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Enjoy this Steve Simmons column one day before it arrives online or in the newspaper |
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Brendan Shanahan, whose Maple Leafs won 32 playoff games in 11 seasons, was essentially fired the other day as president of the hockey club.
Mark Shapiro, whose Blue Jays have won five playoff games in 10 seasons on the job, remains president of the baseball club. The five playoff wins, for the record, came from a team Shapiro inherited in 2016, not from one he built himself.
Edward Rogers, soon to be major domo of all professional sports across Toronto, had to sign-off on the expiry of Shanahan’s contract and the determination not to offer him a new deal.
Shapiro’s contract is apparently up with the Blue Jays right now. It is expected to expire at the end of this season. How he maintains his position in the wake of the Shanahan dismissal is curious at best.
In the NHL, 50% of the member teams make the playoffs. In baseball, 40% of the teams qualify for the post-season. So the baseball team should, by mathematics alone, play in fewer playoff games.
But the post-season scorecard here is horribly tilted: It reads Shanahan 32, Shapiro 0.
Shanahan’s Leafs were in the playoffs nine consecutive seasons but just didn’t go far enough. Shapiro’s Blue Jays — in the second-wild card (or last playoff spot available), have been in the playoffs three times since 2016 and gone 0-6.
Rogers sat on a dais with Shapiro at the Vladimir Guerrero Jr. signing press conference and spoke optimistically about the future. He talked about winning the World Series.
That’s the way Shanahan used to talk about the Leafs winning Stanley Cups. |
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When Shanahan first took over the Leafs, he met with individual newspapers and television networks to talk about his plans for the future. He talked boldly about the Leafs becoming a model franchise for on-ice success, media relations, player accessibility and a new relationship with the city. He was earnest about it. It just never happened. In fact, over the years it got worse. It got to a point where Leafs players were among the most protected, babied, joyless players in all of sport. Most were lacking personality, originality or personal thought. So when Keith Pelley took over the Maple Leafs in earnest on Friday, he talked about the team establishing a better relationship with the fans and media. He talked about the importance of the connection. He spoke with conviction about this similar to the way Shanahan did more than a decade ago. Good luck to him with that … At the end of just about every hockey season, players take a certain pride in announcing which injuries they happened to work through in the playoffs. Broken arms. Broken legs. Broken ribs. Just about everything broken, they’ll tell you about. Just not Auston Matthews. He won’t share a torn anything with anyone. He doesn’t believe it’s anyone’s business but his own. And maybe he’s right, but isn’t that just another sign of how he doesn’t exactly conform to the hockey culture that came long before he did? … I heard more than one person this week compare Mitch Marner’s likely departure from Toronto to Vince Carter’s messy ending with the Raptors. The two situations couldn’t be more different. Carter quit on the Raps, stopped playing, tried essentially to ruin the franchise. Now he’s celebrated for what came before that. Marner played nine seasons with the Leafs, averaged 92 points a year and earned his free agency with his contract about to expire. He’s not walking out on anybody. He didn’t quit on anyone. You may not care for his lack of playoff acumen, the annual playoff collapse of the Leafs or the softness of his game but understand this: Booing him in the future playing for another team says more about you than it does about him … All year long, I’ve been hearing that Sam Bennett wants to stay with the Florida Panthers — and why wouldn’t he? — and apparently they want to keep him. The only way Bennett is available in free agency is if the Panthers can’t find the money to keep him. It’s probably the same circumstance with defenceman Aaron Ekblad, who has been a Panther for 11 years. He doesn’t want to leave, but available finances may dictate what happens with him in Florida.
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I do wonder: Would the Leafs have beaten the Panthers in the second round had Anthony Stolarz played all seven games in goal? … The Dallas Stars and Carolina Hurricanes don’t have a forward better than Matthews, Marner or William Nylander, another reason for the annual Leafs hand-wringing… If I’m Brad Treliving, I would definitely work on getting Morgan Rielly to waive his no-trade clause over the summer. Just to explore what value Rielly would bring in the trade market … What the Leafs need more than anything else: A winning mindset. It sounds simple, but it isn’t. They have strong coaching, a decent GM, a solid duo in goal, a six-man defence of surprising depth and enough scoring. What they don’t have: A built-in desire for victory. It’s an intangible that can’t be taught. You either have it or you don’t. The new Leafs brass needs to study what it takes to win and why their teams comes up short year after year … A successful hockey man I know would tell his wingers the following: “I want you to be first on the puck and arrive in a bad mood.” … One more question for Matthews: Was it right for a team captain to point fingers at teammates — “We had too many passengers” — in the moments after losing Game 7? Would you call that leadership? … The Leafs lost faith in Freddy Andersen in goal years ago for two reasons. One, he was injured too often. Two, he let in too many soft playoff goals. So what’s happened with Carolina in the first two games against Florida: Too many soft goals scored on Andersen. He’s out for Game 3 … Just about every year, Jim Nill and Bill Zito get nominated for the Jim Gregory Award as GM of the year in the NHL. And just about every year, Nill’s Dallas Stars and Zito’s Florida Panthers are playing in the final four. This year, Nill traded for scorers Mikko Rantanen and Mikael Granlund near the deadline. Zito traded for defenceman Seth Jones and winger Brad Marchand. Making the deals is one thing: Being able to make them because you have enough cap space is another matter entirely. Nill and Zito have mastered this over the years … No American team has won a world hockey championship in 92 years. It’s probably appropriate they finally win one now with the deepest collection of hockey players of any country in the world.
