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The Grey Cup is over. Canadian teams about average at quarter pole, Steen goes to St. Louis and the Bruins a pleasant surprise.

Posted on November 25, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Congratulations to the Calgary Stampeders, certainly a deserving Canadian Football League champion after that 22-14 victory over the Montreal Alouettes on Sunday.

In one of the great snoozers in Grey Cup history, Sandro DeAngelis kicked five field goals while most outstanding player Henry Burris hit Brett Ralph for a touchdown as Calgary played just well enough to beat a Montreal team that put up 0 points in the second half.

 

So now that we’ve laid the CFL to rest for another season (at least until Mike Kelly is named Blue Bombers’ head coach later this week or early next week), it’s tim to catch up with the NHL.

 

We’ll do that by giving you an update on th things we’ve nattering about on the 92-CITI-FM morning show this week…

 

1) We’re just about a quarter of the way into the 2008-09 National Hockey League season and if the playoffs started tomorrow, only three of the six Canadian-based teams would be participating.

 

In the West, Vancouver is third, Calgary is seventh and Edmonton is 10th. In the East, Montreal is fifth but Toronto is 11th and Ottawa is 12th. Both the Leafs and Senators have a combined total of 14 wins, fewer than the first-pace Rangers.

 

Seeing Toronto out of the playoffs is no surprise, but nobody thought that, at the quarter pole, Ottawa would have seven wins in 20 games.

 

2) We’ve been talking quite a lot about the deal that sent talented Lee Stempniak to the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for defenceman Carlo Colaiacovo and centre Alexander Steen. A lot of Toronto fans have said good riddance to Steen, a young guy they felt was underachieving.

 

But while Steen always said he loved playing in Toronto, this trade is the best thing that ever happened to his career. In St. Louis, he’ll not only get some much-needed ice time (the Blues have three centres — T.J. Oshie, Paul Kariya and Andy McDonald — on the shelf), but he’ll play for a guy who adored his dad, Blues head coach and former Jets assistant, Andy Murray.

 

Stempniak is a worker who should help the Leafs, but Steen is a legitimate talent who will get ice time and support in St. Louis and in all likelihood will develop into an outstanding player.

 

3) Since we have just passed the quarter pole in this ‘08-09 NHL season, it’s probably time to look up, w-a-a-a-a-y up. To the top of the NHL’s Eastern Conference. 

 

See who’s on top? that’s right, the Boston Bruins.

 

Who would have thought? The 14-3-4 Bruins have 32 points and while they’re tied with the Rangers overall, they’ve played three fewer games. 

 

So how does it happen? Well, it would be nice to say the offensive brilliance of Marc Savard is the reason, but in fact, it’s not. It’s  defence and goaltending. From Zdeno Chara to Shane Hnidy to Tim Thomas, the Bruins are No. 1 defensively in the NHL and as a result, they are the No. 1 in the East.

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What we learned from Week 9: Nothing that we didn’t already know.

Posted on August 23, 2008 by Scott Taylor| Comments Off

I don’t boast when going 2-0. I have been at this gambling thing long enough to know that if you go 2-0 one week, it’s likely you’ll go 0-2 the next. So unlike those gambling tip sites out there, the ones that go through an NFL season at around .500 and scream about how brilliant they are, we won’t brag here just because we had a good week.

 

Besides, the two outcomes in the CFL West in Week 9 were semi-obvious.

 

Edmonton, a healthy club with a great quarterback and a decent defence, had an easy time with a Saskatchewan team that still had 16 starters on injured reserve. The Eskimos were at home, too, and in a game that had a chance to be close (even though, in the end, it wasn’t), homefield is still important.

 

Yeah, yeah, I know, I said throw out all the theories this week, but in games in which the teams (even with one badly injured team) are solidly matched, home cooking will have an affect on the outcome.

 

We picked Edmonton to win easily on Thursday and the Eskies won 27-10. No surprise. Nothing new.

 

Meanwhile, on Friday night, in a game in which we thought Calgary would win by two touchdowns, the Stamps won their second straight road game, this time 36-29 in B.C.

 

B.C. played better than I expected (especially the defence) while Calgary wasn’t as good as I thought. Still the Stamps won a road game by seven points and that’s significant.      

 

Granted, it was the first time the Stamps have won in Vancouver since Aug. 1, 2002 and they did have to put together their winning drive with just six minutes left, but all in all, Calgary has a team that will contend for the Grey Cup — and they won on Friday in front of 34,000 hostile fans.

 

Stamps quarterback Henry (Brain Fart) Burris hit Brett Ralph with a five-yard TD throw with less than three minutes in reg. and then, to their credit, the Stamps defence didn’t choke again — like they did in Winnipeg last month. In fact, former Bomber Wes Lysack picked off a Buck Pierce pass with less than a minute to play to save the game for Brain Fart and the rest of the Calgary cowboys.

 

The Stamps are now tied with Edmonton at 5-3 (just two points back of first place Saskatchewan) and the two teams will play back-to-back games starting on Labour Day at McMahon Stadium. 

 

I like the Stamps to win two straight and by the seventh of September they’ll be tied with the Roughriders, a team that will be lucky to split with Winnipeg. The Bombers have new life since Kevin Glenn was returned to the starting QB’s position and then allowed to call his own plays by his screaming, out-of-control, apoplectic coach. In fact, with Glenn running the offence, it gives Doug Berry more time to yell at his kicker.

 

Yeah, that should make the Bombers a threat in the East. Swear some more, Doug.

 

In the meantime, if Brain Fart Burris ever plays an entire 60 minutes up to his physical and mental capabilities, there is no telling how many points he’ll put up. Burris has the most talent among quarterbacks in the CFL. It’s just that he always does something stupid (or a series of stupid things) to keep opponents in games. 

 

One of these days, he’s going to be flawless — and that day will be scary.

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