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OUA East Playoffs: Ravens in a Romp

Posted by :James Howden On : February 25, 2006
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The basketball dynasty in my back yard keeps rolling along. The Carleton Ravens should have been facing York, and the Lions are getting healthy at the right time. They’ve looked good recently. (They’ve looked good, that is, in game reports I read on the CUBDL, an email newsletter on Canadian university hoops. You didn’t think their games were televised, did you? A note to Dale Stevens, McMaster  Marauder loyalist and hoops devotee in Hamilton, at dstevens@mcmaster.ca, will get you in on the CIS hoop scoop.) York has played much of the year without their top scorer (last year’s OUA East Player of the Year, Dan Eaves) and rebounder (6’10” Jordan Foebel), and could have threatened the Ravens’ drive for a fourth straight national title.

But Queens went in and shocked Toronto, moving York into a matchup with Ottawa and earning themselves the privilege of getting drilled by 34 at the Ravens’ Nest. Ouch. My taxi run to pick up friends made us a bit late, and while we waited for a break in play before sitting down, Osvaldo Jeanty hit three treys in consecutive possessions. By the time we were settled, about 8 minutes in, so was the game. Aside from the Wizard of Os, nobody played all that great, and Coach Dave was fuming. (But then, he always does.) Wait, I should say that Rob Saunders is proving to be better than I realized (he’s been hurt lots, too), another one of those tough Carleton guys who isn’t great at anything but defends well, knows where the rim is and rebounds like a madman.

And El Predicto knew this game would be a blowout, but he goes farther: Ottawa U is going down tonight to York in the other East semifinal. Their terrific season (including that long-awaited win over the cross-town rival Ravens!) ends with a groan. Just a feeling.

Women (and Women) First

Posted by :James Howden On : February 22, 2006
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First things first: I come not to bury the Canadians, but to praise them. Cindy Klassen made her fourth Turin medal a golden one in the 1500 metres and right behind her was another Canuck, Kristina Groves. I think it was Klassen that I heard interviewed – another of these wonderfully appealing, superb-role-model Canadian women – who voiced the thought that speedskating was the most beautiful sporting movement there is. And it’s true: all that power, all that glide, all that grace, all that rhythm and sway.

I can remember a small-town school gymnasium with a TV on a stand. It was September 1972, and we were watching game 8 of the series with the Soviets. I remember dancing and yelling like a fool — we all were — when Paul Henderson scored The Goal. I went on to spend thousands more hours in high school gyms as athlete and especially as coach, and the CBC television inset of Klassen’s old high school gym rocking as she rolled just about made me burst. Those kids will be walking on air for a week. Sport is good. Now, Bob Knight is no model for me as a coach, but I admire his mind and his resolve. And he said it true when he noted the value of sports in a school: “It’s pretty hard to rally around a math class.”

Yes, and the Klassens and the Groves and that sweet surprise gold in the cross-country sprint by Chandra Crawford (and silver in that crazy short-track skating relay), all these great performances by Canuck women are almost certain to be bumped aside by a rather predictable loss by the men’s hockey team. Stumbling through the round robin got them Russia, and the Russians were just better. I am an official member of the Alexander Ovechkin fan club, and not just for that enormous winner he scored. He’s electric  out on the ice, power and speed and skill. Whew! Sad to see our boys go down, but the Russians played not only a victorious but a beautiful brand of hockey.

And how’s this for analysis? Sam, my five-year-old, is learning to skate on our Tiny Perfect Backyard Rink™ and his hockey baptism is coming along nicely, but he’s never really watched a game before. He came in to watch the last few minutes of Russia-Canada, and though he had trouble finding the puck, he quickly began to be able to follow the game and knew which team was in red. He heard his old man moaning a bit, but he came up with this insight completely on his own: “Hey, don’t go in the corner, go to the net!” And on that wide Olympic surface, Ovechkin and company were regularly able to get to prime scoring territory while the Canadians spent most of their time in the offensive zone mucking in the corners. It was obvious even to a little sprout like Sam. Grinders ‘R Us, even with our best guys (?) on the ice. Sigh.

