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The Playoffs Are Coming. It’s Manitoba’s Best Year Ever.

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

This was a big week around the National Hockey League.

Jonathan Toews and the Chicago Blackhawks clinched a playoff berth, Travis Zajac continued to have the best year of his career as he leads the New Jersey Devils into the post-season and Barry Trotz, the head coach of the Nashville Predators, keeps the Preds winning even though they don’t have enough personnel or enough star personnel to be as good as they are.

Some notes from a week in the hockey trenches observing the brilliance of the Manitoba kids in the NHL…

1) This is as good a time as any to praise the Finnish Flash, Teemu Selanne. Last Sunday night, Selanne scored his 600th career goal to become only the 18th player in history to reach the 600-goal plateau.

Congratulations to a great guy, a guy who scored his first 147 with the Winnipeg Jets.

2) When he played for the Toronto Maple Leafs, Winnipeg-born Alexander Steen appeared to be spinning his wheels, going nowhere fast. Now, as a member of the St. Louis, Steen is having a career year.

Through 60 games, Steen has 21 goals and 21 assists and is a plus-five on a minus team. He’s the Blues third leading scorer and is tied for the team lead in goals even though he’s played 10 and 11 fewer games than the two players ahead of him.

After struggling in Toronto and often being a healthy scratch, he has become a big time offensive player in St. Louis. At 26, he is developing into one of the two or three best players on the Blues.

3) If there was one player who could have played on Canada’s Olympic team and didn’t, it was Tampa Bay’s Steven Stamkos. Now, as the season winds down and Tampa misses the playoffs, Stamkos, who was a great friend of 92-CITI-FM and the old Cosmo Show, has a chance to show how good he really is.

Heading into the weekend, Stamkos was tied with Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin for the NHL goal-scoring lead with 45. Could Steven Stamkos win the Rocket Richard Trophy? You bet he could.

4) The Calgary Flames, and the red-hot Nigel Dawes of Winnipeg, have an uphill battle to make the Stanley Cup playoffs, but we will know by this coming Sunday whether the Flames have what it takes to reach the post-season.

The Flames started a five-games-in-seven-days stretch with a 4-3 loss at Minnesota on Sunday. They beat the Anaheim Ducks in Calgary on Tuesday night, but lost a big game to the Islanders, 3-2, on Thursday night. They play at Boston on Saturday and at Washington on Sunday and if they don’t win both of them, they’ll be pretty much done.

5) Manitoba’s top young players have had rock solid seasons in 2009-2010.

Winnipeg-born Duncan Keith, a Chicago Blackhawks defenseman, has 13 goals and 52 assists for 65 points, 31st overall in the NHL and second among defensemen. He’s also a plus-18.

New Jersey rightwinger/centre Travis Zajac has 23 goals and 38 assists for 61 points, 34th in scoring in the NHL. He’s also a plus-16.

Winnipeg-born Patrick Sharp (plus-22) of the Blackhawks has 22 goals and 39 assists and is also 34th in NHL scoring.

Winnipeg’s Jonathan Toews, the captain of the Blackhawks, has 22 goals and 37 assists for 59 points and is a plus-20. He’s 43rd in scoring.

Winkler’s Dustin Penner has 27 goals and 28 assists and is a plus-5 on a very minus Edmonton Oilers team.

Meanwhile, Alexander Steen of Winnipeg and Eric Fehr of Winkler each have 21 goals while Nigel Dawes of Winnipeg has 13.

This might be Manitoba’s best year ever in the NHL.

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The Mainstream Media Strikes Again. Mike Judge was Right, it IS an Idiocracy.

Posted on December 5, 2009 by Scott Taylor| 2 Comments

LAKE BUENA VISTA,  Fla. – There was a wonderfully funny Mike Judge movie called Idiocracy released in 2007 starring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph. It was about an average guy who awakes from a 500-year sleep/coma only to find that the United States had been dumbed-down to such an extent that he was now, clearly, the most intelligent person on the planet.

If our North American mainstream media continues to dumb us all down the way it has in recent years, Idiocracy won’t be a far-fetched cult-comedy. Soon, it will be North America.

Let’s take a look at another week in the wonderful world of mainstream media lies, lunacy and lethargy.

1) Isn’t it great when the media runs a guy out of town? Just ask Winnipeg football fans who allowed their own local mainstream media knuckleheads to run Bomber quarterback Kevin Glenn out of town, only to listen to that listen to that same media mob lament Glenn’s departure when he came back to beat the Bombers in the final game of the 2009 season.

