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.

Shameless plugs for a balding guy; we're on Puck Daddy!

The Yahoo! Sports hockey blog, Puck Daddy, has been running an awesome "5 Reasons I Love Hockey" feature, collecting testimonials from media personalities such as TSN's Bob McKenzie and top hockey bloggers such as James Mirtle and Erin Nicks and

The series was supposed to run in the summer, but Greg Wyshynski extended it into the season. Guess who got his chance today?

The intent was to try to cite five reasons that had not been previously mentioned. You bet your sweet bippy CIS hockey got some love.

Related:
Five Reasons Blogging Journalist Neate Sager Loves Hockey (Puck Daddy)

DanyWatch Day 23: Heater left holding the bag, which might not contain $4 million

None of the principals in the Dany Heatley debacle had time to pick up face paint for Canada Day, but boy are their faces red.

This is not about trying to figure out how this ends. Maybe it gets worked out within a day, or maybe a team who strikes out in free agency will look at "Dany Nicks" as a nice silver medal.

This is more about about being a fan and feeling inadequate trying to figure out what's going on in a league where two front offices do not even seem to understand the rules. The Ottawa Senators and Edmonton Oilers, and possibly Heatley's agents, seemed to work on the assumption a trade had to be wrapped up by 12 a.m. July 1, since hey, that was what they'd heard on TSN and read in the newspaper like all us Al Capp schmos. There was that $4-million matzo ball, the bonus Heatley was due, hanging out there, as you know. It turns out, as mc79hockey explained, they had another 24 hours, possibly longer. Cue Tyler Dellow, who knows this stuff cold (he has a law degree, which makes him the Canadian version of Craig Calcaterra):

"The really interesting thing though is that I don’t think Ottawa necessarily has to pay Heatley the $4MM at some point (Wednesday). The CBA specifically deals with what happens when a team defaults on a contract.

"... There is, I think, some room here for the Senators to simply agree with Heatley that they will default on payment of his bonus and that he'll hold off on grieving that default. Then, once he’s traded, he can file his grievance and his new team can cure the default."

This is the pertinent section of the CBA Tyler dug out:

"11.15 Default. If a Club defaults in the payment of any compensation to the Player provided for in his SPC (standard player's contract — Ed.) or fails to perform any other obligation under his SPC, the Player may, by notice in writing to the Club and to the League and the NHLPA, specify the nature of any and all defaults and thereafter:

(a) If the Club fails to remedy the default within fourteen (14) days from receipt of such notice, except as hereinafter provided in subsections (b), (c) and (d) of this Section 11.15, the SPC shall be terminated, and, upon the date of such termination, all obligations of both parties shall cease, except the obligation of the Club to pay the Player’s compensation to that date."

Cripes, where was that piece of understanding three weeks ago? No doubt there are some CBA experts who were aware, but we are talking about the normals.

It sure looks like everyone believed they had a deadline. Hindsight is 20/15 when someone is standing to the side of it all. However, it stands to reason that if Heatley and his agents were aware of the rules, they could have said to the Senators, "Dany is going to sleep on it," before talking to the New York Rangers, who cleared cap space by trading Scott Gomez to the Montreal Canadiens in the afternoon. The Senators probably could have sat tight and remained in control of the situation. Instead, they were sitting there getting tense because of a deadline that was not only arbitrary, but apparently wrong. No wonder beat writers in other NHL cities are calling Eugene Melnyk's franchise "one of the most dysfunctional clubs in the NHL."

The point, hopefully, is how much one's eyes can get opened to the realities of the salary-capped NHL within a span of 24 hours. This stems from a comment one of this site's users, Alex, left Tuesday morning which turned to be prescient, at least for now-now:

"The reason Heatley is not going to be dealt (at least possibly until the trade deadline) is the lack of understanding of value in the cap environment by Ottawa fans. Every Ottawa fan seems to be expecting a huge return for him. But his value is not high. He is an excellent player and maybe he will get 50 goals again, but his contract is bad enough to cut his value way down. They would get spare parts and other people's salary problems in return. Near the trade deadline when contenders are looking to add salary is when his value will be at its peak, but still with the length of the contact it won't be what fans are expecting.

"Since Murray (who above all wants to avoid looking bad or disappointing fans) can't get what fans expect for him, he won't be dealt."

From the get-go, it seemed like a lot of the Heatley coverage in Ottawa has not reflected that the days are gone when one team could just pick up the phone and hammer out a blockbuster trade.

The other big ball-and-stick sports have gone through this evolution. In the NFL, you rarely see star players traded in their prime. (The deal the Chicago Bears made with the Denver Broncos for quarterback Jake Cutler does not count since Denver's coach is a wingnut and Cutler is not actually a star).

The informational revolution in baseball over the past 10 years has made it harder for teams to flip a veteran for a package of prospects at the trade deadline. Meantime, in pro basketball, only the truly deranged really understand the ins and outs and why it's good to add a player with an expiring contract, like the Raptors did last winter with veteran forward Shawn Marion.

Try telling that to anyone today. After all, the Hockey Reflex dictates that consumers should be led to believe something big is going to go down before the next commercial break. Of course, it does not always go that way, as TSN's insider, Darren Dreger, said on his Twitter after the first round of the NHL draft last Friday ...

"The perfect storm didn't materialize. Tons of talk, but the cap complications killed deals. Saturday should be fun."*

... but it will, probably in the next few minutes, honest.

