Weekend bits: Deck the brawls

Here's what you might have missed while figuring that 9-2 scoreline was just an office party-induced hallucinatory hangover:

Numerical string to ponder: 37.6, 39.0, 50.6. Give up? Too easy, I know, the last one was a dead giveaway. They're the Raptors' defensive FG numbers for the past three games, all W's, and yesterday's W over the GS Nellies included six Bargnani blocks. He's coming along, and so are they. Meantime, Jose Calderon was stretchered off with a back injury and wasn't on the plane to Phoenix where the Raps open their final pre-Christmas road trip.

Another great weekend for millionaire bozo jocks losing touch with their emotions and reality. The Knicks and Nuggets spilled their slapping and backpeddling into the baseline seats in NY Saturday (video here, although who knows how long it'll stay up), the former blaming the latter for actually playing the game out. The nerve. Suspensions may come down today, with original Raptor turned Knick-killer Isiah Thomas one of the focuses:

The league is certain to punish Anthony, its leading scorer and one of its brightest young stars, for throwing a punch at Collins. As for Thomas, a Hall of Fame guard who is now fighting to hold on to his job, the situation is unusual because there is no known precedent for a team’s coach, let alone its president, to be punished for instigating a fight.

Raptors coach Sam Mitchell, missing the point entirely: "We can't fight. We can wrestle. But we've got a better chance of scratching each other than fighting each other where we actually (land) a punch. ... So why is it such a black eye when these guys lose their temper?" Sam, fighting might be a part of hockey - if they penalized NHL coaches for instigating fights, the bench would be a pretty lonely place many nights - but it's not in the NBA, and when it moves into the expensive seats, it's a puffy shiner for all the world to see.

Oh, and this long-running idiot (the one on the right) spat in the face of an opponent, which means it'll probably show up as an option on the next NFL Blitz game. Meantime, there was Chicago Bear Tank Johnson's weekend: arrested for the third time in 18 months, then 12 hours later out partying with a friend who was shot to death.

Back to the playing fields: Agent Zero drops 60 on the Lakers (Kobe's held to 45).

This is not sports, but it's definitely seasonal: Boss drinks lots of vodka at Christmas lunch party and passes out - on the train tracks, his head on the rail, causing a four-hour delay during London rush hour (nice basket catch by The Morning News).

What I learned from the BBC's 100 things we didn't know this time last year: Jose Mourinho says he's only been in an English pub once, and that was to buy his wife some fags, as they're known over there (so there's 101 things - I didn't know the Special Wife smoked).

Jason Williams' line from Miami's game Saturday night stopped me: 26 minutes, 0 shots from the field or the line, seven assists. Hey, all hail White Carob.

One game away from the midpoint of the Premier League season - and now into the holiday match crunch, as David James notes in his Guardian blog - Chelsea's just two points back of Man United. And in Spain, a bad weekend for Barcelona - losing the yawnworthy Club World Cup to Brazilian side Internacional, and falling out of first place in La Liga.

Australia beats the Poms, reclaims the Ashes.

And still Down Under, a world record-breaking bungee jump.

Weekend bits: A.I., the Trade

Unlike Allen Iverson, the Monday morning links never make trade demands:

A.I. Watch: ESPN's Chris Sheridan has a list of suitors for Iverson and his contract. Two things he suggests: A long list that rapidly narrows to two or three serious contenders (Dallas, Boston, perhaps even New York?) and a quick resolution. Oh, and forget about getting fair value.

The Raptors, minus Chris Bosh, lose a tight one to the Portland Trailblazers, who were missing their best scorer and post-up contributor Zach Randolph. Okay, I'm kidding - the Raptors were destroyed by the Blazers. Line of the night came at halftime, from assistant coach Jim Todd on the Bosh-less offence, without a plan B without Bosh's pick-and-roll sets: "We'd like to go inside if we could find someone to go inside to." Are you listening, Mr Colangelo? It's not like Bosh's lengthening list of ailments is going to go away. This team already needs a shooter. As for their vaunted frontcourt "depth", it was shown on Sunday to be a mirage.

