As the NHL all-star weekend takes over Las Vegas, Team Canada takes the ice in Beijing without the country's biggest stars - The Globe and Mail | Canada News Media
Canada’s assistant coach Jeremy Colliton speaks to his players during training on Sunday.ANNEGRET HILSE/Reuters
The NHL set up its little kiosk in Las Vegas over the weekend, hoping to do some market outreach.
The league’s biggest brainwave? Floating a podium into the middle of the fountain in front of the Bellagio hotel. On that stretch of water – possibly the single tackiest place on Planet Earth – they held a mini-skills competition. Columbus Blue Jackets defenceman Zach Werenski won it.
“I’ve been to Vegas a few times,” Werenski told reporters afterward, channelling Sally Field at the Oscars. “I feel like every time you come here, you walk by [the fountain]. You watch the fountains go off.”
You watch the fountains go off – he makes it sound so magical.
Zach Werenski of the Columbus Blue Jackets makes a shot on goal against Juuse Saros of the Nashville Predators during the game between the Metropolitan division and the Central division during the 2022 Honda NHL All-Star Game on Feb. 05, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada.Ethan Miller/Getty Images
Standing in a floodlit swamp, in front of a bunch of confused rubes from South Carolina and Sunderland, flipping pucks at a target.
Imagine Tom Brady or LeBron James being convinced to do this. Try harder. Try as hard as you can. Now stop before you pop a blood vessel.
What was this crowd of yokels thinking? It wasn’t, “I am standing in the presence of athletic greatness.” It was, “When did Cirque du Soleil get so boring?” But I presume that like all visitors to Vegas, they were sunburned and day drunk and happy to doing anything that’s free.
What a great hockey moment that must have been.
Around the same time, Team Canada was hitting the practice ice here in Beijing. They blew off their first couple of days in the city because of a) jet lag and b) the opening ceremony.
Now here they were in the practice rink jammed in behind Beijing’s second-best arena. Maybe 20, 25 people watched them take the ice, mostly to make sure they were all there and not telling COVID-19 fibs.
They weren’t wearing nameplates. Aside from a few known commodities, you couldn’t tell who was who.
Once again, the men’s representatives of the best hockey country in the world at the sport’s premier international competition are largely anonymous, even to their own people.
“I think it’s pretty sad,” said one of the few name brand players, Josh Ho-Sang. He was talking about all the NHLers who should be here and aren’t. “I feel really bad for those guys. … They may never get this chance again.”
Really? Do you think the NHL will ever be back?
“I hope so,” said Eric Staal, the only bona fide Canadian superstar (if this was 2008). “It’s great for the future of hockey. It needs to be a sport that’s played worldwide.”
Which is a nice way of saying that assembling a bunch of guys from the AHL and assorted European leagues isn’t accomplishing that goal.
Nobody here has as much to gain as Ho-Sang and Staal. Both probably believe that a good tournament gets them back to the bigs.
And even these guys think this is a bummer. Even they can see how badly the NHL screwed up this golden ticket. What does that tell you?
Every Winter Olympics starts off star-challenged. This one may be more barren of big names than any this century. Who’s the hot property up front? Who’s going to get people who think biathlon is running forward and backward to tune in? Eileen Gu, Chloe Kim, Jamaican bobsledders. That’s about it.
Canada’s hockey players should be filling that celebrity vacuum. If Crosby, MacKinnon and McDavid (neither first names nor nameplates required), that practice rink on Saturday would have been packed.
Instead, what you get is a bunch of volunteers lining up to take pictures with Owen Power. Not because they have any clue who he is. But because he is the biggest guy on the Canadian team, he’s standing still and he’s too nice to say no.
Team Canada should be filling the global sports content vacuum at the beginning and then again at the end. Forget about priceless. This would have been two weeks of unbuyable publicity.
I’m no marketing genius, but it seems to me that making that sort of splash in a country of 1.4 billion people who are just coming around on cold-weather sport might be a good idea.
The failure to see that obvious truth is so large, so pan-systemic, so bafflingly self-defeating, that it hasn’t provoked much controversy. One bad roster decision sets the NHL commentariat alight. A total, top-to-bottom failure to understand what is in the league’s best interests is apparently too complicated to discuss.
