From ordinary poker players to big-league pros

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, July 18, 2011 at 10:20 AM - 0 Comments

Photo by Roman Cho/Getty Images

Jeffrey Pollack has a pithy way of describing his career: “I specialize in things that haven’t been done before.” Like starting the first trade paper devoted to the business of sports. Or creating the Emmy-winning pastiche of in-car cameras and onscreen telemetry that makes NASCAR watchable. Or transforming the World Series of Poker from a Vegas sideshow into an “anyone can enter, anyone can win” big business. And now, if things go his way, catapulting card sharks into the ranks of pampered sports celebrities.

Epic Poker, Pollack’s newly created professional poker league, will host its inaugural tournament at the Palms Casino in Las Vegas next month, promising to turn top players into a gaming elite. “In any other sport there are platforms, brands or associations that are focused on the best of the best. Poker doesn’t have that,” says the 47-year-old entrepreneur and half-brother of NHL commissioner Gary Bettman. (Joy, their late mother, married Pollack’s father Howard, an accountant, when Gary was 11.) “We’re going to celebrate skill and strategy above moments of luck.”

Players will be ranked by performance and earnings as in tennis, and awarded “cards” as in pro golf, providing them with entry to Epic’s events for three to five years. All of the US$20,000 entry fees will go into the prize pots (traditionally organizers take a 10 per cent “rake” off the top), which will be sweetened by the league with US$400,000 for regular tourneys, and $1 million for the annual championship featuring the season’s top 27 performers. And players, long used to paying their own way, will receive free food, drinks and hotel suites. “It’s elevating the service level that the pros are used to,” says Pollack.

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In conversation: Gary Bettman

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 5 Comments

Photograph by Christopher Wahl

A franchise move, a new discipline czar, a controversial hit, and a see-saw Stanley Cup final; it’s been a busy couple of weeks for the National Hockey League’s commissioner. Prior to Game 5, he sat down to reflect on a season of wins and losses.

Q: Not presuming any outcomes, but what would a Canadian team winning the Stanley Cup after such an extended period of time mean for the game of hockey?

A: I think it would be tremendously exciting for fans of the Canucks. But in the final analysis, who wins the Cup isn’t as important as how good the final was—how exciting, how dramatic, how entertaining, how skilful. If you’re a fan of the Canucks—or Bruins—you’ll be excited beyond belief if they win. If you cheer for somebody else, you’ll be more interested in how good the hockey is.

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The return of NHL hockey to Winnipeg

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, June 6, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 12 Comments

Tom Pidgeon/AP

There’s something about the intersection of Portage and Main that only Winnipeggers get. Two busy roads ringed by tall commercial buildings that offer no shops or attractions that might make a visitor stop and linger. But somewhere deep in the city’s DNA, it is imprinted as a gathering place on momentous occasions. Most especially in relation to hockey. It’s where Bobby Hull signed his million-dollar deal with the World Hockey Association’s Winnipeg Jets. Where fans feted the selection of the great Dale Hawerchuk as the first overall pick in the 1981 NHL draft. And where the desperate vigils were held as the franchise started to slip away in the spring of 1995.

And so it was on the morning of May 31, 2011, when big league hockey finally made its long-awaited return to Canada’s heartland. There were kids playing road hockey on a strip of sidewalk complete with goalies and nets. Jersey-clad men, waving Jets flags and hoisting a replica Stanley Cup. Even a couple of guys who had brought along red chairs from the old Winnipeg Arena. But the crowd of around 1,000 mostly stood and watched a press conference being beamed onto outdoor TV screens from the basement of the MTS Centre down the block. Waiting for the words that would set their fandom free.

The preamble took a few minutes, but finally Mark Chipman, the chairman of True North Sports and Entertainment, made it official. “I am excited beyond words to announce our purchase of the Atlanta Thrashers,” he said. “We received the call we’ve long been waiting for.” It’s not a done deal—the purchase still needs the approval of the NHL’s board of governors and is contingent on the organization selling at least 13,000 season tickets over the next three weeks—but close enough to touch off celebrations around the province and across the country. A couple of weeks of frenzied deal-making that continued right through the final night, and then Winnipeg’s civic pride restored at a reported purchase price of US$170 million—US$110 million for the fractious owners of the Thrashers, and a US$60-million “relocation fee” for the league.

