Alex Kerfoot: Whenever we go to cities on the road he always has a place that he wants to go. And he’s very particular about what he eats. When we’re in L.A., he’ll drive like 40 minutes away to go to a restaurant, because it’s a really good restaurant. He has places picked out.
Mark Giordano: He mixes it up between Italian, steakhouses, stuff like that.
Jason Spezza: Local. Organic. Healthy. But not too healthy. He likes good restaurants. He likes good quality restaurants. He doesn’t like going to chain restaurants.
Giordano: I enjoy just sitting back and getting the luxury of having a good restaurant picked for me.
TJ Brodie: You know if you’re going out to dinner with him it’s Johnny-approved. It’s bound to be healthy.
Giordano: You worry, maybe I’m ordering too much cheese around him or something like that.
Kerfoot: If they have a special, he’ll always get the house special. If he gets big chickens — I’ve never seen a guy eat (like that). It looks like a carcass when he’s done with it. Like there’s not a piece of meat (left). Like he’s licking the thing (clean). It’s gross watching him eat chicken or turkey or legs or anything like that. It’s just what he does. He wants all the nutrients, all the fibre, whatever.
John Tavares. (Claus Andersen / Getty Images)
Tavares is known for carrying olive oil (seriously) around with him on the road.
Spezza: He usually picks restaurants good enough where he wouldn’t have to bring the olive oil. But (during the bubble 2020-21 season) he carried the olive oil with him because we were going to hotels that maybe didn’t meet the standard.
Marner: He brings it everywhere with him.
Justin Holl: I think he brings some Himalayan pink sea salt too sometimes. I swear. I’m not joking.
Spezza: He just likes quality control. Nothing he puts in his body is low quality. So for him, sauces, that kind of stuff, I don’t think he wants the preservatives. He has certain brands of olive oil he likes, certain brands of water he likes, certain brands of sauces he likes, so he’s very particular when it comes to that kind of stuff.
Holl: He’s a big wine guy, too. He has an app where you can put all the wines that you’ve had and try to check as many off a list.
Brodie: Whenever we have a full team dinner, everyone always tells him to go ahead (and pick the wine).
Holl: He’s our Sommelier, our team Sommelier.
William Nylander: He just orders the wine. I enjoy the wine. I’m not complaining.
Morgan Rielly: He’s into Italian wine. I think since having kids he’s told me that there’s less consuming of it going on. We’ve both experienced going to some vineyards and stuff, so we’ve talked about that. And when we’ve had dinner we’ve had some nice wines, some expensive stuff.
Holl: If we’re not getting a meal a lot of times (on the road), he’ll get a meal from the plane because it’s really healthy and good food.
Rielly: We’re provided great meals everywhere we go, but Johnny brings his own sometimes. That’s just, to my knowledge, a conscious health decision.
Spezza: He’ll cheat. I think in-season he’s really regimented and really worried about inflammation and that kind of stuff. But especially in the summer, he’ll let his guard down. I’ve been up to his place a few times, up in Muskoka, and he has burgers and he’s got a nice pizza oven that he makes nice pizzas.
Brodie: I got to go to his cottage this summer. He had a bunch of guys there and it was a good time.
Marner: Just a couple guys up there hanging out, boating around, golfing, stuff like that.
Brodie: He had it all set up for the boys. We didn’t really have to worry about anything.
Spezza: I think Johnny, I’ve seen him evolve. Like, having team parties at his house. He’s a great host. Everything’s planned perfectly. He’s not a bad host, that’s for sure.
Marner: He had someone up for us that made us all the breakfast, lunch, and dinners and stuff like that.
Spezza: John makes a mean pizza.
Margherita and veggie pizzas are his pizza specialties, Spezza said.
Spezza: At his cottage, he has Kombucha in a keg that he has tapped.
Longevity man
Holl: We played some tennis when we were in Muskoka, and he came and watched me, so it fired him up to get back into tennis.
Spezza: I’m actually impressed that Johnny is a guy that, he did not grow up on the lake, he did not drive a boat, but he’s become a good wakeboarder and can drive a boat and teach you how to wakeboard. It shows (that) once he’s into something, like he bought the cottage — he’s like an all-in type of guy. My wife’s from up on the lake and I don’t do any water sports or anything like that. But Johnny bought the cottage, he bought the boat, learned how to wakeboard, like, he’s all in.
