Now’s the time to change some NHL trophy names
After watching Herb Carnegie play, Conn Smythe apparently offered $10,000 to anyone who could turn Carnegie’s skin colour to white.
He was being facetious, of course. He was also being racist.
Carnegie was more than good enough to play in the National Hockey League in the late 1940s, early 1950s, years before Willie O’ree. The Maple Leafs and the rest of the NHL wouldn’t sign him.
He never got the chance to play at the highest level because he was Black.
The trophy that goes to the most valuable player in the Stanley Cup playoffs is named for Smythe. Named for a racist. It shouldn’t be anymore.
This is as powerful a time as any for National Hockey League officials to take a good look at the names on all their trophies and determine the worthiness of each of them.
But the best place to start is with the Conn Smythe, especially at a time when the NHL is preaching inclusiveness and diversity.
Why not name the playoff MVP after Carnegie’s old teammate with the Quebec Aces, Jean Beliveau? He was the first recipient of the Smythe award in 1965. No one has ever represented hockey better than Beliveau did.
Another trophy name to consider changing: The James Norris Trophy for best defenceman. Norris used to run the Detroit Red Wings, had majority ownership of the New York Rangers and lent money to the Boston Bruins all at the same time in the six-team NHL. The N in NHL in those days stood for Norris. This one is an easy change if you’d like. The best defenceman award should be named for the best defenceman ever, Bobby Orr. Simple, really . ... So many of the people screaming about Auston Matthews’ privacy being violated by my report of him testing positive for COVID-19 were remarkably silent just a few days earlier when reports of Ezekiel Elliott’s positive test came out. That story was broken by the NFL Network. And almost immediately became part of daily conversation on ESPN . ... Here in hockey-crazed Canada, the same networks and news outlets that have turned a blind eye to the Matthews story, like it didn’t happen — not even mentioning it on television — reported Elliott’s situation without delay. So is Matthews’ privacy more important or more valuable than Elliott’s? Or has the hockey culture gone silent once again? ... Frederik Andersen, for those interested, is home and safe in California and will be in Toronto shortly to begin training with the Maple Leafs. He was with Matthews for most of the past few months in Arizona . ... Some have compared the Buffalo Sabres purge of more than 20 hockey employees to the Brendan Shanahan house cleaning of 2015 in Toronto that included the firing of Dave Nonis, Dave Poulin and Claude Loiselle. Here’s the difference, though: Shanahan took an entire year to evaluate the individuals who worked for him and with him. At the end of the year, he made major changes. He moved some people around. Sabres president Kim Pegula fired general manager Jason Botterill three weeks after giving him a vote of confidence and replaced him with Kevyn Adams. Adams called at least one scout and probably more and basically said “I don’t know you, but you’re fired.”
Their purge was hardly methodical.
Before there was Colin Kaepernick and his knee, there was Maya Moore. And so little attention. Not that she was looking for any. Moore was ahead of the curve when it came to sports figures protesting in America and fighting for what’s right. She wore a T-shirt and had other members of the Minnesota Lynx wearing shirts that read: “Change Starts with Us. Justice and Accountability.” That was in Minneapolis, long before George Floyd was murdered, one month before Kaepernick took a knee for the first time in an
NFL pre-season game to protest police brutality in America. And quietly, since that beginning with the Lynx, and because the WNBA doesn’t get all that much attention, the veteran Moore has been one of the most impressive, engaged athletes in America.
She took off last season to devote herself to freeing a man convicted of a crime she does not believe he committed. She will take next season off as well — still fighting to find a way to free Jonathan Irons. In the trial that sent Irons to prison and sentenced to 50 years for burglary and assault, the evidence apparently was flimsy. There were no fingerprints, footprints, DNA or blood evidence to connect Irons to the crime. Moore is working with lawyers in her attempt to free Irons. Whether she plays again in the WNBA isn’t known, although she expects to be back. But she’s already made her mark, making a difference where it matters most.
The NBA has work to do when it comes to increasing its diversity. In a league where the majority of players are Black, there are no Black head trainers, there are no Black team play-by-play men, there is one head of a media relations staff who is Black, and one team president, Masai Ujiri. That isn’t good enough. Not even close to good enough. And that needs to change . ... Alphonso Davies, rookie of the year in the Bundesliga: nice way to say hello to the soccer world and announce your arrival for the young Canadian . ... No one goes looking for a story on someone having tested positive for COVID-19. It’s not what we do. You trip over it, accidentally. Somebody says the wrong thing to somebody. Once you have it confirmed and the lawyers say it’s OK, you go with it. Once it’s reported, and the accuracy is verified, closing your eyes and pretending it didn’t happen just isn’t right.