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Dust-up in the Phoenix desert

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Monday, April 11, 2011 at 11:32 AM - 39 Comments

Norm Hall/NHLI/Getty Images

The clock is ticking for the Phoenix Coyotes. Down 1-0 to the St. Louis Blues with less than three minutes left in the first period, the team is fiddling away a two-man advantage. The wingers are having trouble controlling the puck, and the one shot Keith Yandle manages from the point misses the net by a country mile. When a fumbled pass results in a short-handed rush for the Blues, the boos rain down in Jobing.com Arena. It’s surprisingly loud given the size of the crowd—10,977 tickets sold or given away, but at least a thousand fewer actual bums in the seats. On a Tuesday night in late March, matched up against a team bound for the golf course instead of the playoffs, hockey is a tough sell in Phoenix. Hand it to the fans who do show up, though—they’re as apt at expressing their displeasure as any in the game.

The chant that rises out of the upper bowl during the second period isn’t quite as lusty, but perhaps even more telling. “Goldwater sucks! Goldwater sucks!” NHL catcalls aren’t usually directed at libertarian think tanks. Then again, nothing about the saga of the Phoenix Coyotes is business as usual.
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The most expensive game on earth

By Philippe Gohier - Friday, March 4, 2011 at 6:48 PM - 23 Comments

What is it about the NHL that makes local politicians so desperate for its approval? Whatever it is, Gary Bettman, Pierre-Karl Péladeau, and Matthew Hulsizer have managed to parlay that desperation into cheap, low-risk contracts with local governments that hold the promise of hundreds of millions in assets in return. Of the three, Bettman’s act may be the most impressive, if only because he’s performing it in two cities at once. But it’s hard to neglect just how well Péladeau has played his hand in Quebec City.

Consider where Péladeau now stands on the Nordiques file: the municipal and provincial governments in Quebec City have now formally promised to build an NHL rink in the provincial capital using public money. All the while, these same governments that are shelling out hundreds of millions to give this hypothetical franchise a home seem only tangentially interested in actually acquiring a team. It’s easy to see why: it wouldn’t be theirs anyway. The team would belong to Péladeau.

Péladeau has managed to become the presumptive owner of the Nordiques by committing next to nothing in the way of actual funds. Continue…

'We don't want people building a building on our account'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, January 31, 2011 at 10:04 AM - 13 Comments

Speaking over the weekend in Carolina, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman addresses the question of a team for Quebec City.

“I don’t want anybody getting excited,” said Bettman. “The fact of the matter is, over the last couple of years, there have been lots of stories suggesting a building in Quebec City is a done deal, that the money has been raised. Nobody has told me that, and in the conversations that I’ve had with a variety of people, including the mayor and the premier, we have said, ‘We’re not planning on expanding, we’re not planning on relocation, so we cannot promise you a franchise.’

“If there’s a new building separate and independent from us for whatever reason and the opportunity presents itself with respect to a franchise, it’s no different than what I said about Winnipeg. But we don’t want people building a building on our account expecting that there is going to be a franchise, because we’re not in a position to promise one right now.”

A modest proposal

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, September 14, 2010 at 2:45 PM - 0 Comments

As our Paul Wells reported yesterday, the Prime Minister has broached the subject of an NHL team for Quebec with league commissioner Gary Bettman. And as our Philippe Gohier noted, the proposed arena for Quebec City would be run as a crown corporation. The federal government’s initial contribution to that effort would be $175 million.

The last time Forbes magazine produced valuations for the NHL’s 30 franchises, it put the Edmonton Oilers at $166 million. That was nearly a year ago, but it is unlikely the Oilers have appreciated significantly since, so for perhaps the same amount of federal money that would go toward an arena for a privately owned NHL team, the Harper government could purchase its own hockey team and run that as a crown corporation (or perhaps as a public trust, borrowing from the model of the Green Bay Packers).

