Help wanted: how the Leafs can improve at the trade deadline

By Dave Bidini - Monday, January 30, 2012 at 4:56 PM - 0 Comments

Well, thank God that’s over. The all-star skills competition may be the league’s marketing department’s idea of an irreverent teen dream, but to me, it comes off as trying-too-hard and embarrasing: we, too, can be as dumbass goofy as NBAers and could you believe it when Patrick Kane wore those sunglasses oh man that was rich, I tell ya: rich! The all-star game used to be a place where Mike Walton would fight Gordie Howe, or where veterans from the previous year’s spring wars would exact vengeance on the league’s Cup champions. It was the season’s first heated battle, where hip checks were thrown and stickblades were eaten. Talk about skills.

If anything, the All-Star weekend—which, this year, robbed hockey fans of six days of game action—provided us with an opportunity to reflect on the first two-thirds of the year, a small blessing, but still. Among the bluebloods, the mirror flatters, partly because of Toronto’s two consecutive wins over the New York Islanders before the break—hardly enough of a reason to buy champagne, let alone pop the cork; although, surely, a few already have—and partly because of the sunny nature of the team’s play, as opposed to the bodies-strewn-about-a-flaming-train-wreck that was supposed to inform the year. Quite a few Maple Leafs have exceeded expectations—only a handful have fallen short—and, overall, team play has been estimable. Even recent losses to Ottawa and Buffalo were close, single-goal events. Actually, close flatters the opposition. The Leafs dominated both games and were beaten by a hot goaltender and their inability to score the killer goal. Continue…

If winning isn’t everything, why bother keeping score?

By Dave Bidini - Thursday, January 12, 2012 at 7:18 PM - 0 Comments

The morning sucks. Especially with a family; especially with kids.

Before my daughter was born, I remember watching SportsDesk (now SportsCentre) on TSN at 2 a.m. and wondering whether this would be the last time I would ever willfully be awake to watch the late broadcast. It was. As my kids have grown, I’ve managed a few instances of evening consciousness, and being a musician, I’ve sometimes wandered in just as the highlights have started. Still, there’s always a price to pay on the back end.

This winter’s post-Christmas holidays started with the dreadful bleeping of the bedside alarm, and tired legs hitting the cold floor. It got even worse once I started thinking about the next six months: six months of early mornings, stupid breakfasts, school lunches, and napsacks packed with books and pencils and flutes and volleyball runners. In the kitchen, The Fan’s Brady and Lange were on the radio. They tried their best, but they could not. Continue…

The Internet killed the sports journalism star

By Dave Bidini - Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 9:52 AM - 0 Comments

Once upon a time, I despised the writer Eric Duhatschek. I despised him because he wrote: “People in Toronto aren’t hockey fans; they’re Leaf fans.” When I first read this, I wanted to hit him. Hard. In the stomach; maybe the ribs. Using his column’s postage stamp photo as my guide, I looked out for him whenever I travelled to Calgary. I imagined seeing him in a bar, and pouring a beer over his head, or finding him on the sidewalk, and pushing him into thorny shrubs, or watching him climb with groceries into his car, only to club him into submission with a can of stewed tomatoes.

But then I met the tall, wispy Albertan. It turned out that he was friendly, with impeccable taste in music. During our first encounter, he compared Selina Martin to Rachel Sweet, which was good enough for me. Eric also used to room with James Muritech, the late Calgary Herald music writer. James was one of the first and only journalists to review the Rheostatics’ 1987 debut album, Greatest Hits. The Hat remembers his roommate effusing over the work, then setting down to write about it. So I can’t be mad at him. And I no longer want to hit him. Continue…

The World Junior Championships are obscene. But we better win.

By Dave Bidini - Friday, December 16, 2011 at 4:41 PM - 0 Comments

This is not a Leafs column, so let’s put the sorrow and hope and impossibility of faith aside for a moment. Let’s take a breath, let’s launder that blood and mustard-splotched Boimstruck sweater. Let’s set aside the schedule and the standings and forget that Luke Schenn was ever born, for in a few weeks, NHL teams won’t matter. Pro hockey won’t matter. What will matter is what happens in Calgary and Edmonton, and even there, the Oilers and Flames won’t matter. Soon, it will be Christmas and New Year’s: junior hockey time. Players you don’t yet know yet will fill your screens and busy your papers and crowd your radio dial. Canada will be playing. Canada is always playing. And they better win. They better.