In Kansas City, the local media didn’t like Larry Johnson, didn’t like what he (allegedly) said to them and they certainly didn’t want him around. So they joined forces, created a media mob and convinced everyone in the Chiefs organization that Johnson called them all an offensive name and demanded that the Chiefs release him.

The Chiefs did, of course, bowing to the same local media pressure that has helped make the Winnipeg Blue Bombers a team that has had four coaches and hundreds of players (many of them quarterbacks) in just six years.

So what did Johnson do last Sunday? He rushed for 107 yards for the playoff bound Cincinnati Bengals. If the Chiefs never make the playoffs again, it will be too soon. When the media — people who have never played a down of actual real football — runs your team, you’re finished.

2) The mainstream media in Winnipeg has found a new method to help the board of directors of the football club make a decision to fire head coach Mike Kelly. The latest is to suggest that corporate sponsors will cancel their financial commitments to the club if Kelly is back as head coach next season.

As a person who works seven days a week in the corporate sponsorship field, I can assure the board and the local mainstream media story tellers that no corporate sponsor is leaving the football club because Kelly is or isn’t the head coach.

A sponsor might leave because there is a recession and money is tight. He might leave because he doesn’t feel a sponsorship with the club will give him the advertising bang he requires. He might not even want his brand associated with a dumpy stadium and a football club that hasn’t won a title in 19 years. But there is not one sponsor who, honestly, will pull his support because of the coach.

I’ve asked countess corporate sponsors if they plan to pull their financial support from the football club because Kelly is the head coach and not one has said anything of the sort. I’ve also asked more than one board member which sponsors might be leaving and they have no idea.

So let’s bury another mainstream media myth (lie?). There might be reasons why some corporate sponsors would pull their support from the Winnipeg Football Club, but it is NOT because Mike Kelly is or isn’t the head coach.

3) Why would any sports fan spend a dollar on a newspaper? By the time a newspaper gets a story, it’s not just 24 hours old, it’s often multiple-weeks old.

Friday’s official re-signing of Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and Duncan Keith by the Chicago Blackhawks was first announced in Winnipeg on 92-CITI-FM 18 days ago — on the same day the pending deals were announced by a couple of Chicago-area sports blogs. The Chicago Tribune had the rumours the next morning.

The pending contract signings were discovered as a response to a Sun Media “report,” out of Ottawa that claimed Toews, Kane and Keith were all on the trade block in Chicago because the Hawks had “salary cap issues.” As usual, that newspaper report turned out to be false.

Thursday at 92-CITI, we had the story on the contracts’ details and Saturday, the stories finally reached the local newspapers after the Hawks officially announced the deals (Toews and Kane each agreed to five-year. $31.5 million deals while Duncan Keith signed a cap-busting 13-year, $72 million contract).

And people actually pay money for old news? A lot of people are dumber than we thought.

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A Big Night For Our Local Jocks Out in the Wide World of Pro Sports.

Posted on October 9, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I’m off to Tampa tomorrow. Hockey, football, Disney, my daughter, all the things that make Florida great. When you live and work in Winnipeg, MB., it’s October and the snow is on its way, heading off to sporting events where it’s 40 degrees C. is better than a morning on the Tom & Joe Show on 92-CITI-FM — and that’s about as much fun as a human being should be allowed to have.

Speaking of Tom & Joe, we had Chicago Bears defensive tackle Israel Idonije on this morning talking about his fund raising raffle for both the Bisons and Sister McNamara School. What Izzy still does to raise money for the right causes in Winnipeg is way past commendable, but he does it and we love him for it.

This past week, Idonije was tremendous in a 48-24 Bears win over Detroit. He had a tackle and a forced fumble and then, on Monday, went out and had arthroscopic surgery on a minor knee injury. Interestingly, one of our local bird-cage liners carried the headline “Idonije Could Be Out For The Season.” The story came from AP, so you can’t blame the fishwrap, but come on, it was minor arthro. Think before just blindly running an AP story on a local guy who isn’t as injured as the Associated Press (which doesn’t know him and didn’t know the injury) tried to make him out to be.

“I’m doing great, heading off to work, I’ll be ready to go in the Atlanta game,” Idonije said. “It wasn’t a big deal. Just a little clean up. I’m fine.”

Look, the Bears might hold him out an extra week, but he says he’ll be ready to go Sunday night, Oct. 18 against the Falcons. The reason he had the procedure this past week was because the Bears are on their bye-week. Have people suddenly become stupid?

But hey, Izzy is just another extremely talented Manitoba kid caught up in the nasty and high-paying world of big-time pro sports — which might not be as nasty or as messed up as the media types who follow it.

