Friday Incompletions

Two things to like about the way Bryan McCabe responded to a tricky situation Thursday night at the ACC. First, he played a solid game, which is what his team needed. Second, he didn't try to pretend he hadn't heard any boos, or wasn't expecting them, and therefore wasn't a little relieved when louder ones weren't heard. It never hurts to let the fans know you're human ... Good for Joe Torre. Methinks all of New York, particularly the players and the media, will find how good they had it with this gentle, gracious man. And I'll say it again - the Blue Jays should be seeing if there's a way Torre could fit into their organization, pronto ... Don't believe the spin - the NFL would kill the CFL in Toronto. Period. They can't co-exist. The only question is whether the CFL could exist without Toronto, and that's an interesting one. From a Buffalo perspective, this notion that getting in bed with Toronto will help save the team in western New York seems a stretch, perhaps an enormous one ... Woke up this morning to see Sidney Crosby 59th in NHL scoring, with a minus-four to boot. Heavy wears the crown, indeed. . .Everyone likes to hammer John Ferguson for the McCabe and Pavel Kubina deals, and I get that. Where, however, is the praise these days for having Nik Antropov playing for the very affordable price of $1.95 million per season?

Alexei Kovalev continues to confound. He says something incendiary in a broadcast interview, then claims his thoughts were twisted beyond recognition. Huh? ... The Devils are giving up a lot of goals, playing an unusually wide-open style of game this season under new head coach Brent Sutter. Still, 3-4 while not yet having played a single home game isn't quite a disaster, is it ... Having failed to make a lot of hay out of playing six of their first eight on home ice, the Leafs probably need to get three points out of the next two games against the Hawks and Thrashers to start feeling at all good about their start to the season ... By the way, when did Darcy Tucker get appointed ombudsman of the media that covers the Leafs? Here's the deal; the players play, the media writes and says what it wants and the fans, readers, viewers and listeners sort it all out. It's not up to Tucker to upbraid people in the media for calling it like they see it. Perhaps he needs to start putting the puck in the net again before he starts doing other people's jobs ... Nathan Horton is an impressive young player, but he's got a lot of learning and growing up to do. Getting in a fight with Hal Gill on Thursday was just stupid.

Speaking of stupid fights, its really too bad Sheldon Souray felt he had to scrap with Vancouver forward Byron Ritchie this week. Souray injured his shoulder and is out three weeks, with the Oilers still feeling the impact of a fight-related injury to Ethan Moreau last season that proved costly to the team. . .Of course the Lakers should trade Kobe Bryant. It's pointless having one guy, surrounding him with average players and hoping you can still be San Antonio, Phoenix and the other NBA western powers. But if Kobe goes up for sale, the Raptors shouldn't get involved. Going with a team concept and an international flavour just doesn't fit with what this guy would bring to the table. . .At least the Bosox and Indians are waging a competitive series. Otherwise, easy romps have been the nature of every other MLB post-season series. . .If Ohio State doesn't go undefeated, this could turn out to be the most complicated, controversial year ever to pick a national champion in U.S. college football.The latest top team to go down? South Florida to Rutgers on Thursday night. . .By the way, if you want to understand why the rest of Canada's CFL fans despise Toronto, look at the way in which a Grey Cup in the city this fall is being overshadowed by all this NFL talk.

Good to see CFL commish Mark Cohon out front on the NFL-to-Toronto issue and the extra penalties handed down to Saskatchewan players this week. Hopefully this means he's getting comfortable in the job and will start becoming more visible. . .It's still early, but the Casey Printers experiment in Hamilton is starting to look an awful lot like the Jason Maas experiment. . .With Bob Hartley gone, San Jose's Ron Wilson now moves to the front of the next-to-be-fired line. The Sharks missed an early season chance to take advantage of Anaheim's sluggish start and did not look impressive in a home ice loss to Detroit on Thursday night. . .Eight games into the season, no one's wondering whether John Paddock was the right choice to coach Ottawa any more. . .The Leafs have faced four straight backup goalies - Wade Dubieleiwicz, Dany Sabourin, Jocelyn Thibault and Craig Anderson - and beaten two of them. Now comes word Tuesday's opponent, Atlanta, had its No. 1 goalie Kari Lehtonen leave Thursday's win over New York with a re-occurance of his groin problem. If the Blackhawks start longtime Leaf patsy Patrick Lalime Saturday night instead of Nikolai Khabibulin, we can officially call this a conspiracy, yes?

