Category: Sports

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Gretzky the Vacant

One of those vulgar Facebook posts that claim to be enlightening you about the amazingly consequential achievements of some celebrity or another called Wayne Gretzky a “national treasure”.  A talented athlete is not a “national treasure”. It’s just sports.  It’s just an individual with extraordinary physical gifts who does well in a sport.  Sports are not important or consequential.  They are fun, when done well, and toxic when not.  They are sometimes toxic when they are done well, as when the U. S. national women’s football team starts to act like they are entitled to the championship every time.

Gretzky was always kind of a blank slate, a super-talented athlete with very little depth of character. He was a master of the sports interview, giving his 100%, thanking his team-mates, making the obligatory charitable gestures, hauling his money off to the bank.

Now we see more of his character and it’s not pretty.  It’s tacky and tasteless and self-serving and tone-death.  He did not have to endorse Trump, or show up at Mar a Lago to hang out with him or conspicuously salute the American team or hand out hats to the Canadian team that seemed inspired by MAGA.   I am mystified that a man with Gretzky’s profile didn’t have a smart PR agent to tell him how bad all of that would look.

Maybe Gretzky never cared all that much what Canadians thought of him anyway.  He lives almost exclusively in the United States.

What idiot made him “honorary captain” of the Canadian team at the Four Nations tournament?  (Answer: someone in the NHL League Offices.)

For the same reason that people should not make too much of any professional athlete people should not make too much of their faults.  Big deal.  Big deal that he scored a lot of goals.  Big deal that he’s all cozy and snuggly with the appalling Mr. Trump.

Move on.

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Berube

Update (2025-03-31):  Wouldn’t you know it?  Right after I wrote and posted this, the Leaf power-play went on a tear, scoring in 12 of 16 opportunities, or something like that.  Just devastating, quick passes, constant motion, accurate shooting.  We’ll see if it lasts.

It is very difficult to assess the impact of a coach upon the performance of any particular NHL team.  Scotty Bowman is the most obvious avatar of success in this position after leading Montreal to four consecutive Stanley Cups, and then, after leaving Montreal (due to a dispute with management over promoting him to General Manager), coached Pittsburgh to it’s second consecutive Stanley Cup,  and then Detroit to two consecutive Stanley Cups.

Bowman was not successful everywhere or all the time, but he was certainly among the most successful coaches in NHL history.  But was he really a brilliant mastermind of strategy and player development or did he just happen to inherit teams that were stocked with great players and on the cusp of elevated achievements– no matter who was coaching?  It’s impossible to know.  His success in Montreal led Pittsburgh (and other teams) to want him, but he also knew that Pittsburgh had Sidney Crosby and a host of other very good players and he was able to write his own ticket.  From 1979 to 1987 he coached Buffalo with limited success (1st, 3rd, 3rd, 2nd, 3rd, 5th) and was finally fired after they finished fifth in 1986.  He didn’t seem to have the magic then.  He moved to Detroit in 1996-97, which had Steve Yzerman,  and Sergei Fedorov, Nicklas Lidstrom, Larry Murphy, Brendan Shanahan.  They later acquired Dominick Hasek.  So it was a team stacked with very good players, especially Fedorov and Yzerman, and, later, Hasek ( who replaced Chris Osgood).

Teams have won with brilliant, speedy offense.  They have won with steady, tough defense.  They have won with a combination of both.  There is no one consistent formula.  Montreal, with a mediocre team, made it to the finals a few years ago almost solely on the strength of their goalie, Carey Price.

I suspect that coaching shows up the most in three areas:  the power play, the penalty kill, and defending a lead.  (No amount of good coaching can get you a lead if you don’t have skilled players up front, but a well-disciplined team can frustrate a more talented team if they want to.)  This is where I am least impressed by Craig Berube’s work with the Leafs.  They don’t do particularly well in any of those three areas, especially lately (March 2025).  They have had the lead in five of their last six games and lost five of their last six games.  They keep pulling the goalie and giving up empty net goals (they have only twice scored while 6 on 5 all year).  They persist in believing that Morgan Rielly should get lots and lots of ice time even though he is -19 on a team with most players on the plus side.  Contrary to the evidence, they think Mitch Marner is an effective penalty killer, even while Berube obviously discourages counter-attacks while shorthanded, which I believe is a mistake.  They keep putting Max Domi on the ice though he doesn’t check all that well, almost never scores, and doesn’t even seem to have any idea of what he should be doing out there.  He is getting about $2.9 million a year.  For what?