A Win is a Win, But…

Posted by :James Howden On : February 21, 2006
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Well, the scoreboard read Canada 3, Czech Republic 2 in Olympic Men’s Hockey, but it’s surely another of those cases where a win isn’t that helpful, and I’m not just talking about getting a different quarter-final draw than the Russians. It’s not helpful because, as one commentator quoted Canadian hockey man John Muckler as saying, “You never criticize a win.” And there’s probably not enough time to learn and apply anything from that game anyway, but I can’t see us beating the Russians if their goaltending is decent.

That first-period 3-0 lead was a relief at the time, but it seemed to make the announcers think the Canadians were playing well. They were better than they’d been, Brodeur was good in the net, and he was about to be sensational in the second and third periods where the Czechs skated and skilled rings around our guys. But even in the first period, I thought the Czechs had more good chances, and without two gift goals would have been down only a singleton. I can understand Canadian national soccer sides playing an effort-based, toughness-centred, keep-it-simple style, because they are consistently out-talented. But I hear us crowing all the time about the wealth of Canadian talent available to selectors. There is sure a lot of volume, but if we are indeed more talented than other nations, it sure seems odd that we play the game we invented as if underdog pluck and desperation were the only cards we had.

Olympic Hit List, Part X

Posted by :James Howden On : February 20, 2006
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When it comes to the individual Olympic sports, I’m pretty much a traditionalist. Alpine skiing does it for me far more than snowboard stuff does. The latter, in addition to the aggressively care-less attitude of some of the competitors, strikes me as a sport that Americans invented because they weren’t dominating skiing. Sorry for the cynicism. Anyhow, the deep traditions of alpine skiing mean at least a couple of things. One, there is a history to the sport, and great competitors and brilliant events, that give greater lustre to the renewal of a relatively longstanding event. This leads inevitably to a second fact: because of this history, there is also an enormous body of young athletes and experienced coaches and a competitive system that produces greatness.

In so many of the marginal or new-kid-on-the-block sports, on the other hand, I have to wonder, “How many people actually DO this?” Can’t remember who wrote it – Stephen Brunt from the Globe and Mail is a likely candidate – but one retrospective on Canadian performances at the Sydney Olympics argued that the greatest was Kevin Sullivan’s 5th place in the 1500 metres. Given the number of possible countries and athletes vying for this elemental and prestigious track race, an Olympic top 5 is worth any number of synchronized diving medals. Not many Africans (not many anyones) have the facilities, the economic privilege, of even recreational diving.

I can’t help thinking about beach volleyball. (Warning: a severe rant warning has been posted. Too late to say “Don’t get me started!!” Sorry.) No doubt these are good players – I’ll ignore for the moment that over-the-hill Real Volleyball players can then be put out to pasture on the beach – but this should not be an Olympic sport. It exists because of partial female nudity; the men’s competition is tacked on for gender equity reasons. Because it is an Olympic Sport, we get to watch shots of (admittedly quite remarkable) upper and lower female cleavages, salacious views that would normally be intolerable during day- or prime-time viewing. It’s cheesecake. Soft porn with spiking, mud wrestling with sunglasses and some bonus athleticism.

I won’t even go into how repetitive and limited it is compared to the variety and power of the real thing, actual Volleyball. I’ve played a little beach and, though I’m a poor volleyball player, I liked it. I know how good these beach players are, and I’m sure the game makes for great off-season development. If I was a volleyball coach, all my players would be encouraged to play. I was a basketball coach, and I wanted my guys to play all the summer driveway one-on-one, all the half-court 3 on 3 in the park that they could. But that doesn’t mean I’d want Asphalt Basketball in the Olympics. The real game is already there.

Bobsleigh Silver

Posted by :James Howden On : February 19, 2006
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Well, now I’m compromised. I hate it when Canadians win at sports I don’t respect much. (See: Sydney Olympics, synchronized diving. Sheesh.) The bobsled competition reminds me of what Larry Walker said when the Rockies outfielder wasn’t Canada’s top male athlete after a National League MVP season: “I got beat by a car.” (The nominal winner was Jacques Villeneuve, whose career went south when he no longer drove that car.) It’s not quite the same situation, except that when the equipment is as important as the athletes, I just can’t get too excited. I’m irritated, too, when success looks far less interesting to the TV audience than failure does. (Take a memo, snowboard cross.) The morbid allure of catastrophe can’t be a criterion for a good and worthy sports event.

