I blogged in February on The Five Big Problems of the Toronto Maple Leafs. Happily Team President Brendan Shanahan agreed on the most important point. By hiring Mike Babcock as the new head coach – $50 million for eight years – Leafs management sends a clear message to media, fans and players alike: this team must win now.
There are many next steps, the most important of which is to address player leadership, but the first step is the most important.
Said Babcock this morning: “I believe this is Canada’s team and it’s time to put it back on the map. I came here to be involved in a Cup process. I have a burning desire to win. I want to build a team that the fans of the Toronto Maple Leafs can be proud of.”
Dave Feshuck, Toronto Star sportswriter, made news for himself yesterday by attacking Phil Kessel: “You’re the best player on the team, and the coach is fired…are you difficult to coach?” Kessel turned to the others. “This guy’s such an idiot; he’s always been like this.”
Mr. Kessel is, in fact, quite correct; Feshuck has always been like this. Even as an elementary school student, Feshuck enjoyed baiting others, once demanding of a Grade Four classmate: “You’re the best student here, the school burned down…are you difficult to teach?”
Feshuck gave international reporting a swing after college but had to be escorted back to Canada after he posed the following to Prince Charles, “You were supposed to be king, Princess Diana is dead…are you a difficult prince?” Feshuck had a brief reprieve under Mayor Rob Ford, because he seemed to like these questions. “You’re a heroine user, people laugh at you…are you a difficult mayor?”However Feshuck had to be escorted away again when he demanded of President Obama, “You’re a black guy, the police are killing black people…are you a difficult president?” It is believed that Obama muttered, “This guy is an idiot.”And so, Feshuck, being dumb, aggressive and lazy, found he was qualified only for one thing: reporting on sports.
The Toronto Maple Leafs are one of the most talented teams in hockey, and yet, as CBS Sports wrote,”They are extremely streaky and volatile. You never know which team is going to show up and what exactly is going to happen.”These players know how to play. They know how to pass. They know how to score. They know how to defend. They just need a coach to move them in the same direction.Current head coach, Randy Carlyle, is the one to blame for this inconsistency. As he admitted himself after the team lost recently to Carolina, the team with the worst record in the league: ”I don’t think we were mentally ready to go out and play the type of game that was required. Simple as that.” (Whose job is that? Oh, right, the coach.)
And so as simple as that, Carlyle has to go. Sign Dallas Eakins for the rest of the year and see how that goes. If it doesn’t work out, get Babcock. Now is the time to win.
Last Friday, Toronto lost to Buffalo, the worst team in the league, and Phil Kessel, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ star forward walked away from the media scrum, telling them, “Leave me alone.”
The jilted scum (sic) made a story out of that. As Mr. Kessel admits, his answers rarely offer them anything much. “I’m a guy that likes to go out and play hockey and have some fun.” Teammate Nazem Kadri, victim of as much negative press as anyone, gave his point of view: “When (Phil) doesn’t feel like he can trust anybody, he gets a little bit shy and a little bit timid in that regard. It’s really nothing personal.” Let me put it differently and not so nicely: sports reporters are lazy and judgemental. They do not pose insightful questions that develop understanding of the nature of the game nor the player, but instead pose trite statements with question marks at the end, searching for a quote that they can insert into their pre-written narrative.
These are the statements/questions Kessel avoided: “What are your thoughts on losing to the worst team in the league?” “How disappointed are you in the team’s efforts?” “How can the team improve?”
Phil Kessel is a great hockey player not only for his skill and humility on the ice but also for his most admirable disdain for these morons he must endure.
The public’s recent kangaroo court ruling on Ray Rice reminds me of one of the greatest scapegoats in memory: Ben Johnson. For years, Mr. Johnson was seen as Canada’s great hope in Track and Field. He was watched by millions as he trained for the 100 meter dash, sprinting, flexing and smiling day in and day out. He went on to set a world record in the event. Canada had the world’s fastest man.
He arrived at the 1988 Seoul Olympics with a country’s hopes on his back and won the gold medal – annihilating the competition, including hated rival Carl Lewis, and setting another world record. He was immediately coronated by the country, as much a Canadian sporting king as Paul Henderson or Terry Fox. And then…Mr. Johnson tested positive for steroids. Suddenly there was no medal, no record and no coronation. Mr. Johnson was transformed – in less than 9.8 seconds – into an immigrant Canada never should have allowed in. He was branded a traitor. In due course, the critical eyes turned to the doctors and coaches. However the spotlight lost focus when it came to the real problem, on why Mr. Johnson was on a mission to win at all costs. Whose idea was all that? The coaches? The Canadian Track and Field Association? The media? The public? As odd as it seems to me, even today, 25 years later, Mr. Johnson is considered with a collective shame. Even now. As guilty as Ben Johnson was, as guilty as Mr. Rice may be, the real crime committed here is not by these individuals, but by a society that craves blood, the crime of reveling in a public execution.