Brodie: He got up on the surf. He was pretty good. We golfed once. He’s a decent golfer.
Marner: Big golf guy.
Holl: He likes to play pickleball a lot, I know.
Giordano: He’s a big sports guy. It always amazes me. Any sport. Like fantasy football, he knows every player. Basketball, he knows every player.
Holl (in November): His fantasy football team’s struggling a little bit.
Spezza: I think the kids, where they’ve helped him off the ice, they’ve hurt him in his fantasy football. He’s slow on the uptake. Slow to set (his) roster. That’s not his forte.
Holl (in January): I think I’ve gotta revise my statement because he ended up getting second in the league. I think I lost to (Auston Matthews), but (Auston) won and John got second place.
Rielly (looking in the direction of Kerfoot): Kerf, what’s in Johnny’s backpack?
Kerfoot: What is not in his backpack?
John Tavares. (Nick Turchiaro / USA Today)
Spezza: His backpack is usually recovery tools, supplements, and general performance stuff.
Kerfoot: I know what he brings (in his backpack). He brings his own olive oil. His own sea salt. He brings his own coconut water. Amino acids.
Rielly: S— like that. Vitamins.
Spezza: I would think that Tom Brady is a guy that he tries to emulate. I see lots of similarities between his approach and what you read about Tom’s approach.
Holl: He likes his recovery. He likes the red light. I don’t know if you know what that is, but it’s supposed to simulate sunlight. I have a portable one that you bring on the plane and you bring on the road. It’s supposed to stimulate ATP production in your cells, so your cells regenerate faster. He’s got one of those.
Spezza: He’s probably going to live forever! He takes great care of himself.
Kerfoot: He does this crazy thing where when we’re on the plane he has to keep his window open. So we’ll be flying, if we’re trying to change time zones, he wants to keep his circadian rhythm so he always has his window open.
Holl: I think he thinks that there’s some sort of Vitamin D correlation. I’m not sure if it comes through the window or not. But it’s actually funny because I’m sitting right across the aisle from him. We play video games on the plane. It’s Auston, (Michael Bunting), and (Zach Aston-Reese) and I. Sometimes you get the glare on the screen going and I’m like, “Johnny! Close the window!”
Spezza: So he’s like what do you call it, a longevity, human performance specialist. So if you want to know about what’s good for your body, what to do — he would have listened to a podcast or read about it. He’s a guy to go to with stuff like that.
John Tavares. (Courtesy of Toronto Maple Leafs)
Kerfoot: We’re playing cards on the plane or guys are sleeping, doing their own thing — it’s the only window on the plane that’s open. It’s insane. But he has to keep it open the whole time.
Marner: We all make fun of him for it.
Nylander: It’s just him. It’s just funny.
Brodie: I don’t know how he sleeps, because the sun is literally right in his face. And he’s passed out the whole time.
Fun guy
Spezza: John actually likes to play cards. He’s a notoriously slow card player. Slow to make decisions. So, we try to coax him into playing cards with us, and he actually likes it, but he doesn’t like playing too late into the night. It’ll disrupt his sleep schedule.
Holl: I think he’s pretty deliberate with his decisions and everything like that. He is slow.
Spezza: He’s gotta speed his game up a little bit! That’s a fun John quirk that we like to needle him about.
Tavares’ card game of choice: 7 Up and 7 Down.
Rielly: A big part of his life is family and his kids and spending time with them.
Spezza: I think he loves being a dad. It gives him something away from the game to focus on.
Rielly: He talks about his kids a lot.
Marner: He’s got a love for the people around him, friends and family. He takes care of his family very well and takes care of his teammates very well as well. He puts others before himself a lot of times and that’s probably something a lot of people don’t know.
Spezza: There’s times when you can call him and he won’t touch his phone because it’s scheduled time to be away from the phone. He’s very diligent when it comes to preparation and timing.
Holl: I don’t know what book he’s been reading recently, but we’ll talk about books a lot, because I like books. I know he’s a big reader. On the plane, he’ll watch shows. I think he was watching that “House of Dragons” recently.
