The long, strange march to the Summer Cup

In all the long and sometimes undignified history of Lord Stanley’s Cup, there has never been a more improbable march to the championship of the National Hockey League. From the “play-in” games in July to the two southernmost teams battling it out for the Cup in the league’s northernmost city in late September and finishing …

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The Monday Morning Quarterback on Patrick Laine, Victor Hedman, the Ex-Rays, the Impact and more!

So you want to see towering Patrick Laine in a Habs uniform? Really, really, really? Okay then, here’s what you do: Repeat after me, bridles &&&& gals: Patrick Laine. Patrick Laine. Patrick Laine. Say it often enough and perhaps the deal will happen. Much as I dislike these exercises in futility, where people work up …

Repeat after me: Patrick Laine, Patrick Laine, Patrick Laine…

Repeat after me, bridles &&&& gals: Patrick Laine. Patrick Laine. Patrick Laine. Say it often enough and perhaps the deal will happen. Much as I dislike these exercises in futility where people work up depth charts based on players you don’t have, I do like the idea of Laine on the first line next to …

On four ash trees, gone before their time…

We lost four great old ash trees this month – or rather the skeletons of four old ash trees. They had been dead for a year or two, all of them, tall and stark and leafless, but it costs a lot to bring down a big tree, even a dead one, and I hate the …

The Bettman game – an 82-game season beginning in early January? Uh, no…

&&&&& here we are on the World Wide Web, blurs & gams, where the planet’s largest Girl Scout Bake Sale is underway 24/7 and it seems like everywhere you go, SOMEBODY is trying to sell you cookies. … Where were we? Ah, yes – Gary Bettman’s plan to start an 82-game NHL season somewhere between …

On a long friendship between reader and writer, gone too soon…

When you’ve been writing newspaper columns for decades, you develop relationships with some of your readers. Not buddy-buddy have a beer every Thursday night, but friendships that transcend the years and even shift from platform to platform. When I was a full-time Gazette columnist, sometimes writing every day of the week, I had a long …

Don’t look now, but the MMQB is baaaack…

&&&&&&& yes, boils & goils, the Monday Morning Quarterback is baaaaaaaack! For a concatenation of sporting events such as the world has never seen! Back with heroes & zeros! Back to ruin your breakfast! Back because everyone needs somebody to hate! And back because it’s been at least a week since I’ve received an email …

California is our future – and it’s burning

I think of California as a peek into our collective future. From the headlong greed of the Gold Rush in 1849 through Hollywood in the early part of the 20th century, Haight-Ashbury and the hippies, urban sprawl and smog, and the vast military spending that has fueled the state’s gigantic economic engine since the Cold …

On boys behaving… well?

Not so long ago, it seemed as though sportswriting was really the Boys Behaving Badly beat.  Every week there was something new, and most of it was bad. Barry Bonds turning himself into a chemistry laboratory to the point where his cranium swelled like a giant balloon. Tiger Woods frustrating his wife to the point …

Karaoke: the worst Japanese import since Pearl Harbor

My brother-in-law’s brother (sorry, the name is being withheld to protect the guilty) is the worst singer I have ever heard. On a good day, he sounds like a suffering cow trying to harmonize with an air horn. You don't even want to think about the bad days. Not only is he incapable of hitting …