As for the Leafs, I'll take the cue from them and offer up - nothing.

Best read of the weekend, from the New York Times - Yes, you can surf in Cleveland, before the brown water freezes, which ain't exactly Gidget goes to Ohio:

To reach the lake, surfers drag their boards across snowdrifts and beaches littered with used condoms and syringes, Mr. Ditzenberger said. The most popular surf spot is Edgewater State Park. It is nicknamed Sewer Pipe because, after heavy rains, a nearby water treatment plant regularly discharges untreated waste into Lake Erie.

The L.A. Times does a takeout on WADA's anti-doping efforts, and finds that some athletes are getting (surprise) unfairly treated.

Chelsea comes back for a 1-1 draw against Arsenal, which puts them eight points back of leading Man United with a game in hand.

Another Woodbine thoroughbred season ends, Emma-Jayne Wilson and Sid Attard winning their divisions.

Into the weekend: Talking and carolling

A quote, and a little rant to start off, riffing off Wednesday's postgame in Cleveland:

"All in all, we played well. I look at it as a positive thing. We're growing as a team; we're getting better. Three weeks ago, we couldn't have come here and played that well."

And a week before this night and its four-point defeat, the Raptors were eight points better than the same Cavs - so what's up with that, coach? But I'm not picking on Sam here. He's just spinning, like all coaches do. It's more about this North American sportswriting addiction to the locker-room quote, these bromides and warmed-over cliches that we hustle down to get, wait around for, chicken-scratch into our notebooks or transcribe dutifully off the recorder. I did it for years.

Thanks to TV and now the Internet, though, pretty much everyone who cares knows what happened last night. Listening to some player or coach distill it into these little bits of nothing adds - nothing. More interesting is why it happened and how, but rarely is that explored in any depth. Even though it can be a bit pretentious, overall, I'll take the quoteless, British style of match reporting. Will Leitch said it best: access is overrated. And along these lines, here's one for you - via Kottke, former major league pitcher Don Carman's list of stock locker-room answers, favourites (and a few I've written down and banged into the keyboard) including:

7 If we stay healthy we should be right there
12 This team seems ready to gel
14 That All-Star voting is a joke
20 We've got to have fun
26 That's why they pay him _ million dollars

One last appeal. A little while back there was some fun here with the 50 Worst Things to Happen to Sports countdown. Now it's time to put together the answer list: The _ Best Things to Happen to Pro Sports. Any and all submissions appreciated. I've got nearly 20 on my own, but need more.

One last e-mailed Christmas carol. Nice work by Glenn from Arizona on this one:

On the twelfth day of Christmas,
my true Leafs sent to me
Twelve wingers in need of a drumming,
Eleven players and a Glenn Healy piping,
Ten forwards a-diving
Nine wankin' penalties
Eight goals a-milking,
Seven games a floundering,
Six players a-standing
A fiiiiiivvve game losing streak
Four yapping call ups
Three strung out forwards
Two blind defensemen,
And a broken hockey stick from an ash tree!

One last vidgame "think piece". Newsflash: video games like Madden NFL have enhanced kids' understanding of sports. And here we thought all it did was make them fat (Related: Toronto hosts Canada's NFL Madden finals, Jan. 20 at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre).

One - make that two - last BCS bits. Usually I avoid US college football, but these are too good to pass up: Slate's Chris Suellentrop on Who's #2? and blog fave Neate Sager has his Top 5 Pointless Bowl Matchups, including the Whatchamacallit Bowl here in Toronto sometime in January, I forget when, I'll let Neate tell you:

5. INTERNATIONAL BOWL: WESTERN MICHIGAN vs. CINCINNATI, Jan. 6, Toronto There's nothing wrong with playing a bowl game in Toronto. It's just that a game that ranks below the Meineke Car Care Bowl in the NCAA pecking order should not be held just two days before the national championship game. If this game was held on Boxing Day where it belongs, no problem.

