Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Andrei Markov is back with the Montreal Canadiens, almost two months ahead of schedule, after suffering a serious injury on the opening night of the season.

Which is great news for me, as I picked him up off waivers about a week ago in my fantasy league.

Injuries are part of the territory when one is a professional athlete.  Whether they are career threatening injuries, or just a nagging niggling day-to-day ailment, sports fans often forget that these guys aren’t video game characters, they are flesh-and-blood.

The human body, even a well-tuned body, still requires proper rest and care in order to recuperate from a physical set-back.

The time-table for an athlete to return-to-action varies by person, but suffice-to-say there is no magic sponge that is waved over the player, and he miraculously climbs out-of-bed and gets back on the ice or field, despite evidence to the contrary every four years in the World Cup.

The body is a complicated machine.  It requires proper maintenance, and, if necessary, repairs, like any other finely tuned machine.

Yet most of us gloss over those blood-and-guts details when scanning the IR list of our favourite team.  How long until Player X is back from that anterior ligament exterior alleviated pulled muscle thingy?

I’m no different, possibly in part due to the luck of never having broken or sprained anything during my brief athletic career.  There was that one time during high school football that my brand new cleats caused two huge red raw popped blisters on both of my heels, which meant much pain when doing something as simple as walking, but that only lasted about half-a-week.

Sports injuries remained, for me, a mere nuisance, particularly when managing my fantasy teams…until this past Christmas Night at 10:30 pm.

That was the exact moment when all the adults up in the living room at our house heard a series of high-pitched screams emanating from the basement.

The boys said they were just playing Xbox, but for some reason, my five-year-old decided it was a good time to launch a body slam at the visiting 10-year-old, who responded with evasive action that led to my boy tumbling head-over-heels into the thinly-carpeted, unforgiving concrete floor, and landing square on his right arm.

Which caused both bones to snap, between the wrist and the elbow.

Which led to those screams of pain, and Mommy running down the stairs in record time.

Which led to a premature end to the Christmas Day festivities, and a hasty visit to the Emergency Room at Toronto East General Hospital.

We got lucky here, as when the three of us strolled in, the three admitting nurses were sitting around chatting, maybe exchanging Christmas war stories.  A scant twenty minutes later, the place began to fill up with the walking wounded.

My son was attended to right away, and after being weighed, he was prepped for the doctor.

Canada comes under criticism, including here at home, about the inadequacies of our public health system, but I’ve always maintained that while we may indeed have long waiting lines at hospitals in this country, as least we have lines.  A quick glance at the sheet of fees posted in the admitting room indicated that a mere visit would set one back in excess of four hundred dollars, if not for OHIP (our public health plan in the province of Ontario), wonky and imperfect as it may be.

My son was in a lot of pain as the nurses prepared a sling for his injured wing.  The three of us waited for about an hour as the doctors dealt with much more urgent matters.

A room came open around 2:00 am.  The boy was wheeled in, and was prepped for the procedure to realign the two broken bones, as Dr. Isaac Moss wanted to avoid surgery if at all possible.

The calculation for how much drugs had to be administered was off , which led to my son being unfortunately awake for the first part of the procedure, which meant he was in a heck of a lot of pain, until they rectified the situation, after no doubt feeling the hot darts emanating from my wife’s eyes

My boy didn’t do himself any favours, thanks to a stubbornness inherited from his mother; he fought the effects of the drug, all the while imploring Mommy to take him home.

Eventually, a cast was applied to his right arm, and we now begin at least a six-week journey of doctor appointments, and therapy, hopefully ending with my kid’s right arm as good as new.

There will be no rushing of this process.

Which only leads me to shake my head when I think of pro athletes who suffer similar and often far worse, injuries, yet are back playing well before initially projected.

Once upon a time, and no doubt even now, players were purposely rushed back, as the old-school mentality (that should be NO-school mentality) believed that one should play through pain, and injuries, and such things as having one’s bell rung.

That outdated thinking is slowly becoming exactly that in the sports world, outdated, though there are still holdouts hiding in the caves of ignorance, the same caves that are full of folk who blame the victim for incidents such as hits-from-behind.

Even with the best medical care that money can buy, I’m still amazed that someone such as Markov is back-on-the-ice way ahead of schedule, and except for the extra pounds he gained from shoving back those great hot dogs they make in Montreal, he’s back to his usual All-Star form.

The good Doctor told us that a kid my son’s age stands a much better chance of having his bones repair themselves fully without surgery, as opposed to adults.  He will still have to put up with the major inconvenience of that cast until around Valentine’s Day, yet Markov is back out there, playing hockey at the highest level, almost two months ahead of schedule.  Sure, medicine is an inexact science, but two months early?

No, he didn’t break a bone, but the injury he incurred opening night against the Maple Leafs, a lacerated ankle injury, after a collision with goaltender Carey Price’s skate, could have ended Markov’s career.

Instead, he returns early, scoring two goals that first game back.

I don’t care how tough these guys are, that injury had to hurt.

My son has had a difficult time falling asleep the first few nights since the accident.  His cast gets in the way of sleeping, and his arm has to be elevated in order to reduce swelling.  It’s not a lot of fun.  Injuries hurt.

Something to keep in mind the next time you’re apt to complain about a player on your team taking his good ole’ time returning to action after suffering an injury.

Life ain’t a video game.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Earlier today, I saw a list of National Hockey League players who played a thousand or more regular season games in the league.

How many players have had the opportunity to suit up for an NHL team since the league formed in 1917?  Five thousand?  Can’t be that many, seeing that for twenty-five years, there were only six teams in the circuit.  Before 1942, when there were more teams in the league, how big were the rosters?

Whatever that number may be, as of Friday, November 13^th, 2009, from what I could see, only 238 players have played at least 1000 regular-season NHL games.  One might expect the giants of the game to be on that list, after all, you’d have to be pretty good to last that long in the world’s premier hockey league.  Or would you?  Maybe you just have to be good enough to stick around, just good enough to fill out the fourth line.

Gordie Howe leads the list with 1767 games under his belt during a 26-year NHL career, and that doesn’t take into account his years in the World Hockey Association.  Mark Messier follows Mr. Hockey, falling 11 games short of his total.  Ron Francis gets the bronze medal with 1731 games played, Chris Chelios has participated in 1644 games in the NHL…and possibly counting…and Dave Andreychuk sits in fifth spot with 1639.

The first three are Hall-of-Famers, Chelios will be one day if he ever decides to retire, and a good case can be made for Andreychuk to be there too.

Scanning down the list, most of the players listed near the top are Hall-of-Famers.  Scott Stevens, Ray Bourque, Larry Murphy, Johnny Bucyk, Steve Yzerman; just some of the names that pop out at you.  All of them great players during their tour-of-duty in the NHL.

But what about the plumbers, the spear-carriers, the lunch-bucket guys who turned a skill set based on limited talent and hard work into an NHL career that spanned over 1000 games?  When you think about it, it’s those guys that deserved the proverbial gold watch.  Most hockey fans probably would be unaware that they played that many games in the league.

How about defenceman Luke Richardson, who got into 1417 games over the course of his 20-year NHL career that was spent with 6 teams, including two stops in Toronto?  No-one should seriously consider Richardson for the Hall-of-Fame, but this steady D-man sits 22^nd on the list of games played.  Only 21 other players have a longer service record that Luke Richardson.  That’s gotta count for something.

