stick on the ice.

Exuberant celebration of goals isn’t what’s killing the game. Cherry is. It’s time all of us that care about the game to do what we need to do while standing against the wind.

Related: Yes, 'cause this is what's wrong with hockey

Dougie defined us, fully completely

The analogies with Doug Gilmour fall short, just like the Leafs have so often.

The best stab at fighting through any ambivalence on the eve of Gilmour's big night in Toronto, is that for two years, 1993 and '94, he embodied something that courses through Canadians on a chromosomal level. Plain and simple, he was embodied by what he didn't have, which is like next to godliness in the Great White North, eh.

There's a passage in Roy MacGregor's cult hockey novel (hacky to be quoting, true), The Last Season, which better explains why "great and being loved can be two different things" in sports, hockey in particular (assist to Cox Bloc). A small-town hockey coach, Ted "Sugar" Bowles, closes a pregame pep talk to the protagonist's team, "What makes a shark truly unusual is what he doesn't have. And that's a swim bladder ... A shark has to keep moving constantly. A shark does not float, like other fish. He has no swim bladder, see. He can't let up for a minute and that's what makes him top dog."

Gilmour, in 1993 and '94, was our shark. Either you got him or you never could. It's just like how five of Kingston's other favourite sons, the Tragically Hip, are rock gods in Canada but have seldom charted in the United States. Both were too particular to their time and place to translate very well.

He had to keep moving. In the end, that gets a player more attention than those who have the supple arrogance of grace, which is what doomed Mats Sundin to being Tall Poppy Syndromed. There were better playmakers in the NHL during Gilmour's prime years, such as Adam Oates, or Pat La-La-Lafontaine. There were comparable good undersized players, such as Theo Fleury. For two-way centremen, Steve Yzerman and his three rings come to mind.

None of them stretch across 1993 to 2009 like Gilmour, now the Manchurian Coach of the Kingston Frontenacs.

Please keep in mind it was the Leafs, post-Harold Ballard and pre-Ontario Teachers Pension Plan. Down in Kingston, where ol' Pal Hal had been in the clinker for a couple years in the '70s (he was in Bath Institution, next door to the "Millhaven maximum security" that the Hip mention in the first verse of 38 Years Old), there were boys and girls willing to cheer for the dismal Leafs, instead of the still majestic Montreal Canadiens or the Edmonton Oilers.

There was no pinpointing the low point. My best friend Neil Acharya often talks of the day in 1988 when Mark Potter, the sports anchor at CKWS, led off with, "You'll never believe what the Leafs have done this time," alluding to the infamous Russ Courtnall-for-John Kordic trade. There is an argument it might have been a good deal for the Leafs.

In '89, Floyd (Trader) Smith dealt away the draft choice which the New Jersey Devils used to draft Scott Niedermayer. Ballard died in '90. In '91, Cliff Fletcher came in as GM. In the early hours of '92, Fletcher made The Trade to get Gilmour.



Go ahead and laugh, but the Game 7 overtime win over the Red Wings in the first round in 1993 was, wait for it, legendary. They could have played that series 10 times and the Red Wings, with Yzerman, Paul Coffey and Sergei Fedorov, would have won eight or nine times. Bob Cole's sum-up at the unlikelihood of it all, "I am going to talk to Cliff Fletcher and Pat Burns and I am going to ask them to pick my numbers for the lotto next week," still raises chill bumps.



It is pretty easy to see Gilmour and look back at '93 and get bogged down in bathos. It could never be so linear at age 16. You're such a jumble of hormones, half-thoughts and trying not to get your ass kicked just for living. (Aside: That's different from being 32 how? Well, the ass-kickings only come in the figurative sense.)

It was a pretty good place for an average guy to start self-medicating with sports, music and such. Kingston's Doug Gilmour had the year of his life leading the Leafs sadistically close to the Stanley Cup final. The Hip — there was a young, hockey-haired Gord Downie in a team picture from 1978-79, the goalie on the far left of the front row, hanging at Henderson Arena in Amherstview — had just come out with Fully Completely. The Blue Jays were on their way to back-to-back World Series championships in baseball; Queen's had won the Vanier Cup in football. After Wayne Gretzky's high stick-Kerry Fraser's no call-Dave Ellett's skate happened, the hockey gods came through with a makeup call. Another good Kingston boy, Kirk Muller, scored the Stanley Cup-winner for the Montreal Canadiens a couple weeks later.

