THE YEAR THAT WAS
A sports look back at 2016
CC: It might be my age showing, but the year in sports, 2016 edition, was defined for me in bold headlines by the three aging icons of their respective sports who left us.
Muhammad Ali, Gordie Howe and Arnold Palmer, all of whom finally succumbed to health problems that had plagued them for years, were durable symbols of integrity and respect among fans and peers and historians and their passing — though it ended their suffering — leaves three empty chairs in the dwindling pantheon of sporting heroes. The Greatest, Mr. Hockey and The King. R.I.P.
On that happy note, Scott, how was it for you?
SS: We should have known something weird was up when Leicester City, a small club that had just avoided relegation, somehow managed to take down the giants of English football and win the Premier League. Then Cleveland — Cleveland! — won the NBA title when the Cavs came back from 3-1 down against the greatest regularseason team ever, the 73-win Golden State Warriors, and the madness was capped with the Chicago Cubs breaking the 108-year drought to win the World Series over the Indians. This was a relief, since two Cleveland championships in the same year would surely have brought the apocalypse.
CC: My year started with Peyton Manning ’s swan song, in which the Denver Broncos’ defence not only carried the rag-armed old Sheriff to a Super Bowl in which he basically was a passenger, but simultaneously crushed gifted Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, inflicting scars that still haven’t healed. Especially when they repeatedly hit him in the head unpenalized in the new season’s opener and the NFL was mum on the subject. Naturally, the concussion discussion raged on everywhere, not only in the NFL, but in the CFL and NHL and all through youth sports — and as the year ended, the leagues were no closer to finding a strategy to deal with a potentially existential threat.
SS: There was finally no crisis with the Toronto Maple Leafs, which delivered on new coach Mike Babcock’s promise, which is to say they were as bad as he warned they would be. But the team still had a wonder season: they kept the talented kids in the American Hockey League for most of the year, made no attempts to improve the NHL team and then they capped it with a draft lottery win for the rights to pick American teen star Auston Matthews. Suddenly, the rebuild was on the fast track. The Leafs are rich with young talent and they are some distance from being contenders, but they are unquestionably moving in the right direction. You have to live here to know how unusual that sounds.
CC: Not a single Canadian team made the Stanley Cup playoffs, so a-travelling we went to the Divided States. Those who thought Sidney Crosby was robbed of the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada’s best athlete of 2016 had more than a little ammunition — a Stanley Cup and Conn Smythe Trophy, a World Cup title and tournament MVP is pretty close to hitting for the cycle in hockey — but in Pittsburgh, they were quite content with the Penguins’ Cup win over San Jose. The stunner was that the Conn Smythe could as easily have gone to Phil Kessel, who not only came up big (not fat) in the post-season, but showed off a dandy sense of humour never before witnessed. Certainly not in Toronto.
SS: Speaking of the city that Canada loves to hate, it was a tough year for those who enjoy Toronto suffering. The Blue Jays made the ALCS for the second straight year and led the AL in attendance, the Raptors made the conference final for the first time and look like a decent bet to get back and even woebegone TFC made the title game — although lost on penalties in a scoreless game, suggesting the sports gods will only countenance so much Toronto good fortune. Speaking of which, the Argos finished tied for last in the CFL and had a wet firecracker of a season in their new home at BMO Field, which was capped by TFC star Sebastian Giovinco complaining about the impact on the pitch. So that could have gone better.
CC: The McLaren report, for me, was the most significant event in this Olympic year — sadly, probably bigger than anything an athlete accomplished in Rio, even Usain Bolt or Michael Phelps — because of the light the Canadian law professor’s investigation and two-part report shone on Russia’s duplicity and corruption and for what it could mean to the future of the Olympic movement. This isn’t going away. Already cities are declining to bid on Olympic Games because of the outlandish costs of staging them; IOC president Thomas Bach doesn’t also want the public’s wa- vering faith in Olympism to disintegrate completely on his watch and so far he has been awfully soft on an unrepentant offender.
SS: The McLaren reports of summer and winter provided a rather awkward bookend to the Games themselves. When the carnival that is the Olympics touched down in Rio de Janeiro, there were wor- ries about the water, the traffic, the safety, the organization. All had their issues to varying degrees, but the Games, as they always are, were saved by the athletes: Bolt, Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky and Ryan Lochte. OK, maybe not that last one. Canada also managed its best-ever haul in a non-boycotted Games with 22 medals, four of them to 16-year-old Penny Oleksiak in the pool. A good time was had by all. Just don’t expect the IOC to return to a developing nation anytime soon.
CC: My assignments, as usual, (notice how I made this sound like work?) wove in and around golf’s major events and this year’s selection was stunning: Jordan Spieth’s unforeseen Sunday collapse at the Masters, when he looked like he might hit a small bucket into Rae’s Creek in front of No. 12, Dustin Johnson conquering his personal demons and a deplorable USGA ruling to win his first major at the U.S. Open, then one of the greatest final-round duels ever — Henrik Stenson over Phil Mickelson at the Open Championship — and Mickelson’s redemption in September as the driving force behind the changes that ended up with the U.S. winning the Ryder Cup in front of a raucous and occasionally very rude crowd in Minnesota.
SS: Montreal’s Genie Bouchard once seemed a very safe bet to become the first Canadian to win a tennis major, but then 2015 happened. She improved in 2016, but didn’t come close to the highs of 2014. Meanwhile, Milos Raonic and his thunderous serve made the Wimbledon final, the Aussie Open semis and climbed all the way up to third in the world rankings, a Canadian record. The smart money is on him to win a major before Bouchard. Elsewhere in tennis, the Big Four have become more of a Big Two with age and injury catching up to Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal. And Serena Williams won just one Grand Slam, which means the women’s draw looks wide open again. Angelique Kerber won two majors. Oh, you hadn’t noticed? True story.
CC: Things that made me smile in 2016: 41-year-old Henry Burris winning the Grey Cup and the game’s outstanding player award when the Ottawa Redblacks upset the Calgary Stampeders juggernaut … Vancouver race-walker Evan Dunfee’s effortless grace in defeat and note-perfect articulation of the Olympic spirit after being bumped by a Japanese competitor 49-plus kilometres into the 50-km race in Rio and edged for the bronze medal … The sweetly sentimental end of Vin Scully’s 67 mellifluous years of broadcasting Dodgers games … Wayne Gretzky returning from self-imposed exile to the NHL as ambassador for its 100th anniversary season and as a consulting executive with the team he made famous, the Edmonton Oilers.
Things that made me scowl: CFL commissioner Jeffrey Orridge tap-dancing around the league’s concussion issue … foot-dragging by the manufacturers of outsized goaltending equipment … the proliferation of the coach’s challenge, taking the officiating of games out of the hands of the officials and submitting it, Zapruder-film style, to microscopic frame-by-frame analysis. Boring, time consuming and hardly foolproof. In short, bah, humbug.
SS: I will save my griping for the World Cup of Hockey, an exhibition that seemed totally unnecessary and deserving of the fate that almost befell it: a victory by Team Europe. The bright spot, I will admit, was the play of the under-23 North American team, which included the NHL’s ridiculous kid class: Connor McDavid, Matthews, Jack Eichel. Add in Patrik Laine and it’s the greatest influx of talent in recent memory, which is fantastic news for the NHL, except for the fact none of them play in major U.S. markets. The other good news is there will be no World Cup to moan about in 2017.
CC: Maybe no NHL in the Olympics, either. But that’s a topic for next year’s wrap. Happy New Year, sports.