Or how about, in 31^st spot, Doug Mohns, who played 1390 games spread over 22 years and five teams, most of them with the Bruins and Blackhawks well before the 1967 expansion?

And what about Dean Prentice (1378), or Ron Stewart (1353), or how about James Patrick (1280), or Marc Bergevin (1191)?

Marc Bergevin???

I remember a lot of hockey players, but this guy totally slipped my mind, until I saw him sitting at number 82 on the list.  Is he mostly remembered for his wacky sense-of-humour?

The 60^th overall draft pick of the Chicago Black Hawks in 1983, Bergevin played those 1191 games wearing the colours of the Black Hawks, (when they still went with Black Hawks, not Blackhawks), the Islanders, Whalers, Lightning, Red Wings, Blues, Penguins, Tampa again, and finally the Vancouver Canucks.

Reminds me of Mike Sillinger, who recently retired after putting 1049 on his NHL clock, playing for a record 12 different NHL franchises over 18 seasons.

Again, only 238 NHL players have reached the 1000 game mark, and Marc Bergevin and Mike Sillinger are two of them?  No offense intended to either gentleman, but both their names do not leap-to-mind when I think of long careers.

But I am wrong.  Very wrong.  Other foot soldiers that dodged bullets and made their Grand Mark on the game include Derian Hatcher, Curtis Leschyshyn, Gaetan Duschesne, Don Lever, Todd Gill, Dallas Drake, and Tie Domi?

Tie Domi got into 1020 NHL regular season games.  How did he manage that?  The dude could skate, and he had better hands than most enforcers.

Sitting at number 238, as of the day I checked the list, right on 1000 games, is Hockey Hall-of-Famer Bernie Federko, a magician with the puck during his heyday with the St. Louis Blues.

Mark Recchi of the Boston Bruins leads all active players with 1500 games played, and that’s good for 14^th on the list.  And what a career he’s had.  Think of those early years with the Penguins, and then his point-scoring explosion while a member of the Philadelphia Flyers.  Good enough for the Hall-of-Fame?  He’s at least in the discussion.

A thousand games in the NHL?  That’s an accomplishment to be proud of.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

All-Hit Hockey, all the time.  Give the people what they want.

Almost to a person, any hockey fan I’ve spoken with loves the rough stuff.  No, not the silly staged stuff…fighting…but the rough stuff.

The big hits, the little hits, the scrum in front of the net, digging for the puck in the corners, the constant down-low battles for position;  remove these elements from the game, and you’ll severely cripple hockey.  Even if you’re a fan who watches the game for breathtakking exhibits of skills such as tape-to-tape passes, any radical dialing down of hitting in hockey serves to curtail the beauty of other aspects of the game.

In what manner, you ask?  If by only cheapening them, for a large part of what makes a beautiful goal such a beautiful work-of-art is the stressful conditions under which it was scored.  The gifted player can somehow find room to negotiate out there, creating something out of nothing.  If every player could do that, would it be so special?

This argument in no way intends to suggest that we should have less goals scored; if anything, we need more skilled players and more scoring in the league. But don’t just hand it to them on a silver platter.  They have to earn it.  Hockey is still a combination of skill and size, brains and brawn, creation and intimidation.

Here are five hits, or examples of physical contact, in the past week that have come under the microscope:

- Willie Mitchell on Jonathan Toews

- Evgeni Artyukhin slew foot on Matt Niskenen

- Alexander Ovechkin slew foot on Rich Peverley

- Tuomo Ruutu hit on Darcy Tucker

- Mike Richards hit on David Booth

Each incident has to be viewed, and initially judged, separately.  Where the real fun begins is in the reality that no matter how clearly one spells out the definition of illegal hits in the National Hockey League, it is impossible to get everyone to agree on the legality and severity of most hits.

Take the case of Willie Mitchell of the Vancouver Canucks levelling Jonathan Toews of the Chicago Blackhawks.

From my perspective, which translates to absolutely no rooting interest for either team or player, it was a clean hit.  Devastating, yes, but within the rules of the game of hockey.  Not within the rules as in one toe almost over the line, but comfortably within the rules.

From what I could see, Mitchell didn’t run at Toews, didn’t leave his feet, didn’t put his elbow or stick up, and Toews was in possession of the puck.  It was a clean open-ice hit.

It hurt Toews, to the point he had to sit out after that, but hockey is a rough, physical game.  Even Chicago head coach Joel Quenneville was quick to dismiss any talk of it being a dirty hit.

No suspension was warranted.

The hit by Mike Richards of the Philadelphia Flyers on David Booth of the Florida Panthers was also devastating, but to my eyes, it was a late hit.  Booth had dished off the puck, but even at the high speed that the game is played at, Richards had enough time to ease up on his contact.

He chose not to.

The key is to watch the replay in real-time, not slow motion.  The very act of you opening your own front door, when viewed in slow motion, would look like a criminal act.  Slow motion is good in helping determine factors involved in a questionable hit, such as leaving the feet, or position of an elbow, but since life doesn’t happen at that languid pace, to properly and fairly judge an act on-the-ice, it must be watched in real-time.

Even then, Richards still had time to ease off.  If anything, it appears, and I stress APPEARS, as if Richards elevated himself just enough to take a shot at Booth’s head.

Regardless of the validity of that last statement, Richards still delivered a late hit.  Sure, you can drag out the hoary reply that Booth should have been aware of everyone around him, but he can’t watch all five Flyer skaters.  Richards came out-of-nowhere and decked him, when he didn’t have the puck, which is against the rules.  This is not a repeat of the Mitchell hit on Toews.

A suspension is warranted.

The Tuomo Ruutu hit on Darcy Tucker of the Colorado Avalanche certainly appears to be a hit-from-behind to me, though not a seemingly devastating one.  Nonetheless, Tucker was hurt on the play.  Many are saying that there was no intention by Ruutu to injure Tucker, and from what the video replay reveals to me, I’d agree with that sentiment , but should that matter?

Someone is going to get seriously hurt in one of these scenarios in the future, and unless there is a zero tolerance to hits from behind of any magnitude, yes, even accidental ones, then prepare yourself for an onslaught of handwringing when they’re putting some stiff six feet under the day after such a hit.

Ruutu was suspended three games.

As it was a hit-from-behind, regardless of intention, the suspension was warranted.

The Evgeni Artyukhin slew foot on Matt Niskenen of the Dallas Stars is clearly that, an attempt to take the player’s feet out from under him.  Even if Artyukhin claims post-game, as he has, that that is not what he intended, the video evidence (thanks YouTube) shows otherwise.  The danger of the ages-old slew foot is having the duped player bounce his head off the ice.  In this instance, Niskenen fell onto his front, predominantly on his left arm.

The three-game suspension was warranted.

Maybe it helps being a superstar, because Alexander Ovechkin slew footed Rich Peverley of the Atlanta Thrashers, and was not suspended.

And you know what, he shouldn’t have been suspended.  The league got this one right.  Carefully watch the video, at real-time, and do you not see Peverley and Ovechkin battling for the puck, and the momentum of Ovechkin’s body carrying into Peverley, and upending him?

There was no slew foot delivered in the manner in which Artyukhin took out Niskanen.  From what I can recall, Ovechkin received a penalty, which was a good call; even an accidental trip is still a trip, but this incident was the direct result of a typical battle for the puck during a game.

