NHL rookie debate yet to be decided
Is Laine better than Matthews? Come on, it’s been only two months
Items that may grow up to be columns, Vol. XVIII, Last Chapter:
Need to know: Another in a series of “Who’ll Be Better?” debates has broken out vis-à-vis Auston Matthews and Patrik Laine, the No. 1 and 2 overall picks in the June draft.
Clearly, we must have the answer immediately, if not sooner, because why would anyone let a little time pass first?
The Winnipeg Jets have played four more games than the Toronto Maple Leafs, 32 to 28, and Laine has four more goals (17-13) than Matthews and three more points (25-22). And he’s seven months younger than the Leafs’ forward, so there’s that.
But nothing is sillier than this argument, little more than a third of the way through a rookie season. Last year it was Connor McDavid versus Jack Eichel. And though we think now, a year later, that we have seen enough of McDavid to settle that one, all it takes is one awkward slide into the boards, or a torn-up knee or a concussion, and all bets are off.
Durability and longevity are parts of greatness, too. See Gretzky versus Lemieux.
Death and taxes: Hard to vote against a barely 16-year-old who wins four Olympic medals, including a gold, and inspires an entire Olympic team, but as always, the voting on the Lou Marsh Trophy set off a ministorm of bitterness over why (Your Choice Here) had a better 2016 than swimmer Penny Oleksiak.
Sidney Crosby? Awesome year — in a team game. High jumper Derek Drouin? Only perfect. Golfer Brooke Henderson? Arguably as good a season as any Canadian, male or female, ever put up. I might have voted for Sid myself. But Oleksiak achieved what no other Canadian in Olympic history ever has. Good for her.
Death and taxes II: As surely as night follows day, you knew that at some point Toronto FC’s heartbreaking shootout loss in the Major League Soccer championship to Seattle was going to be blamed on the condition of the turf because of the Toronto Argonauts sharing BMO Field.
It couldn’t be that TFC’s bigname players didn’t capitalize on the very few chances either team generated — Seattle won without a single shot on goal in 120 minutes of regulation and overtime. Nope, it was the turf.
On the other hand: In fairness to TFC’s Sebastian Giovinco, who was substituted in the 103rd minute because of cramps, he only cited field conditions as one possible explanation for why his best games were on the road this season and why his success at home last year was reversed as soon as the CFL players moved in and chopped up the field with their cleats.
There were only 13 days between the Grey Cup game and the MLS final, with a TFC-Montreal Impact semifinal in between, and December is not ideal weather for a grass field to regenerate. So it’s conceivable that uneven turf was a factor in so many clumsy first touches by Jozy Altidore and Giovinco and the referee wasn’t kind to the little Italian forward, either. But cramps? That’s a stretch.
One small step: The athletes spoke and the governing body listened. Chalk one up for the little guys.
When the members of Latvia’s sliding team declared they would boycott the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation world championships if it was held in Sochi, they started a movement among like-minded sliders from other countries — and lo and behold, the IBSF pulled the competition out of Russia.
Russian politician Igor Lebedev first mocked the stand taken by the Latvians, notably Olympic skeleton silver medallist and world champion Martins Dukurs, who was beaten for the gold at the Sochi Olympics by Alexander Tretiakov, one of the Russian athletes whose samples were tampered with, according to the McLaren Report.
“Nobody dies in world sport if Latvia does not come to the world championships in Sochi,” Lebedev said. “And who can follow Latvia? Lithuania? Estonia? Do not make me laugh.”
Gold medal-winning bobsledder Alexander Zubkov was another named in the McLaren Report and he has since been elected head of the Russian Bob- sleigh Federation. Makes perfect sense. Short strokes: David Walsh, the Irish chief sports writer of the Sunday Times of London whose dogged investigation helped expose the truth about Lance Armstrong, has been down this doping trail often enough to know why the IOC and other international bodies are loath to impose the ultimate penalty on chronic offenders (read: Russia). “Ultimately the people who run sport … exist to promote their own sports and their own interests. Doping is tedious and costly, bad for business,” he wrote this week. Absolute truth. … If you want to read about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s latest double standard — a year-long, trumped-up, faulty-science Deflategate mission to bring down Tom Brady and the Patriots versus the nothing-tosee-here dismissal of another underinflated balls charge involving the Pittsburgh Steelers — the Washington Post’s Sally Jenkins does a proper evisceration. It’s a beautiful thing.