Doug Gilmour was defining, no two ways about it. He was a smart player and he had the look, the one that landed him the nickname Killer. He'd worked for everything, from making it to the NHL after being a seventh-round pick to playing his way on to Team Canada in '87. He made hockey seem a little closer just as it drifting away from people in heartland Canadian towns (remember, the year of Gilmour was also Year 1 of Gary Bettman). Maybe it is like seeing your high school yearbook photo, especially when you see the clips from Don Cherry's Rock 'Em Sock 'Em videos, but there's no deniability.



Sixteen years later, it might be just random accessed memories. It is no more important nor more interesting than the Winnipeg Jets of the '70s or the 1982 Vancouver Canucks are to people who grew up in another time or place. There is still the burn every Leafs fan has to live with, knowing his best was not enough to silence the "Sixty-seven!" chants.

For me at least, it is complicated further since, as a rookie coach, Gilmour is now of an embarrassing gong show being perpetrated by Doug Springer, owner of the Kingston Frontenacs. The joke making the rounds is that Gilmour, can no longer be called Killer. That nickname belongs to Brian Kilrea in Ottawa.

There is a symmetry to Gilmour's foray into coaching. Say whatever you want about him as a coach (and people have), but like a lot of ex-jocks, he's just trying to figure out where he fits in, like everyone else. It makes him one of us, OK sure he has a lot more money, but Saturday we will be applauding one of our own.

Related:
Getting a lift; He may not be a distinguished coach just yet, but Doug Gilmour the player is that and more (Michael Traikos, National Post)

Ken Holland's words: It has to start somewhere, it has to start some time

The lid was almost screwed on tightly on the fighting in hockey debate, but it might have been ripped off for at least a couple more news cycles.

"The biggest thing with our sport is you look at the other major sports — football, basketball, baseball — you're ejected from the game for fighting. They have a different culture ... We've had a different culture, history and tradition ... I think we should revisit it, because of what happened with that young player (Don Sanderson) in Ontario."
— Detroit Red Wings GM Ken Holland, at globesports.com

This might be sidetracked by people pointing out that's easy enough for Holland to say. The Red Wings have had the fewest fighting majors in the NHL by a factor of two. That is a bit of a logical fallacy, discrediting the person instead addressing her/his argument.

Holland's words are welcome to fans who are numbed to hearing this discussion invariably degenerate into an exchange of insults, "knuckle dragger" and "Neanderthal" on one end, "tree hugger" and "granola eater" on the other. Holland is also easier to side with than Pierre McGuire, who give him credit, is has stood his ground (although one of his corporate brethren calling it "intestinal fortitude" is a bit much; it's sports broadcasting).

It seems like 10 years ago, you would have never heard that from a NHL executive, so it represents progress. Holland wasn't calling for a ban, mind you. The premeditated fights, where two players line up for a faceoff and thrown down their gloves as soon as the puck is dropped could stand to go. Fights which are a honest outgrowth of emotion, spur of the moment, after a cheap shot on a teammate, is going to harder to outlaw.

At least Holland and McGuire, among others, are showing leadership, which might segue into a recent discussion over whether Don Cherry merits induction in the Hockey Hall of Fame. At first shrug, one might say, "Sure, why not?"

There's a reasonable case for Grapes. A counter-argument is that Hall of Fame is supposed to reflect greatness (stop laughing at the mere thought of this about an institution that has Harold Ballard in the builders' category). As Cox Bloc noted, Cherry does not rate induction in the HHOF since he has never used his pulpit for much other than the bullying variety. Putting him in confuses celebrity with greatness:

"At just about every turn, Don Cherry has been wrong about the direction of the game, preferring outdated shibboleths to innovation and progress. How can you honour a builder who would, given his choice not build the game but tear it down and return it to the Eddie Shore era? Cherry's done about as much to build good hockey as his buddy Mike Milbury did to build a dynasty on Long Island.

"Would baseball honour a commentator who was best known for opposing batting helmets, supporting beanballs and benchclearing brawls, and baiting Hispanic players at every opportunity?"

The point, sorry for repeating myself, is that attitudes change slowly and people need to have an open mind. The common refrain with violence in hockey is that we never learn in Canada. The New York Times sent a correspondent to Whitby, Ont., in the aftermath of Sanderson's death and found it's as if some fans, not all, haven't learned anything:

"... the crowd of a few hundred rippled with excitement. The audience seemed to have forgotten that the Dunlops lost a teammate to fighting only two weeks earlier. A fan of the Dundas Real McCoys leaned over to his friend. 'Did you see that right hook?' he said. 'Did you see him go down?' "

That kind of pleasure was never harmless to begin with, but at least that is hitting home. Again, busting on hockey is not going to change things, nor is grandstanding or taking a hard line. Small actions are needed. Stay in your seat when a fight starts at a junior or pro game. If you're watching at home, get up and leave the room. It can have a bigger impact than you might think, just like one GM saying maybe it's time to really get to the heart of the matter.