Ovechkin is a supremely talented player, and he likes to engage in physical play, and every so often, the chippy side of him emerges.  One day, he’ll get under someone’s skin out there, and they will retaliate.  Fans of the Washington Capitals get all apoplectic when this is mentioned, but they are clearly thinking with their hearts, and not their heads.

Regardless…in this instance, no suspension was warranted.

The thing is, in all five instances, someone else could look at the very same video I just watched, and legitimately come up with five different conclusions.  That is what makes policing this game so difficult.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Back in those (mostly) innocent days when I was a kid, one sports story that worked its way through my Grade Four classroom was the sordid tale of a couple of New York Yankees pitchers that swapped their entire families.  Not just their wives, but also their kids and their dogs.  No word if the furniture was thrown in, or if there was a set-of-dishes to be named later.

Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson were solid pitchers for the Yankees, but to a bunch of nine-year-old growing up in suburban Edmonton, these guys were as famous as Reggie Jackson or Catfish Hunter.

It was just plain weird what the southpaws did, never mind what your personal morals may be.  Sure, it was the early 70′s, and the hangover from the technicolour Sixties was upon us, but this went beyond wife swapping.  To this day, I still scratch my head at the notion.

Hockey, being a mostly conservative sport in almost every aspect of that definition, has never publicly had the same arrangement, though you hear stuff sometimes you can’t repeat, though no doubt someone is squirreling it all away for a future tell-all book.

So it comes as a complete shock to me that former Edmonton Oilers’ owner Peter Pocklington reveals in, what else, his new book, that at one point during the early 1980′s, two National Hockey League teams almost went all Kekich/Peterson, and pulled off the most outrageous trade in the history of sports.

Having obviously squirreled away a ton of inside stories over the years, along with a map of where all the bodies are buried, Peter Puck has grabbed the attention for his new book he hoped he would by revealing that he worked out a deal with Toronto Maple Leafs’ legendary owner Harold Ballard that would have seen the two men swap teams.

Swap teams.  Completely.  Which means the fine folk of Edmonton would have been saddled with the complete roster of the early 80′s Maple Leafs, just in time to watch the young guns of the Oilers emege as one of the greatest teams in NHL history.  The trouble is, those young bucks would have been hoisting all those Stanley Cups dressed in Maple Leaf blue.  Worse, the city of Edmonton would have had Ballard within their city borders.

Apparently, for whatever reason, Ballard changed his mind and the entire thing was scuttled.

The mind is boggled at the implications of such a wholesale trade, if it had been allowed to proceed.  Since such a possibility reads like science fiction, let’s put on the Spock ears and follow the changes that would have occurred to our timeline, if that deal had actually gone forward.

It should be noted that the pebble in the pond, check that, the giant boulder in the pond that the Oilers-Leafs swap would have been to the rest of the NHL would have had far-reaching implications, that would still be felt to this day.

The Edmonton Oilers would have moved years ago, if that deal had materialized.  Most likely, the Houston Oilers would have had to wait until the death of Ballard, and the battle over his diminished estate had been settled, before they could finally concentrate on the business of hockey, and during the 1995-96 season, Houston would win the Stanley Cup.

The Quebec Nordiques would still be in the league, though they never would have ended up with goaltender Patrick Roy, and thus, to this day, the Nordiques still would not have won the Stanley Cup, and there are still concerns about building a new arena.  There are whispers the team may move to Kansas City.

Roy would remain with the Montreal Canadiens, though head coach Mario Tremblay would have lost his job as a result.  The Canadiens would make the Cup Final in 1998, losing to the Detroit Red Wings.

The Nordiques would not have been in position to draft Eric Lindros first overall in 1991; that honour went to the Edmonton Oilers, who had earlier traded the rights to the New Jersey Devils for Tom Kurvers, and it was the Devils who took Lindros first that year.

Lindros would thrive in the Swamp, and he never suffered a concussion from that devastating Scott Stevens open-ice hit, as they were on the same team.  Lindros would retire as a member of the Devils, having won three Stanley Cups, in 2000, 2001 and 2003.

A young Peter Forsberg would captain the Philadelphia Flyers to the 1995 Cup.

If Pocklington had ended up with his young team in Toronto, he would have most likely made a ton of cash over what he realized in Northern Alberta.  Even with his business problems that existed in other industries he ran (Gainers Foods), Peter Puck would have not needed to cash in his depreciating asset known as Wayne Gretzky.  Even if he later broke up the Boys On The Bus, odds are Bruce McNall would have been exposed as a charlatan by then, which means the Great One doesn’t end up in L.A, after winning five Cups with Toronto.

Let’s say, instead, Gretzky is traded by the Leafs to the Rangers.  It is he, in 1994, that hoists the Stanley Cup over his head, as the Broadway Blueshirts end their 54-year drought.

As for the Kings, they continue to flounder, though the NHL props them up financially.  As a result, there isn’t a mad rush to pan fool’s gold in the U.S. south, meaning that the likes of the Anaheim Ducks and Florida Panthers never come-to-be.

The NHL still would expand to Ottawa and Tampa, though the Lightning are moved to Minnesota, and that’s where they win the Stanley Cup in 2004 over the Flyers.

The Thrashers and Predators never see the light-of-day, though Penguins’ owner Mario Lemieux threatens to move his team to Nashville if he doesn’t get a sweetheart arena deal from the city of Pittsburgh.

The league is impressed with the Nashville bid, and promises to consider expansion to Tennessee, and Kansas City, in the near future.  Canadian billionaire businessman Jim Balsillie, by now a personal friend of NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, is often mentioned as the owner of a Nashville NHL franchise.

No-one ever hears about William Boots Del Biaggio.

The Islanders still need a new arena, and threaten to move to Hamilton, which Pocklington blocks.

The Winnipeg Jets still move to Phoenix, as the NHL is emboldened by the relative success of the Houston Oilers and Dallas Stars, though even in this alternative timeline, the Coyotes still lose a ton of money.

The North Stars have moved to Dallas, setting up a great rivalry with Houston, but overall, the NHL have dipped a tentative toe into the expansion waters, instead of diving in headfirst, and ending up with the fractured neck they have now.

Which only goes to prove that in every scenario, no matter how bleak, no matter how wacky, there is always a sliver of hope.

Makes me wish Ballard didn’t get cold feet.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Instead of coming up with a semi-accurate, half-hearted definition of what constitutes a superstar, let’s consult a dictionary.  Since it’s 2009, let’s thumb through an on-line edition.

Superstar, according to Merriam-Webster Online:

• Function: noun
• Date: 1924

1 : a star (as in sports or the movies) who is considered extremely talented, has great public appeal, and can usually command a high salary
2 : one that is very prominent or is a prime attraction <a diplomatic superstar>

When the Dany Heatley trade to San Jose was finally completed over the weekend, a number of sports news services identified Heatley as being a superstar.

A superstar?  Really?  Sure, only two other NHL players have scored more goals since the lockout than Heatley, but does he meet all the qualifications required in order to wear the superstar crown?

From my vantage point, a superstar in any milieu transcends their surroundings.  In other words, even your dear Aunt Gertie that doesn’t like sports knows who, say, Alexander Ovechkin is, and probably has an opinion about him.  Don’t get her going on the hot stick celebration.

Following that line of thinking, I propose that there are currently only two NHL players that are bigger than the sport.

Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby.  The ying and the yang.  The Beatles and the Stones.  Mario Lemieux and Wayne Gretzky.

