Tag Archives: eastern conference

There Was a Time When the Crossover Was A Reward…

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

When the Canadian Football League moved Winnipeg back to the East and created the crossover playoff structure, the crossover was a reward.

It was created to honor a good team stuck in a great Conference. For instance, if the East had a 13-5 team and  12-6 teams and your favorite team was 10-8, your favorite team would make the playoffs because the West probably had a 12-6 champ and, ay, three teams that were about 4-14. A 10-8 team deserves to be in the playoffs.

This year, however, a team that is 6-12 could conceivably reach the post-season in the crossover because the B.C. Lions and Edmonton Eskimos are so bad, they’re both embarrassments to the CFL.

Yesterday, the Montreal Alouettes defeated the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 22-19 because when it really counted, the Bombers offence couldn’t make a play. It’s been the same sad story all year for Winnipeg. When they play on the road, they stink. They’re 0-8 away from Canad Inns this season and with a 4-3 record at home, the Bombers are now 4-11.

And still, because Edmonton beat B.C. 31-28 in overtime on Saturday night, the 4-11 Bombers still have a legitimate chance to make the playoffs. Not only are Edmonton and B.C. both 5-10, there is no reason to believe either team will win another game this season.

Edmonton finishes the season at home to Saskatchewan, at home to Winnipeg and on the road at Saskatchewan. They could easily go 0-3 down the stretch. B.C. goes to Calgary, plays at home to Saskatchewan and goes to Hamilton. They could easily go 0-3 down the stretch. Winnipeg has Toronto at home this week, goes to Edmonton and plays host to Calgary. They could easily go 2-1 or even 3-0 down the stretch.

While the Canadian Press wanted to make it clear in their national game story yesterday that the Bombers were dead, nothing could be further from the truth. CP wrote, “The loss further dims the unlikely playoff hopes for the Blue Bombers,” when in fact, it doesn’t dim them much at all. After what happened on the weekend, the Bombers are officially two games back of Edmonton and B.C. (they must finish ahead of the Lions and Eskimos to claim the crossover) with three games to play and they have a relatively easy schedule to finish the year. The Lions and Eskimos have extremely difficult schedules. Winnipeg could make the playoffs with a 1-8 or even an 0-9 road record (if they win their two home games and B.C. and Edmonton lose out).

Look, the Bombers are a lousy football team, but they aren’t so lousy, they won’t make the playoffs.

And that, in itself, is as embarrassing to the CFL as the absolute dreadfulness of the three bottom teams in the league this year.


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Bombers Lose Again. Not From Lack of Effort.

Posted on September 5, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

On the same day, the Winnipeg Goldeyes ended a disappointing season with a win, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers did their best impersonation of the Cleveland Browns.

Juan Diaz hit his team leading 24th home run of the year and drove in his team-leading 75th run of the year as the Goldeyes beat Schaumburg 4-3 in the final game of the 2010 campaign. Kevin West drove in his 70th run of the year and won the “Hit the Cover off the Ball” Trophy as the team’s leading hitter by finishing the season with a .337 average, just barely ahead of Diaz’s .335. The Goldeyes finished 46-53 and there will be plenty of soul-searching in the off-season.

But enough of the good news. In Regina yesterday, the Bombers were beaten 27-23 by the heavily-favored Saskatchewan Roughriders in the annual Labor Day Classic. The Bombers covered the 10 1/2 points, but they also fell to 2-7 on the season, and also fell further into last place in the CFL East. With the loss, the Bombers also fell out of the lead in the crossover playoff  with the two dogs in the West.

It was a game the Bombers should have won. Easily. But because they play like the Browns, every time it looked as if they just might steal a win, they turned the ball over or dropped a pass or got sacked. It also appears as if they’ve lost No. 1 quarterback Buck Pierce for an extended period of time after he injured his arm late in the fourth quarter on a play that might have been called roughing the quarterback in a different game with a different group of officials.

On Sunday, the Bombers had 391 yards of total offence to 359 for Saskatchewan (without losses), but they never held the lead. The Riders jumped out to a 1-0 lead, a 4-0 lead, a 4-3 lead, an 11-3 lead, and 11-6 lead and an 11-9 lead at the half. Then they held an 11-10 lead, an 18-10 lead, an 18-17 lead, a 25-17 lead, a 26-17 lead, a 27-17 lead and a 27-23 lead. They won 27-23, because the Bombers holder, Mike Renaud, mishandled the snap on the convert attempt with 10 seconds remaining. It was Browns-like.

All in all, it was an ugly day for Winnipeg. If they weren’t turning it over, they were taking a bad penalty. Every time it appeared they were going to take over the game, they screwed up. It was not a lack of effort. It was a lack of concentration against a team that, on this Sunday afternoon, was just that much better.

The Bombers are the best 2-7 team in CFL history, but they’re still 2-7. That means they are still a lousy football team.

And yet, I’ll wager two Sport Select tickets that they win the Banjo Bowl.

