If you thought the prospect of getting a haircut is exciting, this will blow your mind: the Monday morning musings and meditations on the world of sports.
• South Korea, which is held up as a model in the fight against COVID-19, had to shut down bars and clubs again last week because one man has been responsible for 40-and-counting new cases.
The closure is considered indefinite.
The NHL, however, still believes it can salvage its season. By now, you’re aware of the plan — the latest iteration is the league will jump right into a 24-team Stanley Cup tournament — but with so much uncertainty, with so much about the virus which is unknown, how can they even consider a restart?
If we’ve come to know anything about this pandemic, it’s how unpredictable the virus is and how one misstep can set this whole process back months.
In Seoul, it just took one man visiting three bars on one night to shut down the city. Yes, there are differences with the NHL’s plan but they’re still proposing upwards of 130 players congregate in one area to play a contact sport with coaches, training staff, medical people and a full television crew in attendance.
Sorry I want to see hockey as badly as anyone but not like this, not with so much at stake. Stay the course. The risk-reward here is not worth it.
• Patrick Johnston first reported in these pages there was trouble between Vancouver Canucks amateur scouting director Judd Brackett and the organization at the end of January. He’s reported it multiple times since.
Six weeks ago I reported the relationship between Brackett and GM Jim Benning was strained over the autonomy of the scouting department.
But a “hockey insider,” reported it last week and suddenly it’s a big story. Sorry, one day I’ll understand how things work in the new media.
• Gratifying to see the response to TSN’s replay of the 1987 Canada Cup series. As someone who wrote the book on the subject, literally, here are some thoughts about Game 2, which aired Saturday.
— This is the greatest hockey game ever played and I’m not sure if second place is that close.
It was an elimination game in a best-on-best tournament which featured 12 future Hall of Famers on Team Canada against Viktor Tikhonov’s best-ever team. The stars were all at the peak of their powers with the exception of Mario Lemieux, who was in the process of announcing himself to the hockey world.
Wayne Gretzky finished the game with five assists, including Lemieux’s game-winner in overtime. Lemieux scored three goals. Valeri Kamensky scored the game-tying goal with just over a minute left in regulation when he went one-on-four against the Canadian defence and scored on Grant Fuhr as he was being pulled down.
Find a better game. I’m waiting.
— Gretzky calls it the single greatest game he ever played and 33 years later, his performance remains awe-inspiring. The five points are one thing but Canada was down a forward going into the game and head coach Mike Keenan shortened his bench in the third period and overtime. That meant Gretzky was playing almost every second shift.
In overtime, he wet himself on the Team Canada bench, missed a shift and was right back out.
— Mentioned Vladimir Krutov in the piece on Tony Tanti over the weekend but it’s heartbreaking for Canucks fans to compare the Krutov of 1987 to the player who showed up in Vancouver in 1989. After Gretzky and Lemieux, Krutov was the third-best forward in that tournament and had the look of a superstar about him.
Suffice to say he wasn’t that with the Canucks.
• If you go to YouTube you can find Bruce Springsteen performing a smoking cover of Long Tall Sally. In honour of The Boss and Little Richard here are the top five Springsteen covers from his live shows.
1. Tom Waits’s Jersey Girl
2. Jimmy Cliff’s Trapped
3. Mitch Ryder’s Detroit Medley
4. The Animal’s It’s My Life
5. The Clash’s Clampdown
Honourable mention : Rhinestone Cowboy. He closes Western Stars with a killer version of the Glen Campbell hit.
• And finally, I’ve never hid my affection for the CFL in this space. I love the league and the players but mostly I love the stories the Canadian game has given us over the years.
Professional sports has largely become cold and corporate. It manufactures storylines which serve the best interests of the business. You can still find real moments and real people in that world but you have to fight through layers of protective covering to get there.
The CFL serves those moments and those people up on a silver platter and they’ve been doing it, in one form or another, for a century. It is part of this country, part of our shared experience and that has value.
But, considering everything else that’s going in our country, that value isn’t $30 million or $70 million and it’s certainly not $150 million which is the headline commissioner Randy Ambrosie has created.
The league has to know this. Sure they can present their financials to Parliament and play the Canadiana card but, in the spring of 2020, our government has more pressing concerns.
Unfortunately, the league just can’t get past the optics of what their asking. As for where they go next, wish I could tell you, but the CFL has always been a resilient, resourceful entity which has survived any number of threats to its existence.
This is part of its charm. It’s embedded in its DNA and it’s the strength of the league. Ambrosie has to create a new story out of that cloth because no one likes the one he’s trying to tell now.
Copyright Postmedia Network Inc., 2020