Ultimately, it seems better to try to understand how this is possible. The endless flame-fanning and rip-jobs in the Ottawa media (and Edmonton too, shame on you, Terry Jones) got really old really fast. Heatley should not rate a single iota of sympathy. He asked for a trade, got one, and shot it down. The situation is akin to Trish Piedmont telling Andy Stitzer in The 40-Year-Old Virgin: "You asked for this, Andy. You asked for all of it." Puck Daddy's headline is "Oilers, Senators had deal in place; Heatley nixed it."

The media might point the cannon at Heatley (fist bump: John Fogerty), but the onus is misplaced. James Mirtle noted the CBA is a culprit:

• "There has to be some way to force players to either (a) honour their contractual commitment to a team or (b) not be able to veto deals when they're the ones requesting a trade. Heatley put the Sens in a terrible position by asking (publicly, no less) to be moved with his July 1 bonus date approaching, and if he now is going to turn down deals, it's going to become increasingly difficult for GM Bryan Murray to get anything resembling fair value for his top player.


• "How bad would it be if the Sens had to pay Heatley's $4-million bonus before making a trade? Well, his contract was heavily front-loaded, with Ottawa paying out $10-million in Year 1 of a six-year, $45-million extension he signed in 2007. If Murray pays the bonus, it'll mean Ottawa forked out $14-million — 31 per cent of the contract — for only one season under those terms, and the acquiring team will get Heatley for just $31-million over five years (about $6-million a season instead of $7.5-million)."

See how far you get with that down on Parliament Hill today, though. Heatley is the bad guy, but a NHL GM not knowing the rules might be worse.

Many metabeers should be consumed in Tyler Dellow's honour on this Canada Day. (That is a new word for beers you say you're going to drink in gratitude to someone, except you're now a semi-responsible adult and have to be sober enough to drive, or get on the right bus, subway and/or streetcar).

UPDATE: Alanah McGinley has all-things-considered take defence of Heatley posted at Kukla's Korner that reasonable-minded Senators fans ought to read.

"... most of the rhetoric floating around seems to go off the charts.

"And why? Well, the justification for this is clear, we're told. First, Heatley went public with his desire to leave Ottawa. Next, he turned down a possible escape trade to Edmonton, making the situation infinitely worse.

"However, being that I’m willing to give Heatley the benefit of the doubt, I’m also willing to believe in at least the possibility that there were other factors at play in the choices he’s made in the last few weeks. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that a goalie named Ray Emery was in the hot seat, getting blamed for all the destruction around him as his once-mighty Senators took an abrupt and unexplainable plummet into the crapper. And back then, everyone whispered all sorts of unsubstantiated and shocking gossip blaming Emery for the team’s fortunes.

"But then Emery left and seems to have done reasonably well since then. And yet Ottawa is still... Ottawa.

"So isn’t it remotely possible — just an tiny bit possible — that the problems in Ottawa might have more to do with the Senators organization itself than any one player? If so, then maybe Dany Heatley's comments to Darren Dreger last night, implying he felt he was getting deliberately screwed around by the team, are at least reasonable from his point of view. (Not that I have any reason to believe he was, simply that I'm no more likely to let the Senators off the hook than I am to let Heatley off for this mess.)

"On the other hand, Heatley is the one that made this public and that wanted out of a contract that HE willingly signed in the first place, so he has plenty of fault in this no matter what. And I’m not saying the Senators are the 'bad guys' in this drama, either. Only that we don’t necessarily know the whole story. And since Heatley strikes me as a reasonably smart guy able to anticipate he’d look pretty bad in all this, I can only assume he felt he had good reasons to take this path.

"Whatever the truth, it seems likely there's far more back-story to this than simply 'Dany Heatley is an evil psycho,' and everyone's sanctimonious moaning about how terribly Heatley has treated the 'poor Ottawa Senators' strikes me as an infantile over-reaction. At the end of the day, it's just business, and conflicts aren't unheard of in business, especially given the amounts of money at stake.

"... until some clever and gutsy Ottawa hockey journalist writes a tell-all book about Heatley and/or the Senators, I'm reserving judgment."

(*It wasn't.)

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)

Monday morning with Mr. Canoehead...

Let it bounce off you like raisins off an Oldsmobile ... check out Puck Daddy's post on the Memorial Cup, by the way ...

Mark Teixeira hitting a home run at Coors Field East the new Yankee Stadium on a pitch where he broke his bat. There would be calls for a Congressional inquiry if someone built a park in Denver or Houston where it was that easy to hit a home run.

Broadcasters who don't realize you "can't succeed by forcing zany or funny or irreverence," as Phil Mushnick put it. That would include TSN's Darren Dutchyshen joking about Pittsburgh Penguins star Evgeni Malkin's parents "having sexy time" while recapping a playoff game last week. It's not insensitive, it's just witless. Borat references were old three days after the movie came out, let alone almost three years later.

The same goes for Rogers Sportsnet baseball commentator Darrin Fletcher eating on-air during a recent Jays game. They're just having fun, damn it, so what if it's bad broadcasting?

Knowing that if the NHL moves the start of the Stanley Cup final ahead to this weekend, it will only be because of a bout of temporary sanity. It means cheering for Detroit to oust Chicago on Tuesday, which is a small price to pay.

An altogether stinky sports Sunday: Blue Jays lose sixth in a row, the Memorial Cup finally was basically over halfway through the first period, the NBA playoff game was a hackfest (61 fouls called in Orlando's win) and having to fake an interest in the Indianapolis 500. There's a lot to be said for being aloof and acting above it all.

Windsor wins Memorial Cup, scores one for Malcolm Gladwell

The Windsor Spitfires, junior hockey champions, were a great third-period team.

And a great second-quarter team.