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When did the walk-in to the arena become such a big deal in the NBA, NHL and WNBA? Wow, look what he or she is wearing today! Isn’t that nice. The WNBA pre-game arena walk-in is starting to look like a fashion show runway of sorts. It may be just me but I like sports a whole lot more than I like sports entertainment. Unless it’s WWE … Another trend that hasn’t hit me, for whatever reason: hot sauce … This is where politics and sports don’t mesh particularly well. Russia won’t have a hockey team at the upcoming Winter Olympics. Nor should it. But that also means the first best-on-best tournament in years will be without some of hockey’s best players: Alex Ovechkin, Nikita Kucherov, Artemi Panarin, Igor Shesterkin, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Kirill Kaprizov … The Blue Jays have to feel so fortunate to not have spent all that crazy money on Juan Soto. The money was crazy, the player in this case, as we’re learning, may be crazier …. The poor Maple Leafs. They can’t even end their season properly. A group of Leafs players tried to get in a first round of post-season golf together only to be interrupted by bad weather and rain. Lunch, I’m told, at what used to be called Devil’s Pulpit was well worth it … One personal TSN complaint: The network has five channels and one show you never want to miss. So how is it there are weekdays when Overdrive isn’t on any of their five channels? … Never saw a playoff goaltender better than Curtis Joseph in the 1997 playoff series between Dallas and Edmonton when the Oilers won Game 7 in overtime. Others to consider or forever remember: Ken Dryden vs. Boston in 1971; Jonathan Quick vs. everyone in 2012; Vasilevskiy in 2021 for Tampa Bay; and Bernie Parent in the two Philadelphia Flyers Stanley Cup seasons in the 1970s.
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Pascal Siakam has always loved playing at Madison Square Garden, the so-called Mecca of basketball in the NBA. His highest scoring game as a Raptor came in New York. And on Friday night, he had his highest scoring playoff game — with 39 points for Indiana in a second consecutive win over the favoured Knicks. When Siakam scored 52 in New York in 2023, he became just the fourth player in NBA history to score more than 50 at MSG. The other three were LeBron James, Steph Curry and James Harden … What do the Raptors have to show for Siakam? It’s complicated. They used some of the capital to acquire Brandon Ingram. They drafted Ja’Kobe Walter and acquired Ochai Agbaji because of the Siakam deal. Right now, it’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast in exchange for a player likely on his way to the NBA Finals … Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the remarkable young man and young Canadian player who ran away with the MVP award this NBA season doesn’t play for a big-market team. He doesn’t have a great deal of flash to his game. He isn’t outspoken or a big personality or on many television commercials. All he does is perform and win. And it’s sad how small and petty the NBA can become when someone who doesn’t fit the mould of a breakout superstar becomes one. Shai should be celebrated, not ridden down for getting fouled too easily. Maybe if a championship follows an MVP season, that narrative will be re-written … There is never a new Tiger Woods — there can’t be — but isn’t Scottie Scheffler getting close to some kind of comparison? … Almost six years have passed since Bianca Andreescu won the U.S. Open, one of the greatest athletic accomplishments in Canadian sports history. Since then, though, where is Bianca? She lost in qualifying this week for the French Open. I keep hoping she’s not a one-trick pony, but the clock keeps ticking and her game is in neutral …Nikola Jokic is the best player in the NBA. One of the best ever. Connor McDavid is the best player in the NHL. One of the best ever. Being the best player and being the MVP of any single season are two different things. But should they be? … Pinball Clemons likes to ask: ‘What time is it?’ The answer, yelled back at him: “It’s football time.” And Saturday night it was. Football time. Argos vs. Ticats. Pre-season football … . Some things just sound right. Like Tim Hortons Field in Hamilton. And now it’s the stadium without a name. Until the next sponsor is found ... The best show in sports right now: Caitlin Clark … The only NHL players to fight more in their careers than Craig Berube: Tie Domi, Tiger Williams, Chris Nilan and Bob Probert … It’s no surprise that Stanley Cup playoff ratings are plummeting in the U.S. this year. The best hockey cities in America — Buffalo, New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and Detroit — all missed the playoffs this year … The late great Roy Halladay rarely lost games. That may have been his most enduring statistic as a major-league pitcher. Halladay, who has gotten some mention for a quarter-century all-star team, lost only 69 games in 10 seasons starting for the Jays in the 2000s. Overall, Halladay started 287 games for Toronto. His won-loss record was 148-76 … Born on this date in history: Bruce Gamble, Pete Liske and Cookie Gilchrist … And a happy birthday to Bob Dylan (84), Chad Green (34), Roman Reigns (40), Tracy McGrady (46), Joe Dumars (62), Pat Verbeek (61), Kris Draper (54), Rick Wamsley (66), Rob Ducey (60), Bartolo Colon (52), Willie Pile (45) and Mattias Ekholm (35).
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