From Cork to Toronto

As predicted, the Philadelphia Flyers have reacted to the 20-game suspension by sending Downie to the AHL , where he may or may not be banned for the term depending on review. Recently Chelsea were brought up by the Football Association for a charge of " failing to control their players " and it strikes me that the Flyers are getting off pretty lightly here. Downie was playing pre-season under an existing suspension after all, not to mention a well known series of other incidents starting with an on-ice finale to an off-ice hazing ritual. Indeed, the OHL and Hockey Canada might have their own case to answer on how Downie got in his current situation, since his former coach claims to have recommended Downie be told to enter counselling but nothing came of it. So what's the solution? If a player receives a suspension, even in pre-season, he may not be released, traded or sent down for the duration of the suspension, and while pay could be docked it could not be counted...

This seems like a portrait of blind-sided outrage, right? Burke said he wasn't actually angry at the offer sheet, but rather the amount of money offered – Penner will go from making $450,000 a season to $4.25 million a year. "I have no problem with offer sheets, they are part of the CBA," Burke said. "I think it's a tool certainly a team is entitled to use. My issue here is this is the second time this year in my opinion Edmonton have offered a grossly inflated salary for a player, and it impacts on all 30 teams and I think it's an act of desperation by a general manager who is fighting to keep his job." The way it all came down also bothered Burke. "I was not notified of this until an agent faxed it into us," he said. "I thought Kevin would have called me and told me it was coming. I thought that was gutless." I mean, if someone had told him it was coming, he could have negotiated a new contract with Penner and avoided this unpleas...

I'm sure Jason Cherniak could find a way to justify this - I sure as hell can't.  From the beginning of the manoeuvering to acquire and move the Nashville Predators, the thing that didn't seem to be missing was money. Jim Balsillie was throwing down 240 million US dollars to acquire a team worth far less than that, having failed in a 175 million offer for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Meanwhile, in the Manitoba Provincial Election, the Manitoba Liberals decried the Tories pledge to assist the bringing of a team back to Winnipeg , and the NDP's assertion that they would be more likely to make it happen sooner, better etc. No money mentioned (directly anyway), but Bob McCown ridiculed it as a stunt on the FAN590. All very principled by the Libs but you could understand in a way that in an underpopulated province like Manitoba it might take government grease to make it happen. Not in Ontario, though. Not in the Golden Horseshoe. Not with deposits for season tickets alre...

The CBC are still on the " greatest something or other bandwagon ". In addition to choosing the Seven Wonders of Canada they are asking Canadians to vote on Facebook for a wish , the most popular wishes to be announced on the CBC on Canada Day. Big Blue Wave urges its readers to support "Abolish Abortion in Canada" which at time of writing currently leads the list with 1223 votes . Sixth is "Restore the traditional definition of marriage". Fortunately there is also a wish that Canada would remain pro-choice , that Bob Cole would retire , and that we celebrate what binds us, instead of what divides us . I'm up for all of those.

The CBC's sports department is a rapidly shrinking animal given the loss of the Olympics, curling and CFL football so it is interesting that the Blue Jays are in talks with CBC to either have them replace TSN as secondary carrier of Jay games or to do so in addition to TSN, the current contract holder. Due to the mutual parentage of the Jays and Sportsnet under the Rogers corporate tent, the primary contract is not up for grabs. In NBA news - when Toronto got its 27th win last year it was April 15 and they had lost 55 games. This year they have lost 23 and are 9-1 in the last ten after their defeat of Kobe Bryant and the rest of the Lakers . As for the Leafs - after last night Nashville is still the only NHL team never to lose to Toronto, albeit over the short history of the franchise. This is a big sporting weekend for me, tomorrow morning will be spent watching United and Sunday morning (10am EST) the historic first international rugby game at Croke Park against France - an...

On the BBC quiz show " A Question of Sport " there's a "what happened next" thing where a video clip was shown in part and the teams had to figure out what (usually pretty unlikely and/or amusing) incident happened at the end. This clip is an excellent contender, when Patrik "king of flub" Stefan misses an open goal with 11 seconds left to make it 6-4 for Dallas, then Edmonton's Ales Hemsky heads down the ice to score with 2 seconds left, making it 5-5 to force overtime and get an unlikely point. Fortunately for Stefan his teammates bailed him out in the post-overtime shootout to take the win. Given that Edmonton had blown a 4-1 lead they were probably relieved to get anything out of the game.