The wordsmiths covering the Memorial Cup can capture the spirit of Windsor's triumph for the papers and the sportscasts. The Spitfires, representing a city devastated by the bottoming-out of the U.S. auto industry, are the first team to win the Memorial Cup after losing its first two games of the tournament. They are just a year removed from captain Mickey Renaud's death from a rare heart ailment age 19, which GM Warren Rychel said at the time was "the biggest tragedy in Spitfire history."

(Puck Daddy has did it justice, brilliantly.)

A broader if not necessarily larger truth could be Rychel and coach Bob Boughner, who as our own Trevor Stewart explained last November, have a special eye for talent. This is kind of a complicated post and you're excused for not reading.

The book Outliers shone a light on the disproportionate number of elite hockey players born in the first three months of the year. The Spitfires actually had the fewest (7) of the four teams at the tournament. The tourney MVP, good Kingston boy Taylor Hall, is a November baby, who is not eligible for the NHL draft until 2010. Windsor's captain and No. 1 goaltender were also born late in the year. The runners-up, the Kelowna Rockets, whose Western Hockey League drafts players at age 15 (a year earlier than the other two leagues), had the most, 10, which is fairly typical. The point is the obvious: Maybe one way to get a read on a major junior team's front office is to see how many regulars it has who were born outside the Jan. 1-March 31 window.

This does not explain the outcome of today's game. That debate could be steered around to the ridiculously long layoff Kelowna had between meaningful games. The Spitfires scored on their first three shots before the Rockets could even skate off the rust from four days between games, for pity's sake. As defenceman Ben Shutron told Gare Joyce of sportsnet.ca, they were "the best-conditioned team in the tournament."

However, what made that possible? They had to get there first. Looking at the rosters for the two finalists hints at Malcolm Gladwell's point in Outliers about how we are not "always particularly smart about how to make the best use of our talent." (ESPN.com, Dec. 8, 2008.) It might also illustrate how Rychel/Boughner are smarter than most of their competition.

As Gladwell explains, there is a huge blind spot with identifying good hockey players. The major junior teams which can negotiate around this might be the ones who put themselves in position to pull off something like Windsor did:

"It's a beautiful example of a self-fulfilling prophecy. In Canada, the eligibility cutoff for age-class hockey programs is Jan. 1 ... Coaches start streaming the best hockey players into elite programs, where they practice more and play more games and get better coaching, as early as 8 or 9. But who tends to be the 'best' player at age 8 or 9? The oldest, of course — the kids born nearest the cut-off date, who can be as much as almost a year older than kids born at the other end of the cut-off date. When you are 8 years old, 10 or 11 extra months of maturity means a lot."

The Windsor brain trust's wisdom might be borne out when you group the Spitfires' and Rockets' Memorial Cup rosters by which quarter of the year the players were born in (January-February-March; April-May-June; and so on.)

Kelowna: 10-4-6-3
Windsor: 7-10-4-5

Kelowna's 10 players born between Jan. 1-March 31 include star defenceman Tyler Myers (Feb. 1, 1990) and starting goalie Mark Guggenberger (Jan. 10, 1989). The Rockets were considered an improbable WHL champion, but the team they upset in the championship series, the Calgary Hitmen, had a somewhat similar birthday distribution: 10-6-4-2. The main reason to cite Kelowna and Calgary is to show what the age distribution often tends to be with major junior teams: Lots of players born early in the year, very few born in the summer and fall. It doesn't explain why Windsor won, it's just background for how they rebuilt in two years.

At age 16, when players are drafted in the OHL, the advantage early-birthday kids have can wreak havoc with teams' evaluations. It evens out somewhat by the time those players are 18, 19 and 20. The Windsor team which Warren Rychel assembled has several contributors born in the second quarter of the year, between April 1 and June 30 (hence second-quarter team):

• Greg Nemisz (June 5, 1990) — Nemisz, who had seven points in six games at the Memorial Cup, was thought of as a bit of reach when he was taken with the No. 7 overall pick in the 2006 OHL draft. Two years later, the 6-foot-4, 200-lb. winger became a first-round pick in the NHL (25th overall to Calgary).
  


• Dale Mitchell (April 9, 1989) — Like Nemisz, Mitchell went in the same round of the NHL draft that he did in the OHL draft (third round to the Leafs in 2007 and third round by Oshawa in '05). Mitchell, a trade deadline pickup, scored a natural hat trick in the tie-breaker game vs. Rimouski and some thought he, not Hall, could have been the MVP.
  


• Andrei Loktionov (May 30, 1990) — Also notched seven points during the tournament. Kind of a wild card since he's Russian.


• Mark Cundari (April 23, 1990)— One of Windsor's top defencemen; was able to take a regular shift in the OHL as a 16-year-old rookie in 2006-07, when Boughner and Rychel went with a youth movement.


• Ben Shutron (June 14, 1988) — A feel-good story, since he played for Kitchener in the '08 Memorial Cup and was a whipping boy while he was with the human comedy which is the Kingston Frontenacs. Gare Joyce wrote a nice piece about Shutron for sportsnet.ca ahead of Sunday's final.

Windsor was the only team at the tourney with more April-May-June birthdates than Jan.-Feb.-March (Drummondville, the Quebec league champ, had eight of each).

Meantime, three of Windsor's veteran role players were all "wrong birthdays" who were acquired in trades:

• Rob Kwiet (Aug. 2, 1988) — An overage defenceman who started out with the Mississauga St. Michael's Majors. Scored the third Windsor goal.
  
  
• Lane MacDermid — A tough guy who was a valuable penalty killer during the playoff run. Originally taken 159th overall in the 2005 draft by the Owen Sound Attack.
  
