hockey blog sept08



	Sept 30, 2008 Should he stay or should he go? The "he" in this case is Luke Schenn, the Leaf's top pick in the spring draft who was, just days ago, considered a long, long shot to make the team. Those in the know (not me) apparently think he is making a serious case for sticking with the rebuilding Buds. The intensity of his play, his maturity, his skill level, his conditioning. . . . I don't know the answer, but it's going to be a question that will put Leaf managers in a tight corner until they decide. On the one hand, he's a kid. If he returns to junior he will be a dominant player in the WHL, he will be an anchor for the world junior team, and he will be allowed the time to grow into the fate that awaits him. In other words, all in good time. The proverbial other hand is, the time is now. Lots of blue chip prospects stepped into the deep end of the pool at 18 and blossomed -- some at different rates of progression (think Sidney Crosby as a fast-track 18 year old success, and Joe Thornton as one who took a couple of years to become an impact player.) The Bruins deliberately took it slow with Thornton, feeling that Pat Burns was a good coach and influence on a young man early in his hockey career. Even with limited ice time, their thinking was that Pat Burns and an NHL home was better for Thornton's development than another year in junior. And some -- like Sportsnet's Doug MacLean -- are making noises that a similar philosophy might make the most sense for Schenn. I didn't get to see all of the Leafs-Blues exhibition match last night, but the post game analysis was full of more ravings for the big kid after he logged 20 minutes of ice time, played strong on defence and scored the shootout winner as one weak NHL team edged another weak NHL team. We'll see. You can read last night's game-over story here. You can read about Luke Schenn here. - - - It wouldn't surprise you to know that the scoreboard a lot of people are watching today in downtown Toronto doesn't involve sports. The markets are in turmoil and while the futures markets were projecting a big positive opening, there's much uncertainty. But for context, yesterday's 800-plus point loss on the TSX wasn't even in the top 10 in history in terms of one-day declines in market value as a percentage. The granddaddy of all the market crashes -- Oct. 19, 1987 -- happened two days after Laura and I got married and we were actually on a subway in Boston around noon that day when the streetcar conductor was coming on the PA to update everyone on the carnage. We were en route to Arizona to hike in the Grand Canyon (I'm nothing if not a romantic) and it was a weird time to be on vacation. There was just so much uncertainty, then as now. Which reminds me. I have an anniversary coming up. Better mark that on the calendar. - - - Among all the financial carnage yesterday, one stock -- just one -- went up on the S&P 500. Campbell's Soup. Go figure. Maybe chicken soup is good for more than the common cold, the soul, and tired titles for pop self-help books. Read more here. - - - Paul Newman's passing has generated a lot of ink and chatter about the man and the way he lived his life as something of an unconventional movie star. Away from the tabloid headlines and nightclubs, he was a bit of a curmudgeon who guarded his privacy. He was a giant of the screen and through his philanthropy improved the lives of thousands. He was a good one. To hockey fans, he will live forever as Reggie Dunlop -- the gritty, world-wise player-coach of the doomed Charlestown Chiefs. Newman said in an interview that making Slapshot was the most fun he ever had making a movie, and his language was never the same again after. Two days before our first child was born, it was cold, rainy, dreary Edmonton Sunday afternoon. I went to the movie store and rented two old films --Philadelphia Story (James Stewart, Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, with Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor. When we think of Paul Newman, that's what we remember. You can read more on Newman's life here. you can read his memories of filming Slaphot here. - - - Chris has Decloe tonight and then I'll run from there to BTNL to watch the minor midget Rangers grunt and sweat. Have a good one, everybody. Sept 29, 2008 Sport was busting out all over our town and other towns on the weekend -- fall lacrosse is nearing an end and hockey is starting to gather momentum. Especially house league hockey, and that's a good thing because my house leaguer, his friends, and his new friends are so keen they can hardly stand the wait between shifts let alone games and practices. Our weekend started Friday night with the minor midget AA Rangers home opener, a solid 8-3 win over Guelph. The next morning me and Pad were up bright and early to hit the road for St. Catharines for a 9a field lacrosse game (a win over Brampton) and