Category: Sports

A Leafs nation, that is.

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My Maple Leafs fan friends are misinformed. They all seem to think that Montreal Canadiens fans are brutal turncoats who will turn on players at the drop of a hat. I think they cling to this notion in the hopes of convincing themselves that they, Leafs fans, are the only true devotees, following their team no matter how bad.

Today’s game was a good example of how ridiculous that notion is. With the losses piling up the pressure was on Alex Kovalev, the Canadiens most talented player, to perform today after he was left home by the GM for the Canadiens’ recent road trip. Some media outlets were reporting that Kovalev wanted out, that he’d played his last game for the Habs. Legendary player Guy Lafleur claimed the Canadiens had embarrassed Kovalev by leaving him home. Turmoil surrounded the Canadiens all week as they drifted closer to falling out of a playoff spot. The Montreal fans described by Leafs devotees would focus their anger on Kovalev, running hit out of town on a rail. Surely today’s game against the Senators would be ugly for him.

Except it wasn’t.

When Kovalev’s face appeared on the scoreboard during the pre-game lineup announcements, the Montreal crowd cheered. They cheered louder than they did for any other player. When the game started and Montreal went to work on an early power play, Kovalev took a pass in the high slot, pulled two players to him and then fed a beautiful pass to Tomas Plekanec who scored. The crowd gave Kovalev a standing ovation. A few minutes later Kovalev stole the puck just inside the Ottawa blueline, swept in and scored. Another standing o. The crowd roared when, on the penalty kill, Kovalev dove to knock a puck out of the Canadiens’ zone. Later in the game, when he drew an assist on another goal, his name drew the loudest cheer during the scoring announcement. It was his night.

Kovalev had an all-star quality game, but the fans were cheering him even before the puck dropped. Those don’t sound like the usual description of Habs fans I hear living here in Toronto.

“A nation is a society united by delusions about its ancestry and by a common hatred of its neighbors.” –Dean Inge

Speaking of Toronto, Mats Sundin — the Leafs’ all-time leader in goals and points scored, long-time captain and almost certainly one of the best players in their history — made his first return visit to Toronto tonight after decamping for Vancouver. While most cheered him when he took the ice, a few Toronto fans actually booed him. That’s shameful. Apparently the Toronto fans’ delusion extends beyond the skill level of their team, and keeps them from seeing the kind of fans they really are.

In which Dan realizes his true calling: TSN statistician

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So after yesterday’s sampling of NHL rosters, I decided to do a little more digging. And to be truer to the group of players that Gladwell used in Outliers I pulled the list of the top 211 draft picks in the 2008 NHL entry draft, courtesy of NHL.com. Of those, 33% were born between January and March. 66% were born between January and June.

More interesting, though, is when I cut that list down to the top 3 rounds of the draft (in other words, the top 91 players drafted): of that group, 43% were born in January, February or March. Under an even distribution you’d expect 25%, so that’s a significant difference.

The more I think about it, the more I think I was looking in the wrong place yesterday. I’d be surprised if NHL rosters were good representations of Gladwell’s hypotheses since developmental factors would be dampened over time by skill, resistance to injury, coaching systems, etc. It’s going to be hard not to waste my next few nights analyzing the last ten draft classes…

So that explains why I never made the NHL

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Those of you who’ve read Malcolm Gladwell‘s latest book Outliers know the chapter about hockey players, where he describes the disproportionate number of hockey players with birthdays in the first few months of the year. Gladwell’s theory is that, because of the Jan 1 age cutoff between levels of minor hockey, those born earlier in the year have a size and development advantage over others as they have an extra 6-11 months under their belt. That doesn’t sound like much, but the difference between 6 years old and almost 7 years old is substantial enough that the older players tend to move into accelerated programs, which gives them an advantage. Gladwell then shows several examples of teams whose rosters skew to the early months of the year.

Tonight, after watching my Canadiens blow a late lead, and lose in the shootout to drop the ninth of their last ten on the road, I wondered if their roster followed the same pattern as the elite teams Gladwell described. Based on the 20 players they dressed tonight, here’s how it breaks down:

Jan: 2
Feb: 3
Mar: 1
Apr: 1
May: 2
Jun: 2
Jul: 0
Aug: 2
Sep: 0
Oct: 3
Nov: 2
Dec: 2

That’s 55% in the first half of the year, 45% in the second half. Not exactly overwhelming. Even if I include the other six players who didn’t dress tonight, it’s 58% to 42%. Still nothing to write home about. So I’m faced with three hypotheses:

  1. Gladwell is wrong
  2. Gladwell is right, but my team is an abberation
  3. Gladwell is right, and this explains why my team sucks

So I went looking for more data. My first stop: the Detroit Red Wings, defending Stanley Cup champs and by any measure an elite team. They’re also at 58% born between January and June, the same as Montreal. Then I checked the Boston Bruins, the top team in the NHL this season: also at 58%. Canada’s gold-medal winning major junior team, an all-star team for players in a very specific age range, clocked in at 64%, with 14 of the 22 players born before June 30, but even that isn’t exactly a drastic difference.

