NHL stars Connor McDavie & Wayne Gretzky endorsing (but looking amazingly off-balance) a betting ap.
You’ve probably seen it. The now ubiquitous advertisement shows Connor McDavid allegedly focused at practice. The Edmonton Oilers’ star forward is firing pucks at a goaltender. Cut to just off the ice where a coach turns to Wayne Gretzky and says: “Connor’s just finishing up. He’s pumped you’re here.”
“No rush,” Gretzky says as he looks down at his cellphone and shouts at it, “Come on! Drain that three.” He’s clearly encouraging some other athlete for some other purpose. But he’s become a distraction to McDavid.
“Trying to practise here, Wayne,” McDavid admonishes Gretzky.
Team Canada celebrates gold-medal victory at 2020 world junior hockey championship in Czech Republic. dailyhive.com
I was heading home from the city, the other night. I dashed up the escalator from the TTC subway, and spotted the coach I had to catch sitting outside the bus station. I sprinted across the platform and landed just inside the front doors of the bus. The bus driver wasn’t pulling out right away, so I caught my breath and moved down the centre aisle of the bus to make room for others.
“Don’t crowd me, man,” said a young commuter next to me. “Keep the f___ away!” And I stepped back and apologized.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” said another man to the guy spouting the profanity.
And on it went. More expletives. More intensity. Back and forth between the two young strangers on the bus. So, before the bus left the station, I asked the driver to open the door and, as he did, I thanked him and said, “I think I’ll catch the next bus.” (more…)
Team Canada captain Maxime Comtois in his penalty-shot attempt.
It was one of those breathless, white-knuckle moments. At the end of regulation time, the quarter-final, elimination game at the World Junior hockey championship was tied – Canada 1, Finland 1. Then, a couple of minutes into sudden-death overtime, a Finn rushing to catch a Canadian forward on a breakaway, slashed the Canadian’s hands from behind. The referees awarded a penalty shot, and Coach Tim Hunter chose Team Canada captain Maxime Comtois to take the shot.
“I was thinking (I have) to score,” Comtois told Canadian Press later, “and I didn’t. … It hurts.” (more…)
A once-in-a-lifetime Paul McCartney concert (courtesy thewritersrefuge.wordpress.com)
An acquaintance of mine told me about the night he met up with a music legend. For weeks, before Paul McCartney’s most recent concert stop in Toronto, my acquaintance and his partner debated whether they should part with the cash required to get into the Air Canada Centre to see and hear the former Beatle. My friend said they vacillated over the expense. Then, realizing they might miss an opportunity to see and hear the creator of such landmark songs as “Yesterday,” “Hey Jude” and “Live and Let Die,” the couple gathered as much cash as they could, dashed to the ACC, but arrived after the concert had begun.
“The scalpers were there with a few last tickets,” my acquaintance said. “But with the concert already underway, I guess they figured they’d better unload the tickets.” (more…)
When Brendan Shanahan took his turn parading the Cup, it was a bittersweet moment.
On Saturdays, 35 years ago, Brendan Shanahan the former NHL star forward, travelled to minor hockey games in west-end Toronto with his father. On those mornings at the arena, Donal Shanahan carried a newspaper under his arm; before each game “Father Don,” as he was known, would tap Brendan’s boyhood teammates on the head for good luck.
“For all those times … he got up in the morning (and) took me to the rink as a kid and tied my skates … or drove me to tournaments,” Brendan Shanahan told me in 1997, “I owe him.”
And 1997 was the year Shanahan won the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings. It was the first time Detroit had won the Cup in more than 40 years.
The image of Brendan going to the minor hockey rink a generation ago, and kids like him the generation before that, are what I call “Canadian Gothic,” not unlike the 1930s classic American painting by Grant Wood. Only in this case, the two figures are not a farmer’s wife and a farmer with a pitchfork, but rather a father with a hockey stick and a son or daughter with a hockey bag.
That’s Canadian Gothic, a vision and a symbolism I kept imagining all this past week as Canada’s men’s and women’s national hockey teams won gold medals at the Sochi Winter Olympic Games. Contrary to Don Cherry’s rock ’em sock ’em attitude being credited with the Canadian victories, I’d suggest to you that credit for Canada’s hockey gold medals at Sochi should be given to the players’ moms and dads.