Why did the Leafs bring Berube on board?  Because he won the Stanley Cup with St. Louis in 2019?  His record since then is rather mixed to say the least: 1st, 4th, 3rd, 6th, then fired.

I don’t see how he was an improvement from Keefe, who actually had one of the best winning records in the history of the Maple Leafs.  Keefe was obviously fired because of the Leafs’ failure to move past the first or second round in the playoffs, in spite of rather good regular season performances.   Berube’s current record is mostly, I think, the result of better goal-tending.  Up to now, Joseph Woll and Anthony Stolarz have been excellent.  They were a big improvement on Frederik Anderson and Jack Campbell and the inconsistent Ilya Samsonov.

Woll and Stolarz were brilliant in goal for a time.  Lately, not so much.  Marner generates a lot of offense but four times in the last two games– 4 times!– he  entered the opponent’s zone during a promising power play set up and gave the puck away.  These were not bad passes that didn’t work: they were bald-faced giveaways, throwing the puck right onto the stick of an opponent.  These happened as the power play squad was taking up positions and so were out of position to deal with a break-out.   They also robbed the power play of crucial zone time.

Nylander scores a lot of goals, because he poaches up by the blue line.  He rarely goes into a corner and emerges with the puck.  He often skates by  opponents with the puck and kind of waves at them.  When he does have the puck, he can be very skilled, and very fast, and he has a very good shot.  I’m not sure how big of a trade-off his defensive lapses are, given his offense.  And I don’t understand why Berube doesn’t demand that Nylander make more of an effort to defend when he doesn’t have the puck.

Matthew Knies gets better and better every game.  Matthews is a thoroughbred, a terrific two-way player.  Tanev and McCabe are okay on defense– not often brilliant but not a liability either.  If Woll and Stolarz can recover their mid-season form, the Leafs have as realistic a chance as any of the other top 8 to advance to the Stanley Cup Finals.

Rielly is the Cal Ripken of the Maple Leafs, and that is not a compliment.  Ripken was  subpar short-stop with limited range who got to play every day because he could be a decent hitter.  But ultimately I think he hurt the team by refusing, as he aged and lost mobility, to move to third-base or DH where he belonged.  Rielly is thought to belong to the number one pair of defensemen on the Leafs but he is clearly a liability.  I would move him down to the third pair and give him a lot less ice-time.  He is -19 at the moment: that is terrible for someone earning his salary.

[As an aside:  while Cal Ripken was in his pursuit of the all-time consecutive games played record, I firmly believed that the Orioles would never win a championship.  They had become Ripken-centric.  He even stayed in a separate hotel when they were on the road.  And, of course, the Orioles remained a mediocre team through the latter years of Ripken’s career.]

I don’t believe in the idea that the Leafs have some fatal weakness that plays out every playoff season.  They have made the playoffs seven years in a row, and they have been very close to advancing several times.  Several times, they ended up losing to a very good team that went on to the finals.  The factors that play into the decisive win are rather random– a bad play in overtime, a lucky bounce, a deflection, a post instead of the corner of the net, playing the eventual Stanley Cup winner in the first round.

One of these times, the Leafs will take the big game, or they may not.  But they are legitimate contenders and in a few years Leaf fans may look back on this era as time of high expectations because they are really quite good, and disappointing achievements because they have been unlucky.

 

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The Infuriating Defensive Shell

Tonight, the Leafs, down 1-0 at the beginning of the Third Period, exploded for three goals in about five minutes to take a 3-1 lead over the Nashville Predators (a relatively mediocre team right now).

They were attacking aggressively, moving the puck up the ice smoothly, pinching at the blue line, sending wingers deep into the corners to fight for the puck, and dominating the game.

In other words, they were using a strategy that worked.  It generated offense.  It prevented Nashville from mounting sustained pressure (because they constantly had to retreat to defend).

So what do you do when you have a strategy that works?  Abandon it, of course.  Yes, they did.  With about 8:00 minutes left, the Leafs stopped pinching, stop going deep into the corners, and prioritized shift changes over attack.  And this change was not subtle.  They stopped attacking the Predators in their own zone, seemingly content to dump the puck out and turn it over to them, and get off the ice as quickly as possible.

