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…

Why people can’t help themselves

By Andrew Potter - Friday, August 19, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 29 Comments

Jess Hurd/Report Digital/ Redux

Anyone who has ever taken part in a riot, or even just hovered on the periphery of one, knows how exhilarating it can be. Windows smashed, cars torched, stores looted—it’s like being in the middle of a video game. Yet there is a tendency to try to psychoanalyze society and interpret the mob’s behaviour as a symptom of some great underlying malaise: hockey’s culture of macho violence in the case of June’s riot in Vancouver, racism or poverty or the welfare state in the case of the looting that hopscotched across England last week.

People are over-thinking things way too much. Any proper discussion of a riot and why it happens has to start with the recognition that rioting, especially for young men, is a huge amount of fun. At any given moment, there are far more people willing to riot and loot than we like to admit, and the only reason there isn’t more of it is that if you do it by yourself or in a small group, you’ll almost certainly get caught. But if you can get enough people to riot, you can all get away with it, which is why when it comes to getting one started, what the participants are faced with is essentially a coordination problem. The trick is getting a critical mass of people willing to do it, in the same place and at the same time.

Certain events, like game seven of the Stanley Cup final, have become reliable opportunities to riot—a bunch of people show up precisely because they know that a lot of other people will also be showing up to riot. Another reliable opportunity is any sort of anti-authority protest, such as a meeting of the G20 or—what sparked the events in Tottenham—a demonstration against police violence. No matter how peaceful the initial gathering is meant to be, it is easily overwhelmed by those who are there just to smash stuff.
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Dance of the Stanley Cup rioters

By Emma Teitel - Sunday, August 14, 2011 at 6:52 PM - 1 Comment

Photograph by Brian Howell; Photo Illustration by Sarah Mackinnon

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring was, famously, a dance that started a riot, but until now, no one has seen the process reversed. Enter 41-year-old Edmond Kilpatrick—a Vancouver modern dance choreographer and fierce Canucks fan (though not the cruiser-toppling, Bay-looting kind of fierce) who was so disturbed by Vancouver’s Stanley Cup riot in June, he decided to dance about it. “The riot stole the entire hockey experience from me,” he says, “and the piece is a comment about what happened that night.”

The piece Kilpatrick is referring to is Party Boys, a three-man modern dance re-enacting the June 15 riot that followed the Vancouver Canucks’ 4-0 loss to the Boston Bruins in Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. “I thought we could congregate downtown and watch the game together,” Kilpatrick says, in reference to the throngs of Vancouverites who filled Georgia Street to watch the showdown on an enormous screen, “but obviously we couldn’t be trusted.” It’s hard to disagree with him. When hockey fans—and a few opportunistic anarchists—realized that their beloved Canucks would not be hoisting the Cup on home ice, storefronts were demolished, cars were vandalized and set on fire, and pictures of young men emerging from burning buildings clutching miscellaneous retail items—their Canucks jerseys pulled up to mask their faces—were more common than pictures of the Stanley Cup itself. Kilpatrick wants his piece—which runs August 10-12 on a 10-by-13-foot stage (the show is part of a larger production called Dances for a Small Stage at Vancouver’s Legion on the Drive)—to answer two questions: “Who were those guys and why did this happen?”
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A Vancouver rioter speaks

By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, June 23, 2011 at 1:36 PM - 0 Comments

During the Vancouver riot, Coquitlam, B.C. native Robert Snelgrove was caught on camera walking out of The Bay Sears carrying stolen cosmetics. The next day, he turned himself into police. Snelgrove, 24, a cell phone salesman, has been suspended without pay from his job and may be fired. Below, he tells Maclean’s what prompted his actions, how sorry he is, and what it’s like to be shamed by an Internet mob.

Q: Tell me about Game 7. How did you end up downtown?

A: I’m not really a sports fan. I got involved because all my friends started watching the games. I live on Seymour at Robson, right above Granville Street, and I got caught up in the whole excitement of the city. It was really, really exciting. I was watching Game 7 at a friend’s condo in Coal Harbour.

Q: When did you hear about the riots?

A: I had heard about it briefly on the news. Then, walking home, I found myself in the middle of it. It was like nothing I’d ever seen in my life before—like WWIII.

Q: At what point did you decide to jump in?