That our country—or rather, the dominant hockey-loving pie slice of our country—will bend routine and design days and evenings around games is a given. What’s not a given is whether this is necessarily, unequivocally, a good thing. A few questions: Are we putting too much pressure on kids to carry on Canada’s obsessive desire to succeed at all things blade and skate? Does that obsession mean that we unconsciously absolve the trappings of the junior game: young men playing for peanuts while owners get rich off their dreams; the dirty secret of hazing and alcohol and drug abuse; youth fight culture; and a citizenry that emerges from the pro hockey derby having learned nothing through their formative years except how to take a pass and throw a hit? Lots about junior hockey is good—giving identity and economy to small places; allowing kids, in the best case scenario, to absorb lessons about leadership and courage—but there’s a certain obscenity in blanket coverage of awkward kids posing for TSN promos like the gladitorial men they are not. And if discussions about the failings of the NHL to make the ice friendlier and more concussion-free—consider wider rinks and small equipment—then shouldn’t that be part of the junior hockey discussion, too? Continue…

Among the ink-stained wretches at the Air Canada Centre

By Dave Bidini - Wednesday, December 7, 2011 at 4:54 PM - 1 Comment

A light, twinkling snow fell against the towered streets as I made my way to the rink last night, my first visit in two years. That this blog had such pull with the Leafs’ press office made me remember the means by which I’d crashed other media rows in past years: fudging credibility to sit in old Memorial Auditorium to watch the Sabres; an anthem-singing guest appearance at the Gardens on the eve of my wedding; and a plea to a novice university pop writer from Expos’ brass in the late 80s to cover a team that no one outside of Quebec wanted to cover. On this visit, however, it appeared as if I’d found legitimacy, passing easily through the glass doors of the rink to the tableclothed media desk in the guts of the Platinum Club, securing my card—my name on it and everything—from a nice woman in whom I confessed procedural unfamiliarity. “That’s okay,” she said, adding, “The elevator is just around the corner,” guiding me with the voice of a nursemaid and a flight attendant’s wave.

I found my ride, walked past P.J. Stock and secured my station—number 81—sitting on high across from the Sittler banner at the north end. Then two anthems, a Coke, a Leafite whispering team scratches into our ear from the press row speaker, and a stick save by James Reimer off an early Devils power play. Excited is too small a word to describe how I felt. So is old, for legitimacy rarely finds the young.

In the first period, the Devils scored two quick power play goals. Continue…

My marriage is better than the Leafs—but the Leafs are pretty good, too

By Dave Bidini - Tuesday, November 29, 2011 at 1:54 PM - 3 Comments

This past Sunday came my wedding anniversary: 19. We were married at St. Lawrence Hall in 1992, and I remember walking home in the mild weather to our hotel—the King Edward—where we immediately ordered room service, having been too distracted during the ceremony to eat much of anything. The voice on the other end of the phone told us that the hotel’s chef was in the throes of apendicitis, and would we settle for soup and a clubhouse sandwich between us? We said that would be fine, and besides, it would give me a chance to check Leaf highlights, maybe on SportsDesk at 2 am. There were no iPhones, no instant scores in 1992. Back then, you went to the car and turned on the radio to know what was happening. Continue…

What do you get when you mate a Leaf with a Lion?

By Dave Bidini - Wednesday, November 16, 2011 at 4:01 PM - 1 Comment

Never mind the wins and losses—well, at least for a moment—and consider the most significant news to come out of bluebloodland last week: the deal between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Zurich Lions of the Swiss League. In the 1970s, Peter Ustinov said Toronto was like “New York run by the Swiss,” and while things are a lot more lively these days, much of the city still operates like the reliable and steady gearworks of a Geneva pocket watch. Partnerships with teams in Lisbon, Barcelona, Assiago, and Paris would have been more alluring, but these are still your father’s Leafs. Few are allowed either in or out of the room with the velvet rope.

I’ve been wondering what might have precipitated this engagement and why this was celebrated as a significant event in Leaf media land. Was it to distract fans from that which has been rumoured over the past few weeks: James Reimer’s brain injury. Another thought: I think if we started calling concussions “brain injuries,” it might get people wising-up to the seriousness of this business. It’s easier to conjure notions of dementia and madness out of brain injuries. Calling them concussions is like calling them pulled hamstrings or separated shoulders. “Brain injury” is a more frightening term. And if the bluebloods aren’t already frightened by Reimer’s, they should be. Continue…

This is the Leafs fan’s weakness: we get way too high and way too low

By Dave Bidini - Wednesday, November 9, 2011 at 7:07 PM - 3 Comments

The editor is laughing. He is laughing and holding his Habs belly. He is laughing and slapping his Habs knee and pointing at the screen with his Habs finger because he knew this would happen. He bet some friends that it would. He is filling his Habs wallet with his winnings. He is getting a beer. This is too funny. Way too funny.