Evgeni Malkin should be considered, if only because his on-ice talents are so immense, and only getting stronger, but I haven’t seen any tangible evidence that supports his inclusion into the select club of superstars.  If on-ice talent were the only yardstick being applied, then Pavel Datsyuk or Ilya Kovalchuk, and maybe Dany Heatley, would have to be included.

Where these gentlemen fall short for serious consideration of being called a superstar is this section of the definition:

has great public appeal

Keep-in-mind every individual franchise has a player or two that is held very close to the bosom of the local fanbase, and as such, their respective values are usually inflated.  For instance, Rick Nash of the Columbus Blue Jackets can be one of the most exciting players in the league today.  His YouTube-ready goals, where he dekes through half the team, and some of the guys up in the press box, are a beauty to behold, and understandably, the faithful in Ohio would clamour that Nash is a superstar.

The argument is all context.  Within the world of the Blue Jackets, Nash is the face of the franchise, thus he is a superstar.  Within the expanded world of the National Hockey League, Nash is one of the young stars that make the game so exciting to watch.  You could make a credible argument that Nash is an NHL superstar.

You would have to work awfully hard to convince me that Nash, or Heatley or Datsyuk or Roberto Luongo, are true superstars.  They do not transcend the game of hockey.  Within the hockey world, they are larger-than-life.  Outside of those cozy borders, they would be lost, unrecognizable to the average person walking down the street of any American city.  For that matter, the majority of non-hockey fans in Canada wouldn’t recognize them either.

Put Ovechkin or Crosby in downtown Manhattan (without the Zamboni in Ovechkin’s case), or on Manhattan Beach in Southern California, or in surburban St. Louis or at the Steak ‘n Shake in Battle Creek, Michigan, and most likely both of these dudes would be recognized.

For a variety of reasons, Ovechkin and Crosby are currently bigger than the game of hockey.

That doesn’t mean they’re better or smarter.  That doesn’t mean we should all bow down and praise them (though maybe we should for all the attention they bring to the game).  That doesn’t mean that their opinons are sacrosanct.  So before the mouthbreathing bloggers of the cyberworld get their shorts all in a knot, keep this sobering thought in mind.  Most likely your favourite player is a nobody outside of the world of hockey.  That’s not the case with Ovechkin and Crosby.

Why these two?  Well, we’ve already listed awesome on-ice talent as one major factor, but they have to have more than that.  Both young men have been marketed very successfully, in particular Crosby, who became the face of the NHL as it emerged from the 2004-05 lockout.

Ovechkin basically elbowed his way onto the marquee, and his fun-loving flair that he paints everything he touches with cannot be denied.

The camera likes both of these guys, for different reasons.  The media likes both of these guys, for different reasons.  Hockey fans are drawn to these two guys, for different reasons.  Love them or hate them, you’re talking about them.

Thus it comes as no real surprise that the sports media sought out Crosby and Ovechkin to get their opinions on the recent firing of NHLPA head Paul Kelly.  Some hockey fans ridiculed the need to ask these two particular players their personal opinions.  Where did they get off thinking they were bigger and better than the game?

Well, they don’t think that.  Neither player put out a press release saying “come and talk to me about Paul Kelly”.  It was only natural for the media to beat a path to their doors, because when these two young men speak, people listen.

Much like when a young Wayne Gretzky, after another blowout win over the woeful New Jersey Devils, called the Devils a Mickey Mouse organization.  No truth to the rumour that’s what got Michael Eisner interested in hockey.

Much like when a younger Mario Lemieux, tired of carrying a couple of clutching-and-grabbing defencemen on his back almost every time he broke into the offensive zone, openly questioned the NHL about their lack of enforcement of their own rule book.

The hockey, and sports world, listened.  And yes, some people complained then that Gretzky and Lemieux should just shut up and play the game.  What makes these whippersnappers think they’re bigger than the game?

(There are reactionaries everywhere).

Both players were right. Bang on.  And both were right to speak out.

So when Ovechkin tells espn.com that even if the NHL decides not to participate in the 2014 Winter Olympics, he still plans to go…well folks, that’s news.  Washington Capitals’ owner Ted Leonsis, one of the more progressive owners in the league, did his best to downplay the comments, but the desired effect was already achieved.  It got people, and no doubt the players, thinking about the issue.

Once again, Ovechkin elbowed his way in.

With all due respect, Dany Heatley does not have that same ability.  Nor has he asked for it; if anything, he seems rather happy not to be in the spotlight.  Ovechkin craves it, while Crosby understands he’s been thrust into it since an early age.  Both men handle the spotlight differently, and they handle it well.

Alexander Ovechkin and Sidney Crosby are the only two true superstars in the league today.  Now what remains to be seen is if they can transcend North American popular culture.  Arguably, only two NHL players have ever reached those lofty heights.

Bobby Orr and Wayne Gretzky.

Particularly Wayne Gretzky.  The Great One is still the face of hockey for most of the world.

We tend to throw around words carelessly.  The word great has been mostly stripped of its power.  Anyone that is in the public eye is a star.  In the sports media, we have also devalued the word superstar.  I am trying to reclaim it for those few worthy enough to wear the crown.

Ovechkin and Crosby.

If you don’t like it, deal with it.  You might want to start by shunning all popular media in North America.  No doubt you’ll be seeing the faces of these two men plastered all over television, and magazines, and posters, and websites for the better part of the next decade.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Tuesday night, after attending to some family business, the wife, five-year-old son and I made the trek down to the waterfront here in Toronto to attend the 2009 edition of the Canadian National Exhibition, better known as the CNE, or the Ex, or the grand rip-off, or the sad summer fair that used to mean so much to a city but has been surpassed by year-round theme parks, the internet and twitter.

Regardless, we usually attend the CNE every year.  My wife is a lifelong Toronto girl, and remembers when the place used to matter.  Then again, stop any 16-year-old and they’ll probably tell you what a bitchin’ place it is.  Do they still say bitchin?

Once we navigated our way through the two dollar games, and the fast food stands, and the haunted houses that aren’t scary in-the-least, and the kids’ rides that look like they’ve been in service since 1957, we found our way to the Queen Elizabeth Building, which really does look like it was built in 1957.

The place was jam packed with a dog’s breakfast of booths offering a cornucopia of stuff you really don’t want, unless you’re hungry, tired, and confused at the CNE.  Booths full of scarves, wooden boards with your family name on it, clothes for your dog, overpriced fudge, boring BBC movies, wooden shoes, cheesy t-shirts with YOUR FACE HERE, and hockey cards.

Ahh, an oasis in a sea of suffering, and like a seasoned traveller, I knew where to find this watering hole, because every year they put the same tired old booths in the same tired old places.  Why not change things up a bit?  Then again, consider the type of people who pay good money for the pleasure of dragging their tired feet around the CNE grounds.  Most of these folk probably do not want to have to think, particularly after carrying around an oversized stuffed banana or SpongeBob doll they won at the baseball toss booth, after shelling out over 27 dollars for it.

My wife wandered off to look at the jewelry, while my son and I made a beeline for this great looking plaque of Gerry Cheevers making a kick save.  The dude at the booth only wanted about 50 bucks for it, and no, it wasn’t signed, but man it looked fine.

Couldn’t justify the cost, not after snaring a signed Bernie Parent photo at an auction at the Air Canada Centre last season that now hangs proudly in my home office.  So, we turned our attention to the forgotten stepchild of the collectable industry…hockey cards.