Unless they’re Canadians named Pierre Lueders and Lascelles Brown and they’re winning a silver medal. (And refusing to talk, afterwards, and to their credit, about their suspicions on the mysterious but widely alleged modifications to the gold medal German sled. Digression complete. Well, except for noting the ironic timing of the similar grumbling after the Daytona 500 was won by a car – yes, I said a car, and not Rusty or Jimmy or whoever it was at the wheel – whose chief mechanic was suspended for illegal monkeying. But I digressed again.) Lueders is a tough and competitive guy. Brown seems a pleasant fellow, too, and his story of getting his Canuck citizenship in the nick so that he could compete was a sweet one. So was Lueders’s reaction to it as he hearkened back to understand why his own immigrant parents had come to Canada and how lucky he felt as a result. Go, Canada! Go, Citizenship and Immigration Canada!

But come on. The sport is fast, it has deep roots, but when the brakeperson can make the Olympics a few months after their first run, as was the case with a couple of Canadian sleds and presumably some others, it’s somewhat discredited in my mind. Find a not-quite-good-enough track athlete or football player, and teach him or her how to push a souped-up toboggan for 5 seconds, jump in and pray. Olympia! Sorry, Pierre, and you, too, Lascelles, but bobsled doesn’t make the Howdy Olympics. If pressed to pick a sliding sport for the Big Owe, I’m surprised to be leaning toward skeleton, the crazy, X-games-ish, new kid on the adrenalin-rush block. Tradition isn’t my only criterion, apparently.

Hockey Fright in Canada

Posted by :James Howden On : February 19, 2006
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Let me be the 7,758,901st to join the national hand wringing in Canada over the desperate fate of Canada’s Olympic men’s hockey team. Let’s say, first, what it’s NOT about.

It’s not about Wayne Gretzky’s choice of wives or assistant coaches. The possible existence of a betting ring involving an NHL coach (Rick Tocchet, not the Wayner) is a serious matter for the integrity of league play, but it has nothing to do with Canada’s performance in Turin. And now for a few suggestions about what is going on.

Europeans play great hockey, and it is a generally more highly skilled brand than Canadian kids are encouraged, coached or, I daresay, even allowed to play. (So long as Don Cherry’s anti-finesse opinions are taken as gospel in Canadian hockey circles, a genuine commitment to skill development has serious obstacles. The kind of Canuck chauvinism that he quivers with makes learning from what the European system does well more difficult than it ought to be. They have not hesitated, it seems to me, to learn from the best of Canadian hockey – and there’s a lot to love. And emulate.)

If having the best team win is your object, the Olympic “lose and go home” system after the round robin is not a good system. The nature of the hockey beast – especially that dominating presence, the Hot (or horseshoes-up-his-hind-end) Goaltender – does not lend itself to one-game eliminations, although it does allow for vastly inferior teams to ice the occasional miracle, which makes for sappy but popular movies. (See: Lake Placid, men’s hockey. The United States got to have its cake and eat it, too, being the sympathetic underdog and still getting the golden glory. Perfect! Sweden’s defeat of the American women, despite being outshot by more than 2 to 1, is the karmic companion for the Americans. Sweden’s turn to make the movie.) Hockey is best played in elimination series, but I’m flaying a dead giraffe. That’s the Olympics. Deal with it.

It’s too early to tell if the Gretzky Gang, though, have chosen the right players. Our two most mobile defenders are hurt, it’s true. With four years between Olympics, we may have favoured experience too much; it downplays the experience gained by the youngsters in between Games, not to mention the eroding skills of vets who were on top in ’02. It seems certain that we would have been loyal to Lemieux and Yzerman had they not had the grace to bow out. On that big surface, with all that youth and speed, Canada would have been hobbled by them, I’m sorry to have to say about such wonderful players. Like a lot of people, I wish that Staal and Crosby were there; watching the young Russians, with their furious speed and skill, is breathtaking when they’re going well.