In fact, Thursday was a great day for Manitobans and folks with close ties to the province. Let’s review:

1) In Los Angeles, former Winnipeg Goldeyes reliever, George Sherrill, pitched another scoreless inning against the Cards and earned the win in a 3-2 Dodgers victory. The Dodgers lead the series 2-0 and Sherrill has been almost flawless in two appearances.

2) The Calgary Flames beat the Edmonton Oilers 4-3 in a shootout. Winnipeg’s Nigel Dawes scored his first goal of the year for the Flames and also added a goal in the shootout. Finally, Dawes is getting a chance to play on a scoring line in the NHL. The Flames might have the best $750,000-a-year player in the game. By the way, former Jets goaltender, Nikolai Khabibulin, was the best player on the ice for the Oilers

3) The New Jersey Devils beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-3 in a shootout in Tampa. Winnipeg’s Travis Zajac scored his second goal of the season and added an assist. His goal came at the 19:59 mark of the third period and sent the game into overtime.

4) Pittsburgh beat Philadelphia 5-4, but Portage LaPrairie’s Arron Asham finally got a chance to play and gave the Flyers 11 solid minutes.

5) The Anaheim Ducks massacred the Boston Bruins 6-1 as former Winnipeg Jet Teemu Selanne scored twice, 82 seconds apart, in the second period. Head coach Randy Carlyle’s Ducks (Carlyle is a former Jets defenceman and Manitoba Moose head coach) blasted the Bruins right in downtown Boston.

6) Detroit beat Chicago 3-2, but Winnipeg’s Jonathan Toews, the Blackhawks captain, played 26 minutes. There is pretty serious talk now that with three of their biggest stars in the final years of their respective contracts, the Blackhawks might be forced to make a trade to free up some salary cap space for next season. Toews, Patrick Kane and Winnipeg-born Duncan Keith can become restricted free agents next summer, however the Blackhawks intend to keep all three. If a deal is done, it won’t be done until next year’s draft and yes, defenceman Cam Barker from Winnipeg (he has a $3,25 million per year salary) appears to be the most likely player who would be involved in a deal.

7) Atlanta beat St. Louis 4-2 but once again former Winnipeg Jets leftwinger-centre, Keith Tkachuk, had a terrific game. Tkachuk had a goal and an assist ad now, at 37, has three goals and three assists in the Blues’ first three games.
icon cool A Big Night For Our Local Jocks Out in the Wide World of Pro Sports. And the Nashville Predators beat the Colorado Avalanche 3-2. Jordin Tootoo from Chruchill and Colin Wilson, the son of Winnipeg’s Carey Wilson, were scratched with injuries Thursday night, but Neepawa’s Triston Grant got a chance to play and did a good job in 11 minutes of action.

In a week in which Todd McCullough, the former NBA star from Winnipeg’s Shaftesbury High School, was inducted, with the first class, into the Manitoba High School Athleltic Association Hall of Fame, it was a pretty great for Manitoba’s athletes.

Keep coming back here for regular updates. Unlike AP, we’ll make an effort to get it right.

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Crosby Should Be Captain, Brodeur the Goalie, Regardless, Team Canada 2010 Will be Pretty Good.

Posted on August 29, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

Now that Hockey Canada’s Summer Orientation Camp is over, it’s time to weigh in with another opinion.

Seems everyone and his brother has decided who should play for Canada’s national hockey team at the 2010 Olympics, so why not join the conversation…

1) Let’s start with the captain. Yeah, I have no quarrel with Scott Niedermayer or Jarome Iginla. I even think Shane Doan would make a great captain. But for my tax money, I’d like to see Sidney Crosby get the job. For one thing, he’s the captain of the current Stanley Cup champion Pittsburgh Penguins, for another thing, he’s not afraid to tell an official what he thinks.

Remember, this is international hockey. Out-yelling your opponent around the officials is vital and Crosby has a reputation for being one of the biggest whiners in the NHL.

Now, frankly, I’m not sure if that’s true (most reputations aren’t), but if it is, he’s the natural and only choice for captain. Remember, this isn’t necessarily about “leadership.” Hell, there are two dozen guys who will be cut from this camp who can lead a hockey team. However, Sid the Kid is the guy who will make sure the officials get an earful of Canada’s position on penalties, penalties that weren’t called, penalties that should be called, offsides, icing, you name it. Sidney will be in the referees’ ears with passion.

And, hey, he’s not a bad player, either. However, it’s not about the most veteran guy or the guy the players look up to that will make a great international captain. It’s the guy who will intimidate the officials at every turn. That’s the type of guy the Russians will choose. That’s the type of guy the Czechs will choose. If you’re going to play that semi-crooked international game, you’d better go into it with your weapons loaded.