They essentially said to the Predators: we’re not going to try to score for a while so you can try to catch up without worrying about any aggressive counter-attacks or forechecking on our part.  Maybe you can score a goal or two and make it close.  We don’t mind.  We quit.

It is fucking infuriating to watch.  Almost as infuriating as seeing William Nylander receive the puck directly in front of the net and decide to skate in circles for a while instead of shooting.   Or watching him give up the puck near the offensive blue line creating a two on one or three on one or even a two on none break for the opponent.

In baseball, a corresponding strategy is to replace a good hitter with a good defender, once you have the lead, on the often vain hope that your opponent won’t tie the game necessitating more hitting, which is no longer available, on your part.

The Leafs now seem to do the same thing when short-handed.  They are obviously shy about going on the attack when they force a turnover.  It looks like something coming from the top down: Mitch Marner used to be aggressive if he got the puck and bit of space while the Leafs were killing a penalty.  Now he just dumps the puck down the ice.   Their opponents must enjoy being able to relax when there is a turnover during a powerplay: don’t worry– the Leafs won’t try anything.

 

 

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The 2024-25 Maple Leafs

I have no idea why the Leafs think that the deep drop pass on the rush during a powerplay works. I’ll bet the very first time they did it, 50 years ago, it probably confused the other team for a few seconds. Rielly doesn’t even bother to try to hide the secret plan any more. As soon as he reaches the blue line, he starts looking for someone waiting, hiding behind the net.

Their play right now without Matthews confirms something Bill James pointed out about baseball years ago. People in general have an exaggerated sense of the impact of star players. It appears that the second tier of players on the Leafs are better than they think and, given more ice time and less focus on the “star”, the team performs better.

Helps to have good consistent goal-keeping too.

Nylander, leading the team in goals, in only +1. It’s not hard to see why. He can be brilliant. And then he can fall down with the puck when he’s the last man back or gives it away at center while his wingers are rushing forward. Sometimes he skates by an opponent with the puck and just kind of waves at him.  He often picks up the puck near the net in an excellent scoring position but chooses instead to skate off somewhere.

Max Domi is lost somewhere. I wonder if there’s something going on off the ice that is demanding his attention.

Rielly has always been over-rated. It looks like Berube is starting to realize it.  Watch him: most of the time he either passes the puck to someone who is standing still, or to someone who is about to be checked.

On the plus side, both Woll and Stolarz are performing very well in goal, in the top five of most departments except for wins– which is good (it means the Leafs are able to split goal-tending duties without taking a hit in quality).

Marner is a phenomenal play-maker.  Please don’t continue to make him play with Holmgren.

They are in first place at the moment, in a tough division (up against Boston, Florida, and Tamp Bay, among others).  But nobody cares about first place, of course.

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Olympic Snoozefest

I find the Olympics boring. I would like to see an Olympics where every country sends a random group of 200 people. When they arrive, their first task is to sort out who competes in what. Then they have to learn how to do it. It would be way more fun to watch than this boring endless cycle of identical people .02 of a second faster or slower thanking their moms and dads and coaches and whoever and springing for the nearest exit to sign the most lucrative endorsement deal they can.

Besides, most of them are probably cheating.

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Blue Jays 2024-06

Blue Jays are paying a very big pile of money to Springer, Kiermaier, and Turner, batting .196, .190, .233, with little or no power. Springer, to my astonishment, is under contract for 2025 and 2026 at over $20 million. Springer and Kiermaier are 34; Turner is 39. None of these players are going to improve, but, rather than admit they spent unwisely, they keep trotting them out there, game on the line or not, runners on or not, disappointed fans or not.

On the plus side, Varsho and Jansen are relative bargains at about $5.5 million.

It’s not fun, as a Jays fan, to watch them trot Springer out there to pinch hit with a runner on, trailing by a run in the 8th, badly needing a win to get close to .500, with a chance to compete for a wild card, maybe. Not fun to see them waste decent pitching performances by not scoring more than one or two runs.

They should cut their losses and put the rookies in. They can’t possibly do worse, and the rookies will at least mostly improve. As for trades, Guerrero and Bichette are fast losing their value. The others have no trade value.