Anyway, I know that’s only a sample of four, but I’d prefer to think that hypotheses #1 is correct rather than #3. I’m not holding my breath though.

Tilt

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A week and a half ago 21-year-old Don Sanderson died in a Hamilton hospital.

Sanderson, a defenceman with the Whitby Dunlops, died early yesterday in Hamilton General Hospital. He had been in a coma and on life support since his head struck the ice during a fight in a AAA senior league game Dec. 12 in Brantford.

I’d held back on posting until the shock of the death had passed and the debate turned, as it naturally would, to whether fighting would be banned. I’ve been waiting, but the debate has not come. The lone discussion I’ve heard so far is whether the rules governing the tightness of helmet chin straps (which might have held Sanderson’s helmet on when he fell to the ice) should be more strictly enforced. This seems akin to enforcing seat belt laws for street racers, rather than trying to stop street racing itself.

Anyone calling for an end to fighting in hockey is met with ridicule (even Serge Savard), even deemed unpatriotic or lacking understanding of the game. Horseshit. Fighting proponents quote some circular argument about ‘the unwritten code’ of hockey, that fighters are there to ‘take care’ of a guy who breaks the rules, and respect each other, presumably as they punch one another in the face. Meanwhile referees, old hockey guys themselves, give out penalties for some infractions but look the other way for others if they think a team’s fighter will take care of things, thus perpetuating this myth of fighters being necessary for the game. This mutually supportive argument spins itself in a spiral, but in the face of logic eventually defaults to the tired plea that “it’s always been this way”, surely the silliest rule for why anything should continue.

The other argument, say fight fans, is that without fighting hockey won’t be entertaining. This is an easy one to dispel, as anyone who’s watched even a few minutes of a World Junior game, or any international tournament, can see.

It’s a difficult position to justify that hockey alone is the one league that requires fighting, or at the very least does not punish it (beyond a meaningless 5-minute penalty). In every other major sport, fighting is strongly discouraged (not tacitly allowed) and results in automatic suspensions. The only other sport where fighting is part of some kind of protective ‘code’ is baseball, surely the pussiest of the major sports. Football, on the other hand — which by any measure is as tough, smash-mouth and brutal as hockey, and almost certainly more so — does not allow fighting.

Staying with the NFL for a moment, imagine the absurdity of a scene where an offensive linesman, unhappy at the fact that his quarterback was tackled (clean though it might have been) grabs the opposing player by the jersey, rips off his helmet and starts punching him in the face. The other player starts punching back. No teammates try to break them up, and linesman (understandably) wait until they tire themselves out before interfering. The referee, knowing a teammate would come to the defense of the downed quarterback because of the unwritten code of football, doesn’t bother throwing the penalty flag. He knows these guys just need to let off a little steam. He also knows that if he doesn’t let these guys duke it out at midfield like this, that the other nasty penalties like clipping or face-masking will just happen more often. So goes the common wisdom, without much evidence to back it up.

Back to reality, and to hockey: there’s simply no logical argument for allowing fighting in the NHL, but as long as troglodytes like Don Cherry advocate for it, it’ll be around. If Gary Bettman wants to leave a legacy of actually improving the game, he should ban fighting and watch the rest of the world take his sport more seriously. So long as players in the world’s premier hockey league are allowed to beat each other bloody in the middle of the ice, and then do it again the following night (or even minutes later!), precious few outside of Canada will associate the game with skill, grit or speed. They’ll associate it with thuggish brutality.

Finally, I submit that fighting should be banned if only to prevent pathetic displays like this from ever again occurring:

Now then…can I use a lightsaber while I snowboard?

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The Queen (our home station) decal
Our home station

Four days since I last blogged. The hell is wrong with me lately?

A good four days it’s been though. Thursday night was spent partaking in one of my favourite pastimes: watching the Habs beat up on the Leafs. Friday we had dinner at Fieramosca, and came home to find our Wii Fit waiting for us. We considered setting it up that night, but the wine and limoncello we’d just consumed made us think twice. Ironically.

Yesterday was our get-crap-done day (capped off by an excellent meal and very nice 2004 Cab Sauv from New Zealand), freeing up today for brunch with our friend Cyndy and entertaining CBGBLB, who I think were just using us for our Wii. But they brought us chocolates* and convinced us to order pizza, so we didn’t mind. We also finally put up our TTC wall decals, courtesy of Walloper, which we think look pretty sharp.

I’ll be honest with you: the idea of staying home tomorrow to play Wii Fit and lightsaber duel kind of appeals to me more than the idea of going to work tomorrow.

* The chocolates were from Eat My Words. Very cool idea in support of the Steven Lewis Foundation, and a great gift idea. Check it out.

Mats who?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Time for your sports update, you bunch of wussies.