  
• Scott Timmins (Sept. 11, 1989) — Centre who was with Kitchener last season. Originally a fifth-round pick.

Last but not least, there are the fourth-quarter players:

• Andrew Engelage (Oct. 28, 1988) — A kind of OHL version of the Red Wings' Chris Osgood (often criticized, but his teams win) who was originally a 13th-round draft choice. Ended up being in net for 64 wins this season after Windsor was criticized in some corners for not trading for a more ballyhood goalie, such as Red Wings prospect Thomas McCollum.
  
  
• Taylor Hall (Nov. 14, 1991) — One wonders what Hall's progress would have been if his family had not moved from Western Canada to Kingston before he was exposed to the draft. Hall's father was a pro athlete (CFL), which means he has the genes to counter his wrong birthday.
  
  
• Harry Young (Nov. 12, 1989) — The team captain and a Windsor native, Young was a fourth-round pick in 2005 by Guelph. Windsor got him via trade.

Of course, by this point, you might have figured out, "Hey, smartass, Windsor's best NHL draft prospect, Ryan Ellis, was born Jan. 3! Doesn't that blow the theory out of the water?"

Ellis, who just became the 20th player to win a world junior gold medal and a Memorial Cup in the same season, is an outlier. Concerns about his size (5-foot-10, 173 lbs.) led to the offensive defenceman slipping through the entire first round in the 2007 OHL draft before Windsor snapped him up in the second. If you read the feature story Sun Media's Ryan Pyette wrote about Ellis ahead of today's game, you see traces of that "ten thousand hours" theory:

" 'I was constantly shooting pucks,' Windsor Spitfires star defenceman Ryan Ellis said of growing up in Freelton, Ont., near Hamilton. 'We had a (white) garage door my dad tried to repair a million times. But it didn't work. There was really nothing left of it. It had brick in the middle but it just covered the net.

" 'I basically destroyed the door.'

"... Boughner remembers, a couple of years ago, pulling into the Ellis driveway to interview the Spitfires' potential draft pick. He saw the garage door with the terrible dents.

" 'Warren (GM Warren Rychel) said I have to see this kid play and after I did, I went to meet him,' Boughner said. 'You watch him knock down bouncing pucks at the blue line and he has the most unbelievable hand-eye co-ordination I've ever seen. It's innate talent, but he works harder than anyone at it. He shoots a ton of pucks. In the games, he doesn't shoot enough for my liking. I'm always on him to shoot more.' "

You know the rest of the story. Ellis scored the sealer today, the fourth goal in a 4-1 win, on a slapshot from the point after some nice work along the end boards by the November baby, Taylor Hall.

Obviously, junior teams should not draft or trade based on birthdates. Maybe they should use it a check when they try gauge the upside of a 15- or 16-year-old player. (Oddly enough, the Belleville Bulls are losing P.K. Subban, who went from sixth-round pick in the OHL to a top prospect for the Montreal Canadiens and a two-time world junior defenceman. Subban's birthday? May 13, making him another second-quarter player.)

All this might go to show is how well each team stickhandles around a built-in bias in hockey toward players born in January, February and March. It might show how well teams do with evaluating a player who is not a finished OHL-ready product at age 16, which is almost every player.

It is interesting if you look at the birthdates of players on an also-ran team. Selecting one at random ... the Kingston Frontenacs.

It turns out the Frontenacs are absolutely top-heavy with January, February and March birthdates, 12 in total. In the 2007 OHL priority selection, they didn't take a single player born between July 1-Dec. 31. Coincidentally or not, the only selections from that '07 draft who have panned out were the first two picks, forward Ethan Werek (June 7) and d-man Taylor Doherty (March 2). Doherty is coming off a disappointing second season, but will get drafted into the NHL because teams can't teach size (6-foot-8, 220 lbs. give or take).

Only two players on this past season's team, defenceman Brian Lashoff (July 16, 1990) and winger George Lovatsis (Nov. 30, 1989), were born in the second half of the year. Lashoff ended up being signed by the Detroit Red Wings after being passed over in the 2008 NHL draft, which makes him a late bloomer. Lovatsis proved to be a fan favourite last season. They were, on balance, decent additions.

As you might expect with a 19th-place hockey club, the Frontenacs make a lot of in-season trades. One of general mangler Larry Mavety's trademarks is to deal for a former high draft choice, telling anyone who will listen that he's bound to realize his potential with the Fronts.

This season the Frontenacs traded for three forwards who had each gone relatively high in the draft, Kelly Geoffrey, Colt Kennedy and Mitch Lebar. You know where this is going: Their birthdays fall within a five-day span in late January, the 25th, 28th and 29th. Perhaps it is true they haven't found the right fit. Based on the evidence, it might be that starting from an early age, they had a leg up on their peers. That made them seem better than they really were, and now their peer group has closed the gap.

Windsor has an abundance of players who didn't have the benefit of an early birthday and/or were not drafted early at age 16. They're the champs. Kingston, the Siberia of major junior hockey, has all these players with early birthdays who were taken high and are now perceived as not playing to potential. In the words of an old Twilight Zone episode, how many coincidences add up to a fact?

There are other factors in building a winner in the OHL. How players are treated, fan and community support, being able to bend the draft rules, each play a role. The best this analysis can do is be a gauge for who can find the hidden gem, and who doesn't know their ass from a hole in the ground.

(In the recent draft, the Frontenacs used the 37th and 42nd overall picks on players not born in January, February and March. Winger Brett Morgan, a late second-rounder, was born Aug. 12. Clark Seymour, the defenceman taken early in the third, was born May 18. There might be hope yet for this franchise!)

