Monthly Archives: May 2010

Love the Hawks, Wouldn’t Be Hurt With Flyers Upset

Posted on May 28, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

As a Winnipegger, it’s difficult to pick a side in the Stanley Cup final.

After all, if the Hawks win the Cup, the trophy will come to Winnipeg with Chicago captain Jonathan Toews and very likely stay here for a week or two. If the Flyers win the Cup, captain Mike Richards will bring it to Kenora and spend a few days with it in Winnipeg and then Arron Asham will bring it to Portage la Prairie and then I’m sure I’ll run into him — and his little trophy — on the golf course someplace.

When you stop and consider that the captains of the two teams in this year’s final are from Winnipeg (Toews) and Kenora (Richards), you start to get the sense that in the same year Canada won both Olympic hockey gold medals, the game has really, really, really come home.

In fact, if you check the rosters of the Hawks and Flyers, it’s hard not to look at them as Canada’s teams. The Hawks have 15 Canadians while the Flyers have 17 (and that’s just on a list of the regulars). It’s great to cheer for Canadian-based teams at playoff time, nothing wrong with that at all. But if you like to cheer for Canadian hockey players, cheer for the Hawks and Flyers. They have a boat load of ‘em.

And that’s why it’s tough to pick a side. Sure, I’ll go ahead and pick a winner, but I really don’t care who wins. I have no trouble cheering for both of them. And, because I’m 8-6 in series picks this spring, I have nothing to brag about.

The Stanley Cup Final

Chicago Blackhawks (Western Conference Champion) vs. Philadelphia Flyers (Eastern Conference Champion)

Let’s make one thing clear: Both these teams have good players. The Hawks and Flyers didn’t get this far in the NHL’s two-month post-season tournament because they won 12 games by some fluke of nature. Yeah, it’s a great story how the Flyers reached the playoffs because they won a shootout against the Rangers in the final game of the regular season, but at this stage it’s nothing more (or less) than a great story. The Flyers have earned their ticket to the final just as the Hawks have earned theirs. But here’s why I like the Hawks to win: they’re just as tough as the Flyers, they have just as much heart, they skate better, they have more scorers, they have equally qualified special teams (probably a better power play) and a better goaltender. End of argument for me.

Chicago Blackhawks in six games.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in 2010 NHL playoffs, Blog

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

A Battle of Unheralded Goalies Highlights Stanley Cup Final

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Yes, indeed, I plead guilty. This year, all accepted knowledge of the National Hockey League playoffs is out the window. Gone! This year, the Stanley Cup playoffs are still about The Goalie. They’re just not about the “highly-regarded” Goalie.

Let me explain. I believe that the team with the best goaltender will win the Stanley Cup. As Brian Burke once said, “We call it the Stanley Cup playoffs because we can’t call it Goalie.” The two-month tournament that we know as the Stanley Cup playoffs is usually decided by the goaltender who gets red-hot just at the right time. He doesn’t necessarily have to be considered a “great” goalie. Just a hot one.

This year, however, the goaltender issue has been strange. It’s still about the hot goalie. It’s just kind of shocking who the hot goalies are. Roberto Luongo? Bust. Marty Brodeur? Long gone. Evgeni Nabokov? Taken out in four in  the Western Final. Marc-Andre Fleury? Out in the second round.

This year, the fast, skilled Chicago Blackhawks will face the gritty, defensively responsible Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup final. The Hawks goalie is Antti Niemi, a guy who was considered the anchor around the neck of a good hockey team. He was the reason the Hawks weren’t going to win. The Flyers goalie was the journeyman American, Brian Boucher, but he got hurt and now its the Canadian journeyman Michael Leighton, a guy who was originally drafted by the Blackhawks, played most of his career in the AHL and had played only 103 games in 10 NHL seasons when the playoffs started. Huh?

Heading into the final, Leighton — Philly’s No. 2 goaltender — leads all playoff goalies with a 1.45 goals against average and a .948 save percentage (Boucher is third: 2.33, .915). But Leighton has played only eight games in the post season. There is chance he’ll double that number by the time the playoffs end.