Tonight I watched the Montreal Canadiens handle the New York Rangers 6-3. That makes them the third-best team in the eastern conference points-wise (though they’re ranked fourth, though, because division leaders get the top three seeds) behind Boston and Washington. While the Canadiens were expected to win the conference this year, no one expected Boston to be as good as they’ve been, or for the Canadiens to suffer the injuries they’ve had.

The Habs are currently missing their #1 goalie Carey Price, as well as what’s essentially their #1 (or at least #1b) line of Saku Koivu, Alex Tanguay and Chris Higgins, not to mention defenceman Mathieu Dandenault, but they’ve won 5 of their last 6. I’m not sure how they’re doing it, but they are. I just hope they can hold it together until those guys get back.

OK, normal cerebrally whiny programming will resume momentarily.

Al Strachan just reported that Alex Ovechkin has stepped down as player for the Washington Capitals

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Apparently Brian Burke has stepped down as general manager of the Anaheim Ducks. This is good news for Toronto sports writers, in that it will allow them to fill their flamillions of column inches and never-ending radio shows with idle, boring speculation. It’s also good news for Leafs fans, as it will distract them from the reality that their team sucks, and will fill them hope for the Stanley Cup rings that Brian Burke is reputed to carry in his pockets.

I expect the Sun to publish the 2010 parade route in tomorrow’s edition. Mind all the (ha ha) waterfront construction, lads.

Things I've learned in the past 24 hours

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  • I’m getting sick. Not enough to make me feel like I need to stay in bed, but enough to drain me of all energy and motivation to, you know, move.
  • The Rob Zombie remake of Halloween (imdb | rotten tomatoes) started off better than I expected, in that it gave us a Michael Myers preview, but the remake part was just standard slasher fare. The only thing I liked better about it than the original was that Myers moved like a normal guy…fast sometimes, normal speed the rest of the time, instead of at a slow zombie pace.
  • Sometimes our cats will sleep quietly through the night. Other times they will stage a Bob Fosse revival on our bed at 3AM. Last night was the latter.
  • We need a new coffee table and over-sized (but not too over-sized) chair, but aren’t having much luck finding them. Lo and behold, I read this in Thursday’s issue of Now, and figure we should give it a try.
  • Even when the Canadiens are down 4-1 going into the third period, I should still finish watching the game, especially when it’s against a soft team like the Islanders. The Habs scored 4 goals in the third period and won. They’re playing .850 hockey so far this season, the best of any team in the NHL.
  • The Raptors look pretty good, having won their third in a row to remain perfect in this young season. Bosh looks better with O’Neal there to take the pressure off, Bargnani looks better coming off the bench than he does starting, Calderon looks better without the T.J. Ford of Damocles hanging over his head, and Kapono just looks better. But the defense is what seemed different last night…not all the time, but a lot of the time. Players like Michael Redd and Richard Jefferson have carved through the Raptors like butter in recent years, but last night, the Raps seemed to challenge more. Anyway, we’ll see how they fare against real competition like the Celtics or Lakers.
  • John McCain isn’t funny.

Misery loves company

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There’s been a lot of talk lately about Toronto getting a second NHL team. Many have weighed in, both pro and con. Sure, the market could support it, but it sounds more like the kind of fantastic speculation that Toronto fans and sports writers engage in when the Leafs aren’t worth watching. So, daily.

I, for one, support it based on curiosity alone. It might help to solve the mystery, or at least dispel some myths, about the Leafs fanatical fan base. Lots of sports analysts have asked whether Toronto fans love the Leafs or love hockey. I say it’s neither. First, Torontonians seem to hate the Leafs as much as love them. Second, I don’t think a strong case could be made for them simply loving hockey, or they’d have stopped watching during the Ballard years when the product on the ice barely resembled the sport. No, I’d suggest that Torontonians are infatuated with the Leafs, but infatuations are fleeting. If a second team appeared with a legitimate shot at the Stanley Cup, how many Leafs fans would jump ship? I suspect more than in other hockey-crazy markets who’ve enjoyed success in recent decades like Detroit or even Montreal, even though Leafs fans typically refer to themselves as “better” fans than any others.

Anyway, I think Gary Bettman would rather give Bob Goodenow a hot oil massage than allow another Toronto team, and Hamilton might well lose their collective shit and blow up the Kings Highway if their city is passed over for expansion in favour of Leafs II, so I guess my social experiment will have to wait.

Hey dean, do me a favour and pick up those jocks, will ya?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I have no problem with athlete salaries. I know people complain about someone getting paid a magillion dollars to slap a puck or throw a ball, but it’s simple: thousands and thousands of people will pay good money to watch that player perform, or wear their jersey, or buy their sneakers, or whatever. Owners of sports franchises can do math, and will pay players an amount they think they can recoup in these ways. Sure, some teams will pay extravagant and undeserved amounts for players out of desperation (cough Jeff Finger cough), but for the most part sports franchises pay players enough to help them accomplish their goal: to entertain and turn a profit.

Universities, though, are not sports franchises. They’re supposed to be institutions of higher learning, and therefore this bothers me:

[Via Greg Mankiw]