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Fans: You Just Have to Love ‘em. Too many of ‘em just don’t want to admit the ugly truth…

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

FARGO, N.D. — After spending two days watching the Minnesota Vikings work out, it’s nice just to sit in the press box at Fargo’s quaint little Newman Outdoor Field and watch baseball.

It’s a beautiful night, the place is full (it’s Fan Appreciation Night) and you can smell the hot dogs and hamburgers all the way up here on the suite level. Goldeyes-RedHawks games are always fun and while it appears Winnipeg is going to have to mount a comeback if they don’t want to fall below .500, it’s still great baseball.

Meanwhile, earlier this afternoon, I had a chance to watch Thursday night’s Bomber game and then read the comments at winnipegfreepress.com and winnipegsun.com. Some of them are quite insightful. Others are just laughable. Only a few of them seem to have the heart or the cojones to admit the truth: It’s a bad team, playing bad football.

While plenty of fans (surprisingly, dozens) want to blame the officials (the score was 39-17, that’s not the officials fault) and a couple of boneheads wanted to blame Fred Reid (Fred Reid?) who carried 13 times for 103 yards, there were a few who actually knew the ugly, unpopular truth: It’s official. Eight weeks into the season and the Winnipeg Blue Bombers under head coach Paul LaPolice are worse than they were under the hated Mike Kelly.

In Thursday night’s game at Molson Stadium in Montreal, the Montreal Alouettes lost quarterback Anthony Calvillo to a  bruised sternum in the first half and yet Montreal still whipped the Bombers by three touchdowns. Winnipeg is now 2-6 on the season. Last year, with Kelly at the helm, they were 3-5 after eight weeks. It’s a mess and it doesn’t appear as if it will get any better anytime soon.

In fact, the thought that this year’s version of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers could be 2-11 by the end of September is now legitimate. Thursday night, Bombers quarterback Steven Jyles could muster very little offence. He completed only 11-of-22 passes for 123 yards, watched his receivers drop balls and could put only 10 offensive points on the board. To be fair, Reid was solid and Jovon Johnson was sensational, but….

The Bombers are bad. Real bad. And it’s hard to see this team getting better fast enough to stop a sweep by Saskatchewan in early September, then losses to Toronto, Montreal again and B.C.

And how ugly would 2-11 really be?

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Just Plain Bad

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

Here’s today’s question: Have we watched the point in professional sport — outside of golf, of course — where we’re going to make up the rules as we go along?

The NFL and NBA have been making up the rules for a long time. Hockey has no rules, or to be more fair, despite a number of changes and league directives, the rules are still different in the third period than they are in the first. Major League Baseball has reached the level of pure, unadulterated joke (Why bother having a strike zone? Play call your own. Don’t waste the money on a homeplate umpire). Officiating in the World Cup was comical.

And there is the Canadian Football League.

Just watched the PVR of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers 28-7 loss to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Watched the live version at Assiniboia Downs on Friday night and have just re-watched that debacle once again.

There is NO justification for calling the Kevin Glenn fumble in the third quarter a “non-fumble.” It was a fumble. The textbook definition of a fumble. If you look up the word fumble in the CFL rulebook, you are asked to go to www.tsn.ca to watch the replay of that fumble. And yet, even with video replay, there was some sort of excuse made up to make it a non-fumble.

It happened, of course, at an extremely important point in the game and may have changed the outcome (on the next play, Glenn threw a touchdown pass to make the score 21-0). The CFL should be ashamed.

The Bombers lost and fell to 1-2 on the season, tied with Hamilton for last in the East. It’s really not that big a deal. After all, this 18-game season is only three games old and the Bombers get the lousy Eskimos in front of the beer cup snake at Canad Inns Stadium next week.

But it just makes the league look bad and nobody needs that.

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At Home in the Whine Cellar

Posted on June 20, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

I arrived home on Friday rather shocked to see my wife in her favorite chair on the sundeck, reading a book and then hearing the droneful buzzing of what I thought were vuvuzelas. For a died-in-the-wool football and baseball fan, I would never have expected to see (or hear) my bride watch soccer.

“That’s not the soccer game,” she said without looking up from her book. “It’s the mosquitos. This is June in Winnipeg. Some of these mosquitos are bigger than wasps. I put out some coils. It’s not bad here.”

Silly me, and I thought it was the World Cup.

Speaking of the World Cup, there are two things that I love: (1) all the players who dive around as if they’ve been shot in the back of the head and (2) all the referees who call things they don’t see.

The officiating in the World Cup is silly. I wouldn’t call it bad. I’d just call it apochryphal. These guys make up fouls that don’t happen, they pick out one foul in a series of fouls , they call offsides or miss offsides when they don’t see it and on Sunday, the referee pulled a red card on Brazil’s Kaka when Kaka barely made contact with a player from Cote d’Ivoire who should have been kicked out for life for bad acting.

When I heard that FIFA might have sent Koman Coulybaly home for blowing the call on the Yanks’ third goal in the USA’s comeback 2-2 draw with Slovenia, I was marginally impressed. Only marginally, because FIFA didn’t suspend the dozen or so other referees who had made calls as egregiously bad.