Or in this case, a wonderful, jumbled assortment of hockey and baseball cards from the past thirty-five years.  Most were from the Glut Years; 1990 through to about 2000.  The years that almost killed my interest in the hobby, when everyone and their Mom thought that they’d get rich by purchasing a room full of Eric Lindros rookie cards and then stashing them away.

Didn’t work that way.  The vast majority of people who got into the sports card industy at that point were buying high..and later selling low.  Or just plain dumping them.

For once in my life, I was on the right end of a trend, having started collecting in 1973.  By the mid-90’s, I bought the odd hockey and baseball card set, and particular singles of players I followed, but that was the extent of my interest.  Now that my kid is at the age where he’s noticed sports cards, it’s reinvigorated my interest, and appreciation, for those colourful pieces of cardboard.

Yes, I’ve kept all of my cards from my childhood, and most of them are in fine shape.  I could probably get a good amount of cash for them, IF I chose to sell, and IF someone wanted to purchase them (always the big if in the equation), but I have no intention of doing that.  Those cards are a wonderful time tunnel back to simpler days, when all I cared about was what teams would do on the ice, not in late-night bars, or in the back of taxi cabs, or in courtrooms in Phoenix.

Plus, my kid has no idea that these things have any worth.  What does he know about economics, he thinks I’m a human money machine.  He’s interested in sports cards because they look cool, as he says.

We waded through the box of commons, looking for the Magnificent Seven, because the CNE special offered seven cards for five bucks.   That sounded like fun, though in truth, seven cards in this commons box added up would be lucky to break the two dollar mark in overall value.

Right away my son found a Pavel Bure card, in the beautiful away blue Rangers uniform, that he didn’t already have.  That was card number one, for after all, he thinks Bure still plays and the Russian Rocket is his favourite player.  The truth can wait for later.

Then he got all excited about a Tom Draper card.  Tom Draper?  Sorry, it’s not about the money, but dammit if I was going to spend more than five cents on a Draper card, especially when I have about a half-dozen at home.  We moved on.

Next, he stumbled upon a legends card with Milt Schmidt on it.  Seeing the Bruins logo, my kid’s face broke into a wide grin and he recited the words I whispered to him when he was still in his crib.  “Number Four, Bobby Orr”.

I dropped the Murray Bannerman card I was looking at (and already had), and took a look.  Could it be?

Naw.  It was Uncle Milty.  A nice find, but since it was a modern card, it wasn’t special enough to make our Magnificent Seven.

Next to that card was a Reg Leach from my favourite O-Pee-Chee/Topps set of all-time, the very colourful 71-72 set.  What a find!   No way the guy in the booth would cast aside a card from that set into his commons box.

And he didn’t.  It was a fine looking reprint that was part of the 2002 Topps Archive set.  Nonetheless, I don’t have all of the original 71-72 set, and seeing that the price for those babies has risen considerably, I never will.  This copy will suffice.  Also found a Peter McNab reprint (75-76) and a Mike Milbury reprint (78-79) that I already had as originals, but they looked so good just sitting there atop a motley collection of worthless computer-perfect modern cards, that I had to have them.

We now had four of our Magnificent Seven.

By now, my son had lost interest, and having located his Mom walking by, implored her to buy him ice cream.  Undaunted, I soldiered on.

Entry number five took me away from hockey; it was a simple, yet tasty Bill Gullickson card (1985) in his beautiful white Montreal Expos uniform.  Anything Expos I’d buy, heck, I’d buy the team if they’d let me.  Thought I already had this card, but just in case, I had to take this puppy home.

Card number six was also baseball.  Tom McCraw of the Cleveland Indians (1976), the Topps set the year before I started collecting baseball cards.  And this was no reprint.  This was the real deal.  Which doesn’t really mean anything, for who remembers Tom McCraw except the McCraw family, and die-hard White Sox fans?

Card number seven is where I genuinely got excited.  When I found it, I looked around in order to find someone to share my joy with.  Alas, I was surrounded by Philistines.  Where was Scott Laughlin when you needed him?  He would have understood.

For there in my hands, framed by an ungodly mix of purple and pink borders, looking sharp in his yellow-and-green Athletics uniform, was Herb Washington.

This is the guy that wacky old Charlie O. Finley signed to a contract to be a pinch runner.  A pinch runner.  Washington was a track star at Michigan State, and Finley signed him in 1974 only to pinch run.  Nothing else.  Just run.

Which he did.  During his brief two-year MLB career, Washington got into 105 games, stole 31 bases, and got caught stealing 17 times.  He scored 33 runs, which means to me this guy wasn’t able to take full advantage of his speed out there.  More to base stealing that running fast.  Worse, he got picked off second during a World Series game.

Still, this card was the only time Topps ever released a pinch runner card.  Had to have it.  I now have it.

Which got me to thinking, will we ever see a day when an NHL team carries a designated shooter?  Someone who’s awesome at the shootout, but would be a liability during the normal course of a game.  You’d only carry him on the bench to be that big stick come the skills competition.

One name leapt to mind – Jason Allison.  That dude was a pure goal scorer.  That dude also made me look good on skates.  He might be a perfect candidate for the role.  Does it specify anywhere in the NHL rulebook that a player has to wear skates on ice?  What about gumboots?  Maybe Allison could take the deciding shot in boots, or broomball shoes.

Maybe that’s why the Maple Leafs invited Allison to training camp.

It turns out Herb Washington has, or had, a hockey connection.  He was the owner of the Youngstown Steelhawks of the CHL, from 2005 to 2008.  The team folded after that, and Herb nows owns a number of McDonald’s franchises in Youngstown and Greenville, Pennsylvania.  Fast food for a fast guy.

Please say hi to him for me if you’re in the area.  Tell him I finally found his card.  Can’t wait for the Jason Allison DS card.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

So the overhyped 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver may be the last Winter Games that feature the players of the National Hockey League.

Well, life, and the Winter Olympics, will go on.

I understand the reasons why it’s a good thing to have NHL players at the Winter Olympics.  I also appreciate the fact that the Games will go on without them.

Count me among the camp that just can’t get all that excited about pro hockey players at the Olympics.  A big deal is made about how strong the teams will be for 2010, and a cursory glance at the rosters confirms that contention.

But so what?  I find it very hard to get excited about a ringer team (pick your country of choice) that are thrown together for a scant couple of days at the tail end of August, and then don’t congregate together until a scant couple of days before the Big Event.

Outside of blind nationalism, which has never been my cup-of-tea, I have been unable to find the motivation to emotionally bond with any of these teams, be it 1998, 2002 or 2006.

Canada broke its (shameful, so we were often told) decades long Gold Medal drought at the 2002 Salt Lake City games, and it was one of the most watched TV sporting events in Canadian history.  Hey, everyone loves a winner.

But outside of Wayne Gretzky popping a few blood vessels trying to circle the Canadian hockey wagons, I found it all a grand bore.  Yes, these were the best players in the world playing hockey, but it came off a touch sterile, devoid of real emotion.

Sure, if I was on that team, I would have been caught up in the drama.  But I wasn’t.  Like most, I watched from the comfort of my couch.

And from that perch, the entire thing was over just as it got started.  I had no time to identity with the team, as in the collection of individual talents and egos that make up any team in any sport.  How does that disparate group of athletes jell as a team?  What are the stories and subtexts of such a development?  Such a narrative usually takes time to unfold; two weeks is not sufficient.