On Coach's Corner tonight Don Cherry laid into the online effort to get Vancouver Canucks defenceman, Rory Fitzpatrick, a berth in the All Star game through the online vote . Now I think All Star games in mid season are lame to start with but they're a big thing over here. Cherry has a problem with the ASG going back his time in Boston but he tells Fitzpatrick that he should not go if selected. In Ireland we are well used to these kind of efforts. There was the time Ronnie O'Brien , now of Toronto FC but then a fringe player with Juventus first had a vote stack for the Juventus Player of the Year but then later Time's Person of the Century until Time yanked his name from the poll. The Wolfe Tones' "A Nation Once Again" was the BBC's World's Most Popular Song . Email has created a way for the Irish diaspora to mess with the world's heads. Personally I voted for Fitzpatrick - why the hell not. There are no criteria for entry and anyone dis...

When I'm away for a weekend to relax, I hate getting roped into activities I don't feel like doing. I call it "compulsory fun", an obvious oxymoron. The same goes for enforcing patriotism or support of things like the military. I really hope what I've written about below plays out very differently. I don't know Jacques Beaulieu, the coach of the Quebec Major Junior league Saint John Seadogs but I can safely predict his name being mud on websites like rabble.ca and on various left leaning websites before the night is down, because he fired winger Dave Bouchard, a 20 year old left wing, for failing to sign a flag being sent to a Canadian Forces detachment in Afghanistan . Said M. Beaulieu: "Morally, we have standards with this hockey team and that's a standard that we believe in." "I mean, if Dave doesn't believe in it, that's fine. But he won't be part of it. He won't be part of this organization. That's the standard...

TSN: Why do you promote hockey via the "my NHL" advertisements... during hockey games? Surely if you want to increase the reach of hockey you should be advertising during non-hockey telecasts or on other channels? I'm just asking. NHL: Still think it was a good idea to mess Jim Balsillie, respected and VERY RICH executive of Blackberry, around just to try and force him to keep the Penguins in Pittsburgh? Now you appear to be stuck with (a) loudmouth Mark Cuban or (b) a guy who even the CFL wouldn't give a franchise to and who employs drug cheat Ben Johnson in ads for his Cheetah brand.

An interesting comment made on Andrew Coyne's blog in reference to the proposal for a Team Quebec in the World Ice Hockey Championships - "Godot10" wrote Somebody should tell Guy Bertrand that (like Team Slovakia did when it became a country), Team Quebec would have to start out in Group C in the World Championships, to get to Group B, to get to Group A. i.e. There isn't enough seasons for Quebec to get through from Group C to Group A to make the 2008 World Championships. I don't think the rest of the world is going to give up a spot just so Quebec can satisfy its hockey ego. The comparison to England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in soccer which others have made is not quite appropriate, since Britain does not field an aggregate team which one or more of its constituents opposed, and in any case those teams actually predated rather than postdated the European and World competitions. With the exception of curling provincial teams are not very usual in pop...

Like many other things, the media loves to prognosticate about political term limits but would never seriously discuss the concept about itself. A few weeks back Bob Cole was joined in the Hockey Night in Canada Leaf game commentary box not by Harry Neale but by Cassie Campbell , who stood in when Neale was snowed in . As this was the first time a woman had acted as colour commentator on Hockey Night, much talk followed, not least that Campbell wasn't ready to fill in in the role, that she hadn't served her time , that presumably someone like the recently departed to the CFL anchor role Elliotte Friedman would have been a better choice if available. Now, having watched that game I thought she made a fair go of it. That the CBC decided to go with her when someone with more on-air experience was surely to be found a few streets away at CBC headquarters is the CBC's fault not Campbell's. However my reaction at the time was more - what the hell is the CBC, the state ...