Meanwhile, Niemi is No. 2 on the stats sheet. He has a 2.33 goals against average and a .921 save percentage in 16 games.

Yes, the final two teams in the Stanley Cup tournament have the hottest goaltenders. It’s just hard to imagine both of them  will keep up the pace.

But then again, Canada’s Olympic hero Roberto Luongo has been a career playoff bust and Martin Brodeur hasn’t played well in the post-season since 2003.

Remember, it’s not about “great” goalies. It’s about “hot” goalies. It’s just that nobody expected the hot goalies to be Leighton, Niemi and Boucher.

*           *          *

At 3 o’clock this afternoon, the Tampa Bay Lightning are expected to announce Steve Yzerman as the team’s new general manager.

Interesting choice because after the Red Wings re-signed Ken Holland and Jim Nill, Yzerman was No. 3 in Detroit.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in 2010 NHL playoffs, Blog

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Chasing the Circus Trucks…

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Like a puppy, it’s always fun to chase a circus wagon, just in case something pops out.

This week, all sorts of things have been popping out…

1) Check out http://tgcts.blogspot.com/

Great post, but in many ways, it’s sad but true.

2) The folks I know who attended Sunday night’s final of the Memorial Cup hockey tournament tell me it was one of the great experiences of their lives.

Terrific, now that we have that out of the way, let’s get to the ugly truth. Any tournament, in any sport, that sets up so a championship game can finish with a lopsided 9-1 score is a bad tournament.

The Canadian Major Junior Hockey League needs to quit being so greedy and play a true national final. Just like the Stanley Cup, find two good teams in the East and two good teams in the West (or four and four) and play best-of-seven series to determine a winner.

A four-team tournament in which one finalist can play on Tuesday and not play again until Sunday is stoo-pid.

3) So LeBron James quits and head coach Mike Brown gets fired. No wonder the Cleveland Cavaliers will NEVER win an NBA championship.

4) There was a time when I thought Texas Rangers/Dallas Stars owner Tom Hicks was an over-leveraged fraud. He had a pile of money on paper, but not enough of the real stuff and he was running around signing hockey players like Mike Modano and Brett Hull to ridiculous contracts. Meanwhile, he was signing baseball players to contracts that made absolutely no sense. Unless, of course, you were the player in question.

Not surprisingly, Hicks had a real supporter in a former Winnipegger who moved to Dallas and used to write me the nastiest e-mails defending Hicks as a wonderful owner who knew how to treat players and fans. My e-mail pen-pal didn’t think idiot owners were pricing pro sports out of the realm of the average fan. He thought owners had every right to overpay players and then overcharge the fans. And so what if ridiculously high contracts meant that small-market teams in places like Winnipeg and Quebec City would have to re-locate? Just the cost of doing business.

Well, the recession came and, of course, a paper tiger like Hicks went broke. As many fans know, Hicks has been trying to sell the Rangers to a group headed by Nolan Ryan, but the sale has stalled and yesterday, Hicks had to put the Rangers into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

In a 21-page filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Fort Worth yesterday, the top 30 unsecured creditors were listed. Included on the list were a number of Rangers players who were all paid w-a-a-a-y too much. According to the list, Alex Rodriguez is still owed $24.9 million in deferred compensation, six years after he was traded to the Yankees. The next five people on the unsecured creditors list are also current or former players: Kevin Millwood ($12.9 million), Michael Young ($3.9 million), Vicente Padilla ($1.7 million), Mickey Tettleton ($1.4 million) and Mark McLemore ($970,000).

Wonder if the Stars will be next? Bet Gary Bettman, who just finished with the bankruptcy of the Phoenix Coyotes, is looking forward to that prospect.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Blog, general sports

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Things that make you go, “hmmmm…”

Posted on May 23, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It’s been another crazy week in the toy box. People acting like idiots, the mainstream media playing dumb and as ESPN’s Stuart Scott likes to say (and we’re paraphrasing), “plenty of noise and bluster but no substance.”

