They're no hovercrafts

TONY BOCK/TORONTO STAR

Is it Leafs goalie Mikael Tellqvist, or Chris Young and his old-school road hockey pads?

One of the open spots on this mostly closed Leafs roster concerns who’s going to be Eddie Belfour’s standby.

I’m not one to root openly, except to say this: If Mikael Tellqvist doesn’t make the team, I’m really, really hoping they keep his pads around.

This has nothing to do with the new rules (aw – there I go again), especially as they apply to goalie equipment (for a quickie history, check this out).

The inestimable Rosie DiManno has a talk with Belfour about the new gear restrictions in her column today – Belfour bellyaches about his trapper, which is a switch from some of these guys talking as if they're being sent out in nothing more than a jockstrap and a covering loin cloth. (btw, did you know that in women’s hockey, the goalies wear a covering pelvic protector called a jill? I didn’t know that before I read this).

No, Telly has only one issue and it is purely aesthetic. The pads he’s wearing, they look kinda old-school or (EUPHEMISM ALERT) retro if you’re being charitable – and if you’re not, well, they’re homely, the kinds of pads only a mother could love. In fact, they bear a passing resemblance to the road hockey pads my mom picked out for me from Canadian Tire’s 1972 Fall and Winter catalogue. I won’t say any more for fear of dating myself, but the blocker looks like something Captain Kirk would wear for a beam-down to Triskelion (sort of like a road game against the Islanders, that).

The pads also look, well, puny – certainly much smaller than the hovercrafts these fellas were wearing a year ago, and even smaller than the white pads the other three goalies here are wearing. Probably an optical illusion, that, with the boards and the ice also white.

Jennifer Quinn, sports feature writer extraordinaire at the Star, handled the blog's quote-running duties, catching up with Telly on the subject of the pads:

"They kind of looked small at the beginning. After a while you get used to it. They are smaller, so they're going to make you quicker. And I'm a reflex goalie, so they'll be good for me."

Yup, they're old school, he said -- but old school in taking the game back to the '80s, firewagon, Breakfast Club days. Hope he's right there.

But enough of this mumbling. We’ll be back with a posting from today’s scrimmage. You’ll be able to spot me easy enough. I’m the guy in the press box with the Go Pads Go! Go Pads Go! sign.

And oh, a mea culpa from yesterday's late post: Jan Steber got credit for a goal I thought went to scoring machine Jeff O'Neill, and it was on Todd Ford, not Belfour. Must have missed the replay.

Comments

[denial]

I had a pair of those canadian tire street hockey pads. Their value was purely decorative. I still have nightmares of my reflexes getting the better of me and forcing me to make a low save by flinging to my knees. That crunching sound was my soul.

Is anyone even slightly surprised that eric lindros has started getting edgy with the media. telling a sports reporter that "you guys are going to make a big deal out of everything" is a very revealing thing to say when training camp exhibition games haven't even started. I mean, there's no room to move on a statement like that.

a guy called into the fan yesterday with what started out to be a sane comment and then devolved into anti-lindros rhetoric that bordered on a hate crime. but the part worth noing here was when the caller said that lindros should have known that this is what life is like in toronto. the sports editorial media here is torn between reflecting the inbred need for this team to win, and a parasitical, tabloid feeding frenzy that will sell 1 more paper today, regardless of how it erodes social fabric in the long run (as an economist noted once, "...but in the long run, we're all dead"). It's a neurosis that gives the media here a deceptive quality that is probably unique in the sports world, and for lindros to act surprised that he's facing it isn't naive; it's flat out learning disabled. If Lindros wants to have sports writers coddle him and treat him like he didn't hold quebec over a barrel based on absolutely nothing but the perceived leverege that he had (which he no longer has), then he should be playing in some nonplace. If Lindros wants to make it as a hockey player and (gasp) a grown up human being, he should suck it up, realize that he (or his so called supporters) have dug him a MASSIVE public relations hole because of that stunt with quebec, and climb out of it by showing the world that his injuries have given him a depth and understanding that goes beyond the game.

Instead, he's just acting like a brat, because for the moment, that's all that he really is. And if he takes lessons from Tie on media relations, I figure that his toronto story is pretty much done anyway. that's what you get for hanging around with the wrong people, eric, and for being a 3 year old who can't escape his own persona, because it's so soft and comfortable and full of people who won't tell you that you're acting like a suck. you become a bedtime story for mario to tell sidney.

now where were we.

utterly unsurpised to hear that curtis regrets leaving toronto. curtis did what sosa did when he left the cubs. curtis is a remarkably nice guy, and like many remarkably nice guys, he's a passive aggressive. curtis got ticked off at quinn at the olympics (or was it the world cup? i can't remember), and he let it fester. he didn't say anything -- he just let it drone on and on. and then he emotionally detached himself from the leafs and left, and surprised us all. sosa did the same thing in chicago, because baker has zero perception skills and didn't see that sammy was taking too much heat for a team that has a cultural problem with losing (sound familiar?). it was all starting to add up here in toronto for curtis -- he would never blame his defense for the losses -- but he would never blame HIMSELF, either. And that should have been an open book for Quinn to read if he had any perception skills. He doesn't. Quinn cannot handle abstract concepts like that behind a goalie is an actual, complex human being.

you know who can read people like that? wayne gretzky can, and that's why even if the coyotes suck, those players are going to become better human beings (not that this matters to most of us, but it'll matter to them). Paul Maurice is also of this breed, and marlies players are going to benefit massively from his mentoring.