Comments

[brad chisholm]

What's the NHL record for starts against opposing team's backup goalies?

[Rick Grace]

Great game by the Leafs last night. And great hockey entertainment as well. Seems the refs let the players play last night. Not calling every miniscule infraction. Lets hope the Leafs and the refs keep it up.

And about this constant CFL vs NFL thing? All I know is Saturday is a great day for the Canadian sports fan on TV. At 3PM its the Argos Als in a huge game before a big crowd at the Big O, followed by the HNIC double header.

I know where I'll be for 8 hours. And despite all the negativity always aimed at our two favorite leagues, they will dominate the TV ratings again for the weekend.

[Mike McCann]

Damien could you please explain to me why every time an athlete calls out the media or criticizes them(i.e. Darcy Tucker)the media starts hammering on them for having the gall to criticize the high and mighty media.I hear responses like "they should stick 2 playing hockey, (Or whatever sport they play)they aren't qualified to make statements about the media and other blah blah blah.Now if it is alright for you as a columnist to criticize a pro hockey player which u are not so what qualifies you 2 make these judgements if hockey players can't comment on media since they aren't qualified?
PS Can u skate?

[ChuckyCheese]

Hey Mike McCann, perhaps you would like it if Damien ran his comments by you first to see if they meet with your approval before it's avaliable to the public.

If you don't like what he has to offer, then DON"T READ IT!!!

[Jenny]

Hi Damien,

I think the game against Florida was the best game the Leafs have played this season. I know some people would argue the Islanders game, if only because of the score. But the important things about the Florida game were that the Leafs played well defensively, they had solid goaltending, and they didn't despair and quit when down 2-0. It was a good and fairly even hockey game, unlike some of the lopsided disasters we've seen in the past few weeks.

If the Leafs play at that level (or even better, e.g. trying to avoid the defensive holes that allowed the Panthers to score) for the majority of the remaining season, I believe they should be a definite mid-seeded playoff contender.

And although I've grown up and supported the Leafs through these years, I have to admit that Carolina is looking quite sharp this year; even Friday, when Ward got beaten in shootout, I felt that they played the better game overall.

I realize it's still early, but I was wondering as to your opinion on who the most likely Cup contenders are this year based on what you've seen so far (hopefully without causing too much controversy among the Leafs diehards who believe they'll sweep every team on their way to the Cup).

[Maxie]

Gee Mikey, maybe political pundits have no right to criticize politicians because, um, ah, .... er, oh yeah, 'cause they ain't politicians. And male doctors shouldn't work in Obstetrics cause they will never give birth or breastfeed.

There should be an IQ test to post in here.

[Remi]

The goaltenders today are not as good as the goaltenders in the 50s,60s.Today's goalies go down on every shot fired at them.In the old days,they stood up to make great saves and if they had to go down,they would get up right away.Most of today's goals could be stopped by the goalies if they would stay up.Most of the goals scored today go over the goalies's shoulders.Like I say,if they would stand up ,they would stop more shots from going into the net.The goalies today go down on every shot and are lucky when the puck does not go in the net.The best goalies in my opinion were Sawchuk,Bower,Worsley,Cheevers,Plante,Broda,just to name a few.I don't like the the coaches that the goalies have today.All they teach them is to go down on every shot.

[denial]

Hello.

At what point is Paul Maurice actually going to claim some responsibility for the (non-) performance of this team? Really. "Nice guy" aside -- have you ever heard Paul Maurice take even partial ownership of a problem?

Sure, we're heard him frequently use the collective "we" or "our" -- but it's always in the "our defense seems tight" or "we need to play our game on the power play" or something like that.

But at what point does this free ride end and Paul Maurice is asked the same kinds of questions, and put under the same rather chilling spotlight, as Pat Quinn?

Don't get me wrong - I wasn't a Pat Quinn fan at all, and found his obsession with veteran players at the cost of rookies to border on labour rights violations and age discrimination. But it must be said, in all fairness, that his coaching tactics and fundamental approaches to coaching were under constant scrutiny; at least for the last few years of his tenure.