I repeat: it’s too early to tell.

You Call THAT Olympic?

Posted by :James Howden On : February 17, 2006
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Snowboard cross. Yes, friends and neighbours, if the inclusion of snowboarding in the Olympics didn’t strike you as JunkSportFriendly enough, we get to combine it with braying hopped-up motorbikes ‘n’ mud (and, of course, roller derby) to get this goofy thing. “Boardercross” the cool kids call it. Oh, it crossed the border, all right. OUT of the Olympics, say I! It emphatically lands on the Howdy Hitlist of alleged sports to be dumped from the Summer and Winter Olympics. More on the List anon.

One good thing about “boardercross”, though: it did get me to snap the friggin’ television off. The women’s final, I decided, was something I would watch because there were, after all, two of our great Canadian girls in it, ranked one and two, Ricker and Maltais, an Anglophone and a Francophone, storybook time! Storybook, that is, if you like trainwrecks. So Maëlle Ricker goes down in a scary heap for no reason the cameras picked up. (And has at least a concussion, apparently.) Dominique Maltais goes flying through the netting. Two to go, ye smiting and petulant gods, but I’d had enough. “This is ridiculous.” Click.

This was almost as bad as an overmatched but fabulously lucky Australian somehow becoming the short-track speedskating champion in Salt Lake City. (Yes, the Steven Bradbury factor. “To Bradbury” is now in the Aussie lexicon, a verb meaning to succeed when you had no business doing so. Luckily – well, by “virtue” of being slower than his competitors – he avoided the crashes of the fast guys. I like it when “slow and steady” works in the steadfast course of a long life, but not in an Olympic race.) (Yes, and short-track speedskating is out, too. What’s next in the Summer Olympics: 400 metre hurdle races run in high school gyms? Now there’s an idea…) Anyway, back to boardercross: I flipped it off in disgust, and therefore missed the Olympifarcical sight of the (should’ve been) easy winner, the American Lindsey Jacobellis, falling flat on her hot dog buns and allowing a surprised Swiss, Tanja Frieden, to Bradbury her way to one of the silliest gold medals ever awarded.

Boardercross is too random, too made-for-TV, and the Olympic event has little enough importance to the competitors themselves that a show-off move is worth the risk of winning, and chaotic results are met with a shrug. That’s boardercross. Yes, my point, exactly. Gonzo. (And don’t come back.)

Hockey, Russian Style

Posted by :James Howden On : February 16, 2006
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Did you see the Russians today? Lord, they play a dazzling brand of hockey! The Red Men looked spectacular in a dominating 5-0 win versus Sweden. Gosh, I wish we were paying more attention to how the Russians train their kids to skate and handle. They are sometimes accused of being selfish, but much of that comes from the resentment of the less-skilled. You know: “Oh, so-and-so’s a hot dog. Yeah, he’s good BUT…” You could even see it in the way that Reverend Cherry rumbled and threatened brimstone last year (remember this?) when Sidney Crosby scored with a lacrosse-like high-altitude wraparound goal. Sounds like sour Grapes to me. (Yes, I meant to do that.) (If you missed the pun, please proceed directly to the next paragraph.)

I like to make sweeping diagnoses that lend gravitas and grandeur to things like, oh, hockey. Try this on for size. In Canada, we still have a lingering and rather Puritan suspicion of the arts, and you can see it even in our approach to hockey. We like determination, a workmanlike approach, aw-shucks humility, and straight lines. Up and down the wing. Shoot it out. Dump it in. Keep it simple. Don’t be a smarty-pants, young fella! Who do you think you are? Russia, meanwhile, has a deep tradition of reverence for dance, music, poetry and all forms of expression. They revere (too much in some cases, no argument here) the great ones, the Talents. They are much less likely than we are, it seems from the outside, to routinely cut down their “tall poppies” for being so gosh-darned, well, tall. So skill and speed and creativity and, yes, artistry are all valued and nurtured in their players. So they don’t play in straight lines. Their number one objective is not to throw the puck into the corner and then grub and grunt to get it back…