Blue Jays Salaries

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Harrison Butker’s Beautiful Nobody Wife

Someone on Facebook posted this, in response to the ridiculous controversy over the speech made by football player Harrison Butker of the Kansas City Chiefs to the graduates of Benedictine College in Atchinson, Kansas.

Oh no, a catholic gave a pro catholic speech with catholic views to catholic students at a catholic school, the horror, the misogyny, the… idiots love to go out of their way to be offended. The same crowd that preaches acceptance cannot stand living in a world where other people aren’t like them apparently

I responded:

Agree. The same way a male state legislator with no medical training or background and expertise in psychology or physiology should not be telling parents what they can or cannot do to address a child’s issues with sexual identity. Nor should the same state politicians be telling libraries what books they can stock on their shelves. Or if people who are fearful of communicable diseases can wear a mask. Or if teachers can teach about the fundamentals of the U.S. economy before 1865. Idiots love to go out of their way to be offended.

I initially thought the entire “scandal” was just media masturbation: a trivial event and a trivial offense sparking trivial outrage and then trivial blow-back, and so on, with everyone losing sight of the utter triviality of the original event along the way.  Harrison Butker is a nobody, a fucking football player, of no particular consequence, and certainly of no importance to culture or intellectual life in the U.S.

His comments were not as anodyne as his defenders would have it, nor as caustic as his critics would have it. They are just unbelievably mediocre.  Seriously?  In this day and age?  Women should stay home and cook and clean and have babies?

He says:

On the day before Mother’s Day, he said, “I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.

I can’t think of anything more deeply insulting to Isabelle.  You had no life before you met the wondrous Harrison Buttkiss?  You were not a whole person, because this amazing, virile, intelligent, paragon of testosterone had not yet laid you?

He went further, attacking diversity and inclusion in general, gay marriage, and so on– the usual litany of ignorant white male grievance.  He attacked abortion, which is odd because his party has left him in the dust on this issue.   Have you checked with Mike Pence lately?  And what other bedrock principles are you and your party eager to shed the moment they become politically inconvenient?

Shame on you Benedictine College!  Not because Butkisser gave you a mind-numbing divisive grievance-laced litany of intellectual dishonesty, but because you chose an athlete of mediocre intelligence to give your graduation address.  Someone who is famous for one-dimensionality, or achievements in the stupidest, dullest major sport in the world.  Please– the entire secular, consumerist, celebrity-addled world worships these masters of inanity.  Can’t a college — especially a Catholic Christian College– stand up and say, we will be different!  We will not kowtow to the worldly vice of idolization of professional athletes and materialistic success!  No, we will invite someone with real achievements in really important, consequential areas, like literature, journalism, painting, music, engineering, science, social services, or perhaps even ministry.

But then the administration of Benedictine College wouldn’t get to go home and tell their wives and mommies, “Guess I got to meet?” and really impress them.

 

 

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The Boys in George Clooney’s Bloat

A few months ago, I started seeing trailers for the new George Clooney movie, “The Boys in the Boat”.   I breezily scratched that film off my list.  Firstly, Clooney is a mediocre director, as evidenced from his previous films.  Secondly, a plucky band of American working-class men incredibly, stunningly, unbelievably, amazingly, shockingly enter an athletics competition and win.  My God!!! Has that ever even happened before?  Will the audience be surprised by anything in the film?  Will the best rower prove to be a nice guy, and get the girl?  Will some group of nefarious, jealous, evil people try to stop them?  Will there be a last-minute hitch to shockingly overcome?

As if.  As if anything about this film was ever going to be even remotely interesting.  Then, I accidentally stumbled into the review on the Roger Ebert review site.  Now, I know rogerebert.com is overly generous to most films, but this review stunned me. I was completely wrong.  This magnificent film is fresh, exciting, rousing, and heroic!  You must see it!  3.5 out of 4 stars.

Seriously?  There is nothing in the description of this movie that even hints at a result like this.  The story is cliché-ridden, it’s directed by the “genius” who directed “The Monuments Men” (which Clooney himself apologized for) and “Leatherheads” which was reputedly so bad I never even bothered to see it, and it overtly toots the message of “believe in yourself” because if you believe in yourself you will win, even if all the other competitors also believe in themselves and win too.  We know for a fact that Nazi athletes do not believe in themselves, are not plucky, are never underdogs, and are known to deflower virgins.