The dude in that Brazil-Cote d’Ivoire match shouldn’t be allowed to officiate a match involving nine-year-olds, let alone a World Cup match. But, hey, I’m not the only won whining. The referees’ supporters should listen to the players and managers. It’s a joke.

*          *          *

The Winnipeg Blue Bombers were drilled 38-20 in Hamilton in their final pre-season game yesterday, proving once again that pre-season games don’t mean squat.

When you go from a 34-10 win over Montreal in your first pre-season game (read: practice scrimmage) to a 38-20 loss in your second, all it means is that head coach Paul LaPolice and his staff were looking to see who could play and who couldn’t. They got a better sense in Game 2.

Kevin Glenn, who should never have been released in Winnipeg, threw a pair of touchdown passes as he took the Bombers apart in the first quarter. Buck Pierce struggled and Steven Jyles looked good for Winnipeg. LaPolice appears to have a decision to make.

Regardless, after Hamilton leaves Winnipeg on July 2, we’ll all — and that includes the coaching staff — have a better idea as to where this Blue Bombers team actually stands in the CFL’s Eastern Conference. Those two practice games meant nothing.

*          *          *

Heading back to watch the golf. I’ll see how long it’ll be before I’m forced to hit the mute button. I don’t know about you, but I’m just so tired of Johnny Miller’s new full-time job as captain of the Phil Mickelson Cheerleading Team.

UPDATE: Miller just described a trap shot facing Ernie Els as “impossible to get close.” Els stiffed it. Just another day listening to Johnny Miller saying things are going to happen and they never do.

Golf is really quite enjoyable on CBS. Miller kills it on NBC.

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Lousy Goaltending Equals Great Entertainment

Posted on June 7, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

The Chicago Blackhawks took a 3-2 lead in the Stanley Cup final Sunday night. Antti Niemi outduelled both Michael Leighton and Brian Boucher.

Unfortunately for the Philadelphia Flyers, coach Peter Laviolette couldn’t put both Leighton and Boucher in the net at the same time.

Laviolette pulled Leighton in the second period after the darling of the Eastern Conference final allowed three goals in the 13 shots he faced. Boucher came in a gave up three goals on 14 shots. If the puck was as big as a football, the Flyers might be ahead in this series.

However, it’s not like Niemi has been the second coming of Glenn Hall. He allowed four goals on 27 shots and most NHL coaches would not be happy with a goalie whose series goals against average is now 3.80. His save percentage is below .900. That’s not good.

Of course, that’s what is going to make the next game or two spectacular. When there is a chance — a good chance — that Game 6 will finish 9-8, you can’t help but get fired up to watch. Fans wanted offence and thanks to three marginal goaltenders — and Flyers defenceman Chris Pronger who was a slick minus-5 on Sunday night — they now have offence.

It’s just too bad for the Flyers that ever since Bernie Parent retired, they haven’t had a chance to win a Cup. No goalie, no championship. This year, however, they get to play against Antti Niemi. Before it’s over, he could cough up ol’ Lord Stanley all by himself.

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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.

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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


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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.

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Ready to Call a Vancouver-Pittsburgh Stanley Cup Final

Posted on April 29, 2010 by Scott Taylor| Leave a comment

The first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs told us three things: (1) Henrik Sedin IS the most valuable player in the National Hockey League this season, (2) the Pittsburgh Penguins appear ready to defend their Stanley Cup crown and (3) nothing beats a great goaltender.

How ’bout that Jaroslav Halak? He made 53 saves in Game 6 and 41 saves in Game 7 as he led the Montreal Canadiens to the biggest upset of this playoff year. The Habs were down 3-1 in the series when Halak decided to win it himself, stopping 131 of the final 134 shots he faced to give the Canadiens a 4-3 series win over President’s Trophy champion Washington Capitals. So much for Alex Ovechkin in this year’s post-season.

It was the fourth time in eight years, the No. 8-seed had beaten the No. 1-seed in a first-round series, and it means we went 6-2 with our picks in the opening round.

Let’s take a look at the second round:

Western Conference

San Jose Sharks (1) vs. Detroit Red Wings (5)

The Sharks looked good in round one against Colorado and appeared to get rid of the playoff jitters. The aging Wings, who just don’t play very well at home these days, looked great on the road against Phoenix. This will be a great series, but I think it’s the Sharks in a close one.

San Jose Sharks in seven

Chicago Blackhawks (2) vs. Vancouver Canucks (3)

The Canucks finished strong against L.A., scoring 17 goals in the final three games. The Hawks were lucky to get past Nashville. The Canucks gain some revenge from last year.

Vancouver Canucks in six

Eastern Conference

Pittsburgh Penguins (4) versus Montreal Canadiens (8)

In a year of upsets, I don’t see one here. Sidney Crosby is on a mission and the tiny Canadiens will tire, Jaroslav Halak or not.

Pittsburgh Penguins in six

Boston Bruins (6) versus Philadelphia Flyers (7)

Tuukka Rask is a better goaltender than we think and Boston gets Marc Savard back. This one is still a toss up. The Flyers will win if Brian Boucher matches his first round heroics.

Boston Bruins is seven

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