2) Onto the starting goalie: Martin Brodeur. And I’m not going to justify it. He’s simply the best. Roberto Luongo is No. 2 and Cam Ward is a solid No. 3 because he’s the type of guy who has won a championship before and yet, like Eddie Belfour in 2002, he’ll just be proud to be part of the team.

3) The forward lines. These are my choices, they might not be yours:

1. Sidney Crosby/Vincent Lecavalier/Jarome Iginla

2. Mike Richards/Rick Nash/Ryan Getzlaff

3. Jonathan Toews/Dany Heatley/Martin St. Louis

4. Eric Staal/Shane Doan/Milan Lucic

No. 13: Corey Perry

4) The defensive pairings:

1. Scott Niedermayer/Shea Weber

2. Jay Bouwmeester/Dan Boyle

3. Dion Phaneuf/Mike Green

No. 7: Brent Burns, Duncan Keith or Drew Doughty (all three would be fine, take your pick)

OK, so if I had to make a decision on the seventh defenceman it would probably be Brent Burns because he can also play up front. However, I do believe Drew Doughty is going to be the NHL’s next great defenceman.

Regardless, if you selected Robyn Regehr over Dion Phaneuf or Jordan Staal over Shane Doan or Brrenden Morrow over Marty St. Louis, I would not put up a fight.

This camp in Calgary had so many great players, Canada could probably send two teams to Vancouver and if they were properly coached, they could win two medals.

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On to the Conference finals: We like Wings and Pens — Again — in the Stanley Cup final

Posted on May 16, 2009 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

For those of us trying to make money in the wonderful world of Sport Select, the 2009 Stanley Cup playoffs have been a pretty decent source of revenue. 

Granted, after two rounds, the two top seeds — the Boston Bruins in the East and the San Jose harks in the West — are gone, but for the most part, the teams we have selected to reach the Conference Finals, have indeed reached the Conference finals.

Pittsburgh, with Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin will face Carolina with Eric Staal (our darkhorse pick as a Stanley Cup finalist) in the Eastern final, while the “Winnipeg” teams, Chicago with captain Jonathan Toews, Duncan Keith and Cam Barker against Detroit, with Darren Helm and Derek Meech, are in the Western final.

That’s obviously the way it should be.

For the record, here at rcsportsblog.com (you can follow us on twitter), we went 7-1 in the first round and 3-1 in Round 2. The only outcome we did not select correctly in Round 1 was, of course, Anaheim’s upset of Jonathan Cheechoo’s San Jose Sharks and our only incorrect choice in Round 2 was Carolina’s Game 7 upset of the No. 1-ranked Boston Bruins.

Interestingly, we also said that the two most interesting — and exciting — series would be Chicago-Vancouver and Pittsburgh-Washington. They were.

So on with the Show. Here’s our look at the third round, the conference finals, of the 2009 Stanley Cup playoffs.

ROUND THREE

EASTERN CONFERENCE

No. 4 Pittsburgh Penguins vs. No. 6 Carolina Hurricanes

The Pens won the season series 2-1-1 and were not only in last year’s Stanley Cup final, but have five players with Stanley Cup rings. They obviously have enough experience to handle this series against a team that won the Cup in 2006 and still have 10 players from that team. The Pens have the stars in Crosby, Malkin, Gonchar and Jordan Staal, but Carolina has so much grit and character, that it’s impossible to count them out. It also doesn’t hurt that when it looked like this team was out of it back in February, goalie Cam Ward went 14-4-2 over the final 20 games. Ward won the Conn Smythe Trophy in 2006 and will have to be that good again against all the Pittsburgh firepower. We like the Penguins in five.

WESTERN CONFERENCE

No. 2 Detroit Red Wings vs. No. 4 Chicago Blackhawks

The Red Wings are the defending Stanley Cup champions and they’re certainly good enough to win it again. In fact, the Red Wings have the best team in the National Hockey League. They roll four strong lines, have a Norris Trophy defenceman in Nick Lidstrom and an MVP-calibre forward in Pavel Datsyuk, they are well-coached and have better goaltending (Chris Osgood) than the Eastern media will ever give credit. The Wings won the season series against the upstart Hawks, but when asked about this matchup, I always see that January 1, outdoor game at Wrigley Field, the one in which the Hawks rode the home crowd to an early lead and then collapsed under the weight of the Wings speed and talent. The most important thing the Hawks have going for them is youth and enthusiasm and, hey, that might carry them, but we like Detroit in six.

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