Related:
Red Wings' GM open to debate on fighting (Allan Maki, globesports.com)
Player’s Death Revives Debate on Fighting in Hockey (Katie Thomas, The New York Times)
Put Cherry in the Hall (From The Rink)

Some business left over from 2008

There is probably still time to get a vote in for Cox Bloc's Mittenstringer of the Year, which honours, so to speak, the worst in Toronto sports media personalities.

They have branched out from just newspapers to a certainly high collar-wearing Hockey Night in Canada personality who, while a national treasure, is not what he used to be. For the journos, this is not something to be feared: Last year's honouree was not even nominated this time around. Being roasted had a positive effect.

Related:
Congrats! It's a MOY! (Cox Bloc)

Sennies, Santa and Sour Grapes: Out there, people are talking

It is good to pass along a couple alternative viewpoints on a day when Eugene Melnyk is promising the Senators will be a top-four team in the Eastern Conference and Don Cherry's war on dressing down continues unabated.

The biggest, of course, is that Erin Nicks, perhaps as an über-obscure homage to early 1990s Saturday Night Live sketches, has written the ultimate kiss-off post over at The Universal Cynic.

The OSHC can continue to lurk around here all they want, but they should know they're wasting their time. It's one thing to suck; it's quite another to put people to sleep in the process. We all know how much the Sens "hate it" when fans and the media pile on. Be very careful what you wish for, ladies. Let's see what happens when observers finally throw in the towel, stop caring and move on to other interests. Check the falling numbers on the attendance. Listen to the frustration and hopelessness of the fans on the post-game show. News flash, Mensas: You're losing them. You're losing your fans in a fairweather town, and you're too damn proud to admit that this time, you f*cked up huge. Bravo.

On the Melnyk front, Puck Daddy has a good summation of the Senators' sputtering season: "Can the Senators really be expected to be contenders with okay goaltending and zero secondary scoring?"

Meantime, Ray Emery was on the FAN 590 talking about his experiences playing in Russia. Why couldn't The Team 1200 score an interview with him?

Meantime, our man Jean-Pierre Allard is taking on a couple of issues revolving around men in loud, red suits. He's got a letter to the editor in the Toronto Star suggesting Cherry be appointed the Senators' fashion consultant, and meantime, he's suggesting a Christmases Future should come with fewer gifts.

In other words, it's just getting good in Hockey Country. It's a helluva toboggan ride.

Related:
Dreamy optimism meets harsh reality in embarrassing Ottawa (Sean Leahy, Puck Daddy)

Spin-o-rama into my heart

You've likely seen this:



It's pretty much the talk of the town today (and if it's the talk of T.O. it's likely being forced down the throat a conversation starter everywhere in our fair land).

Pretty cool move, eh?

If you were insane enough to listen to the post-game presser last night you would have heard two or three of the reporters ask Ron Wilson what he thought of the move. In particular the reporters wanted to know whether Blake would have had a one way ticket to Exhibition Place if he had missed (somehow it doesn't seem as menacing as sending them to Newfoundland did) and whether he would have been pissed if a Devils player had made that move on the Leafs.

Thankfully, Wilson gave the correct answers ("Don't care what they do as long as they score" and "no, it's up to us to stop what they do"). But, it's telling that the questions were even asked. Only in hockey would the display of creativity be questioned. Just ask Don Cherry. Hockey players, especially Canadian hockey players, don't "showboat." Just keep your stick on the ice and finish your checks.

Remember this:


Or more importantly do you remember Cherry's reaction to the "lacrosse goal?" Somehow that incredible display of skill was held up as evidence of all that was wrong with the game by the people's philosopher. "Let's see the little punk try that in the NHL" was essentially the message.

And, in one way, Cherry was right. Crosby would be taking his life in his own hands if he made a move like that in the NHL. One of the league's thugs would have "delivered a message" to Crosby for having the audacity to be creative. And, the hockey world would have taken the goon's side -- "serves the little punk right," would be the attitude. "How dare he stand above."

Think Blake is going to keep his head up the next time the Leafs play the Devils?

It's insane. As Canadians we should be proud that we have produced players like Crosby that can do the things that he can do and that even middling players like Blake have the skill to pull off a move like he did last night.