The current roster includes a number of young and promising players. With wise management—General Manager Stephen Harper?—the team could be will set-up for sustained success going forward. Indeed, from that standpoint, this would seem a good buying opportunity.

Alternatively, perhaps the Prime Minister could offer to buy any of the six struggling American franchises that are valued at less than the Oilers, with designs on moving that team to Quebec City. In either scenario, why would we settle on owning the arena in which a professional ice hockey team plays when we could own the professional ice hockey team itself?

The Devils, hell, and the NHL

By Colby Cosh - Tuesday, August 10, 2010 at 6:08 AM - 0 Comments

“The grievance is denied.” That’s the concluding sentence of arbitrator Richard Bloch’s Monday ruling on the 17-year $102-million contract Ilya Kovalchuk signed with the NHL’s New Jersey Devils last month. When the NHL deregistered the contract, whose terms would have seen New Jersey pay Kovalchuk 97% of the total amount in the first 11 years of the deal, the Players’ Association naturally objected.

Sure, the NHLPA argued, there were years tacked onto the far end of the deal that neither Kovalchuk nor New Jersey expect the player to be in the NHL for. Those years are priced below the likely league minimum, and are obviously in the contract for the sole purpose of lowering Kovalchuk’s average salary-cap hit in the present. But what of it? Nothing in the Collective Bargaining Agreement between the league and the PA specifically forbids this behaviour, and several similar “backdive” deals, though less extreme in every respect, have already been registered by the NHL and played under.

Bloch rejected this argument, granting a clear outright win to the league. The CBA contains a general “anti-circumvention” provision, but the guidance offered by that provision was less than clear:

No Club or Player shall enter into any Player Contract, Offer Sheet or other agreement that includes any terms which are designed to serve the purpose of defeating or circumventing the intention of the parties as reflected by the provisions of this Agreement, including without limitation, provisions with respect to the Entry Level System or Restricted Free Agency. However, any conduct permitted by this Agreement shall not be considered to be a violation of this provision.

Now that’s an odd paragraph, wouldn’t you say? Because there is no rule in the CBA that would in itself forbid the Kovalchuk deal, the NHLPA leaned on that last sentence, which basically says “anything permitted by this agreement is permitted by this agreement” and seems, in its plainest reading, to deprive the first sentence of all its potential force. Well, hell, no arbitrator’s going to go along with that—i.e., to read a paragraph completely out of a contract prepared and vetted by professionals representing both parties, as if he were physically Liquid Paper-ing it out of the document.

Bloch had little choice but to conclude that there must be some reason for a general anti-circumvention rule—and that reason, he concluded, was to allow the league to block contracts like Kovalchuk’s, which violate the spirit of the CBA rather than its letter. Nothing specific about Kovalchuk’s contract—the amount, the end date, the degree of frontloading—is forbidden by the agreement, Bloch conceded. Perhaps no single factor is even unique to it. But, taken together, the components have a vague tendency to offend the “no circumvention” concept. Supposedly.

Bloch’s decision includes an observation that is, after all, very hard to disagree with: “A contract term covering a Player’s NHL services to age 70…is not expressly prohibited by the CBA. But the parties to that SPC may not reasonably be found to be seriously anticipating its fulfillment.” Bloch would have created a serious problem for the NHL if he had found the anti-circumvention sections of the CBA to be meaningless. If he had ruled in favour of the NHLPA, you can bet your last nickel that someone would have been signing one of those age-70 contracts in July 2011. Or even sooner.

But Bloch has created a serious problem, too: as a consequence of his ruling in defence of the CBA’s spirit, it is no longer clear exactly which frontloaded contracts are kosher and which are treyf. Kovalchuk and the Devils returned to the negotiating table Monday night in an attempt to save the contract by tinkering with the math. What principles ought to guide them? What changes must they make to render the contract acceptable in the eyes of another arbitrator—one who wouldn’t even be Richard Bloch? (The NHL and the Players hire arbitrators for the duration of only one grievance; experience in the sporting world has shown that owners will inevitably and instantly fire any “permanent” arbiter who rules against them.)