Spezza: He reads lots of books. Mostly biographies or stuff on something that interests him. He’s into some of that — human performance stuff.
Holl: I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that he likes Mumford & Sons.
Marner: I know he loves Celine Dion, that’s about it. I don’t know anything else, but he loves Celine Dion for sure.
Rielly: We had karaoke one night and he sang “My Heart Will Go On,” which is a good song — not for karaoke. He’s got pretty old-school taste, I think.
Spezza: His style of dress, I say, would mirror his personality. Where it’s like quality but understated.
John Tavares. (Courtesy of Toronto Maple Leafs)
Marner: People probably don’t notice a lot, he’s got a lot of designer on his body. Low key stuff.
Brodie: Coming here, I didn’t know him before, so I pictured him as being very serious and always sort of (having his) game face (on). But from being here the last couple years, he’s definitely more laid back and easygoing than I thought he would be as far as joking around and having fun with the guys.
Spezza: There’s definitely more than meets the eye when it comes to humour. Little bit of a dry sense of humour at times.
Giordano: He chirps me because he says I like watching CP24 a lot, watch the news a lot in the room.
Kerfoot: I think he has a reputation of being very serious all the time, and he is very thoughtful. But he’s not afraid to give it around the guys.
Jason Spezza, left, with John Tavares. (John E. Sokolowski / USA Today)
Brodie: I think it’s even funnier coming from him because he doesn’t always chirp, so when he does it’s funny.
Giordano: He’s one of my dinner partners, so we go out for dinner a lot and he has interesting takes — we talk a lot of hockey and stuff like that — but he does have a great sense of humour for sure that you guys don’t see.
Spezza: Over the years, what I’ve learned about John is he’s learned to let off a little bit and blow off some steam. I’ve known John since he came into the league, because we trained together in the summers, and early on he was very rigid and very, like, stuck in his ways and kind of like, scared, I think, to ever step outside his box. And I think as he’s matured and gotten older he picks his spots and has learned to just enjoy himself too.
Rielly: To me, he’s never really appeared like a guy who’s overly concerned about hockey as much as it is just trying to maximize his ability to do his job.
Spezza: I remember early in his Islanders days and he was warming up in the hallway. I knew him, so it wasn’t a shock to me, but people in Ottawa (were) like, “Look at this guy! Look at the way he prepares!”
Spezza recalled one of Tavares’ first appearances at the renowned Sidney Crosby (and Spezza)-led summer training sessions in Vail, Colorado.
Spezza: Johnny and Matt Duchene were coming as young guys. Matt was just kinda eyes wide open and Johnny was very focused, very dialed, there for business, wanted to show everybody how good he was.
Rielly: He’s not a hockey robot because it comes naturally. Like, he’s not acting. He’s not really going to the ends of the Earth to try to be healthy. That’s just what he chooses to do. I think he would do that whether he was a hockey player or not.
Spezza: One thing I’ve always admired about Johnny is his intensity whenever he’s on the ice. Everything has an intention. I don’t know if that’s something that he learned over the years. But even summer hockey skates, everything has an intention to it.
Rielly: That’s just his personality. He hones in on something. It happens to be hockey. So he spends lots of time on the ice, he spends lots of time in the gym, and he spends lots of time focusing on nutrition.
EDMONTON – The Edmonton Oilers signed defenceman Travis Dermott to a professional tryout on Friday.
Dermott, a 27-year-old from Newmarket, Ont., produced two goals, five assists and 26 penalty minutes in 50 games with the Arizona Coyotes last season.
The six-foot, 202-pound blueliner has also played for the Vancouver Canucks and Toronto Maple Leafs.
Toronto drafted him in the second round, 34th overall, of the 2015 NHL draft.
Over seven NHL seasons, Dermott has 16 goals and 46 assists in 329 games while averaging 16:03 in ice time.
Before the NHL, Dermott played two seasons with Oilers captain Connor McDavid for the Ontario Hockey League’s Erie Otters. The team was coached by current Edmonton head coach Kris Knoblauch.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — Maria Sharapova, a five-time Grand Slam singles champion, led the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s fan vote her first year on the ballot — an important part to possible selection to the hall’s next class.