Snark break...

Milk before the cereal? You wild man, you... how was your Have-Not Province Party?

The Creighton University baseball team, which is also the Blue Jays, lost in extra innings on Tuesday, just like their American League namesake. In case you're wondering, they also didn't use Travis Snider in the final three innings. (Seriously, Cito Gaston, you don't manage to protect the egos of marginal talent.)

The Buffalo Bills' Toronto game is on a Thursday, meaning it will be on the NFL Network. Someone please ask Rogers chairman Phil Lind how having the game on a network no one in the U.S. gets will, in his words, "re-introduce Toronto to American viewers as a tourist haven." As a double whammy, Rogers is spending all this money to promote a game that will air in Canada on rival TSN.

The New York Jets are also skedded for home games during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Smooth move, NFL.

Hockey Night in Canada's playoff preview, as you know, included the perspicacious puck pundits from Canucks Corner, Kuklas Korner and Puck Daddy, which was essential. It was a bit heart-sinking that good airtime was wasted on the tapped-out blogs vs. mainstream media debate, which is a major eye-glazer compared to talking about who's going to advance in the playoffs.



That whole debate is about as fresh as a Leafs joke. Anyway, that's just a small quibble from a small person. Greg Wyshynski is taking the St. Louis Blues to beat the Vancouver Canucks, by the way.

Free-agent NHLer Mike Comrie's dad founded the Canadian furniture chain, The Brick. After the season Comrie had, some team should be able to sign him for no money down.

No one remembers if David Beckham took any reds when he played for the L.A. Galaxy, but he got carded while trying to buy a glass of red wine once.

It's hard to figure out who to root for in a lawsuit between Woody Allen and American Apparel. One is really creepy, disgusting and sleazy. The other makes movies.

This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• Garry Nunn scored the series-winning goal for the Vancouver Giants in the second round of the WHL playoffs last night. Hosing him out of a college education really paid off.
• For anyone wondering, the only reason to pay attention to the NFL draft is to see if a team will give Pat White a shot at playing quarterback. A six-foot-nothin' left-handed scrambler who played for a spread option team at West Virginia? Do it.
• A belated congrats to a friend and fellow 2002 University of King's College grad, Renée Mercuri, and her spouse, Joshua Tusin. They welcomed their first child, Maxence "Max" Tao Mercuri Tusin, into the world on April 6.

Do the Terrier dance...

Please, next year, let's have the Frozen Four championship game available in Canada on a tier 1 cable channel, since you don't get many Colby Cohen moments too often. Rogers Sportsnet, which showed some NCAA games earlier this season, had baseball commitments.

It would have been a hell of a lot better than that out-with-a-whimper final installment of the Battle of Ontario, where the Leafs done did themselves out of a spot in the NHL draft lottery. Boston U, as you know, beat Miami of Ohio 4-3 in overtime after scoring twice in the final minute of regulation to tie it before Cohen, off a stainless-steel cojones no-look pass from James Shattenkirk, shot and had the puck redirect off Miami of Ohio's Kevin Roeder. Crazy. It was Boise State on ice.

Seriously, the NCAA Tournament needs to be on in Canada. Is it selfish to feel ripped off by not getting to watch a college hockey game and not getting to see Brad May drop the mitts in his final NHL game?

Puck Daddy had the privilege to be there and The Terrier Hockey Fan Blog, suffice to say, is alight this morning. This more than makes up for Boston U losing Ethan Werek to the Kingston Frontenacs.

(Canada played at 5 p.m. ET at the under-18 world championship yesterday, meaning Werek, who scored two goals in an 8-1 win over Switzerland, could have been back in his hotel room to see his former Stouffville Spirit linemate, Corey Trivino, skate for Boston U.)

Fronts: Don't make this hate on Nate week

No one's trying to pick on Nathan Moon. He has had seven points in the past two games, both of which the Kingston Frontenacs won to fashion, wait for it, their first winning streak all season.

Then again, the clip of Moon slashing Oshawa's James DeLory, who retaliated with extreme prejudice and got a 12-game suspension, has been all over the Internet. There was Moon, after all that, whacking Brampton's Sergei Grachev last night, and the colour commentator saying, initially, "I don't know why they would call Moon on this."

It only took 54 games and some surpassingly subpar goaltending from the Ottawa 67's Adam Courchaine and Brampton's Thomas McCollum, but the Frontenacs have won two in a row. It's great for the players, who have endured a lot of losing this season, but any excitement is tempered when you look at what some of the other OHL's former drop cases have done this season.

The Erie Otters, whom the Fronts coincidentally play tonight, are running sixth in the stacked Western Conference after being dismal for two seasons (33 points in 2006-07, 40 in '07-08). The other non-playoff team, the Owen Sound Attack, playing in the league's smallest market, are hanging on to the final playoff spot in the West.

The Soo Greyhounds, Kingston's competition in the Crater for Catenacci, Hunt for Harrington or Swoon For Sefton, have also gone younger than Kingston. Ten Greyhounds are 1991 or or '92 birthdate players, compared to just eight of the Frontenacs.

It is important to keep in mind how it works in the world of Fronts owner Doug Springer and GM-for-life Larry Mavety. The bar can be set as low as they like. Twenty-three wins in 68 games last season was enough for Springer to hang the Mission Accomplished banner. This edition of Limestone City Light Brigade has 12 wins with 14 games remaining; if they get to 17-18, they'll the season a success. You better agree, or Nathan Moon might take out one of your ankles.

Just kidding, Mooner. Great game last night; you have to cheer for anyone named Nathan with a birthday on Jan. 4.