One last interview. Alanah at VCOE got her press pass from the Canucks, and thus was able to get some of those locker-room quotes (see - there's a theme here!):

Alanah: You strike me as a player that enjoys playing to the fans and this bad luck might be getting to you in a personal way.
Alex Burrows: Yeah, a little bit for sure. I haven’t scored a goal in 28 games, but you’ve just got to keep working. Like I said, the bounces aren’t going our way right now.

Alanah, go back to Don Carman's list right now! I believe this one is No. 13. Or maybe 17.

Sports around town. Woodbine's closing day goes Sunday out at the Rexdale plant, with a first post of 12:40 p.m. And here's your Sovereign Award finalists.

Watching. Arsenal at Chelsea, 11 a.m., Sunday, Fox Sports. They're both through to the Champions League knockout round - nice try there, Gooners - but it's the postgame press conference, Wenger vs Mourinho, that might be the better matchup.

Pooch punts. Jinks the Vizsla is back. Went 3-2 last week, and the tail is wagging but good this time around. Actually, it's always wagging when it's kibble or cookie time:

DETROIT (-1 1/2) over Minnesota
NY JETS (-4) over Buffalo
WASHINGTON (+1 1/2) over Philadelphia
New England (-3 1/2) over MIAMI
Denver (+7 1/2) over SAN DIEGO

Weekend bits: Evolution to elephants

Some things you may have missed this weekend in Maple Syrup Nation:

ESPN's Scott Burnside on the maturation - okay, let's call it the evolution of Darcy Tucker:

"You have to remember how much the game's changed in three to four years. There were so many more scrums in the game of hockey, whether it was during the play and after, and Darcy always found a way to be in the middle of those things," (Paul) Maurice said. "So, as a spectator, it maybe distracts you from watching the other things that he did offensively. Now, with the power play that we have and the way he plays the game, you start to realize that he has a really good sense of timing of when to bring it to the net and when not to. There's a lot more game offensively."

Toronto's Jonathan de Guzman scored the winner to salvage something out of a terrible week for Holland's Feyenoord Rotterdam.

Still on Euro footy in Holland, check out Dutch photographer Hans van der Meer's European Fields photo essay - fantastic (great catch by SportsFilter).

One more from over there: Thierry Henry says he's out for a month with a nerve problem, and perhaps there's more to the story.

The New York Times' Harry Hurt gets in touch with his inner George Plimpton, going under centre for three plays with the Jets:

The offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer waved me to the sidelines for a final dress rehearsal. Nick Mangold, a 6-foot-4, 300-pound rookie center, crouched over to deliver my first practice snaps. I was mortally afraid Nick would hike the ball so hard my hands would break. But he laid it in my palms like a pigskin pillow.
My second fear was that I’d suffer a 54-year-old’s senior moment, and forget how to call my three plays. I actually blurted the correct words, but my voice was so loud it could be heard out on the adjacent turnpike. “Keep your voice down in the huddle,” the starting quarterback Chad Pennington admonished, “like you’re having a conversation.”

For the video, which although a little long is quite well done and very much in the spirit of the dear departed Plimpton, go here.

Haile Gebreselassie, already among the all-time greats of distance running, cruises to his second marathon win in four months, taking the famed Fukuoka in Japan.

The Times Online gets up close and personal with elephant polo, while activists mount campaigns to end it and Scotland beats Sweden for the world title.

And finally, here's How to Say Nothing, as Hockey Night in Canada's Kelly Hrudey sets up Saturday night's Colorado at Vancouver tilt:

"This is hugely important but I don't want people to read too much into this, or make more of it than there really is. It's the first part of December, obviously, and although these are big points and you need them right now, you can make up ground later in the season."

Photo of the Day: Smokescreen

MARCOS BRINDICCI/REUTERS

Diego Maradona: Either a new training regimen, or he's rehearsing to replace pal Fidel.

Related: Diego checks in.