Some observations from the other side of the nut bin:

1) See ol’ Brett Favre had arthroscopic surgery on his ankle this week. Wonder if that will convince the American media geniuses that maybe, just maybe, he’ll play one final year in the NFL with the Minnesota Vikings?

I don’t know, sounds like a guy who is serious about his return, doesn’t it? C’mon, nobody has arthro at the clinic of the finest orthopedic surgeon in the world just to sit on the couch.

Of course, the AP decided that the ankle surgery story wasn’t the big Favre story of the week. Instead, the AP went bat-loonie over Favre’s little staged pep talk to the Southern Mississippi baseball team. Seems ol’ Brett said (with an hearty laugh. I’m sure) that if the Southern Miss boys get to the college World Series, he’ll return to the Vikings.

Is AP humour impaired?

The only thing that will keep Favre out of the Vikings season opener at the Superdome on Thursday night, Sept. 9, is a slow healing ankle. A really, really, really slow healing ankle.

2) The Memorial Cup has a silly format doesn’t it? The best team in the country, the Windsor Spitfires, reaches the Memorial Cup final on Tuesday and doesn’t play again until Sunday night.

Meanwhile, the Brandon Wheat Kings play two games against the Western Hockey League champion Calgary Hitmen in that time, before playing in the final.

And wasn’t that a miscarriage of justice? The Hitmen had won five consecutive games against the Wheaties and yet they lose the semifinal in overtime and they’re out. The level of hockey is terrific, the players are great, but the tournament that’s been designed to find Canada’s finest big time junior hockey team is a dinky little four-team TV show.

It should be an eight-team event or maybe just a three-team tournament based on a number of separate best of three series.

If Windsor doesn’t win by six tonight, they mailed it in.

3) Love that the holier-than-thou American media has decided to dump all over Brian Cushing for getting caught using Performance Enhancing Drugs (I also love that media-created term, “Performance Enhancing Drugs.” It implies that they work and they’re good for you).

Cushing was the AP defensive rookie of the year in 2009-2010, but was caught using the juice and suspended for four games this coming season. AP asked the media boys to re-vote on Cushing’s award and, not surprisingly, he won a second time so his award wasn’t taken away.

That prompted a number of the American media police force to drop bombs on Cushing as if Cushing was the only player in the NFL using PEDs. Hypocritical dicks.

Interestingly, not much was made of the fact Cushing was accused, along with teammate Clay Matthews, of being a regular PED user at USC. The outstanding website, Steroid Nation, had a story on Cushing and Matthews back on April 4, 2009. You can read it here.

Now, of course, we have a load of NFL players tied to Canadian PED doctor Anthony Galea, but the mainstream media wants to crucify Cushing because those morons seem to believe — or seem to want us to believe — that Cushing is the only guy in the NFL on the juice.

It’s like their incessant whining about Mark McGwire. Sure he took PEDs, but what were the pitchers doing?

The media demands that football players spend six months of every year playing like missiles with no regard for their bodies. Then, when one takes a treatment to recover from the brutal injuries he suffers every week – just to make the fans and the media happy — the international media comes down on him like a hammer.

Too bad most media people never played any sport at an elite level, let alone football. They might have been able to develop a different opinion of what they’ve helped create: Bigger, badder, meaner monsters.

In the meantime, it looks like Santana Moss will be the next player to get hammered for the fall of Western Civilization.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Blog, general sports

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Counting Down to Hawks-Flyers?

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I understand the Hawks part. For months it’s been clear that the hockey team Dale Tallon built has had the necessary speed, skill and grit to reach the Stanley Cup finals. Must admit, I didn’t think they had the goaltending, but Antti Niemi has proven smarter people than me to be wrong.