A: I don’t have a criminal record. I’ve never stolen anything in my life. I was standing outside The Bay, watching people breaking windows, smashing things, and lighting things on fire. I didn’t do that at all. When I saw multiple people break the window and walking out with stuff, I got caught up in it… It was a spur of the moment thing. Normally I would never think like that. I’m not trying to defend it, but it was one of those things—everyone’s doing it, so I might as well try it. I was quite intoxicated. I wasn’t in the best state of mind. Continue…

How do you solve a problem like Roberto Luongo?

By Charlie Gillis - Friday, June 17, 2011 at 5:26 PM - 15 Comments

He’s never been one to pour out his soul, so one might reasonably interpret the phone call Roberto Luongo placed on April 21 as a full-on cry for help. After two straight blowout losses to the Chicago Blackhawks, Vancouver’s superstar netminder had lost the starting role in Game 6 of the Western Conference quarter-finals to his backup, Cory Schneider. Now, with the Hawks threatening to erase a 3-0 deficit in the series, Canucks coach Alain Vigneault was having a public crisis of confidence in his $10-million-a-year goaltender. Luongo’s future hung in the balance.

So he reached out to his brother Leo, a goaltending instructor in the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League, and like any good coach, Leo steered the conversation toward the positive. Roberto’s recent failures went unmentioned, as did the attendant pressures of his epic 12-year, $64-million contract. “We talked about him staying focused and sharp and being ready,” Leo told Maclean’s. “In hockey, you never know what’s going to happen.”

As it turned out, Schneider went down in Game 6 with leg cramps, and Luongo entered the game in the third to make a series of impressive stops in an overtime loss. Continue…

Vancouver's 40-year-old virgins

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 6:04 PM - 9 Comments

Deep in the fuggy, aromatic basement of TD Garden, in a corner of the Boston Bruins’ dressing room, Johnny Boychuk’s words to live by loom above his stall: “Move your feet, play physical, shoot the puck!” They are not so much a credo as a command, penned on a strip of yellowed masking tape like a reminder to an errant child. The defenceman reddened last week when a visitor noticed. “Just something I wrote to myself,” he mumbled through his playoff beard. But there was no need to be sheepish, because here was Bruin hockey boiled to its essentials—skate, hit, shoot. Thus did Boston find its way to the 2011 Stanley Cup final. They would forget it at their peril.

They didn’t, of course. The Bruins championship was a masterpiece of blood and sweat, forged from the work of role players and a goaltending performance for the ages. And the Canucks? They might have used that bit of tape. Continue…

Photo gallery: Riot in Vancouver

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 16, 2011 at 2:58 PM - 4 Comments

Canucks take Game 1 in Stanley Cup final

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 2, 2011 at 10:07 AM - 0 Comments

The Vancouver Canucks clinched a victory in Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final Wednesday night thanks to a last minute goal from right-winger Raffi Torres. The final score was 1-0 for the Canucks over the Boston Bruins. Vancouver goalie Roberto Luongo stopped 36 shots, obtaining his third shutout performance of the playoffs. He was also awarded the game’s first star. But the victory didn’t come without a cost, as Canucks defenceman Dan Hamhuis left the game with an injury in the second period. It’s unclear whether he will make a return for Game 2. During their 40-year history, the team has never won the Stanley Cup.

News 1130

The Stanley cup goes on vacation

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Sunday, August 22, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 0 Comments

Scott Strazzante/Chicago Tribune/ Mark L. Johnson/CP

On his day with the cup, Chicago Blackhawks star Patrick Kane took Lord Stanley’s mug to visit Niagara Falls, N.Y., a cancer hospital, and onto the stage at a Jimmy Buffett concert. But the lingering memory will surely be his holy crap moment with hockey’s Holy Grail. The 21-year-old winger—more than a little scared of heights—agreed to hop into a cherry picker belonging to his hometown Buffalo fire department. Up, up they went, three storeys above the street, so photographers could capture him hoisting the trophy against the scenic skyline. But when it came time to descend, the motor stopped working. It took 25 minutes for firefighters to manually lower the ladder. And all the while, Kane’s buddies stood below, heckling. Respect.

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Friday, July 16, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Unforgettable goal, unforgettable friend
When Andrés Iniesta clinched the World Cup after smashing home the game winner deep into overtime, he honoured his friend Dani Jarque. Spain’s humble playmaker tore off his jersey, revealing an undershirt with the words “Dani Jarque: always with us” written in blue marker. Jarque, a teammate on Spain’s lineup since the pair cracked the under-15 squad, died a year ago, aged 26, a month after being made captain of Espanyol.