Still, the sport of hockey belongs in the Winter Olympics, because, well, because it’s a winter sport, despite the effort of the NHL to push the Stanley Cup Final into July.

So when Toronto Maple Leafs’ GM and all-around blustery guy Brian Burke mentions that he’d like to see hockey moved to the Summer Olympics, it makes me take off my weathered Kansas City Royals cap and scratch my head.

Why?

The men’s gold medal game is arguably the centrepoint of the entire two-week sporting orgy.  At the very least, it is the winter equivalent of the men’s marathon; it’s the big bang that ends the Games.  To rip it from its rightful place, and plunk it down in the midst of the Summer Games would be almost as stupid as signing Colton Orr to a contract.

First, as previously mentioned, it is a winter sport, thus it belongs beside its brethren; skating, skiing, skiing and shooting, skiing and shooting and racing, luge.

Second, in the Summer Games, Ice Hockey would get lost.  Correction…it would get swamped.  By the 100 metres, by basketball, by the marathon, by the swimmer-of-the-moment, and by women’s beach volleyball, just to name a few.

Third, do NHL stars really want to forgo a large part of their summer so that they can play competitive hockey?  I agree with Burke’s point that it’s foolhardly (my words) to shut down the National Hockey League in the middle of the season, and troop off to a country and have the best players play while everyone else sits at home playing Rock Band for two weeks.

But that’s not enough motivation to remove hockey from the Winter Games.  Why should the Olympic Games bow to the demands of the NHL?

Don’t get me wrong on that last point.  The tall foreheads in the NHL often make frustratingly short-sighted decisions, but they look like humanitarian futurists compared to the Lords of the Rings.  The Olympic Games continue to be a cesspool of graft and corruption, and stupid, stupid, stupid squandering of public funds.

Fellow Canucks, prepare yourself for the onslaught of propaganda insisting that the gold medal’s Canadian athletes take home this February far outweigh the public cash poured into someone’s pocket in the private sector.  And remember this, Chicago, when you bid for the Summer Games.  Almost without exception, every Olympic Games goes well over budget, and guess who get’s left with the bill.  That’s already happening in Vancouver.  Yet we abandon all reason and quiver at the knees at the prospect of holding the Games in our own city.

Ahh, but the Games will go on.  Bread and Circuses persist to this day, so one might as well belly up to the bar and partake in the feeding frenzy.

And to that end, I’d prefer to see a return to a national hockey team playing in the Winter Olympics.  Maybe, like soccer, they should set an age limit for participation.  If a return to that system is unworkable, how about having the world junior’s forgo the Boxing Day tournament every four years, and play for Olympic Gold.  Really, only Canadians care, on a large scale, about that fine tournament.  Attach the allure of an Olympic Gold Medal to that event, and you’d probably broaden its appeal.

But whatever you do, leave the sport of hockey in the Winter Olympics.  If the NHL teams and players wanna take their puck and go home, let them.  We don’t need any more manufactured drama, nor does the league need to shut down its product during two weeks of the worst month of the year.

Then again, having NHL stars play in the Olympics means there’s no NHL All-Star Game that season.

Hmm, let me reconsider this.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Wilco, without a doubt the best band in the world at this moment, released their latest album last week.  Titled Wilco (The Album), it was eagerly anticipated by a legion of fans and music media who, for the most part, have shared a similar sentiment about the new release…

While the album’s good, it’s not necessarily up to the high standards of past Wilco offerings.

Which is unfair, and probably inaccurate, to already have decided the fate of a release a scant seven days into its public life (yes, it was available earlier on the band’s website).  Still, take your pick of some of their earlier work…Being There, Summerteeth, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, A Ghost Is Born, Sky Blue Sky.  All fine albums, with each one setting up massive expectations for the next release.  And so far, Jeff Tweedy and crew have managed to scale those self-inflicted peaks, though in each case, it’s taken some time for fans and critics to have their eyes opened to the gems contained within.

In an earlier life, I reviewed new releases by a wide spectrum of bands.  What always bothered me was the need, due to the magazine deadline, to pass judgement on an album after only, at the most, a half-dozen listens.  Some records/CD’s require time to reveal all their hidden beauty; a cursory listen may turn up the radio-friendly hits, but not the real gold underneath.  If anything, a music reviewer/magazine should be required to revisit a reviewed album six months later.

While listening to Wilco’s latest offering on the way to work today, the immediate lukewarm reaction to it reminded me of much of the hockey world’s reaction to what GM Bob Gainey has done with the Montreal Canadiens in the past two weeks.

After watching his team take a nosedive after the All-Star break, firing head coach Guy Carbonneau, taking over behind the bench himself, and getting swept by the Boston Bruins in the first round of the playoffs (all this during the overblown 100th anniversary celebrations), Gainey is understandably under considerable pressure to improve the lot of the Canadiens for the 2009-10 campaign.

He’s cast his lot with underachieving goaltender Carey Price, which might, in part, explain why Jacques Martin was brought aboard as head coach.  Gainey was facing a summer of significant roster turnover, as a number of players were set to become unrestricted free agents on July 1st.

While many in the media, and fans as well, were curious as to how Gainey would manage this off-season, most pointed to the fact that the Habs would benefit from having a lot of cap room to play around with.  Surely they’d be able to land the big stud centre the team has lacked since…since…Pete Mahovlich???

What about the Vinnie rumours?  How about Gaborik or Hossa?  Should they keep Komisarek or go a different direction?  And what about Kovalev and Kaptain Koivu?

So many questions, and Gainey began to answer them by engineering a pre-July 1st trade with the similarly underachieving New York Rangers.  Suddenly, Scott Gomez was a Hab.  That deal seemed to knock over a series of dominoes, which ended up revealing the names of Hal Gill, Mike Cammalleri,  Brian Gionta and Jaroslav Spacek, not to mention Perry Pearn.

Almost immediately, the reviews on Montreal Canadiens (The Album) were mixed, at best.  Were the Habs a better team now than they were in April?  Did they address any of the myriad of issues that faced this team going into the summer?  Are all these players too small?  Okay, Hal Gill excepted, but in his case, is he too slow?  Where’s that stud centre we’re all been clamouring for?  Why allow Kovalev to leave…and for Ottawa of all places?  Has he ever spent any real time there?  (To butcher Sinatra…I wanna sleep in the city that never wakes up).

Some have noted that Gainey and his Canadiens have moved neither forwards nor backwards with all these free agent signings and trades, but rather they have moved sideways.  As in, yes, things have changed, the team sports a new face today, but to what end?

This past weekend, a few of us from NHL Home Ice made the 10-hour car trip from Toronto, down over to Chicago (the home of Wilco), to catch the Cubs and Milwaukee Brewers at Wrigley on July 4th.  Being baseball season, there are White Sox and Cubs stuff everywhere in that town.  The NFL Bears were well represented, as were the Bulls.  Even noticed a couple of guys wearing Blackhawk caps, and more than a few shop windows displaying Blackhawk jerseys.

Regardless, for all the justified hype about the re-emergence of the Chicago Blackhawks, the Windy City is first-and-foremost an NFL town, then a baseball town, then the Bulls, and then the Hawks, make no mistake about it.

While we were there, the scandal involving possible contract errors by the Blackhawks were all the buzz back in hockey country, meaning Canada.  It was on the general sportscasts, as each and every hockey-related story is.