Of course, it hasn’t hurt the Hawks that they’ve won a record seven straight road games in the playoffs and now lead the San Jose Sharks 2-0 heading back to Chicago. The Western Conference final could be a lot shorter than anyone would have guessed.

The part that remains confusing for me is the Philadelphia Flyers part. I was at the Flyers-Rangers game, the final game of the regular season, when Philadelphia was lucky to dispose of New York and grab that final available playoff spot (the seventh seed in the East). I had no clue from that Sunday afternoon that Philadelphia would be able to take out both New Jersey and Boston and not only be around for the Eastern Final, but leading 2-0 in the series.

And the two wins have not been flukes. Philly massacred Montreal 6-0 in the opener and then whupped the Habs 3-0 in Game 2. A Montreal team that had been scoring at will during the playoffs had just been shut out in back-to-back games while their “unbeatable” goaltender now had an embarrassing 4.50 GAA in just 120 minutes of Eastern championship series play.

Over in Chicago, Jonathan Toews, the Winnipeg kid who went to UND, has been the clear choice as Conn Smythe Trophy winner this year. He leads the playoffs in scoring and tallied the winner in a 4-2 victory over San Jose on Tuesday night. It’s amazing to think that for most of the lead-up to the 2010 Olympics, the Eastern pundits didn’t think Toews should be on Canada’s Olympic team. After proving he was the best player in that tournament, he’s proving now that he’s the best player in the world. Playing on a line with big Dustin Byfuglien and little Patrick Kane, he’s made the Hawks an offensive force. And this, starting with a guy who claims he doesn’t even worry about scoring goals.

“I don’t even really think about scoring,” he told reporters after his team’s Game 1 victory. “I want to kill penalties and I want to play with as much energy as I can and then create as much as I can in the offensive zone when that’s my role. I’ve gone into these games focused on working hard. A lot of offense has just happened as a result of hard work.”

Two hard-working teams have the upper hand heading into Games 3 of the Eastern and Western championships. One suspects the Sharks are done and if the Habs don’t snap out of it at home on Thursday, the Stanley Cup final could probably start this weekend.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in 2010 NHL playoffs, Blog

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Big Decision By Bombers: Patrons Can No Longer Leave the Stadium and Return Later

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Monday afternoon, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers will hold a news conference in conjunction with Winnipeg Police, to announce a radical new plan for the 2010 season. At least, it will be radical for some “football fans.”

This year, patrons who enter the stadium for any Blue Bombers game will not be allowed to leave and then return later. Instead, this season, if you leave the stadium, you’re gone. No pass out privileges allowed. It’s a move that’s sure to anger many Bomber fans, but it’s also a move that the Winnipeg Police Service believes is necessary to control the crowds –especially on the legendary East Side of Canad Inns Stadium — that are becoming increasingly drunk, rowdy and unmanageable.

“We’ve had a number of meetings with police about this issue and it’s been recommended to us that we no longer allow people to leave the stadium during the games and then return,” said Jeffrey Bannon, the Bombers marketing manager who has been the front man for this issue. “This isn’t something we ever wanted to do, it’s something we and the police believe we must do.

“Police have explained to us that people are leaving the stadium and bringing back materials they should be bringing back. There have been more incidents in recent years than police want to deal with and they’ve asked us to help them put a stop to it.”

Last year patrons got into a brawl with police and in another incident a man fell to his death. Police are spending far too much time arresting and simply trying to arrest people at Bomber games.

Those who frequent and comment on message boards have been clearly angered by this decision. But if you’re a football fan who just wants to watch football, it’s a decision that makes nothing but sense.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Blog, CFL

Tagged , , , , ,

Vancouver and Pittsburgh Are Both Gone. It’s on to Plan B

Posted on May 16, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

FARGO, N.D. — When we predicted, confidently, that the Vancouver Canucks would meet the defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins in the Stanley Cup final we forgot to consider a handful of very bad things:

1) We did not believe Jaroslav Halak would do to the Penguins almost exactly what he did to the Washington Capitals.