Micaela says I’m pushing it, but while watching Guided by Voices last night at Asbury Park’s famed The Stone Pony, I was thinking that Bob Pollard was a Mark Twain superstar kind of guy.
Click the image below to see him nail Tractor Rape Chain. True, he got so drunk that he not only told the audience to “Fuck off” more than several times and played I am a Scientist twice, but also fell down in a heap at the end. But I stick to my theory, based not only on his out-spoken, sardonic nature and belligerence, but Bob as an exhaustive, creative force. And he drinks a lot too.
Mark Twain: A Life by Ron Powers is an intimidating work not only from its physical weight (3 pounds of text) but more from the iconic burden of the man. Mark Twain, as he himself wrote, lived “in the midst of world history”, charging through an epoch of change, realizing many of his dreams, and yet suffering through as much misery. He captained steamboats at the outset of the American Civil War, mined for silver in Nevada during the Comstock Lode, and went on speaking tours world-wide, all the while developing the “American” voice in literature, a life famously beginning and ending as Haley’s Comet appeared in the sky. He was a witty, demanding man and deeply reflective, offering rebukes to governmental policies that would ring true even today. “I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.” But most interesting of all, he had plans for many unrealized books, including a follow-up to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Twain wrote in his journal: Huck comes back, 60 years old, from nobody knows where & crazy. Thinks he is a boy again & scans every face for Tom and Becky.
Tom comes, at last, 60 from wandering the world & tends Huck & together they talk the old times; both are desolate, life has been a failure, all that was lovable, all that was beautiful is under the mould. They die together.
Sadly, Twain outlived much of his immediate family, surviving his wife and three of four children.
I’m sick of the bad behavior in hockey these days, especially from Boston Bruiin Milan Lucic. Not only did he threaten Canadiens players in the handshake after the game last night – apparently he’s going “to fucking get them next year” – but far worse, he deliberately tried to injure Danny Dekeyser in the previous series by stabbing his stick into his groin. As amusing as some might find all of this – to say nothing of water bottles being sprayed to insult and mock – it is terrible for the game of hockey.
Lundqvist mocks Crosby
Indeed this garbage is reminiscent of the dark days of the 1970s, the Philadelphia Flyers – the self-proclaimed bullies of the league – and Bobby Clarke, infamous for breaking Russian Valery Kharlamov’s ankle in the 1972 Summit Series. None of this is a matter of “boys being boys” – as some are chuckling – but rather is a terrible embarrassment for the sport and must be eradicated. It’s not a difficult task. Suspensions of 5-10 games would work for the first infraction, 20-40 games for the second incident and a lifetime ban for the third. There are other leagues in the world, and perhaps Lucic would be a better fit somewhere else.
I admit that I went to Boston with an attitude. As a fan of Toronto Maple Leafs, I do not think kind thoughts of anything Bruin, and so donned my Leafs cap to represent the true blue and white. I didn’t have to wait long for a reaction. “You guys have been losers since 1967.” The guy stared at me deadpan at the bus station.
My comeback wasn’t a classic. “At least I don’t live in Boston.”
It was going to be a long weekend, but I was up to it, and went straight into a bar called The Tam to watch the Bruins-Canadiens game, now in overtime. I received a few glares and just one muttered comment – “I think this guy is messing up my karma” – but that was it. I almost felt bad when the Bruins lost the game.
The startling silence continued over the next day – perhaps because I was at a writer’s conference? It wasn’t until I arrived in Cambridge that things picked up again. A square-jawed, almost pleasant-looking man leaned out from an alley. “Leafs are the only Original Six team that didn’t make the playoffs. Did you know that?”
I wasn’t sure if he was right. It took me a couple of blocks to think it through and another few to think of my comeback. “Now I know I’m in fucking Harvard.”
I continued on to The Sinclair, preparing for the next attack.
“Love the hat, man.”
I wanted to detect a tone but couldn’t find one.
“Got to wear your colors,” said another. “I respect that.” It wasn’t until I ran into an old friend at the show that the antagonism returned. “I looked up, saw the Leafs hat, and thought what an asshole. I knew it must be you.”
By hiring Mike Babcock as the new head coach – $50 million for eight years – Leafs management sends a clear message to media, fans and players alike: this team must win now.