Bloch hasn’t really said what kind of deal meets the no-circumvention test. He didn’t even give the parties the reassurance that existing frontloaded contracts are definitely legal and could be safely imitated. In fact, he specifically said the opposite. Which puts the league under no apparent obligation to even treat like contracts equally, or two different teams consistently. All that the Devils and Kovalchuk can really do here is to seek Commissioner Bettman’s advice in advance of signing, or make another deal and cross their fingers that either the Commissioner will like it or the next arbitrator will uphold it.

The Collective Bargaining Agreement doesn’t appear to offer the team and the player any freedom to sign a contract without some degree of league interference—which raises the question, what good is the CBA at all if we’re going to have a “Bettman decides everything” system? (And, more particularly, how did the Players’ Association get manoeuvred into signing an agreement that doesn’t protect its rights very effectively?)

Why the NHL needs to be in the Games

By macleans.ca - Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 11:00 AM - 15 Comments

NHL commissioner Gary Bettman can think of a lot of reasons why his league should not participate in the 2014 Winter Olympics, to be held in Sochi, Russia. Most fans can probably think of only one reason why it should—it would be great fun to watch. That lopsided score is bad for hockey.

In a meeting with Maclean’s editorial board late last year, Bettman put forth a comprehensively gloomy view on the prospects for NHL participation beyond the Vancouver Olympics this month.

February is a problematic month for the league, Bettman noted: “We’re about to hit the stretch runs. Teams are firing on all cylinders.” The Olympic break, he claimed, diminishes playoff momentum. Olympic rosters can have a significant impact on some teams, with the possibility of injury or fatigue. Flying time to Russia is another problem, as is the time difference. And Bettman said some owners, likely those in unprofitable southern U.S. cities (although he wasn’t specific), complain that for the NHL to “go dark” for two weeks reduces interest in hockey.

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A real game changer

By Charlie Gillis - Monday, February 15, 2010 at 7:00 PM - 3 Comments

Imagine for a moment that we went back to the old way of doing things. Instead of getting jacked up this week about a potential gold medal showdown between Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, hockey fans would be making do with—let’s see—Alexandre Giroux and Sergei Mozyakin. Both are respectable journeymen: Giroux is a 28-year-old Canadian who ranks among the top American Hockey League scorers; Mozyakin, also 28, stars with Atlant Moscow in Russia’s Kontinental League. But potential protagonists in a future Olympic rivalry? Not quite.

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The Commons: ‘This is our game and we need to protect our players’

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, February 2, 2010 at 6:11 PM - 34 Comments

“It is high time,” said Glenn Thibeault, the NDP MP for Sudbury, “this issue is taken seriously.”

Shortly thereafter he clarified just how seriously.

“Today,” he said, “we are calling on the government to establish a Royal Commission on violence in sports. We need to look at all aspects and all of the causes, from equipment to social trends, coaching and officiating. This is our game and we need to protect our players.”

Oh, Patrice Cormier, look what ye hath wrought. Continue…

The Interview: Gary Bettman

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 12:23 PM - 52 Comments

In 16 years as NHL commissioner, Gary Bettman has shaped pro hockey in numerous ways—U.S. expansion, two lockouts, rule changes, the salary cap, the participation of NHL players in the Olympics. The past year, however, counts among the most troubled of his tenure. The league’s tug-of-war with billionaire Jim Balsillie for control of the Phoenix Coyotes put Bettman at odds with many fans, highlighting the combative side of the commissioner’s personality. Earlier this week, he discussed the fallout of Phoenix, fan antipathy toward him, and other hockey-related matters with the Maclean’s editorial board.

Q: It’s been a tumultuous couple of years for you, at least publicly. Do you still enjoy your job?

A: I love the job. I’m passionate about the game, and the people around the game, the way we as a sport connect with our fans. Every job has challenges, things that make the job interesting. I’m not exactly sure, by the way, that I buy into your characterization of tumultuous. That seems to be a little dramatic, perhaps media-centric, as opposed to the reality. But every business has day-to-day challenges, and that’s part of what gets those of us who work going every day.