At a certain point in the history of our great rivalry, the Russians realized that they could learn something from the legendary Canadian “grit” that we all love to talk about. They will dump the puck and chase it now when teams sit back and clog the blueline. They can be tough in the corners (after all, there’s not a long learning curve for those skills — you have to be tough and you have to be willing). They can cycle the puck in those corners, too, because who else can turn so nimbly and accelerate so quickly? But what have Canadians learned from Russians? Not every Russian can dazzle like Alexander Ovechkin — he is a prodigy — but why is it that seemingly every pro-ready Russian can stickhandle at top speed and get that wrong-foot shot away instantly while even the great Canadians can’t? I answered this question more fully in an article you can find here, but basically it comes down to Canadian chauvinism: we think we’re the best, and therefore have nothing to learn from anybody.

Canada still has far more players in the NHL, the world’s best league, than any other country. We still do lots of international winning, and our juniors did it again this year. But if we weren’t so arrogant about it, maybe we’d have more of the showstopping stars and not only the guys in the orchestra pit or the corps de ballet. Sorry for the arts references, but you know what I mean. Maybe football’s a better example: we produce the hockey equivalent of offensive lineman and tight ends, but the QBs and RBs and wideouts are rare. (And this is no mere analogy: ask any CFL roster!) I want the Canadian lads to lead in the skills department as much as they do in the realms of desire and toughness, and I don’t think they need to be mutually exclusive. Not, at least, if we’re willing to learn something from the Russian (or Czech or Swedish…) way of developing hockey players. As the saying goes, It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.

Competitive Greatness. Or Not.

Posted by :James Howden On : February 14, 2006
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First candidate for Howdy’s Handy Olympic Hitlist: snowboard halfpipe. Reason One: see “made for TV” comments from a few days ago. Two: “Look. Another guy did a 720. Wow.” They all look the same to me. Three: the athletes themselves don’t even care that much. With all their rebel, streetcore, skateboard-north cool, the Olympics are no big deal, and they’re determined to demonstrate it. Groovy. Go back to the X-games, then.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Damn! It happened to our man Jeremy again. Wotherspoon seemed to self-destruct in an Olympic race in which he was favoured, the long-track speedskating 500 metre sprint. It wasn’t quite a reprise of the Salt Lake Two-Step, but he must be bitterly disappointed. If he was a baseball player, we’d say he was gripping the bat so tightly it was turning to sawdust. In the great basketball wizard John Wooden’s Pyramid of Success, the top block of the triangle is titled “Competitive Greatness”. It has changed a little to reflect more peaceful themes, but I like the original contents of the “CG” block: “Be at your best when your best is needed. Real love of a hard battle.” But beyond a certain level, you can’t coach this. I have no doubt that Wotherspoon wants this more than most elite athletes do. “Try easier,” I would have liked to tell him. (Yes, if Coach Howdy had been there, gold medals all ’round!)

Jerk that I am, I’m on my couch doing psychological assessments of this gifted and dedicated athlete, one of the great skaters in the sport’s history. This brings me perilously close to that most immature tendency of the sports fanatic: to resentfully criticize a homegrown athlete or my favourite team for their failure to make me feel better about myself. That can’t be good.

Running Up the Score

Posted by :James Howden On : February 12, 2006
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Welcome to the Olympics, Italian pucksters! The Canadian women whacked ‘em 16-0 yesterday, and no doubt there will be accusations of running up the score. (Disclosure: I was the goaltender on the receiving end of a 22-0 shellacking when I was 11 or so, and rather enjoyed it; made some of my best saves and learned a lot about being a goalie and about how hard I could focus and try. My team was awful, my coach made a terrible error in scheduling, and I couldn’t lose. Bliss.) The red and white are on a mission, though, and the goal differential as a tie-breaker is a big part of the problem.

But this wasn’t necessarily the worst humiliation for the Italians. Sometimes you can shame a team worse by obviously going through the motions; it may not be so obvious to TV viewers, but the players always know. Hey, it’s the Olympics, kids. You embarrass people all the more by laughing and chuckling while you beat them by 6, and you sure as skatin’ don’t get yourself ready to play the USA.