No, I was not wrong.  Here’s a good corrective (the Guardian).

Will I see it?  I retch at the very prospect.  There is not one thing in the previews or reviews or trailer that displays the slightest hint of originality, insight, intelligence, or fun.

And rogerebert.com should scrape itself off the list of “review” sites.  This is not the first time, recently, that it has been excessively generous to a bad film.  I know you want to be popular and you hate disparaging films that you know the public is going to love, but it is a disservice to culture in general to throw yourself at a film like a cheap slut late, late, late on a Saturday night.

 

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Clark vs Maravich

Look folks, I’m sure Caitlyn Clark is a magnificent player, so let’s not spoil it all with bullshit about her achievements.  For about a week, I have been hearing and seeing reporters– most disquietingly from Christine Brennan on PBS News (who has become rather slavish of all things women sports lately, especially the USWFT)– raving about Clark’s “unbelievable”, “astounding”, “unprecedented” career achievements, as if she is the equal or better to the best male players.

Pete Maravich averaged 44.2 points a game per season.  He scored 3,667 points in 83 games.  There were no 3-pointers in his era, so all of his points were earned through field-goals and at the free-throw line.

Clark averages 32.1 points per game.  Her “record” total was achieved in 130 career games.

Are we clear now?  No, Caitlyn Clark is not the greatest basketball player ever.  Peter Maravich, arguably, still is.  I say “arguably” because there may be other male players who come close.

The idea that Caitlyn Clark is now the all time best college basketball player of any gender is sheer nonsense.

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The 2023-24 Maple Leafs

There are about 10 or 11 teams in the very competitive NHL that could make a serious run at the Stanley Cup this year:

Winnipeg Jets
Vancouver Canucks
Boston Bruins
Colorado Avalanche
New York Rangers
Florida Panthers
Dallas Stars
Vegas Golden Knights
Toronto Maple Leafs
Carolina Hurricanes
Los Angeles Kings

Several teams are not far behind this cluster and could easily make a run at the playoffs if they get hot.  It is a very competitive league and, as has been observed, winning the NHL championship is likely the most difficult challenge of any major team sport.  It is long, hard, and grueling.

I have been a Toronto Maple Leaf fan since about 1967– I am so old that I actually saw the Leafs win a Stanley Cup (in 1967).  I remember that at that time, they were close behind the Canadiens for the total number of championships: it was 13 to 11.  Since then, it has become 24 (!) to 11.

The Leafs have a notoriously bad record in recent years in the playoffs.  They actually have a good record of making the playoffs, each of the past seven years, but, with the exception of last year in which they eliminated Tampa Bay, they have not won a single series.  It is a stain on the careers of Austin Matthews, John Tavares, William Nylander, Mitch Marner, and Morgan Rielly, none of whom have performed particularly well in the playoffs.  It is an even bigger stain on their goaltenders, Jack Campbell and Frederick Andersen, neither of which have been able to “come up big” in decisive playoff games.

This obscures the fact that the Leafs do have a very good team.  They can score goals but their defense is suspect.  Their No. 1 goalie, Ilya Samsonov, is a wreck and has been demoted and their next most auspicious candidate, Joseph Woll, is injured.   Matt Murray– last I heard– was hurt and will not return (I think he was moved to Pittsburgh, last I heard).   Martin Jones has stepped in and is currently performing exceptionally well.

No Leaf fan can forget how they led the decisive game 7 against Boston 4-3 in the third period a few years ago only to see Frederick Andersen allow three highly questionable goals, including the egregious one through the five-hole that gave up the lead.  The Leafs lost 7-4 (one empty net goal).

The Leafs have lately looked pretty good, with Martin Jones in net.  But so has Winnipeg, Edmonton, Vancouver, New York Rangers, and Boston.

I am optimistic– I always am, this time of year, recently– about the playoffs.  The Leaf “core four” (Nylander, Matthews, Marner, Tavares) are a year older.  Tavares in not getting more effective, but the other three are entering the years in which most athletes are in their prime.  They also have the bitter experience of losing in the first round in six of the last seven playoffs (and the second round last year) to teams that appeared to be inferior to them.   They should know now how much grit, consistency, and determination is required to win a seven-game series.   They should be tougher, more resilient.  Matthews in particular seems to have stepped up his game.