That’s how the NHL gets away with it (and other things). They wait a while, and then they fly everyone to Vegas instead. Problem successfully ignored.
On Sunday, Canada practised again. After the players had drifted off, team GM Shane Doan dropped by in his street clothes.
This must have seemed like a sexier job a couple of months ago, but you wouldn’t know that from hearing Doan talk about it.
He waxed on about the possibilities and what it means to wear the Maple Leaf. He analogized it to three similar sporting experiences – playing rugby for New Zealand, soccer for Brazil and cricket for India. Being part of teams that are not allowed to lose.
“That’s the best part of our tradition,” Doan said. “The expectation.”
Is it?
You know what Doan’s trying to say, but it’s getting harder to believe the underlying premise. If that expectation existed, the NHL’s best would be here.
I’m not talking about bargaining their way to the Olympics. I’m talking about climbing into the wheel well of a China-bound jetliner if that’s what it took.
Instead, the heirs to that special hockey tradition got a look at what a hassle Beijing was going to be and said, “Pass.”
Would Brazil’s best soccer players or India’s best cricketers take a powder on a World Cup because going might cost them a few bucks? Because someone at their day job told them they had to stay back and work out all the hours they’d missed in December and January?
No, they would not. Every single one of them would go to the World Cup if it was being staged in Hell. No league could deny them. If one tried, it would spark insurrection.
But here’s the NHL and its players with their thinking caps on, trying to figure out how a couple of weeks in the global spotlight might affect the Leafs’ ability to make cap space for a back-up goalie. This is the important work of hockey. Let guys who have nothing better to do handle the little things, like the Olympics. Canadian hockey’s tradition still carries an expectation, but it’s changed. Now it’s an expectation that we can lord over the sport whenever we feel like it, but only if it’s convenient.
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GUADALAJARA, Mexico – Canada’s Marina Stakusic fell 6-4, 6-3 to Poland’s Magdalena Frech in the quarterfinals of the Guadalajara Open tennis tournament on Friday.
The 19-year-old from Mississauga, Ont., won 61 per cent of her first-serve points and broke on just one of her six opportunities.
Stakusic had upset top-seeded Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia 6-3, 5-7, 7-6 (0) on Thursday night to advance.
In the opening round, Stakusic defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 6-2, 6-4 on Tuesday.
The fifth-seeded Frech won 62 per cent of her first-serve points and converted on three of her nine break point opportunities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
TORONTO – Alejandro Kirk’s long single with the bases loaded provided the Toronto Blue Jays with a walk-off 4-3 win in the 11th inning of their series opener against the St. Louis Cardinals on Friday.
With the Cardinals outfield in, Kirk drove a shot off the base of the left-field wall to give the Blue Jays (70-78) their fourth win in 11 outings and halt the Cardinals’ (74-73) two-game win streak before 30,380 at Rogers Centre.
Kirk enjoyed a two-hit, two-RBI outing.
Erik Swanson (2-2) pitched a perfect 11th inning for the win, while Cardinals reliever Ryan Fernandez (1-5) took the loss.
Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman enjoyed a seven-inning, 104-pitch outing. He surrendered his two runs on nine hits and two walks and fanned only two Cardinals.
He gave way to reliever Genesis Cabrera, who gave up a one-out homer to Thomas Saggese, his first in 2024, that tied the game in the eighth.
The Cardinals started swiftly with four straight singles to open the game. But they exited the first inning with only two runs on an RBI single to centre from Nolan Arendao and a fielder’s choice from Saggese.
Gausman required 28 pitches to escape the first inning but settled down to allow his teammates to snatch the lead in the fourth.
He also deftly pitched out of threats from the visitors in the fifth, sixth and seventh thanks to some solid defence, including Will Wagner’s diving stop, which led to a double play to end the fifth inning.
George Springer led off with a walk and stole second base. He advanced to third on Nathan Lukes’s single and scored when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. knocked in his 95th run with a double off the left-field wall.
Lukes scored on a sacrifice fly to left field from Spencer Horwitz. Guerrero touched home on Kirk’s two-out single to right.