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.

Snark break ...

First things first: Our own Duane Rollins will be on ThatChannel.com's It's Called Football, today at noon Eastern. The rumour is that they might talk about soccer.

Mats Sundin has been likened to a "slow-moving mountain." The Vancouver Canucks wanted the Sundin the way he played in Toronto and got Eric Lindros, the way he played in Toronto.

Did Bill Romanowski really think he had a chance of coaching the Denver Broncos? He has to the dumbest NFL player who attended Boston College, but that's only because Mark Chmura knows assault has two S's.

Here's a prop bet: The Ottawa transit strike will be over before the Kingston Frontenacs get their next win.

(The Detroit News referred to the Plymouth Whalers "winning at Frontenac, 2-0." Apparently the team no longer merits being attached to Kingston.)

It honestly wasn't clear if this was from The Onion or the New York Post.

Strange as it sounds, it's disappointing that Corky Simpson recanted and said he was sorry for not voting for Rickey Henderson for the Baseball Hall of Fame. Damn him for having grace and backing down.

Gerry Dee on the inspiration for those bits he does on The Score, as told to Kurtenblog: "“We decided that my character would become the worst sports reporter in the world that actually thinks he’s the best. I wanted the character to be different and have lots of imperfections. It also irks me to see people like Steve Simmons who has probably never bounced a ball or skated around a rink have so much to say about sports."

Last and certainly least, that is Kingston's own Brett Angel running the goalie to start this minor-league hockey brawl (via Puck Daddy)



This post is worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• TV Feeds My Family is asking readers to vote for the best show on TV. It is dirty pool to demand all you click through and vote for a certain drama that revolves around a high school football team in Dillon, Texas and returns to NBC next Friday?
  
  (Mad Men is also in the mix, but it has enough votes already.)
• The World of Junior Hockey sees the Kingston Frontenacs' Nathan Moon and Ethan Werek as possibilities for Team Canada at the 2010 World Juniors. Werek, maybe.
• No one asked, but for the NFL playoffs this weekend: Baltimore, Carolina, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
• There is no cynicism about Steve Sullivan's comeback with the Nashville Predators. He's been out of the NHL since the Senators were last Stanley Cup contenders. That's how long it's been.

The daily Sennies swipe

James Mirtle is running a poll at From The Rink on which team is going to end up with the No. 1 overall NHL draft choice.

The Senators, at this writing, only have 13 of 173 votes cast, putting them well behind the lead dogs in the race (Tampa Bay and the New York Islanders). Point being, they're in this discussion.

From The Rink is also in the first round of the Busted Coverage blog tournament. Go forth!

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)

Snark break...

One thing you as a Canadian do not mind voting for so often ... the Canadian Blog Awards, best sports blog category, Round 2.

Gary Bettman suspending Sean Avery for "conduct detrimental to hockey" is like Nero fining someone for playing the fiddle for too long. Like Puck Daddy says,

"Seriously, if the NHL were half as vigilant on hits to the head as they are for Sean Avery's nonsense, Simon Gagne might not hear church bells every time he closes his eyes."

At the same time, the WAGs are not fair game for trash-talk. It did rate a mention from TMZ: "Hockey Fun Fact: You can punch the hell out of an opposing player on the ice, but when you refer to his girlfriend as your 'sloppy seconds' — that's where the NHL draws the line." (Fist jab to Taking Note, and to play off Duane's post from last night, Sean Avery, Sean Avery, Sean Avery ... Sean Avery, Sean Avery, Sean Avery.)

It's like she has a reverse Midas touch or something. The world's most famous hockey mom, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, spoke in Augusta, Georgia on Monday, and the city's ECHL team folded on Tuesday.

An ECHL team folding is like a canary in a mine shaft in The Wonderful World of Gary Bettman. The Augusta Lynx were affiliated with the NHL's Tampa Bay Lightning, so really, the Lightning could just play out their remaining schedule. They're pretty much an ECHL team beyond Vinny Lecavalier, Martin St. Louis and the gentleman goalie from Verona, Mike Smith.

Future Hall of Famer Ken Griffey Jr. broke into the majors in 1989, the year the first President Bush took office. Nineteen years later, he's having trouble getting a contract, largely because of what happened while the second President Bush was in office. Maybe Griffey should have run for President.



Please read the Daily Norseman's take on Pat and Kevin Williams' suspensions -- it's about due process, not who took what: "The NFL completely and totally mishandled this case in so many ways that it's damn near comical."

From the department of Took Them Long Enough, the entire World Junior Hockey Championship will be broadcast in the U.S.

This post was worth nothing, but this is worth noting:

• Dave Van Horne broadcast baseball in Canada for how many years (quite a few, Neate) and the Vancouver-centric media doesn't know there's an E in his last name. Way to spoil a nice article about Larry Walker!
• Columbus Blue Jackets prospect Stefan Legein is ready to rejoin the AHL NHL team (TSN.ca; via Loose Pucks).
• Matt Auffrey, who was a pretty decent forward for the Kingston Frontenacs in '06-07, was on that Augusta ECHL team which folded.
• Fronts fans who long for better times (now why would they do that) should take note that former captain Cory Emmerton is on a bit of a roll with Grand Rapids of the AHL. Let's all start praying for an injury bug to hit the Detroit Red Wings, so he can wear the winged wheel. He earned the right to sport an iconic crest after those years wearing a Count Frontenac sweater.

(Sorry, no photo of Elisha Cuthbert to dress up this post. Find one your damn self.)