More weekend bits: Goals vs. fights

Lots of links sent to the email basket this morning, with yet more stuff hanging over from the weekend:

Check out this goal from Francesco Totti, during Sunday's Serie A menu. Then go back and review the weekend Ronaldinho evidence (this time, with the commentary from GOLTV - just a warning, that). Totti vs Ronaldinho. Discuss (and thanks to Peter for the latter pointer).

Next, an eternal question: What's pro hockey gotten itself into now? Is it about skill, or is it about brawn? Regular J-Rich sends along a link to this Boston Globe piece from Kevin Paul Dupont that longs for the good old days of fights, intimidation and Freddy the Fog:

TORONTO STAR FILE PHOTO

The good old days.

Note to NHL: Bring back the fighting, as fast as possible, I'm begging you.
In the spirit of full disclosure, it is without question that my sentiments are influenced by watching what most often has been an emotionally bankrupt Bruins team here in 2006-07. Even when there is the rare case of group indigestion along the boards, I have taken to murmuring in the press box, "Please, don't anyone get mad down there. Whatever you do, don't throw a punch! Gentlemen, above all -- manners."
(snip)
Think anyone down here in the Lower 50 today would turn away from one of the buckets o'blood we witnessed in the early '70s? Can you imagine the ratings that something like the Bruins' first-round sweep of the Maple Leafs in 1969 -- Pat Quinn's likeness hanged from the second balcony after his hit on Bobby Orr -- would bring today? Absolute guarantee: that kind of NHL would not be on the Vs. network. No, sir. We'd be watching that kind of hockey strictly via pay-per-view. And the third period might cost more than the first.

So that's what the NHL needs to boost its invisible profile in the U.S. - more fights. There's something to what Dupont's arguing - most nights, blood and thunder have vanished from the NHL game (from everywhere but the highlights shows, as Chris Zelkovich points out). It's all surface, and no depth. And I confess, I like a good scrap as much as anyone - but it has to be one that happens because of that passion, and not as a substitute for it absence. There's a huge difference between a thumping bodycheck and a bench-clearing brawl as the ne plus ultra of the passion that's gone missing - or worse. The Flyers of that 'buckets o' blood' era were the end product of a hyper-expanded (NHL and WHA) hockey world that didn't have near the international talent pool to draw upon that it does now, and where deliberate intimidation became a strategy to make up for the diluted product. Go back there? No thanks.

But lest you think it's all a starless void in the U.S., there was this illuminating and very readable profile of the Capitals' brilliant young Alexander Ovechkin, in the Washington Post Magazine:

PAUL CONNORS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

The good new days.

On September 17, 1995, Alex turned 10. Two days later, his oldest brother, Sergei, 22, who'd been recuperating after a car accident, died suddenly of unforeseen complications. The next day, Alex's youth team was scheduled to play a game. "His brother wasn't even in the ground yet," the father recalled. "We decided he shouldn't skip the game. He played while tears were flowing down his cheeks. He cried the entire game, but he played. He wanted to play. We were obviously not thinking about hockey that day. I don't even know what the score was. We didn't really think of it as a lesson. We didn't want him to sit at home and dwell, and to cry and to poison himself with his thoughts."
(snip)
To capture the hockey world's attention Alex had forsaken almost every soft distraction of youth. He had done nothing but play hockey. It was a price he was happy to pay, he said. Just being on the ice with his teammates was always, "sort of a high for me," he said through an interpreter. "It's like a child getting his most secret dream achieved. For example, if you always dreamed about a toy transformer robot and you finally get it. That's what I feel on the ice."
Scoring, of course, feels even better. "You can imagine a situation when you are running away from an angry dog," Alex explained. "You've got a bit of adrenaline in your blood, right? Combine that with a sense of accomplishment, and you've got a goal."

I'd love to excerpt more, but go and read it yourself. This is the sort of in-depth, extended feature coverage of the NHL that just isn't done that often anymore - here or in the U.S. Superb stuff.

Weekend bits: Video hits and misses

Some flakes here in case you missed 'em while shivering through the Vanier Cup:

Video replay: Sepp Blatter doesn't believe in it - "We have to help referees and have correct control but we must never stop the match with videos or monitors to look at what has happened" - but Ronaldinho surely does after this wonder goal.