Nary a peep in Chicago, and I was monitoring the local television stations, and had my AM radio with me to listen to 670 The Score.  They had a brief mention of it, before going back to discussing the pennant chances of the Cubbies, and what Jay Cutler meant to the Bears.

Yet in Montreal, a hundred or so fans of the Canadiens held a rally to demand that GM Bob Gainey re-sign Alex Kovalev.  Have they seen Kovalev actually play these past few seasons?  Madness, I tell you.

Blackhawks’ GM Dale Tallon can screw up by signing over-priced over-rated free agents Brian Campbell and Cristobal Huet, and the hardcore fan base in that city will pillorize him for it, but he doesn’t have to face the same degree of pressure as a Bob Gainey, or a Brian Burke, or a Ken Holland.  While it’s on the radar, hockey gets lost in cities such as Chicago.  Let’s face it, hockey gets lost in almost every American city.  Make no mistake about it.

Yet in Canada, where apparently we have nothing better to do, every story is magnified, often far beyond its relative importance.  But that’s the way it is up here in Hockeyland.  Which helps to explain the overwhelming number of thumbs down reviews about Gainey and his moves so far this off-season.  We all think we know better up here.  There’s no allowance to actually see what these new acquisitions might do come October, we’ve already passed judgement.

50,000,000 critics can’t be wrong, but like all those stellar Wilco albums, this one will take some time to see if Gainey has engineered a masterpiece, or if all those signings were just the thrashings of a desperate man.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Who knew?

I mean, we should have known.  It’s not like he kept it a secret.

Every time Maxime Talbot would enter that car dealership in Pittsburgh, and talk with the pretty lady, he’d declare that he was a “superstar”.  And every time, watching that TV commercial at home, I would crack up at, well, first the bad acting on everyone’s part, and second, at the thought of Talbot as a superstar, even in the fevered mind of some scriptwriter.

Well, after Game Seven this evening in Detroit, Monsieur Talbot can indeed be treated to superstar treatment wherever he goes all this summer, thanks to two of the biggest goals he’ll ever score during his life.

Don’t know about you, but that was an emotionally draining game to watch, and I don’t root for either team involved.  We all wanted a great Game Seven, well, we got one.  A game for the ages.

Have there been better playoff games?  Heck, yes, including a number during these playoffs.  Have there been better Game Sevens?  Probably, but this one deserves to be somewhere on the list, particularly after time passes, and we all have had a chance to savour what we just witnessed.

None of the three goals were highlight reel material, but then again, none of them were fluky.  Okay, the Penguins got a fortutitous bounce on the first Talbot goal, but that kind of bounce happens in the game of hockey on a regular basis.  The question is, what will you do with such a gift when presented with it.

Talbot tore the wrapping paper off it and lit the lamp.

Sure, Fleury probably would have liked to have had that Detroit goal back, but from a fan’s perspective, the Wings scoring late only served to rachet up the tension to a sublime level.  It was sweet pain.

Many people, including myself, were hoping that this game would be so good that it would have to go into overtime to decide things.  Well, close enough.  Only two previous Stanley Cup Game Seven’s have gone into extra time, and we’ll have to wait for another shot at such an ending.

But Detroit certainly didn’t surrender, despite the clock ticking down on their chance at a second Cup-in-a-row.  With 6.5 seconds remaining in the third, they controlled the puck, and set up a beauty of a chance with, what, a second remaining?  Okay, we didn’t get overtime, but we were treated to Fleury making a heck of a save to preserve the Penguins’ third Cup in team history.  Shades of Patrick Roy, who, according to those quick profiles Hockey Night in Canada does at the end of every Cup clinching game, was one of Fleury’s goaltending heroes growing up; Roy and Martin Brodeuer.

Roy has four Cups and free admission anytime into the Hockey Hall-of-Fame.  Brodeur has three Cups and will get that same pass someday soon.  Fleury has one Cup and counting.  No matter what happens during the rest of his career, Marc-Andre Fleury is a Stanley Cup winning goaltender.

Which brings us to the Terrific Two.  Evgeni Malkin and Sidney Crosby.

Malkin erased all bad memories of last year’s Final, and had a great playoff, after a great regular season.  He wins the Conn Smythe Trophy, (the first Russian to do so), in the same season that he won the Art Ross Trophy.  Think of what this amazing young player has accomplished after only three seasons in the NHL.  Not too shabby.

Neither was the effort of Penguins’ captain Sidney Crosby, who limped off the ice after being on the receiving end of a terrific hit during the second period.  He came back for the third period, and took a shift, but it was no go.

Didn’t matter.  Crosby did what he had to do earlier on, particularly down the stretch during the regular season and during the first three rounds of the playoffs, including when Pittsburgh were down 2-games-to-none against the Washington Capitals in the second round.

All the Sidney Crosby haters out there, I sincerely hope you choked on the image of 87 lifting the Stanley Cup.

It was beautiful.  One of the true superstars of hockey, accepting the Stanley Cup as captain.  Put aside your petty prejudices and think of what this young man has already accomplished during his four years in the National Hockey League.  With this Cup win, he’s practically done it all.  Oh sure, the likes of Alexander Ovechkin may very well get to this point in the near future (and what a fine moment that will be), but Crosby, and crew, beat him there.  That’s a fact.  Twist it as you will.  Denigrate it on the internet billboards with juvenile talk of league conspiracy, but nothing will change that fact.

Man, there can’t be much better things in the world of sports than waiting to hoist that Cup.  The Conn Smythe was the Christmas stocking; the Cup were the mountains of presents under the tree.  Just rewind your PVR and watch the eyes of the Penguins’ players as that moment arrived.  At that juncture in time, money and injuries meant nothing.  It was all about the win, all about the team, all about the Cup.

And that ends maybe the most enjoyable National Hockey League post-season I have ever watched, and I’ve watched them all since 1971.  The first and second rounds featured some amazingly enjoyable hockey.  The third round dipped a bit, but it set up a fantastic seven-game Stanley Cup Final between the Red Wings and the Penguins.  One for the ages.

The King, ahem, the Wing is dead.  Long live the King Penguin.

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s

It’s not like the Baseball Hall of Fame, where fans and media engage in debates as to which cap the likes of catcher Gary Carter should don when he was finally enshrined in Cooperstown.  The Kid came to fame with the Montreal Expos, but reached the pinnacle of his career with the 1986 New York Mets, combining clutch hitting and some fortuitous bounces in downing the Houston Astros and Boston Red Sox as New York’s 2nd team became the toast of the town after winning the World Series.

Even though the player has a say in the decision, the tall foreheads at Cooperstown have the final word, and they went with the tricolour of the now defunct Expos, which did not sit well with Mr. 7-Up, who no doubt envisioned a healthy amount of appearance money flying away, thanks to the prospect of having to sign his John Hancock on BHOF memorabilia bearing the logo of a dead franchise, instead of the mighty Mets.

Carter himself publicly showed his disdain for that choice, when he was recently introduced at the Baseball All-Star Game.  Festooned in the distinctive Expos cap, he also made a point of holding up a Mets cap.  There was no sign of a Dodgers, or Giants cap, even though he also suited up briefly for those franchises.