2) We did not believe Sidney Crosby would fail to score in the final four games of a series… any series.

3) We did not believe Roberto Luongo would be as weak as he was against Chicago — again.

4) We did not believe the Sedin Twins would completely disappear.

5) We did not believe Montreal could be as good as they were against Washington and Pittsburgh and we did not believe Vancouver could be as bad as they were against Chicago.

So it’s on to the NHL’s Stanley Cup Conference finals. No Pittsburgh. No Vancouver. But we are armed with a Plan B. After going 1-3 in the semi-finals, we’re now 7-5 this spring.

Here’s our look at the Conference championship series…

Western Conference

San Jose Sharks (1) vs. Chicago Blackhawks (2)

The Hawks proved against Vancouver that they simply skate too well. The Hawks are fast, skilled and gritty. They have everything a Stanley Cup champion needs, especially leadership. If Antti Niemi gives them any goaltending at all, they should win a game in San Jose and cruise at  home and that’s all they’ll need. The Sharks are shedding the “choke” label, but losing to a No. 2 seed is not choking. The Hawks are the best No. 2 seed we’ve seen in a long, long time. If Chicago does win, they won because they were, as we suspect, the better team.

Chicago Blackhawks in six

Eastern Conference

Philadelphia Flyers (7) versus Montreal Canadiens (8)

It just seems as if the Habs are this year’s team of destiny. With great goaltending from Jaroslav Halak and a load of scoring from their little guys, Scott Gomez, Brian Gionta and Mike Cammalleri, who leads all scorers in the playoffs with 12 goals, the Habs have ousted first-place Washington and No. 4 Pittsburgh. No small feat. However, while the Flyers look like a pushover for a team that has been so emotional and so dedicated, they deserve a lot of credit themselves. The Flyers checking lines have tied the opposition in knots and Mike Richards and Simon Gagne always seem to be around when they’re needed most. I like the Flyers, but I’m taking…

Montreal Canadiens in six


→ Leave a comment

Posted in 2010 NHL playoffs, Blog

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Habs Victories Mean the NHL Should Add More Playoff Teams and Start the Post-Season in January

Posted on May 13, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

It has been quite a run for the Montreal Canadiens.

First, the eighth-seeded Habs took out the No. 1-seeded Washington Capitals and then on Wednesday night, they eliminated the No. 4-seeded and defending Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Canadiens are living proof of two things: (1) the 82-game regular season means nothing just so long as you’re one of the 16 teams that makes the playoffs and (2) the NHL has absolute parity now and when a team with 88 points takes out a team with 121 points and then a team with 101 points, then a team with 80 points could do the same.

Wednesday night in Pittsburgh – remember, the Habs have won two series against alleged superior talent and they won both series without home-ice advantage – the Habs built a 4-0 lead and held on to win 5-2 as Jaroslav Halak made 37 saves.

The Habs got a couple of points each from Brian Gionta and Mike Cammalleri and held Sidney Crosby pointless for the fourth time in the series as Montreal pulled off what many people believe was a “monumental” upset.

But it wasn’t. Not really. The competitive level of the NHL has never been closer than it is right now and anyone who thinks he or she can predict winners on a regular basis in this loop is delusional. Granted, it’s ultimately about goaltending and clearly Halak was better in this series than Marc-Andre Fleury, but let’s not short change the play of people such as Gionta, Cammelleri, Scott Gomez, Thomas Plekanec and Dominic Moore.

The Habs got great goaltending – yes – but they also outskated and outchecked the Penguins for much of the series and that’s why they’ll move on to play the winner of the Philadelphia-Boston series in the Eastern final.

Listen, Montreal, accomplished what no team has accomplished since the current playoff format was created in 1994: They not only beat the Presidents’ Trophy winner (Washington), but also the defending Stanley Cup champion (Pittsburgh) in back-to-back series as an eighth-seeded team (OK, I know that sounds like, “scored more goals on Tuesday nights against Francophone or Russian goaltenders in cities that end with ‘n’ or ‘h’,” but you get it).