In Hamilton a senior hockey player is on his deathbed after whacking his head off the ice in a fight. Across the U.S. south several NHL franchises are on the brink of bankruptcy (and don't think there isn't a connection between those two ideas. Yes, the people in the rinks cheer when there are fights. That's easy to see. But, we don't know how many people watching at home are turning away). Yet hockey's deep thinkers continue to insist that there is nothing wrong.

It's a wonderful game. Or, at least it can be when the skill and speed of its players are allowed to shine through. But, too often that's lost in the ugliness that grabs the headlines.

If the NHL ever needed a showboat, it's now.

Kill the pig! Bash his head!!

All Sean Avery! All the time!!
Below the jump. Updated constantly.

See if you see anything missing from the Dallas Stars roster.

Edit: As I type we are about 30 minutes away from the start of Sean Avery's meeting with Gary Bettman in New York. It's likely an hour or so from when the suspension will be announced.

I've heard some experts predict that he will get as much as 15 games, which would make it one of the all-time longest suspensions.

With that in mind, it's useful to look at the history of how the NHL has handled racial slurs (the closest parallel to what Avery did. Today's progressive feminism is a new thing for the league, I guess) . Bnet has a nice little summery here.

Three games has been the max. And, that was with Chris Simon, a man that was about as popular as Avery. Speaking of Simon, I'm still looking for a history of how the NHL has handled incidents of of racism towards natives. I suspect I'll be looking for a while.

Edit 2: No word yet as of 12:20 p.m. EST. About 10 minutes ago Hockey Central at Noon's Daren Millard had these two gems back to back.

First: "I hope they give him 15 games," said with disgust dripping off the tongue.
Then: "(paraphrasing) The only thing I've heard is maybe they should have let him play against Calgary so that justice could have been served on the ice," said with barely hidden regret.

So, let's review. Using the term "sloppy seconds" is grounds for the 12th longest suspension in NHL history, yet openly wishing that the Flames had the chance to beat the snot out of him — something that would, it always needs to be said, land you in jail if it happened on the street, is perfectly reasonable. It's puckhead thinking at its most embarrassing, illogical best.

Sloppy seconds is more stupid than it is truly offensive (although there is an element of flippancy to the term that is offensive. It's saying that women have no worth other than as conquests for men. She's nothing but someone I once had sex with...). A suspension in line with what others have received for similar things (see above) is likely in order. Some sensitivity training? Why not. But, 15 games? It simply isn't justifiable. Not with the NHL's past history it isn't.

Edit 3: (Puck Daddy has a very comprehensive post.)

Edit 4: So, it's 5:11 p.m. EST and I've yet to see a NHL press release show up in my inbox with the title "League suspends Dallas Star..." So, it might be tomorrow before we get a ruling on this. Late tomorrow, as one can expect with any touchy press release.

Of course that means we have to listen to the puritans in the working puckhead media for another day. So, what a delay accomplishes God only knows.

The other possibility here is that the league's lawyers are working overtime to find a way to justify a lengthy suspension. 'Cause, as stated, it isn't really justifiable and Avery doesn't strike me as a good soldier that will lie down and take it if Bettman and co go all medieval.

Edit 5: Did everyone see that the Ottawa Sun's Bruce Garrioch wrote that it is, "Time to ban Sean Avery from the NHL for life ...

"Make an example of this guy. Ban him for life. Classless. Conduct detrimental to the game is about the least of the worries. Enough of Avery already. Bad actor. Bad act. Time for him to go. For good."

Edit 6: God love Colby Cosh:

A surprising number of sportswriters have had no problem with the league’s instant invention of a retroactive campus-style speech code to deal with Avery’s outburst. Perhaps it’s because their own freedom of speech is hostage to abusive NHL front offices; your average hockey writer bites his tongue so much that the damn thing drops right off about a week into his career. The rest of us, however, have no trouble understanding what is wrong with a business that is not in the opinion trade monitoring an employee’s off-duty speech and punishing him for it

How refreshing to see a MSM article -- albeit from a guy that only writes about hockey peripherally -- that actually tries to defend Avery a bit. Yes, he's an tool at times, but my God...by the reaction you would have thought he had hunted down an opposing player in a premeditated fashion, jumped him from behind and slammed his head into the ice so hard it broke his neck. It's a good thing you never see that type of behaviour in hockey and the worse thing Gary Bettman has to deal with is Avery's (who has never been suspended before, by the way) potty mouth.

Edit 6.5: Glove tap to Mr. Cosh himself who sent me this link in an e-mail exchange. Some are starting to break through the Group Think.