Q: We want to give you a chance to respond to the broad perception here in Canada that you feel the future of the game lies in the United States—and that the real reason the NHL was in court this summer was to keep Canada from getting more teams.

A: I’ve got to ask you a question about your question. Where does that perception come from? What is it based on? Give me any factual basis and I’ll answer the question. Continue…

The Commons: Huzzah, Mr. Ignatieff asks a question that is not entirely rhetorical

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 5, 2009 at 6:45 PM - 33 Comments

The Scene. We are—as a people, as a political class, as a town quite bored with itself—easily impressed. So it is that the Prime Minister’s overt display this weekend of something approaching personality is being roundly hailed as something approaching significance. Mr. Harper played the piano and sang. In public. And such is the state of things that, were you to judge only the reaction, you might assume he’d personally negotiated the surrender of the Taliban, or at least convinced Gary Bettman to move a hockey team to Hamilton.

By those same standards, similar huzzahs are almost certainly due to the leader of the opposition, who, let the record show, stood in the House this day and asked a question that was almost not entirely rhetorical.

This was, mere months ago, his trademark: an insistence that Question Period be something other than an exchange of slanders. Alas, since returning this fall, with a new mandate of opposition to justify, he’s been less reason and inquiry and more piss and vinegar. Take, for instance, the first of his questions on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday of last week. Continue…

This Week: Good news/Bad news

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Face of the week
Ricky Barnes reacts to his missed birdie putt on the final hole of the U.S. Open. Lucas Glover (right) went on to win the tournament.

A week in the life of Gary Bettman
The NHL commissioner has had a hectic few days. At the NHL awards in Las Vegas, he addressed player representatives irked by a falling salary cap, shaky franchises and dubious TV deals. Good news came Monday when Chicago businessman Jerry Reinsdorf confirmed plans to bid on the Phoenix Coyotes. But within 24 hours, Bettman found himself trying to broker peace between the two feuding owners of the Tampa Bay Lightning, Oren Koules and Len Barrie.

GOOD NEWS

Shifting sands
Rising petroleum prices have pumped new life into the Alberta oil sands, and that’s good news for Canada. Yes, pricey oil makes for expensive fill-ups. But Canada needs oil-patch jobs, and with a $50-billion deficit, our government needs the tax revenue that oil sands generate. Moreover, plans to renew the North American auto industry are predicated on the development and sale of smaller, fuel-efficient cars, so pricier gas may prove to be the industry’s friend. If these twin engines of our economy—energy and auto-making—get running again, everyone benefits.

Aiming high
A sweeping proposal from Egypt has the potential to raise talks between Israel and the Palestinians to a new and promising level. Under Egypt’s plan, an end to the blockade on Gaza would be followed by a prisoner exchange between the two sides and the formation of a Palestinian unity government, ending Hamas rule in Gaza. The deal includes safeguards to ensure aid isn’t appropriated by militant groups—a major roadblock to reconstruction efforts in Gaza. The approach may appear ambitious, but it addresses a persistent impediment to deals between Israel and the Palestinians: no sooner have you resolved one irritant than another raises its head, shattering the agreement you’ve worked so diligently to reach.

Ugghh!
Tennis is cracking down on screamers and grunters, and thank goodness. Up-and-coming star Michelle Larcher de Brito was told in advance of Wimbledon she could be docked points for the prolonged shrieks she makes when hitting the ball. Occasional grunting may be unavoidable in a sport where a powerful stroke wins games. But tennis legend Martina Navratilova was right to label the excess noise “cheating, pure and simple.” If Martina could win 18 Grand Slam titles without moaning on every shot, the lesser lights can do without it, too.

Cold comfort
After 300 years of Danish rule, Greenland reached a new self-government agreement this week with Denmark, setting the stage for eventual independence. The move brings decision-making on governance and natural resources closer to Greenland’s 58,000 inhabitants, and may indirectly benefit Canada. Ottawa had been at odds with the Danes for years over Arctic sovereignty, and the more Copenhagen loosens ties with Greenland, the more tenuous its Far North claims become. Not to put too fine a point on it, but we’d much rather deal with a pragmatic neighbour than with its distant and nostalgic European parent.

