November 17 2007

A long time ago in an environment far removed from today's NHL Sam Pollock held the rest of the league by the entry-draft throat. From 1970 to '78 Sam hel 25 first round draft picks and with them he built a dynasty. When will the other general managers ever learn.

Three names in the hockey news over the past week; Don Waddell, Doug Armstrong and John Ferguson Junior.

Last February Atlanta General Manager Maddell traded two fiirst round draft picks to get Keith Tkaczuk for a playoff run that lasted four games.

In Dallas, Armstrong traded last year's first round draft pick to Phoenix for unrestricted free agent Ladislav Nagy and then next year's first round pick for defenseman Mattias Nordstrom of the Kings. Nagy jumped to Los Angeles in the off season and dallas" playoff run lasted seven games.

And in Toronto John Ferguson Junior traded away all four of his first round draft picks since joining the team. In return he received Brian Leetch and goaltenders Andrew Raycroft and Vesa Toskala. It will be a decade before the Leafs recover from that kind of mismanagement.

P.T. Barnum said there"s one born every minute. The NHL proves the adage.
The suckers are out there and they're not hard to find if you go looking for them.

Does anyone care to bet who will be the first to pick the pocket of new Dallas Stars general manager Brett Hull?

November 10 2007

I don't know whether the phrase is an anachronism (considering the times, it probably is) but when I was a kid it was drummed into my head that "cheaters never prosper". That was well before Bill Belichick, Pete Rose and most blantantly, the steroid users of sporting life.

And what a mess we have now. There's much talk of upgrading the medals of the runners who finished behind the now-disgraced Marion Jones at the Sydney Olympics. The problem is, in at least one instance and probably in every case the runner or runners that finished behind Jones were on the "juice" as well.

Ben Johnson won the 100 metres at Korea in 1988 and flunked doping. That moved Carl Lewis to gold and Linford Christie to silver. Later it was learned that four of the top five finishers used steroids including Lewis and Christie. Only Johnson lost a medal.

In 1976 Canada was the first host-nation to fail to win at least one gold medal. That was the year of the East German women swimmers. If the IOC were to strip all of those medals Canada would have become a swimming powerhouse with 4 silver medals and gold medals for Nancy Garapick and Cheryl Gibson.

This is the trap we're in. The fix was in for Sale and Pelletier in figure skating and Sylvie Frechette in synchronized swimming and the best the IOC could do to repair it was declare a tie for the gold. Steroids have turned sports into a hopeless swamp from which there appears to be no escape.

November 3 2007

Forgive me if you've heard this before. "Steroids are dangerous."

This week at a conference in Iceland a lengthy study was released of former East German athletes who were victims of the doping that surfaced during the
1976 Olympics here in Montreal. Among the horrifying results; among 52 female competitors who were forcefed anabolic steroids 38 percent suffered severe depression with suicidal tendancies. Thirty-two of the fifty-two underwent psychiatric therapy. And a quarter suffered from some form of cancer. The risk of miscarriage and stillbirth was thirty-two times higher than the normal German population. And, where one would expect the heredity of great athleticism to be passed on; of sixty-nine children what he have is a staggering number of physical deformities, mental handicap, allergies and asthma.
The DDR swimmers of 1976 are now in their early fifties and the bill has come due.

And still the chearing continues practically unabated. Latest from the steroid wars? It cost two-million dollars to formulate a test to discover EPO, the steroid of choice among cyclists. No sooner had the test been put into effect, the competitors with their backyard technology found a way to short circuit it by polluting the urine test with a few grains of common soap powder.

And so it goes in the unending and seemingly hopeless war on performance enhancers.

October 27 2007

They have taken to calling the state for world professional boxing "alphabet soup". There's the WBO, WBA, WBC and IBF. All of them naming champions and contenders and seldom do the twain meet. For that reason most boxing enthusiasts look to Ring Magazine for the true picture.

Last Friday night in Montreal the IBF named Lucian Bute their junior middleweight champion after a TKO win over Alejandro Berria. While Berria had been listed the IBF champion, Ring Magazine did not recognize him among the top ten contenders. The best junior middleweight is the immensely talented Joe Calzaghe of England. Calzaghe has held the WBO title for ten years; successfully defending it 20 times. In two weeks he'll fight Ring's number one contender Mikkel Kessler of Denmark, the holder of the WBC and WBA titles.

So, while it's a Montreal feel-good story that Bute is undefeated and has a piece of a world title, in Ring Magazine all it got him was a one-notch bump in the rankings--to 4th. High altitude to be sure, but there's still a lot of work to be done.

October 23 2007

The problems that Guillaume Latendress and Maxime Lapierre have had finding consistancy in the NHL re-enforce theories about rushing the careers of young athletes.

Forget about hockey for a moment and consider the brutal mishandling of the Michelle Wie in golf. Egged on by parents and agents, she was forced, not only to onto the LPGA tour at the age of 14 but also in a monumental case of poor judgement she also played on the men's tour.

Wie turned 18 last week and a once promising career is now in shambles. Her scoring average was 76 this year. She did not shoot one round in the 60's. Wie made a tournament cut only twice. Rather than deal with the family any longer her agent quit this week after only one year.

There is a lesson here, one that has been taught dozens of times through the years. Unfortunately like many lessons there are those who fail to learn from them and find themselves doomed to repeat them. And, repeat we have seen and will continue to see as long as the dreams of parents and agents outstrip the welfare of their charges

October 13 2007

This week in the Gazette our friend Red Fisher is listing the greatest trades the Canadiens have made over the years which got me to thinking about the worst. And without a doubt the worst was Patrick Roy to the Colorado Avalance. Next to the Flyers trading for Eric Lindros it was probably the worst trade in NHL history. The Canadiens at the time had the perfect management storm; a president Ron Corey; a general manager - Rejean Houle and a coach- Mario Tremblay none of whom had a clue. Houle had been general manager only 5 weeks at the time.

So it became Patrick along with team captain Mike Keane to the Avalanche for Jocelyn Thibault, Martin Rucinsky and Andre Kovalenko. Looking down from the Forum Pressbox the next home game my first thought was ---for the first time in my memory there was not one potential Hall-of-Famer on the Canadiens. That was the major damage. The heart was taken right out of the organization.

Twelve years, six coaches and two general managers later the team is still trying to regain it's stature. They finally seem to be on the right track but, for all of those great trades over the years, the Canadiens were stung badly one time and it turned out to be a franchise breaker.

October 6 2007

Gambling and sports have long been uncomfortably wedded. For worse more than better. The possibility of easy money led to the Black Sox scandal in 1919; the college basektball point-shaving scandals of 1951 and 1978; Pete Rose in the 80's. The NHL had Don Gallinger and Billy Taylor in 1948 and Rick Tocchet last year.

Until recently the incidents were isolated but there have been six major betting scandals in the last seven years including Italian and German soccer, South African cricket and, of course the NBA's Tim Donaghy to name a some.

And now, tennis.

The Russian mafia reportedly offered Noval Djokovich two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars to throw a match in Moscow this year. The watch was put on Nikolai Davydenko after strange betting patterns before one of his matches in Poland.

Where the money's big the crooks will flock. It's unavoidable. The
sports talk stations feature dozens of commercials for on-line gambling.
The Quebec government flogs ttheir lotteries with a whispered and insincere "you have to be eighteen to gamble" at the end. And every day we become a little more cynical. And we have to ask ourselves "are the athletes doing their best or, are gamblers ensuring that they aren't."