Edit 7: It's six games. By three games, it's the longest NHL suspension for non-violent behaviour in history. It likely won't satisfy the majority of bloodthirsty puckheads in the media and in society.

It goes without saying that if the league treated actual violent behaviour this seriously there would be a lot less players with eight-month long headaches.

More reaction to come, I'm sure...

Edit 8: Here is the NHL press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / DECEMBER 5, 2008


STARS’ AVERY TO SEEK PROFESSIONAL ANGER MANAGEMENT EVALUATION SUSPENDED FOR
SIX GAMES

NEW YORK (December 5, 2008) -- Dallas Stars forward Sean Avery
has been suspended for six games, without pay, as a result of inappropriate
public comments that he made Tuesday in Calgary. Avery has agreed to seek a
professional anger management evaluation and, if necessary, structured
counseling in response to a pattern of unacceptable and antisocial
behavior.
Avery met with Commissioner Bettman at a hearing in New York
yesterday. Also in attendance were NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly, NHL
Senior Executive Vice President and Director of Hockey Operations Colin
Campbell, NHL Associate Counsel Jessica Berman, Dallas Stars co-General
Manager Brett Hull, NHLPA General Counsel Ian Penny, NHLPA Director of
Player Affairs Glenn Healy and Avery’s agent, Pat Morris.
“Mr. Avery has expressed remorse for his recent comments and has
sought a professional anger management evaluation,” Commissioner Bettman
said. “I will require that he follow through with that process as a
condition of his returning to the ice and that he complies with any and all
recommendations.
“Mr. Avery has been warned repeatedly about his conduct and comments,
which have too often been at odds with the manner in which his more than
700 fellow players conduct themselves.
“Playing in the National Hockey League is a privilege, requiring a
high standard of personal behavior. Mr. Avery forfeits that privilege for
six games.”
Avery was suspended in accordance with the provisions of NHL By-Law
17 and Article 6 of the NHL Constitution for conduct "detrimental to the
League or game of hockey.”
In addition to the two games already served, Avery will miss
games Dec. 5 vs. Colorado, Dec. 10 vs. Phoenix, Dec. 12 vs. Detroit and
Dec. 13 at Nashville.

Edit 9: People close to the game, of course, have always held deeply progressive feelings about the place of women in and around it:


So, the league's reaction to Avery is just really keeping in that tradition.

Friday afternoon, at the movies

Brad Pitt, as you probably heard, is going to star in the adaptation of one of the great books of Western Civilization -- Moneyball.

Oh, and he's also starring in an adaptation of some book called The Odyssey. That book is pretty good too, despite having only one Homer.

The crazy part is that it's still seems more scalable than the plans for a Don Cherry biopic. Also, not that anyone asked, but of the four Michael Lewis books that sit on my shelf, Moneyball seems like it would be the toughest to adapt into a film script when compared to Liar's Poker, The New New Thing and The Blind Side. The latter would be the role of a lifetime -- what actor could physically carry off the role of 6-foot-5, 350-lb. Michael Oher and actually be able to act too?

All Your Base Are Belong To Rios suggests John Turturro for the minor role of J.P. Ricciardi. Would J.P. then reprise his role as "Fan At The Bar" from Fever Pitch?

Related:
Brad Pitt's Double Bill: The Odyssey and Moneyball (FirstShowing.net; via Walkoff Walk)

Sean Avery, becoming a personal hero

Sean Avery slagging Don Cherry on The Hour is a headline-grabber, no doubt. Please don't ignore that he actually stuck some pins in another Canadian sacred cow — major junior hockey.

"Avery, who is from Pickering, Ont., and played in the Ontario Hockey League, said a junior hockey player's focus on the game to the exclusion of everything else is 'terrible.'

“ 'I didn't go to school,' he said. 'I dropped out at Grade 9. I didn't learn to play the piano. I didn't read Moby Dick. I didn't read anything.' ”

It is welcome to hear someone who is an active player actually articulate the reality of hockey's economic system (loose definition). It has made the players richer, but haven't necessary enriched them.

Good on Avery for saying something interesting. And, yes, he dissed Don Cherry.

"Avery said he used to defend Cherry to European teammates.

“ 'The European guys hated him, but I always stuck up for him,' he said. 'I said, ‘it's Grapes'. You've got to love him. But he would bash the European guys.

"And there are a lot of great European players. They may not be the toughest guys in the world, but they still bring an exciting part to the game.

“ 'I'm just over with him.' ”

(Link via James Mirtle.)



Related:
Avery sour on Grapes (William Houston, globesports.com)