then a long period of down time before a 3p game against Barrie (we lost.) At home, Laura was carting Chris to Twin Rinks for a scrimmage -- and the restaurant wasn't open, much to the consternation of the parents. Laura took Chris and a buddy to Burger King after the game instead, and then back to our house to give the electronic toys a workout. Meanwhile, back in St Kitts, me and the Padman were killing time. A lumberjack's breakfast at a diner and then off to the Welland Canal museum, which also happens to house the Ontario Lacrosse Hall of Fame. We went to see the lacrosse stuff; we ended up being impressed with the Welland Canal. The canal -- a 40-odd kilometre waterway to connect lakes Erie and Ontario for ships seeking to avoid the adventure of a trip over Niagara Falls -- is an engineering marvel. The locks, the water, the technology are wildly impressive and I made the point to my kid that guys who are good at math (and he is, oddly enough for a child of journalists) can basically write their own tickets. It was all engineering and the question I put to him as we looked at the locks (and the endless QEW construction) was basically, would you rather be the guy holding the jackhammer, or the guy holding the blueprints? Anyway, the canal and it's history are a wonder. Consider that a ship on Lake Superior is almost 600 feet above sea level, and Lake Ontario is a little more than 100 feet above sea level. That's a long way down to move those ships and much of it happens in the locks on the canal. It cool to see what people with marketable skills can do. Unlike me. And this. - - - I wasn't at Chris's hockey on Saturday, but I know there was much discussion of the red, white, blue division of house league. I remain convinced it is a good system, but I also will acknowledge that September is a tough month for some kids. Kids moving to red from rep, or white from red, or blue from white, do not generally react well to the news. In many instances, neither do the parents. The advantage of sorting the kids by relative skill level -- and I will say openly the system is not perfect -- is that the kids get to compete at a level generally commensurate with their skills. Kids who get to touch the puck have more fun. At every level there are kids on the bubble who could move to one division or the other. Coaches make judgment calls when drafting teams. The bottom line is this: right now, today, at any level from AAA midget to the greenest initiation program player, the probably isn't one kid in MOHA who will play hockey as a career. Not one. Maybe one or two will get a hard look. Maybe. The rest will all, to varying degrees, chase the dream and I'm all for that. But I've done the math. The odds aren't good any will make it as a pro. But if the parents and coaches and conveners and many others all do our jobs right, all the kids will have fun, develop a love for the game, play it recreationally for a long, long time, and eventually give something back to the generations that will follow them. For me, that's about as complicated as it gets. Have fun, learn, laugh. Make friends. If, along the way, hypothetically speaking, you get to see a flying garbage can or a really cool bonfire made of a lawn furniture, well, then you just have that many more good stories to tell your grandchildren. Right? - - - Sunday morning me and Pad were up early again for a trek to Williamsville, NY, near Buffalo for a lacrosse tournament billed as the Fall Brawl. Our Under-16 team entered and we were playing a field of teams largely made up of high school varsity teams (18 and under) and a couple of good U18 clubs teams. Going to the States is always fun -- things are just different there -- and Sunday was no different. We lost a couple of close games and lost two more in blowouts. The final game against the Buffalo Lacrosse Club was the most fun. We trailed 11-2 or something at the half. Bigger, older, faster, stronger; our guys were completely outclassed. In the second half we scored a couple of goals before we realized that Buffalo wasn't trying anymore. At first, we parents didn't know what to make of that. Some of the Buffalo kids started trying moves that, under normal circumstances, would be considered showboating. And then it occurred to me. The kids -- on both teams -- had stopped worrying about the score and were just having fun. When the Buffalo kids got the ball, they would start passing it around and yell "No Shot! No Shot!" In other words, don't try to score. Try tried some ridiculous stick plays and passes, all of which failed. When we got the ball, they defended, but lightly. Their goalie ran the length of the field with the ball and tried (and failed) to score. Normally in lacrosse such a move triggers a brawl. But the kids in this case knew he wasn't trying to show anyone up. He was being silly. Our goalie responded by doing the same thing. No one from Buffalo