The organization released the voting results on Friday. American doubles team Bob and Mike Bryan finished second with Canada’s Daniel Nestor third.
The Hall of Fame said tens of thousands of fans from 120 countries cast ballots. Fan voting is one of two steps in the hall’s selection process. The second is an official group of journalists, historians, and Hall of Famers from the sport who vote on the ballot for the hall’s class of 2025.
“I am incredibly grateful to the fans all around the world who supported me during the International Tennis Hall of Fame’s fan votes,” Sharapova said in a statement. “It is a tremendous honor to be considered for the Hall of Fame, and having the fans’ support makes it all the more special.”
Sharapova became the first Russian woman to reach No. 1 in the world. She won Wimbledon in 2004, the U.S. Open in 2006 and the Australian Open in 2008. She also won the French Open twice, in 2012 and 2014.
Sharapova was also part of Russia’s championship Fed Cup team in 2008 and won a silver medal at the London Olympics in 2012.
To make the hall, candidates must receive 75% or higher on combined results of the official voting group and additional percentage from the fan vote. Sharapova will have an additional three percentage points from winning the fan vote.
The Bryans, who won 16 Grand Slam doubles titles, will have two additional percentage points and Nestor, who won eight Grand Slam doubles titles, will get one extra percentage point.
The hall’s next class will be announced late next month.
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The driver charged with killing NHL hockey player Johnny Gaudreau and his brother Matthew as they bicycled on a rural road had a blood-alcohol level of .087, above the .08 legal limit in New Jersey, a prosecutor said Friday.
Gaudreau, 31, and brother Matthew, 29, were killed in Carneys Point, New Jersey, on Aug. 29, the evening before they were set to serve as groomsmen at their sister Katie’s wedding.
The driver, 43-year-old Sean M. Higgins of nearby Woodstown, New Jersey, is charged with two counts of death by auto, along with reckless driving, possession of an open container and consuming alcohol in a motor vehicle. At a virtual court hearing Friday, a judge ordered that he be held for trial after prosecutors described a history of alleged road rage and aggressive driving.
“’You were probably driving like a nut like I always tell you you do. And you don’t listen to me, instead you just yell at me,’” his wife told Higgins when he called her from jail after his arrest, according to First Assistant Prosecutor Jonathan Flynn of Salem County.
The defense described Higgins as a married father and law-abiding citizen before the crash.
“He’s an empathetic individual and he’s a loving father of two daughters,” said defense lawyer Matthew Portella. “He’s a good person and he made a horrible decision that night.”
Higgins told police he had five or six beers that day and admitted to consuming alcohol while driving, according to the criminal complaint. He also failed a field sobriety test, the complaint said. A prosecutor on Friday said he had been drinking at home after finishing a work call at about 3 p.m., and having an upsetting conversation with his mother about a family matter.
He then had a two-hour phone call with a friend while he drove around in his Jeep with an open container, Flynn said. He had been driving aggressively behind a sedan going just above the 50 mph speed limit, sometimes tailgating, the female driver told police.
When she and the vehicle ahead of her slowed down and veered left to go around the cyclists, Higgins sped up and veered right, striking the Gaudreas, the two other drivers told police.
“He indicated he didn’t even see them,” said Superior Court Judge Michael J. Silvanio, who said Higgins’ admitted “impatience” caused two deaths.
Higgins faces up to 20 years, a sentence that the judge said made him a flight risk.
Higgins has a master’s degree, works in finance for an addiction treatment company, and served in combat in Iraq, his lawyers said. However, his wife said he had been drinking regularly since working from home, Flynn said.
Johnny Gaudreau, known as “Johnny Hockey,” played 10 full seasons in the league and was set to enter his third with the Columbus Blue Jackets after signing a seven-year, $68 million deal in 2022. He played his first eight seasons with the Calgary Flames, a tenure that included becoming one of the sport’s top players and a fan favorite across North America.
Widows Meredith and Madeline Gaudreau described their husbands as attached at the hip throughout their lives. Both women are expecting, and both gave moving eulogies at the double funeral on Monday.