BAD NEWS

Price of war
The Department of National Defence is straining Canadians’ patience and credulity by refusing to release the estimated future cost of its mission in Afghanistan, citing security issues. DND has already said that annual costs in the conflict are topping $1 billion, so how does releasing the projected spending on the conflict in 2011-2012 help the Taliban? More likely military brass censored the information to bolster the security of government, which has already signalled it will pull troops out at the end of 2011. If a change of heart is under way, Canadians have earned the right to participate in the debate. We have faced up to the real costs of the mission: the deaths of 120 soldiers and one diplomat. We have a right to know the price tag. We can handle it.

Pluck o’ the Iris
Iris Evans, Alberta’s forthright finance minister, knows something about raising kids. The former nurse and one-time minister of children’s services raised three sons through financial difficulties. So when she offhandedly remarked that good parenting requires one parent to stay home (at considerable financial sacrifice, she noted), she knew of what she spoke. Evans was expressing an opinion, not setting government policy, but you wouldn’t know it from the outrage. She offered grudging regrets, saying she “would have preferred not to have initiated the debate.” But we’re glad she did, and she owes no one an apology.

Picking your battles
French President Nicolas Sarkozy fell into a familiar trap this week when he labelled burkas “a sign of debasement” and declared them unwelcome in France. Time and again, Western politicians have fuelled Islamic anger by fixating on the personal choices of Muslims rather than what really matters: respect for the rule of law and basic civil rights. Fortunately, Sarkozy counted among the few leaders in Europe who responded forcefully to election-rigging in Iran and the brutal suppression of pro-democratic protestors. That’s the kind of intervention Muslims can use.

Ain’t that American?
Several cities in the U.S. have cancelled Fourth of July fireworks this year because of tight budgets. Regrettably, and perhaps unintentionally, at least one Canadian town has stepped into the void. Officials in Kenora, Ont., located near the U.S. border in the province’s northwestern corner, have decided to bump their “Canada Day” fireworks to Saturday, July 4, saying they hope to boost attendance by drawing in the weekend cottage crowd. Shrewd perhaps, but not wise. No one would consider moving Christmas, so why Canada Day?

The Commons: General Canada

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, March 13, 2009 at 4:46 PM - 31 Comments

Rick Hillier started with a joke about something his late father had said. Then one about his wife and his propensity to talk. Then one about missing his flight. Then one about his Newfoundland heritage. Then about the stature of his audience. Then about George Stroumboulopoulos. Then about Alex Trebek and Wheel of Fortune.

The occasion was a dinner in a hotel ballroom in downtown Ottawa to mark the beginning of a weekend conference of “conservative-oriented” thinkers. General Hillier, formerly the top-ranking soldier in the Canadian military, was preceded to the stage by Preston Manning, former leader of the Reform party. Manning, with remarkably blond hair for a man of 66, was preceded to the stage by Monte Solberg, a former Conservative government minister who has left politics and now has a blog.

In front of the stage were approximately 20 tables with approximately 10 people seated at each. Each table had a brown tablecloth and a vase of red or white flowers. Men, each in a black or navy blue suit, outnumbered women by a factor of three to one. Waiters in black suits, white shirts and black bow ties served roasted butternut squash with green valley apple bisque to start and a main course of slowly roasted rib eye of western beef with fresh herb pan juices, roasted potatoes and seasonal fresh vegetables.

As guests—including half a dozen Conservative MPs and political science professor Tom Flanagan—nibbled at their dessert (a granny smith and caramel tart tatin with vanilla bean ice cream), General Hillier proceeded with his speech.

“Life is good, isn’t it?” he asked. “We live in the best country in the world … You need to stop and remind yourself of that.” Continue…

Can we please now ban fighting in hockey?

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, February 3, 2009 at 10:35 AM - 86 Comments

“You’ll never get rid of it entirely.”