It's ski season, John Kucera and Manuel Osborne-Paradis enjoying career best weekends at Lake Louise. But in Europe it's situation critical: No snow.

New word of the day, courtesy of Pistons GM Joe Dumars: Paradocrity.

Their trumpets confiscated, their complaints lampooned, their team humiliated at the "Gabbatoir" - life's rough for a travelling England cricket fan.

The case of the vanishing basket. Courtesy of emailer Andrew Kwong, Here's the video evidence (wait a minute; where were the referees in all of this nonsense?)

One I missed when (too hastily) putting together Friday's post on the gay Leaf movie, so I'll put it up here now: Life in the NHL Closet.

Goal celebrations

Simon Hattenstone in the Guardian sportblog wins Post of the Morning honours - now there's a new regular feature here to ponder - with this one on footy goal celebrations:

CP FILE PHOTO

Now that's a goal celebration.

It is remarkable what a celebration tells us about the scorer. Alan Shearer's macho outstretched arm is so Alan Shearer that he patented it. The brilliantly understated Colin Bell just about raised a hand in acknowledgment - a bashful thanks rather than a victorious salute. Denis Law celebrated with one finger in the air - stylish but modest - until he scored for City against United to relegate them and marked it with a grief-stricken tear. Samuel Eto'o followed a goal at Real Madrid's Bernabéu with a Black Power salute.

 

So let's think here. Playing off Simon's tee shot, what can we come up with for hockey? Corey Schneider put this Youtube compilation together (skip ahead to about the 1:45 mark for the actual top 10 hockey goal celebrations, unless you want to sit through another dose of hits and fights and *cringe* Chumbawumba).

Of that bunch, Milan Hejduk gets my nod. But what about this one? Here's a hint - Signature moment, and the in-the-air flourish looks on one level to be merely the finishing move - but the puck's already in the net. That's a celebration, even if it's not as separated from the actual goal as Hejduk's, or Tiger Williams, or Sean Avery doing Jack Palance (pick it up around the 3:30 mark, and RIP, Jack).

Bobby Orr winning the Cup (nice touch, the cheezy period soundtrack at the end; here's Dan Kelly's original call) - No. 1 choice here for best hockey goal celebration.

Photo of the Day: Arrival

STOYAN NENOV/REUTERS

Ronaldinho arrives in Sofia for Wednesday's key Champions League tilt.

Related: Rich clubs are barely in the same league as their local rivals (International Herald Tribune).

Winning club in Champions League likely to net £100 million (Financial Times).

A pitch: Flutie to Argos

What you might have missed while  trying to stay awake during the Grey Cup:

Lame and lamer. As in, what was more mystifying: That "Santa believes in the Ottawa Renegades" sign that trailed the Grey Cup to the sidelines, or Jim Popp, limp-wristing a replay challenge in the closing minutes that was his last chance at breathing some into the Als cadaver. As for the sign, any ideas are welcome. As it turned out, it held together better than the Coupe.

I was going to wrap up more of the pigskin freakout weekend, but Damien kinda covered that off. Good on him for it, too, because it's that TSN Top 50 CFL list that came out Friday night that you might have missed. Specifically, Doug Flutie. With the other news going in that Pinball Clemons would indeed be back to coach the Argos - and the tone of his comments sure sounded like a guy planning to give it just one more season, then retire to a life of being president and Mr. Argo - how about this pitch: Flutie to the Argos, taking over the vacant offensive co-ord job as a prelude to head coach in '08?

If ever any game looked like it could use a do-over, it was OSU-Michigan.

Vanier Cup: Saskatchewan comes home, meets Laval.

Those York Yeo- Lions swept Saturday's pajama-night high jinks.

TomKat nuptials: Beckham a no-show (David, that is).

And from across the pond, a red-card outbreak has reopened the debate on introducing video replay. I have a feeling Jim Popp would say no.