Canadian women’s Team Canada.
Case in point. A few months before the women’s hockey Team Canada left for Russia, the team’s sponsor (Procter & Gamble’s “Thank You Moms campaign) arranged a special bonding dinner for the players in Laval, Quebec. My wife – a senior editor for Zoomer magazine – attended the dinner because she’d learned that the team brass had planned something different for the young women players – a surprise visit from the mothers.
The golden feeling went right round the room, as Anne Apps, who had not seen Gillian Apps since training camp in August, heartily embraced her daughter; as Nathalie Saviolidis caught up with her daughter Geneviéve Lacasse so that the two could share conversation about the goaltender’s prospects against the arch-rival Americans; and as veteran player Hayley Wickenheiser and her mom, Marilyn, talked of hers and Team Canada’s pursuit of a fourth straight gold medal.
“I’ve never met so many young women who appear so comfortable in their own skins,” Jayne MacAulay wrote in Zoomer. “Elite hockey, it appears, is a college for confidence and leadership.”
While not exactly the same – because there are fat NHL salaries attached – I remember at the beginning of February, when the Leafs brass continued an annual tradition of bringing the players’ fathers along for a road-trip to Florida; on the junket the fathers watched their sons play the Panthers in Miami and two nights later the Lightning in Tampa Bay. The atmosphere of the trip some likened to a tailgate party, during which the players roomed with their dads, attended father-and-son dinners and did a little fishing. Toronto Star reporter Curtis Rush talked to Randy Carlyle about the value of such an investment.
“It’s an opportunity where we can use (the players’) dads as a catalyst and say, ‘Hey, play well for your father.’”
The record shows that the Leafs got dumped by the Panthers 4-1 on the Tuesday night. But after the hoped-for pep talk from their dads and a couple of days’ R and R, on Thursday night the Leafs came through with a convincing 4-1 win over Tampa.
Parents and coaches volunteering time and support have as much to do with the game as winning.
Over the past five months or so, I’ve carried on something of a tradition in our family. Back before Donal and Brendan Shanahan’s early Saturday trips to the rink in Mimico, back the 1960s, my dad – despite his newspaperman’s late-night hours – accompanied me to the outdoor rink in Agincourt to watch me play early-morning house-league hockey. Two generations later, this winter, I’ve accompanied my son-in-law as we watch his son Sawyer and his teal-jersey Sharks learn the skills of skating, stick-handling and shooting.
“Just like my own minor hockey days back in Agincourt,” I said to my son-in-law, “we learned it wasn’t about winning, but being there.”
Finally, I guess I should point out the irony of Brendan Shanahan’s NHL championship with the Detroit Red Wings in 1997. His traditional victory skate around Joe Louis Arena, that spring night in 1997, must have felt bittersweet.
“I regret that (my dad) wasn’t able to see me play in the NHL,” Brendan Shanahan said, “or watch me win the Stanley Cup.”
“Father Don” Shanahan, who had always “taken his son to the rink” in Brendan’s minor hockey days, died of Alzheimer’s disease six years before his son won the Stanley Cup.
Crosby in Team Canada dressing room at Vancouver Olympics in 2010.
It was the day before New Year’s Day, four years ago. I had simply gone to exchange a gift at an electronics store in Oshawa. As I drove home that midday I remember listening to former Detroit Red Wings star Steve Yzerman announcing names of Team Canada hockey players for the 2010 Winter Olympics.
That’s when I was T-boned by a truck coming through an intersection. I remember my world spinning until I hit something else and came to an abrupt stop facing the opposite direction in the intersection. Next thing I knew, not an official, just a guy with a cell phone in his hand came to what was left of my driver’s side window.
Christine Sinclair of the Canadian women’s soccer team. Courtesy The Record, U.K.
The Olympics have dominated much of our attention the past week. And as I suggested in my column last week, nobody deserves the attention or the applause more than these dedicated young athletes. However, there is one side effect to watching, listening to and reading about the Games I find bothersome. And it came up the other night just before the women’s soccer semi-final match between Team Canada and Team U.S.A. Somebody asked an analyst how important the game was for the Canadian women.
“Hugely,” she said. “It’s the most important game ever.”
