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.
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.