The editor is laughing and I am writing, and that the Habs have struggled to find themselves over the last few days is beside the point. By contrast, the Leafs have completely lost themselves, and even though the writer knew that he would eventually be forced to write this column, he thought that maybe his instincts would betray him; maybe luck would sway and a new day would find him and the team and the land. Continue…

It’s a bad time to be a loser

By Dave Bidini - Wednesday, November 2, 2011 at 1:13 PM - 3 Comments

It’s a bad time to be a loser. Everything seems just a little wrong (which is to say, a little right) and everybody seems not to be themselves (embodying the posture and attitude of a winner).

Take, for instance, last Sunday’s game vs Ottawa. It turned into an L for the Leafs, but the disappointment slid down the shoulders of fans like beading October rain. The previous night, Toronto had risen to best the Crosby-less Pens, a substantial win in the face of an injured starting goalie and a second line that has yet to find its zone. Were Reimer at full-strength, it would have meant games split between the suddenly able netminding duo, and a better chance in back-to-back contests. Besides, losing to Ottawa felt more like an early-season mulligan, and even if this amounts to misplaced confidence, that any kind of misplaced confidence exists among blueblooders is a not insignificant achievement. Continue…

Everything that goes wrong in the world, I blame on the Montreal Canadiens

By Dave Bidini - Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 1:12 PM - 23 Comments

F—in’ Habs. There, I said it. It’s not like I don’t say it at least 30 times a day. The paperboy misses the porch: F—in’ Habs! The Windows and Doors people wake me up from my afternoon nap with one of their incessant calls: F—in’ Habs! I burn the noodles: F—in’ Habs! An earthquake levels Bali: F—in’ Habs! Everything that goes wrong in the world, I blame on the Montreal Canadiens. It’s convenient and it fits. I believe we would all be much happier and the world would work better and there would be no more stress or pain or misfortune if only the Habs would throw their skates into the river already. But this isn’t going to happen. I am realist and, yes, I am learning to cope.

Someone once said that great clubs need great enemies, but why it can’t be Dallas or Florida or Buffalo, I don’t know. Instead, it has to be the most arrogant and self-satisfied of all teams grinding against that which I love. It has to be the (F—in’) Habs. Argghhhh. Once more, only longer: Arghhhhhhhhh! Continue…

Prospect Porn: Leafs v. Colorado

By Dave Bidini - Wednesday, October 19, 2011 at 4:47 PM - 1 Comment

Okay: I like porn. But not just any porn: Prospect Porn. I can’t get enough of it. I spend way too much time tapping on a screen in the dark—actually it’s more mouse-thumbing then tapping; screen over screen over screen—staring at young men from distant places; gifted young men; lithe, goofy-looking with sculpted arms and stats to drool over. Thirty year olds with long careers are one thing, but give me the hairless fulsome buck who has emerged as if from a fine mist. Give me his promise. Untested, pure. Maybe a little overbitten and acne’d. A prospect.

To this end, the Leafs have done nothing to satisfy my urges, which is why I’ve had to look elsewhere: Colorado, Long Island, and Edmonton. For this reason, I couldn’t wait ‘til (last) Tuesday, which promised a visit by the Avalanche, the league’s youngest and Prospect Porniest team. Not only that, but the Leafs—young, too, I suppose, only not so Prospecty—were hop-skipping along on a three-game unbeaten streak, so my interests were two-fold. I poofed the throw pillows on the couch and prepared popcorn and beer. I sent the kids to bed. Actually, I did not. My kids are baseball brats and they don’t love hockey. Between the two of them, they’ve lived through exactly one Leaf post-season. In 2009, I prepared a chocolate milk chart in honour of the year: two Leaf wins in a row got them gumdrops, three wins got them Twizzlers and four wins got them— yup—chocolate milk. “You’re teaching them about disappointment, aren’t you?” asked my wife, approvingly. But I wasn’t. This is the sad and torturous environment in which they’ve been raised. Continue…

The biggest losers in hockey

By Dave Bidini - Friday, October 14, 2011 at 11:33 AM - 13 Comments

The morning after the Chicago Blackhawks defeated the Philadelphia Flyers to win the 2010 Stanley Cup—their first in 49 years—I shuffled downstairs in my pyjamas. It was a warm morning, early June, and the NHL hockey season was over. I pressed my fists to my eyes, yawned, and yelled upstairs for the children to get out of bed. Actually, that’s a lie. My wife, Janet, did the yelling while I stood there in the living room looking under pillows for the remote. Finding it, I kachunked the tv and a station bzzzed on. These words were written across the screen:

LEAFS BIGGEST LOSERS IN HOCKEY Continue…