William Scott Bowman didn’t have to make that choice when he was handed the gold key to the Hockey Hall of Fame back in 1991.  At that point in his storied career, Scotty Bowman had won five Stanley Cups as the head coach of the Montreal Canadiens, in addition to three Cup Final appearances with the expansion St. Louis Blues.  Bowman’s tenure in Buffalo did not end in the manner he would have liked, and after a few years in TV, he returned to the league with the emerging Pittsburgh Penguins.

At the time of his departure from the Sabres, Bowman was already one of the greatest NHL coaches of all-time.  If he had never again stepped behind an NHL bench, his legend was sealed.  As life would have it, Penguins’ head coach Bob Johnson was struck with brain cancer, and tragically passed away in November of 1991.

The defending Stanley Cup Champions mourned for their beloved coach, and got back to the business of defending their title…with Bowman as their new head coach.

The Penguins were a juggernaut, and swept aside Bowman wannabe Mike Keenan and his Chicago Blackhawks in the Cup Final.  Bowman won likely his most unexpected Cup, which just added to his legend.

Except there was a considerable backlash building against the Master.  There were many who clung to the faulted belief that anyone could have coached the late 70’s Canadiens to victory, that all Bowman had to do was open the door on the bench.  The same surface criticism was levelled at Bowman about these talented Penguins, and it only intensified the following spring when the heavily-favoured Pens fell in Game Seven overtime to David Volek and the New York Islanders.

Bowman moved on to the eternally under-achieving Detroit Red Wings, and initially experienced a bumpy ride with the Wings, including a sweep in the 1995 Final at the hands of the New Jersey Devils, coached by former Bowman disciple Jacques Lemaire.  Suddenly, the naysayers were emboldened with fresh evidence that Bowman was overrated.

Undaunted, the Red Wings did what any champion does.  They refused to panic.  They didn’t blow things up and start again.  They stayed the course, made the changes they deemed logical, and were rewarded with back-to-back Stanley Cups in 1997 and 1998.

The 1997 celebration remains, for me, the most joyous post-game celebration I have ever watched on television.  The pent-up frustrations and expectations of Red Wing fans finally had a platform for release, and Bowman took part in the festivities, donning skates and hoisting the Cup.

The Master would put an appropriate exclaimation point on his stellar career, capturing the Cup one final time in 2002, his final year behind the bench.  In total, William Scott Bowman won nine Stanley Cups, and led a team to the Final on an additional four occasions.

He set seemingly unassailable records for games and Cups won.  Along the way, he alienated players and fans alike with his style, but both parties understood one plain fact about Bowman.  He was a winner.

So when Bowman decided to jump ship and join the resurgent Chicago Blackhawks as an advisor (joining his son Stan in the Chicago front office), he once again exhibited a perfect sense of timing.  The Master tested the wind, and knew which way it was blowing.

During a recent game against the Red Wings, the TV cameras found Bowman in the crowd, surveying the game unfolding in front of him.  Which got me to thinking.

If Bowman was not yet in the Hockey Hall-of-Fame, and someone had to choose which NHL sweater or cap his plaque would display, which team would he represent, particularly if one was only to consider his record as an NHL head coach?

Statistics don’t always present the entire picture, but they’re a pretty good starting point.   Let’s agree that his days with the Blues and Sabres are not in the discussion, despite his early success with St. Louis.  His six plus years in Buffalo are without doubt the most disappointing of Bowman’s NHL career.  His time with Pittsburgh wasn’t long enough to warrant inclusion either.

Which means, rather obviously, it comes down to his legendary stint with the 1970’s Montreal Canadiens vs. his more recent success with the one modern dynasty still operating in the National Hockey League, the Detroit Red Wings.

In Montreal, Bowman returned to the organization he got his start in, including a Memorial Cup win in 1958.  After a power struggle in St. Louis, Bowman left and took over the reins of the Canadiens, who the season before, had won the Stanley Cup with an underrated team that featured rookie Ken Dryden in net, and was captain Jean Beliveau’s final year in the league.  The trouble was, head coach Al MacNeil was called out by Habs’ icon Henri Richard concerning ice-time during the playoffs, which the French media ate up, and even though the Pocket Rocket tried his best to calm the waters after the season was over, the damage was done.

Bowman got the job, though that 71-72 team lost in the first round in six games to New York Rangers, who made it all the way to the Cup Final, only to lose to the Bruins.

The next season, Bowman steered the Habs to first place in the East Division. in the process losing only 10 games, as Montreal regained the Stanley Cup.  But the best was yet-to-come.

After losing Dryden to a contract dispute, Montreal came up short in ‘74 and ‘75, the years of Bernie Parent, Bobby Clarke, and the Broad Street Bullies.  The emergence of superstar sniper Guy Lafleur, the maturing of the Big Three on defence, the addition of effective role players such as Bob Gainey and Doug Jarvis, and the return of Dryden all added up to a dynasty, one that won four straight Stanley Cups between 1976 and 1979.

It was on the strength of these magnificent teams that the legend of Bowman was forged.  By the time he left for Buffalo, Bowman had won five Stanley Cups in five Final appearances during his eight years with Montreal, and compiled a gaudy 419 wins in only 634 regular seasons games, as well as posting a .714 winning percentage in the post-season.  These were truly Hall-of-Fame numbers.

Fast forward to the late 1990’s, and Bowman behind the bench of the Detroit Red Wings.  During his nine-year head coaching tenure in Michigan, Bowman won three Stanley Cups in four appearances.  He won 414 regular-season games in only 706 games, and his playoff winning percentage was an impressive .642.  Along the way, in part thanks to an additional two games added on to the regular season NHL schedule, Bowman’s 95-96 Wings set a league record by winning 62 times that season, two better than the 76-77 Canadiens, coached by Bowman.

The overall numbers are similar.  The Montreal numbers are slightly more impressive, though one has to factor in the circumstances under which these two franchises operated.  The late 70’s Canadiens were the most powerful team in a league that still featured a number of weak sisters.  The Habs were challenged by the young Islanders, and the very talented Boston Bruins, but managed to overcome all obstacles during that four-year run.  Montreal and Boston were among the powerful teams that fattened their averages against the likes of the Cleveland Barons, Washington Capitals and Minnesota North Stars.

By the time Bowman was hoisting the Cup with the late 90’s Red Wings, the landscape of the NHL had changed considerably.  Thanks to better training techniques, better coaching, better goaltending, and a resulting tighter style of play, there was more parity in the league than when Bowman was with Montreal.  There were less opportunities to feast on the unfortunate, which meant less inflated numbers.  Taking all that into account, Bowman’s final stats with the Red Wings compare very favourably with his halcyon days in Montreal.

In the end, both incarnations of Bowman are deserving of accolades.  And despite what the great unwashed may rant about on internet billboards, not just anyone could have coached these teams.  It takes a special kind of coach to be able to juggle all the demands of a talented group of athletes, each of whom believes they have what it takes to be on the first line, or start in net.

A large number of books have been written about Bowman and his coaching style.  Suffice to say, Bowman is arguably the greatest head coach in NHL history.  His two greatest stretches of accomplishements happened in Montreal, and Detroit.  Each incarnation was impressive to behold.  My heart says Scotty Bowman is first-and-foremost identified with the Montreal Canadiens, but my head says that his most impressive coaching job was with the Red Wings.

The better question might be, who would win in a best-of-seven battle between the 1977 Montreal Canadiens and the 1997 Detroit Red Wings?

- Mick Kern

Mick Kern appears courtesy of Live From Wayne Gretzky’s