Don gave his usual "up the troops" spiff with photos from the troops. Fair enough, that's his usual. But he also devoted a large portion of his slot to every Canadian killed in Afghanistan since 2002, in chronological order , including Foreign Affairs civilian Glyn Berry. The difference between Cherry and the reflex support-Canada-at-war-coz-liberals-hate-the-army types is that I truly believe that these deaths deeply affect him. I don't think the fatalities affect a lot of politicians on all sides as much as they should. I understand Adrienne Clarkson is held in very high regard by former service members for her regard for the soldiers of which she was Commander in Chief. So, in answer to Robert McClelland's question , I'll pick hero for Cherry. If he asked the same question about Peter McKay and Gordon O'Connor I'd probably pick use less fool. The other thing I noticed about the game tonight was that because they sandwiched in the Hall of Fame...

Two captains in my thoughts - Mats Sundin of Sweden and the Toronto Maple Leafs and (it seems) Robbie Keane of the Republic of Ireland. First - Mats. Not my kind of captain really, but in my short hockey-following spell he's all we've had. Pretty different from the "blood, guts and guile" employed by Manchester United - Robson, Bruce, Cantona, Keane (we have yet to see Neville G exhibit guile). My wife regales me with tales of Doug Gilmour - who sounds like Robson in putting his body on the line but never making it to the ultimate prize. In any case, Mats and Krusty the Klown have been tearing it up in Torino and returning with gold medals. He's 35 now - a bit late to acquire a taste for championhood but even if the Stanley Cup is beyond us in 2006 I wish he would show some rage once in a while... unSwedish I suppose. God knows he has a lot to rage against if he took a notion to, since there are more passengers in the team than on the TTC and even Domi lo...

This post used to say "Try ul rather than li - might be a bullet point?" which is a lesson to me not to post on comments and post to my blog simultaneously. And it's not like they look similar either... oh well! Bit of a symptom of the weekend really - back to back losses for the Canadian men's hockey team against Switzerland (Tobler0wned?) and Finland, the dawning realisation that unlike a large chunk of "Dallas" I'm not going to suddenly be in a shower and realise that Steve Staunton as Irish soccer manager is all a dream and lastly the crushing defeat at Anfield - not the scale of the result but the significance of it for United's season, for the disaster that is United's playing staff and for Alan Smith's future . I missed it on telly and I'm glad I did because h earing about it was depressing enough . Nice to see that the workshy scouse plague left us with the moral high ground with their "serenade" of Smith though - a...

I am offering Don Cherry's advice to Wayne Gretzky to another canuck under the cosh. Tim Danson, publicity hound extraordinaire, has filed a lawsuit on behalf on Steve Moore and Moore's parents following Todd Bertuzzi's suckerpunching of him. The statement of claim against Bertuzzi, the Vancouver Canucks and their holding company, seeks $15m in lost earnings, aggravated damages of $1m, punitive damages of $2m and $1.5m for his parents' claim of "negligent infliction of nervous shock and emotional distress". Now, don't get me wrong, what Bertuzzi did was wrong and some restitution is due, unlike Gretzky who has done nothing wrong except be subjected a thinly veiled charge for "failing to control his wife". In the case of the suit itself, only a lawyer who in my opinion shamelessly exploited the French and Mahaffey families while attempting to radically alter the nature of state punishment in Canada, would lodge this suit the day before Bertuz...

Apparently Jose Theodore of the Canadiens has tested positive for propecia, a masking agent , and the story is it's because of hair loss products. (If he is taking drugs it doesn't seem to be helping him much). Apparently it's doctor prescribed so that's okay then. Funny that his doctor doesn't have a copy of the banned list when my brother used to carry a card with the IRFU banned list when he played junior rugby in Dublin. US skeletoner Zach Lund also seems to have hair problems. This seems to be quickly replacing cold medicine as one of those "whoops, you mean it has drugs in it" scenarios we see every Olympics. Come on Jose - embrace the Messier look. Didn't hurt him did it? Because it's not as if you'd ever take drugs, obviously.

Okay, I think we've lulled them enough now . Another disaster on Monday in Scotiabank Place (so far from downtown Ottawa it might as well be in Nova Scotia) and maybe Pat really will be in trouble .