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Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Monday, July 5, 2010 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

The never-ending story
It took John Isner of the U.S. from Tuesday until Thursday—a record 11 hours, five minutes—to post a first-round victory at Wimbledon over France’s Nicolas Mahut. An exhausted Isner lost in the second round Friday to Thiemo De Bakker of the Netherlands. “I was just low on fuel out there,” Isner said.

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Hawks win (finally!)

By macleans.ca - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 11:27 AM - 0 Comments

There were plenty of heroes in Chicago’s Stanley Cup win over the Philadelphia Flyers. Patrick Kane, whose overtime winner faked out everyone from the CBC announcers to his own teammates. Duncan Keith, who cemented his status as the world’s best defenceman. Jonathan Toews, who, though he failed to score a goal in the six-game final, was the most dominant player on the ice. Just as interesting though, is the behind-the-scenes story of the Blackhawks’ long journey back from an obscurity born of late owner Bill Wirtz’s stubbornness. For that, credit goes to Bill’s son Rocky, who took over after his father’s death, along with John McDonough, an executive whose marketing acumen reconnected the team with its long-suffering fans. Special mention, too, for Dale Tallon, who lost his job as GM but who—as Michael Farber of Sports Illustrated puts it—is “the architect of this Cup team as surely as Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Robie House in Oak Park.”

Sports Illustrated

Don't mind me; I'm on a math bender

By Colby Cosh - Monday, April 19, 2010 at 3:11 AM - 19 Comments

As the paid-up holder of a Mainstream Media club card, can I warn the sportswriters away from making too much of the statistical fluke of all eight first-round NHL playoff series starting out tied through two games? The warning will arrive too late for some, but others may yet be saved.

As a landmark of NHL parity, the large number of 1-1 results in 2010 is not going to prove very useful. Imagine that game outcomes are statistically independent of each other and that the better team has a p chance of winning each individual game in the home team’s rink. If that’s the case, then the chance of a given series standing level after two games is 2(p)(1-p).

The 1-1 tie is always, for realistic values of p, the most common outcome. In a world of perfect parity—all teams are equal, no home-ice advantage, p = 0.5—half the series will be tied 1-1 after two games. And because the chance of the better team going up 2-0 is counterbalanced by a decreased chance of the other team going up 2-0, the overall chance of a tied series doesn’t drop off very fast as you depart from the parity condition, p = 0.5. For p = 0.6, about 48% of the series are still tied 1-1 after two games. (The better team is ahead in 36%, or 0.6²; the worse team is up 2-0 in 16%, about 0.4².)

But you can see that having eight series tied 1-1 will be incredibly rare even in the world of perfect parity. The probability of that happening in a given year will be the total product of the chances of a 1-1 tie in each of the series. Given an average overall value of p, the odds of all eight series starting out equal works out to, at most, (2(p)(1-p))⁸—a pretty small number, demonstrating the great flukiness of the “eight ties” outcome. Even in the perfect-parity world the expected frequency works out to 1 time in every 2⁸, or 256, years. In the real world, the right average figure for p is probably around .54, giving us an “eight ties” year about 1 time in 269. In a fairly extreme non-parity world where the 1-4 seeds had an average 60-40 edge—that is to say, p = 0.6—the “eight ties” outcome would happen once every 355 years.

In other words, using this fluke as any kind of sign, indicator, or test for parity is about like insisting on reading a book only by the light of Halley’s Comet. You’d better have a comfortable chair. And plenty of kids, so they and their progeny can continue the observations (over several millennia) after you die in it…

On top of the World

By Charlie Gillis with Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 2 Comments

Photograph by Chris O'Meara/Associated Press

After the Golden Goal, when jubilant members of Team Canada had finished mobbing Sidney Crosby, when the sticks had been gathered and the players made their way to the long blue carpet for their medals, a pleasing sight unfolded in Canada Hockey Place. The crowd began bobbing, twisting, to the rhythm of the Black Eyed Peas, and for a moment, you could look around at thousands of red maple leafs—on flags, placards, T-shirts and jerseys—brought to life simultaneously, as if by a gust of wind.

Down on the ice, the man of the moment looked up and smiled. Minutes earlier, Crosby had slid the puck under U.S. goaltender Ryan Miller for what will surely count among the greatest goals in Canadian hockey history—right up there with Paul Henderson’s in 1972. Now, as he stood at the end of the line awaiting his Olympic gold medal, the crowd began chanting his name. “Cros-by! Cros-by! Cros-by!”