Blog blast past: Stef-fing out; a NHL prospect walks away, quite possibly for real

Columbus Blue Jackets prospect Stefan Legein, who quit hockey at age 19 three months ago, is returning to the game,
(TSN.ca (via Loose Pucks). Strangely enough, the Sean Avery-style agitator's return his hitting the same news at the same time Avery is in the headlines. Here's our post from Aug. 20, and one wishes him all the best now that he's chosen to come back.

Everyone's going to have a theory about what would possess Columbus Blue Jackets prospect Stefan Legein to apparently quit hockey at the ripe old age of 19.

Breaking out the jump-to-conclusions mat -- maybe he's going to sign in the KHL, maybe he doesn't want to play for the Blue Jackets -- is a normal reaction to news that's too much for your usually shockproof B.S. detector. There is no room, none at all, in Canada's hockey consciousness that allows one to easily digest the news that Legein might drop out of hockey. Just read the comments at TSN's website, where the player's father has denied the story).

It would not be a a shock if (emphasis on if) this was borne from Legein having some sort of personal crisis, the kind of thing that, pre-political correctness, was called a nervous breakdown. This could be 100% off-base, but since theories are like fingers (everyone's got 10 of them), what the hell. Depression is a prevalent enough illness, but the wider society, let alone the emotionally stunted sports word, has a hard enough time understanding the condition that's it worth using the Legein story as a jumping-off point. By no means is this the case here.

Speaking from experience, a common trap depressives can fall into is being unable to avoid emotional reactions to everyday situations. It's easy to see a scenario where a young person, unable to work through it, told people close to him that he was quitting the one activity that he had come to be identified through. It serves three purposes. It's a way to punish yourself through self-denial, lay a guilt trip on loved ones and put off working your way through that which you must work through.

Only a true believer would expect hockey fans to not look at Stefan Legein as someone who's throwing away a shot at every Canadian boy's dream of playing in the NHL. No one, though, has any right to ridicule or scorn. No one has to make a cause-of-the-week out of him either, but at the very least you should try to understand it from the player and human being's point of view, just this once.

The Canadian junior hockey system is not famous for being sympathetic to teenagers, let alone sensitive types who might bruise easily. Players are drafted at 16 and are forced to develop a keen survival instinct in a hurry, because they have no rights, none at all, except to ask for a trade (and then they get branded as a "brat" or a "hot dog"). There are probably a few players who develop thick skin to the exclusion of an actual maturation within.

In this context, the self-portrait Legein offered for sportsnet.ca in the lead-up to last season's World Juniors is kind of chilling:

" 'You have to hate everyone out there,' Legein confirmed. 'They hate you and they're trying to hit you and hurt you and they're trying to beat you so you have to have that same hate back.

" 'I have no friends on the ice. Once the game's over, sure everything's fine but once we're on the ice there are no friends.' " -- Dec. 7, 2007

In hindsight, you could read between the lines that Legein was trying to tell the adults who control his hockey destiny what they wanted to hear. It's ironic that he said he emulated Sean Avery, the NHL's premier agitator. Avery is at least as famous for the lengths he goes to to show the world how much he's bored by playing hockey as he is for playing hockey. (Others have pointed out this could be a prank, and considering the previously noted Avery/Andy Kaufman comparisons, it's not impossible.)

Avery's off-ice notoriety, the Vogue internship, all that, could be how Avery handles his ambivalence toward playing a game -- that's also happened to make him wealthy and a much more eligible bachelor than he would have been otherwise. (It's kind of hard to imagine Elisha Cuthbert would have ever shown up on a red carpet escorted by a guy who teaches Grade 9 math in Ajax.)

Of course, the fear when you try to act like someone else is that's what you'll end up becoming -- someone else. That's contributed to a crisis for more than one athlete in a violent collision sport such as hockey or football.

There are obviously other scenarios that could be at work.

(This might have nothing to do it, but ShysterBall has linked to a Pat Jordan Sports Illustrated profile of Bo Belinsky, who was kind of a Sean Avery of his generation. One quote from Belinsky that's kind of haunting: "I could never give up enough of myself for success." Does that not sound like, as Duane notes, clinical anxiety?)

It's bad enough to have already violated Legein's privacy by wondering if his mental state might have influenced his reported decision to walk away from hockey. It's not even out of the realm of possibility that taking time away from the sport is part of making a commitment to trying to become a NHL player. He probably never had And yes, perhaps something scandalous or prurient that will come out in a matter of days. Last, but not least, someone will connect the dots between Legein and 16-year-old Western Hockey League prospect Brandon Regier also retiring and argue that Canada's hockey system offers as quick a road to early burnout as it does to the NHL.

Sports fans don't always accept that players who have a chance to realize what you always dreamed of doing don't necessarily embrace that dream. It would be easier for us to understand if Legein had physical problems that made it too risky for him to keep playing high-level hockey, like the heart condition that forced the University of Denver hockey player David Carle to give up the game this spring. When it's something like depression, which is a very common condition, there's absolutely no understanding and that's just plain wrong.

That's not to say this is what's afoot with Stefan Legein. If not him, though, then it will be for some other promising athlete soon enough.

(Other, better hockey sites have noted that Daniel Ryder walked away from the Flames last season and he's back this season.)

Have you no shame, sir? That was a rhetorical question

Only in the irony-rich, cash-poor NHL: Two weeks ago, the St. Louis Blues were trotting out the telegenic half of the Republican vice-presidential ticket in the midst of the greatest financial crisis in the U.S. in seventy-five years.

Now they are turning by said crisis to their advantage:

The team announced Monday that at every remaining Saturday home game beginning Nov. 29, the organization will call the seat number of a fan and pay that person's mortgage or rent for four months, up to $4,000 US total.

