News you need to get through the day …
A few scattered thoughts to ingest before the Thanksgiving Tryptophan kicks in …
EMPTY NET
Going into Saturday night’s game against Niagara, the Hamilton Bulldogs are the lowest-scoring team in the Ontario Hockey League with just eight goals in four games. By comparison, Oshawa has 26, Barrie has 25 and Sarnia has 24.
Oshawa rookie Nick Wong has seven all by himself in five games.
How slow a start is this? Last year the Bulldogs got their eighth goal just 68:02 into the season. Meanwhile, 13 of the 21 players who’ve seen action in at least one game this season don’t yet have a single point.
AT LEAST SOMEONE IS SCORING
There were 59 hat tricks throughout the entire 2016-17 NHL season. There have already been four — Connor McDavid, Brandon Saad, Alex Ovechkin and Wayne Simmonds — in the opening games of this season.
For good measure, Houston Astros’ second-baseman Jose Altuve hit three homers in the first game of the playoffs on Thursday night.
INSULT TO INSULT
First Kent Austin was calling the offensive plays for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Later June Jones was brought in to help. Art Briles was momentarily added to give offensive insight before that terrible idea blew up. Now Dan Morrison has been added to the offensive staff.
Think offensive co-ordinator Stef Ptaszek has been told often enough this year yet that he might want to accept any phone calls coming from Canadian universities for head-coaching vacancies?
THE ONLY ONE
Only one Bulldog — Connor Roberts — made it on NHL Central Scouting’s Players To Watch List which is an early-season guide to who might be hearing their name called come draft time next June.
However, the team’s third-round pick from 2016 was included. Jacob Pivonka chose to go to the United States Development Team instead of coming to Hamilton. And head coach John Gruden’s son, Jonathan, made the list. He was a draft pick of the London Knights but also chose to go to the U.S. team.
BEST NAMES ON THE LIST
The best five names on the Central Scouting list that we hope to hear NHL play-by-play guys screaming someday? 1. Nando Eggenberger 2. Jett Woo 3. Shaw Boomhower 4. Jan Sir 5. Matthew Grouchy In case you’re wondering, Grouchy has had only 28 penalty minutes in his year-and-a-bit junior hockey career.
STINGY MAROON
In six games this season, the McMaster Marauders football team has given up 244 fewer points than the Windsor Lancers, who they play next Saturday.
Four times this year already, the Lancers have been within a converted touchdown of giving up as many points as the Marauders have surrendered all season. One afternoon they gave up a staggering 81.
THE BUCK STARTS HERE
With the Ticats playing the Bombers on Friday night, it’s time to ask how it is that retired quarterback Buck Pierce suddenly has more national advertising profile today than he ever did while he was playing? That commercial he’s in seems to be on every four minutes these days.
STONER-WEAR
Canada’s Olympic team will look, well, rather Canadian marching into the stadium at Pyeongchang in February. For the most part, that’s a good thing. The overall look is effective. But a few questions for the designers from the Hudson’s Bay Company who created the uniforms:
Do a pair of well-worn, loose-laced Greb Kodiaks come with the lumberjack jackets (for the record, we used to call them stoner jackets back in the day while others have referred to them as Huntsville Tuxedos)? Do the Ottawa Redblacks get residuals for the look?
And did we really need our athletes to be decked out in an official Olympic onesie?
BOUNCE-BOUNCE-GOAL
Tickets will soon be on sale for a World Junior’s pre-tournament game at FirstOntario Centre. It goes Dec. 22 against Switzerland.
Last time we hosted a warm-up game, John Tavares scored one of the most-astonishing goals in hockey history when he juggled an airborne puck with his stick from behind the net to the front of the net and then batted it in.
CAN WE WATCH THE SOPRANOS ON IT?
The New Jersey Devils are unveiling the biggest in-arena scoreboard in the world this week. It’s apparently the same size as 1,300 50-inch TVs and covers more than 9,500 square feet, which would be more expansive than the square footage of most of the biggest houses in this area.
Pretty cool, right? The Devils’ president seems to think so.
“(This will) put Newark on the international map,” Hugh Weber says.
Sure. That, and having the sixth-highest murder rate in the United States. But let’s go with the scoreboard.