However, what they really did was prove that anybody can beat anybody in the playoffs and that’s why, as my friend Les Jackson of the Dallas Stars has suggested, more teams should be in the post-season than the current 16.

If Philadelphia comes all the way back to beat Boston in the other Eastern semi-final, it means that the Eastern final will involve the No. 7 and No. 8 seeds. It also means that the long, tedious regular season was a complete waste of effort and has no real credibility.

The NHL would be better off (and significantly better off financially) if it played a 40-game regular season and then, in January, put all 30 teams in the playoffs and started off with a bunch of best-of-15 series. There is nothing more boring or meaningless than an NHL regular-season game in October (or, more stupidly expensive, for that matter) while there is nothing more exciting than a Game 7 in May.

The Montreal Canadiens have just proven that all you need to do is change the dates.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in 2010 NHL playoffs, Blog

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“Bridge Financing” Will Likely Keep Coyotes in Phoenix for One More Year.

Posted on May 12, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

They’re calling it “bridge financing.”

Tuesday night, Glendale, Arizona’s city council voted 7-0  to fork over the $25 million the NHL requested to “cover losses” for the 2010-2011 season, as long as Glendale and the NHL don’t find an owner to purchase the Phoenix Coyotes and keep them in the desert. If they do find a new owner, there is no public financing (unless, of course, the lease on the arena is full of public financing).

Of course, being good Republicans, Glendale City Council couldn’t call it “money to cover losses,” — heaven knows there is no such thing as corporate welfare in a state were people will soon be asked “to show your citizenship papers,” — so city manager Ed Beasley was “given the authority to negotiate a fee to the NHL to maintain and operate jobing.com Arena,” if the NHL can’t find an owner before the beginning of the coming season. That, in political terms, is “bridge financing.”

If the NHL finds a new owner — either Chicago-based sports mogul Jerry Reinsdorf or the Can-Am combination known as Ice Edge Holdings — then the payments will cease. Only the NHL gets the $25 million. Nice deal.

Beasley told reporters in Phoenix last night that he expected a new owner will be found by June 30, the date the league can legally sell the Coyotes to David Thomson and Mark Chipman who would move the team to Winnipeg, likely for the 2011-2012 season.

This all sounds quite familiar. It all sounds like the crap was Winnipeg was handed in 1995. It all sounds as if the immediate future of the Coyotes is in Phoenix, but long term, this team will play somewhere else.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Blog, NHL

Tagged , , , , , , ,

No Ice Edge Miracle So Far: It’s Either the Return of Reinsdorf, the NHL Maintains Ownership or Here Come the Jets!

Posted on May 10, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Not surprisingly, talks between the City of Glendale and Ice Edge Holdings, the group of Canadian and U.S. businessmen (mostly Canadian) interested in purchasing the Phoenix Coyotes of the National Hockey League, have broken down.

According to Ice Edge legal counsel Grant Woods, who informed the Arizona Republic of the group’s decision late Monday afternoon, Ice Edge could not get an exclusivity agreement with the City of Glendale and chose not to continue negotiating. A spokesman for Chicago-based sports mogul Jerry Reinsdorf would not comment on the Ice Edge situation saying only that the bid from Reinsdorf was still on the table, “if the people in Arizona are still interested in our offer.”

So here’s the situation as of 10:50 p.m. CDT on Monday night:

1) The NHL still owns the Coyotes.

2) Ice Edge is still interested in purchasing the team if it is considered the exclusive bidder.

3) Reinsdorf’s people say the Chicago-based owner of the White Sox and Bulls is still in the picture.

4) Winnipeg-based True North Sports and Entertainment  is still being considered by the NHL as a potential buyer if all else fails and it becomes apparent that no buyer is interested in keeping the Coyotes in Glendale, Ariz.

In other words, Winnipeg has never been closer to re-acquiring an NHL franchise than it is right now.

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Blog, NHL

Tagged , , , , , , , , ,