In the ninth, Guerrero made a critical diving catch on an Arenado grounder to throw out the Cardinals’ infielder, with reliever Tommy Nance covering first. The defensive gem ended the inning with a runner on second base.
St. Louis starter Erick Fedde faced the minimum night batters in the first three innings thanks to a pair of double plays. He lasted five innings, giving up three runs on six hits and a walk with three strikeouts.
ON DECK
Toronto ace Jose Berrios (15-9) will start the second of the three-game series on Saturday. He has a six-game win streak.
The Cardinals will counter with righty Kyle Gibson (8-6).
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
CALGARY – Mired in their first four-game losing skid in 20 years, the Calgary Stampeders are going back to Jake Maier at quarterback on Saturday after he was benched for a game.
It won’t be an easy assignment.
Visiting McMahon Stadium are the Eastern Conference-leading Montreal Alouettes (10-2) who own the CFL’s best record. The Stampeders (4-8) have fallen to last in the Western Conference.
“Six games is plenty of time, but also it is just six games,” said Maier. “We’ve got to be able to get on the right track.”
Calgary is in danger of missing the playoffs for the first time since 2004.
“I do still believe in this team,” said Stampeders’ head coach and general manager Dave Dickenson. “I want to see improvement, though. I want to see guys on a weekly basis elevating their game, and we haven’t been doing that.”
Maier is one of the guys under the microscope. Two weeks ago, the second-year starter threw four interceptions in a 35-20 home loss to the Edmonton Elks.
After his replacement, rookie Logan Bonner, threw five picks in last week’s 37-16 loss to the Elks in Edmonton, the football is back in Maier’s hands.
“Any time you fail or something doesn’t go your way in life, does it stink in the moment? Yeah. But then the days go on and you learn things about yourself and you learn how to prepare a little bit better,” said Maier. “It makes you mentally tougher.”
Dickenson wants to see his quarterback making better decisions with the football.
“Things are going to happen, interceptions will happen, but try to take calculated risks, rather than just putting the ball up there and hoping that we catch it,” said Dickenson.
A former quarterback himself, he knows the importance of that vital position.
“You cannot win without good quarterback play,” Dickenson said. “You’ve got to be able to make some plays — off-schedule plays, move-around plays, plays that break down, plays that aren’t designed perfectly, but somehow you found the right guy, and then those big throws where you’re taking that hit.”
But it’s going to take a team effort, and that includes the club’s receiving corp.
“We always have to band together because we need everything to go right for our receivers to get the ball,” said Nik Lewis, the Stampeders’ receivers coach. “The running back has to pick up the blitz, the o-line has to block, the quarterback has to make the right reads, and then give us a catchable ball.”
Lewis brings a unique perspective to this season’s frustrations as he was a 22-year-old rookie in Calgary in 2004 when the Stamps went 4-14 under coach Matt Dunigan. They turned it around the next season and haven’t missed the playoffs since.”
“Thinking back and just looking at it, there’s just got to be an ultimate belief that you can get it done. Look at Montreal, they were 6-7 last year and they’ve gone 18-2 since then,” said Lewis.
Montreal is also looking to rebound from a 37-23 loss to the B.C. Lions last week. But for head coach Jason Maas, he says his team’s mindset doesn’t change, regardless of what happened the previous week.
“Last year when we went through a four-game losing streak, you couldn’t tell if we were on a four-game winning streak or a four-game losing streak by the way the guys were in the building, the way we prepared, the type of work ethic we have,” said Maas. “All our standards are set, so that’s all we focus on.”
While they may have already clinched a playoff spot, Alouettes’ quarterback Cody Fajardo says this closing stretch remains critical because they want to finish the season strong, just like last year when they won their final five regular-season games before ultimately winning the Grey Cup.
“It doesn’t matter about what you do at the beginning of the year,” said Fajardo. “All that matters is how you end the year and how well you’re playing going into the playoffs so that’s what these games are about.”
The Alouettes’ are kicking off a three-game road stretch, one Fajardo looks forward to.
“You understand what kind of team you have when you play on the road because it’s us versus the world mentality and you can feel everybody against you,” said Fajardo. “Plus, I always tend to find more joy in silencing thousands of people than bringing thousands of people to their feet.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 13, 2024.
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