I am suspicious of Nylander– he can be brilliant but he also gives the puck away far too often and sometimes seems to be coasting outside the blueline waiting for a pass.  Both he and Marner make risky passes and it’s hard to assess whether the pretty goals they generate outweigh the ugly goals they give up.  One immediately remembers overtime in a game against Boston this year in which Nylander turned back with the puck– a thing he likes to do too often– and fell.  He just fell, giving up the puck to the two deadliest forwards on Boston (and the game-winning goal).  The other night, he was coasting to the bench while Colorado was in full press mode towards the Leaf net.  They scored.

There is also hope in regard to the Leafs 3rd and 4th lines, and other secondary players like Matthew Knies who is improving in every game.   Jarnkrok in particular has become more effective, Domi is showing some determination and more skill, and Robertson occasionally threatens.

On defense, Rielly is actually playing better than he did last year when he seemed to be struggling at times and lost his instincts for contributing on offense.  Brodie and Giordano or good– not excellent– Liljegren seems to be improving.  McCabe can be forceful.  Timmins and Lagesson strike me as filler material.  They could use another good pick-handling defenseman.  The need a good defensive defenseman even more:  they often mishandle the puck in their own corners and end up running around chasing while the opposition sets up.

The Leafs made what I consider a major blunder is allowing Justin Holl to walk– I thought he had improved significantly over the past few years and  he is playing pretty well for Detroit– and an even bigger blunder is signing forward Ryan Reaves (thank goodness he’s out right now) and an incomprehensible blunder in signing John Klingberg (out for the season, I believe), who has a career -40 rating.

When Woll returns, will he be as effective as he was at the beginning of the season?  Will Jones continue his solid performances?  We haven’t seen Dennis Hildeby in action yet– he is a great unknown, a large (for goalie– for anybody) player at 6′ 7″ and 200 lbs.  The Leafs will almost surely start him at some point in the near future, for there is a perception out there that the Leafs have overworked their #1 goalies the last few years perhaps contributing to their disappointing performances in the playoffs.

So, as usual, I will expect the Leafs to finally advance further than the first round this year.  I expect Matthews, Marner, and Nylander– with their increased experience– to contribute more.  Matthews in particular seems more able than ever before to summon his formidable talents into a gritty two-way game that can actually redirect the teams momentum at crucial moments.   I hope the Leafs do pick up a solid defenseman somewhere for the playoff run.   And then we have to hope that Jones and Hildeby or Woll perform well.

Tavares?  Tonight, against Detroit, he was worse than ineffective.  He gave the puck way, lost almost every battle for the puck along the boards, and seemed slow and lethargic.  He was so awful I wonder if he is hurt.

The NHL is a very tough league.  The Leafs have shown this year that they can beat any team on a any given night.  Perhaps this is the year they finally show that they can win a seven-game series against a tough opponent.  If they do, they need the “core four” to perform well but I expect they will win only if they get unexpected contributions from players like Knies, Jarnkrok, and Domi.  The impact of sensational players like Matthews is generally not as great as most people think it is.  (I thought the Blue Jays were deluded in their vain attempt to sign Ohtani in the off-season: for the same money, they could have improved themselves at four or five other positions and that would have had a bigger impact on their overall success.)

Look at the winning teams for the past decades: they are comprised of a star or two, yes, but more importantly an assembly of strong secondary talents, reliable goal-tenders who don’t allow soft goals at crucial moments of the game, and defensemen who, once they have the puck, can smoothly move it out of the defensive zone to forwards who have positioned themselves to receive it and advance into the other team’s zone.  Justin Holl’s major fault, until last year, was the frequency with which he blindly shot the puck along the boards to the opposition point man, or passed the puck to players who were either being checked or didn’t exist.  Jake Gardiner, before him, was even worse at that.  This is the play before the play that results in cheap goals against.   Teams don’t win championships with great saves by their goalie (though Montreal, with Carey Price, came close a few years ago).  They win by preventing those chances in the first place.

The Leafs appear to me to have improved in this area.  Until recently.  They have recently looked weak and disorganized.  Both the power play and the penalty kill have been atrocious.

Given the level of talent on the club, you have to look elsewhere.  I believe it’s time to fire coach Sheldon Keefe.