It is a not half-bad idea for a promotion and maybe one should leave it at that, but seriously, this is like something out of the last days of Nero's Rome or France around 1788.

Blues owner Dave Checketts, as Puck Daddy has detailed, donates a lot of money to Republicans, the party who generally had more to do with the global economic meltdown. Now his franchise turns it around in order to create some kind of whiz-bang promotion?

It just marketing and maybe it should be left alone. Another reading is that this is how desperate NHL teams are getting to get people in the seats, even in St. Louis, which has had a team since 1967 and has had an even longer history in pro hockey. It's the Blues' business and they're free to do what they wish. That doesn't mean people can't laugh like hell at the irony. You would not see any Canadian team offering to pay anyone's rent or mortgage.

Related:
St. Louis Blues contest pays mortgage or rent for their fans (The Canadian Press)

The secret of hitting...

Puck Daddy has a post today on hits to the head in the NHL, in the wake of Chris Pronger's totally unnecessary whacking of Pavel Datsyuk last night. The only thing to piggyback is to refer back to Mark Moore's 2006 book Saving The Game, which talks about how players rejected safer upper-body equipment -- the padded wetsuit -- several years ago.

"His reply shocked me: he said they did. Their design staff came up with prototypes very similar to what I was dscribing, he said. But here was the reception they got: They were scoffed at and ridiculed by the sponsored pro players they showed them to, who said they looked absurd and vowed they would never wear them. And they were rejected by consumer parents in test-marketing, who statistically always preferred the biggest, bulkiest, most armourlike equipment offered, for their kids."

And yes, as has been obvious for quite some time, the NHL needs to make it a penalty when someone makes a shoulder-to-head check on a player who has passed or shot the puck. It's counter to the purpose of body contact. Hitting has always been more akin to tackling in rugby than in football. Players hit someone to cause a change in possession, or the flow of the play, not to hurt someone. The pendulum has swung too far toward the football mentality, with the difference being that men on skates move much faster.

The NHL has never repeated a bad idea

It is well past time to wean oneself off sniping about Sarah Palin. She is clearly a cipher and it does no good to carry hate around.

"Where the hell is the NHL in all of this? We know they typically look the other way for the minor stuff, like owners loaning a fraud millions of dollars to buy into a franchise, but what about this?

"Do they even give a damn that half their audience will be made to feel uncomfortable Friday night in St. Louis? Do they give a damn that hockey fans are being used as props at a political photo-op? Is any publicity good publicity, no matter how it alienates people?

"... We're all hockey fans first, and come to the rink for an escape from all of this partisan nonsense. Too bad some owners put their own politics ahead of their fans.

Related:
Why Palin will be in St. Louis, and naming next son Zamboni (Puck Daddy)

Covered In Oil embargo: The screwballs have spoken

The Covered In Oil embargo -- the Edmonton Oilers' "one-strike nuclear solution" (SNN Sports). The unfortunate part is that David Berry has apparently decided to take a break from the site.

Obviously, this is one of those chattering-class issues, but what the hell ... our man Andy Grabia from The Battle of Alberta gathered up a list of sites that covered this off -- the resulting good karma must be why his Red Sox forced a Game 7 in the ALCS -- so please click through for the symposium.

(Update, 4 p.m.: Puck Daddy has weighed in: "... the Oilers are embarrassingly behind the times when it comes to new-media acceptance. The times, in this case, being circa 1999.")

The Battle of Alberta reminded everyone that the Oilers have a history of coming down hard on fans who express themselves freely.

Hot Oil puts it squarely on the Oilers for not having a policy and for having a double standard.

David Staples at the Edmonton Journal obviously read his Virginia Woolf: "Having their own places to write (what) they like ... is worth far more than a spot with your name on it in the press box." (Easy enough for him to say, though. He has a job.)

For Washington, D.C.-based On Frozen Blog, it's a whole different world.

From Here Come The Bruins: "News flash: People who work really hard to give your team FREE publicity are not a detriment to your organization."

Barry Melrose Rocks had fun with the notion of what this does with outsiders' perception of Alberta folk -- who are among the best folk around.

Empty Netters (which is a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette blog), Pension Plan Puppets, The NHL Arena Program, Earl Sleek at The Battle of California, Cycle Like The Sedins, Five Hole Fanatics, Going Five Hole and Strange Deadfellows and Wrap Around Curl each showed support. This take from a BoC commenter was pretty choice:

"It's amazing how removed from reality these guys can be. Don't actively piss off your customers, especially the most loyal and vocal ones. Hockey is such an insular community -- sometimes it seems like about 50 different guys just swap jobs every few years. And now they can't even see their own antiquated bull----."

A final word should go to Eric McErlain over at Fanhouse, since he's in public relations and also helped Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis come up with a blog policy for his team's press box two bloody years ago.

"As a PR professional in the business for almost two decades, I will say this -- anybody in the sports business who doesn't know how to deal with bloggers in the year 2008 just isn't doing their job ... Understanding how to deal with bloggers should be basic blocking and tackling for a PR person, not something you deal with in a huff while hurling threats at a person who's just trying to do their job -- and promote your product at the same time.

"Here in Washington, we've been fortunate in that Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Capitals, has been quick to embrace new media and has directed his PR staff to do the same. The result speaks for itself -- despite being what many might call a non-traditional hockey market -- there are now more Capitals blogs around than I can keep track of on my own, providing a wealth of analysis and commentary that this town's two newspapers never could on their own."

That's all for now. Send your thoughts to neatesager@yahoo.ca.