I do understand that Maurice needed time to get into the rhythm -- kind of a grace period where he wasn't asked to be held accountable for the myriad of problems; just merely articulate them (which he is remarkably good at doing, as are most analysts who can tell you what the problem is with stark precision, but can't solve it if their life depended on it).

So I ask again: at what point does Paul Maurice start taking ownership of some of these problems? Or was he just hired to "coordinate" a bunch of professional athletes, like an Olympic or All-Star coach?

Paul Maurice may very well be a nice guy. And after years of wandering throug the cold, grey, miserable Pat Quinn media encounters, Maurice was and remains to some extent very, very, very refreshing.

I think that's it, you know. The media as a whole likes Maurice, because he's very good for 'copy' -- he provides a lot of quality information from which entire articles (maybe even a series) can be written.

But at some point, the fifth estate -- at least the sports end of it -- is going to have to sharpen up and do what it's supposed to do. And this means asking Maurice to explain why his coaching tactics and strategies, despite their theoretical appeal, are utterly NOT working in any respect. This is NOT a team that is hard to play against. This is NOT a team that overwhelms the opponent deep, or literally exhausts away defensemen and goalies with 40 shots a night. This is a team that is consistently medicore in every facet.

If a coach isn't that important, why bother having one?

[Steve Barnett]

Denial has a point...Perhaps Maurice is getting off a tad easy..
Certainly someone should be asking questions of who ever it is handling the defence on this team..Im with the rest Mikey, You ever seen a movie critic who has actually made a movie? Now, to what is really burning me up about Maurice. Can we just pick a goalie and go with him? Toskala is obviously the better goalie as anyone who has laced up a pair of Tacks will tell you...He would of had the tying goal in the Sabres game and Langs goal on friday was like a trip back to last year...The experiment should be over. This team has zero confidence in Raycroft, especially in the 3rd period. It is like everyone (fans included) is waiting for the cheap goal to go in. And has anyone noticed the trend of 2 goals in about 30 seconds lately? All on Raycroft?
The guy is a decent back up. To try and convince us otherwise is a waste of time. The players all say the right things about Razor but they dont trust him plain and simple. Put him on waivers if you cant trade him, and thats how it looks right now because they have been trying all summer and right up to today to move him. Send him to the Marlies and bring up Clemonson to back up Toskala. This team needs a shake up and to say that already this soon into the season tells you something about the team or the coach.

[Mike Yoshida, Irving, Texas]

I echo Steve B's sentiments exactly. I sent the following e-mail to my buddy right after Saturday night's game:

Subject: Tonight's 3rd period meltdown ... again with Raycroft leading the way ...

All I can say is that Raycroft ONLY has 40 minutes in him. I think the WHOLE team senses that too, just by the way they play in front of him ... he NEVER makes that game-stealing big save in the 3rd period. That's how they pulled out the Florida game, Toskala was HUGE in the 3rd. Monday night's game was broadcast by Versus down here, and the commentators were singing the praises of Raycroft during the 2nd intermission, and Christal asked me, "So how do you feel about Raycroft now?" To which I replied, "I'll let you know AFTER the 3rd period". I had that same sinking feeling again tonight. Voila, it's getting to be so predictable.

You can almost read their (players) minds, "Oh boy, here we go again ... we work so hard to get the lead and then PooF, in a flash, it's gone!" Regardless of whether it's NOT REALLY a goal you can fault Raycroft for giving up, the fact remains HE's the one who's in there when it happens ... guilt by association, I guess. You can tell by their body language, they have NO chance of coming back.

[Bill Mogulsby]

I have to get back to that issue about Tucker and his criticism of the media and Cox's rebuttal. First let's put this thing in context - we're talking about atheletes and sports journalism - not exactly going to resolve the middle east conflict in this debate but... the condescension in Damien's comments reveals a fundamental lack of respect for the Tucker and his right to take up the cause of his teammate.

If the world of professional ice hockey is too low-brow and the participants opinions are not worth considering then go make good on your attitude and write a book on geo-politics or peak oil or climate change or the decimation of the Amazon rainforest or the imminent world-wide shortage of fresh drinkable water... Come to think of it - why am I wasting my time writing this - oh yeah because I happen to think Darcy Tucker is cool (or at least he was when he scored a little).