There are moments in sports that define an athlete, and some that define a country. But seldom do the two converge as neatly as they did in the men’s hockey final at the 2010 Winter Games, where Canada defeated the U.S. 3-2. Crosby’s goal seven minutes, 40 seconds into overtime cut short an improbable comeback by the Americans and unleashed four years’ worth of pent-up emotions, dating back to Canada’s ignominious defeat at the Winter Games in Turin. Those feelings had only deepened in the early days of these Olympics, as Canadians had been alternately pitied and mocked for various glitches, not to mention our disappointing medal haul that first week.

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Canada's Olympians: Sidney Crosby, Ice hockey

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, February 11, 2010 at 10:00 AM - 37 Comments

He’s still capable of wonder—though wonder itself has been part of the sales package so long it sounds hokey to say. It was there in Sidney Crosby’s voice a couple of weeks ago, after he woke in Vancouver to the sight of crews putting the last touches on the athletes’ village. “Exciting,” “special” and “honour” cropped up in the ration of bromides he served up that morning to the microphones.

And there was a genuine flutter in his references to the athletes’ village, where any Olympic participant will tell you the good times truly roll. It turns out even a $9-million-a-year superstar and self-described “homebody” can get giddy about something like that.

Crosby is that rare athlete whose actual personality is more appealing than he would have you believe. At 22, he is inarguably Canada’s best hockey player, winner of a Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins, a Hart Trophy as the NHL’s most valuable player, and a world junior championship. The ebullience that might induce has been pressed down beneath a lid of cultivated blandness. But one need only watch the home video footage of him currently airing in Tim Hortons’ commercials to catch a ray of the preteen enthusiasm that came before the script. And any fan who watches Crosby can see the part of him that is spontaneous, real and unabashedly animated by the tribal aspects of the game. He revels in the success of teammates. He takes offence on their behalf.

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Hands off the silverware, Grapes

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 5:58 PM - 48 Comments

So Don Cherry likes the idea of changing the name of some of the NHL’s year-end trophies, does he? Breaks my heart to say it, but I guess he is a bad role model after all.

Let’s not get distracted by broad notions of respecting heritage and preserving the old imperial spirit of hockey. Most of these trophies were given to the NHL specifically so that people’s memories would be preserved in perpetuity by means of some small token. The Norris Trophy was donated to the National Hockey League by the children of James Norris. The Art Ross trophy was a gift from Art Ross. The Hart Trophy, or the original one, came from David Hart. Not many people know who James Norris, Art Ross, and David Hart were, but if anyone does, it’s because of the generosity and devotion to hockey of themselves and their families.

It would be morally and spiritually unspeakable for the league to unilaterally annul these pledges and rename these objects, and the arguments given for doing so are asinine. We want to rename the Norris Trophy for Bobby Orr because… everybody already knows who Bobby Orr is? Memorials are meant for the people we all still remember, are they? Then why the heck do we call them that?

The heritage angle is relevant too, but it is only likely to confuse things. When the NHL locked out its players in 2004 and decided not to hold a Stanley Cup tournament, we were all outraged that a long tradition had been broken. But while we were lamenting for history, we weren’t quick enough to remember that the NHL doesn’t have any ethical claim at all to exclusive control of the Cup, and isn’t even its legal owner. That principle has now more or less been established by a court settlement, but in the meantime, the league succeeded in holding the Cup hostage in a labour dispute.

Now it wants to turn its other trophies, whose beauty and antiquity are the envy of all other professional sports, into cheap marketing trinkets. Unless you believe the conveniently anonymous NHL source who says the idea was to make the trophies more “relevant” to the players. If I said something that stupid to a journalist, I would insist on anonymity too. (þ: Staples)

There's no faking a playoff beard

By Andrew Potter - Monday, June 8, 2009 at 12:00 PM - 7 Comments

We are now well into the last round of the NHL playoffs, with the Pittsburgh Penguins once again up against the Detroit Red Wings. Sometime this week, the Stanley Cup will be held aloft and carried triumphantly around the rink by an ecstatic group of players who haven’t shaved in months, and who now look like nothing more threatening than refugees from a Sam Roberts concert.