Michael Sanderson spoke those words to practically anyone who would listen in the days following his son Donald’s death. And in a nation suffering no small amount of guilt over a senseless loss, they were received as absolution. In the depths of his grief, this man got it, the self-styled purists said. He’s played the sport. He knows fighting is embedded in it. He won’t use the death of his 21-year-old son—by universal account about the best kid you could ever meet—as a pulpit to rail against that which sets the game apart. “Other people won’t understand this,” Don Cherry told his coast-to-coast audience after attending Donald Sanderson’s memorial service in Port Perry, Ont. “But Mike is a hockey guy.”

Yet on this subject, more so than any other, we Canadians don’t listen closely. Or we hear only what we want to. So if you’ve been gathering your information on this slow-moving controversy from Coach’s Corner, it may surprise you to learn that Michael Sanderson would in fact love to see fighting eliminated from the game. You may be shocked to hear he supports measures that would suffocate the practice. Automatic ejections? “Helluva rule.” Requiring players to keep their helmets and visors on during fights? “Great. If they know they’re going to be punching plastic with their bare hands, they’ll eventually stop.”
Continue…

Admittedly, not everything can be his fault

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, November 18, 2008 at 3:56 PM - 4 Comments

While the Prime Minister should be held to account at all times and made to face the highest of standards and expectations, we would defend Mr. Harper against the suggestion that he is to blame for professional hockey’s inability to legislate hits from behind.

Small Balls: Wednesday June 25, 2008

By Nancy Macdonald - Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 1:51 PM - 0 Comments

La première étoile: Russian Marat Safin caused a sensational upset today at Wimbledon by knocking out top-seed Novak Djokovic, ranked No. 3 in the world. Safin, struggling at No. 75, admitted that he’d already booked himself a flight home to Moscow tonight. Cancel that, eh?

Two minutes to … Gary Bettman for empty posturing. He’s “suspended” Ducks’ owner Henry Samueli after Samueli pleaded guilty to obstructing a securities investigation. Given that Bettman’s now got 3 owners under suspicion or convicted of business misconduct, his avowal that he’ll hold NHL owners “to the highest standards” is hard to take with a straight face. (The other two are Ottawa’s Eugene Melnyk, facing fraud charges and William Del Baggio in Nashville, under investigation for irregularities related to his purchase of the Predators.)

Who’s got tickets? Spain takes on Russia tomorrow in a Euro2008 semi-final. Spain’s solid performance has solidified their status as odds-on favourites. But Russia, looking good since welcoming back star forward Andrei Arshavin, is not to be counted out.

Extra bases: No. 3 seed Maria Sharapova upset Wimbledon traditionalists and British tabloids by announcing that she’ll be playing in shorts, not a skirt. But today, the Sun ran a retraction—under the banner headline Shara’s Shorts: A Sun Apology. After seeing her in action, the tab decided her shorts were sexy—not “manly” at all… Continue…

Three cheers for the IIHF

By Charlie Gillis - Friday, May 16, 2008 at 11:32 AM - 0 Comments

Some speculate that Gary Bettman is celebrating at NHL h.q. that the semifinals are an all-American affair. Maybe so, but Canada remains the league’s bread and butter, and there are signs our attention is wandering (you know: more than usual).

This may result in a TV ratings shellacking for the NHL in the next few days, though we’ll have to wait a few weeks for the results. The matchup: Canada v. Sweden tonight at the IIHF championship in Halifax (TSN), versus the Dallas Stars and the Other Swedish National Team (a.k.a. the Red Wings) on Saturday. As Hockey Canada honcho Bob Nicholson notes, last year’s IIHF gold medal game from Moscow pulled 1.8 million viewers—despite a poor time slot compared to tonight’s 5 p.m. ET semi.

Ratings for the NHL semifinals are not yet available. But the comparatives to this point don’t look good. In the second round, the most-watched game out of the U.S. (Dallas v. San Jose, Game 6) drew a measly 800,000 here in Canada. Even the Habs and Flyers were drawing in the 1.75 million range on CBC. The sponsors must be getting restless.

Now we have a star-studded Canadian team in contention in a tournament that is being played on home soil, and might well provide better hockey than the NHL playoffs. If I can choose only one game over the next two days, I know which one it will be.