Most fans are familiar with the sporting world’s more amusing superstitious types, like the baseball player Wade Boggs, who famously ate chicken before every game, or the hockey goaltender Patrick Roy, who liked to talk to his goalposts. Pittsburgh captain Sidney Crosby gave hockey purists conniptions after his team beat Carolina for the Prince of Wales trophy to make it into the final round: he picked up the trophy and carried it around last week, when even touching the thing is considered bad luck.

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A real beauty, that Cup

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, June 5, 2008 at 12:41 AM - 0 Comments

It’s shinier in person.

That might explain why 17,000 Pittsburgh Penguin fans stuck around tonight to clap eyes on the greatest trophy in professional sport—even as they booed the Detroit Red Wings for winning it. But the Stanley Cup got it’s proper reception when Henrik Zetterberg, the Conn Smythe-winning forward, took it out of Daniel Cleary’s hands. You could hear him up in the press box, hollering with joy as he hoisted the 35-pound bad boy over his head. 

More than making you forgive the Wings their automatonic play, it was a scene to remind you that the Cup’s effect is universal. Swedes, Finns, Russians, Canadians and Americans alike understand the meaning of winning it. 

“It’s just a great feeling I have right now,” beamed Zetterberg after the on-ice celebration, with the Conn Smythe perched beside him. Pittsburgh’s last-gasp effort was close enough to scare him, he acknowledged. But holding on for the 3-2 win was more than enough to make his year. “When I saw the puck behind the [Detroit] net, I looked at the clock and saw zero minutes and zero seconds, I was a pretty happy man.”

A number of things got settled here tonight. The age of wimpy Euro—or the Euro as addendum to a core of Canadian “leaders”—is officially over. To merely credit Nicklas Lidstrom as the first European captain to hoist Lord Stanley’s mug is to criminally understate the man’s impact through every shift of every game in this series. He is, in Pierre McGuire’s tired phrase, a monster in every respect. Zetterberg is dominant at both ends of the rink, never skirting the rough stuff, maintaining breakneck speed even as he’s clipped and smacked and head-hunted. Tonight, he scored one of the stranger Cup-winning goals in history by pulling the puck through his skates as he wheeled through centre, unleashing a shot that caught Pens goaltender Marc-André Fleury off guard; as it dribbled between his pads, Fleury sat back, knocking the thing in with his butt.

Tomas Holmstrom, another Swede, takes more abuse in front of the net than any player since Phil Esposito. Niklas Kronvall is an outright menace in the open-ice hitting department. Datsyuk stands his ground. So do Franzen and Filppula.

So Lidstrom had every right to claim his due when he appeared before the press horde tonight. Being the first Euro to captain a Cup winner is “something I’m very proud of,” he said. “I’ve been over here a long time. I watched Steve Yzerman hoist it up three times in the past, and I’m very proud of being the first European. I’m very proud of being captain of the Red Wings. So much history with the team and great tradition.” How can you argue with that?

Better yet that Lidstrom made one of those class-act gestures that would bring a tear to Don Cherry’s eye, handing it the Cup off first to Dallas Drake, a career plumber who toiled 15 seasons on four teams without winning a title. 

Second thing: the Penguins are closer to championship form than their critics thought. Yes, they were at least a couple of good defencemen short of beating a team like Detroit. Yes, GM Ray Shero will have a devil of a time improving the team while staying under the salary cap—especially if he plans to keep Marian Hossa. But the spectacle tonight of the Pens storming back on the Wings for the second game in a row, almost tying it on a Sidney Crosby backhander with centi-seconds left on the clock, is proof enough of what’s going on here. They showed character, as well as youth and talent.

Finally, the “system” is back in hockey. It is hard just now to pinpoint exactly what Detroit’s system is. “Venus fly trap” might fit, given their capacity to lunge from a full-bloom, run-and-gun game to collapsing around their prey back in their own slot. Yet there was Lidstrom himself uttering the dreaded word, crediting coach Mike Babcock with selling his charges on a strategic formula that would limit offensive opportunities. Again and again tonight, Pittsburgh rushes fell apart in the neutral zone under Detroit’s patented high-speed checking. It’s not obstruction, per se. Just very rapid recovery.

That’s the good news: the Red Wings’ template requires very fast forwards, very mobile defence, great stamina throughout the lineup. And they execute it brilliantly. I’m one of those who complains incessantly about their robotic efficiency. But it must be a joy for their partisans to behold.

Almost as great a joy as that shiny old Cup in Henrik Zetterberg’s Midas-like hands. What lucky fans they are.