tried to stop him and they easily could have. He didn't score either, but someone else did on the rebound. The Oakville player who scored, and the Buffalo defender who let him, then jumped at each other and butted chests, the way football teammates do after a touchdown. The refs were laughing. The kids were laughing. The parents were smiling. It was just fun -- way more fun that watching Buffalo score 15 more goals. Shows what happens when the kids take over. - - - Rep hockey tryouts in Oakville are always an interesting experience. There's actually a book in the entire rep hockey industry and maybe I'll do that some day. But an Oakville kid I am very well acquainted with used to play rep in Oakville then went to the GTHL last year. He played single A hockey on one of the top teams. A great kid, a great skater, hard worker, fun to be around. He came back to Oakville this year to try out. Cut from AAA. Cut from AA. Cut from single A. Disheartened, but for less than a day when we was offered a spot on a top GTHL AA team. That team is undefeated in league play, and this weekend that kid was elected an assistant captain by his teammates, most of whom didn't know him a month ago. But he wasn't good enough to play single A hockey in Oakville? Hard to fathom. And that, if someone asks you, is among the reasons kids leave our town for the GTHL. - - - One more lacrosse note -- at the hall of fame on Saturday there was a very cool picture of Brendan Shanahan with the Stanley Cup posing with his brother Brian, with the Mann Cup (the big prize in Canadian lacrosse.) Brendan had written on the photo: "Mr Stanley and Mr. Mann finally meet." Both Shanahans were accomplished lacrosse players, and Brian was a five-time Mann Cup champion. They learned their lacrosse in the thin air of the mountain fields of Mimico, home of the Mountaineers. Sept 26, 2008 No blogging yesterday. It was just one of those days and I had less to say than usual (not that it's ever worth listening to, but you get what you pay for.) I'm working from home again today and the power just went off, so we'll see how long I can get by on backup battery power and a Blackberry. Just like the early settlers used to do, right? - - - Roy won his 20th, the Jays won their final home game of the season and it was a fun game to watch as the Jays ran over the Yanks 8-2 last night. Halladay won't win the Cy Young this year, I expect the Indian's Cliff Lee, with a 22-3 record, will get the nod. But for my money, I'd want Roy on the mound in a game that matters. It would be nice to see him play for a team that gets into some games that matter, but that's another topic. You can read more about the Jays' win here. - - - I spotted this little story in the Globe the other day about scientists in Alberta discovering the fossil of what may be the smallest dinosaur they have yet found in that part of the world. It was, they said, the size of a chicken. I found this interesting because many, many years ago -- after dinosaurs walked the Earth, but not much after -- I worked at a newspaper and at one point in time I worked on the night desk. The night desk is where editors spent time before marauding through the city's pubs to pick the stories for the next day's newspaper, design the pages, pick the photos, etc. This was in the days before you could do all that work on computers (we edited copy and wrote headlines on computers, but layout was done manually in a place called the composing room.) Anyway, occasionally there would be odd-sized little holes on pages that needed to be plugged. These holes were so small that you could barely fit a sentence in, let alone a headline and a story. But you couldn't ignore them because otherwise there would be this blob of white space on the page. So, editors would insert what we called a filler. There were actually services that sold one-line filler copy, or there were promotional fillers for the newspaper you could plop in. Or, you could make your own, which was generally frowned upon, but only if you got caught. As the filler copy generally only appeared on classified advertising pages, or maybe in the middle of a financial stats page (it's called agate, BTW) you knew they weren't going to be read much. So some editors would have a friendly rivalry to create their own fillers. They had to be factually accurate, suitable for family reading, and short. Really short. And the one that I was most proud of was: Some dinosaurs were as small as chickens and others were bigger than houses. Hey, on the night desk we took our kicks where we could find them. You should have seen my fillers on popular building supplies. It took a quarter century, but I have been vindicated on chicken-size dinos. Personally, I was never in doubt. You can read about KFC-sized dinosaurs here. - - - Now, this next bit of news is a bit of an odd one for the blog, but given the general tumult in society being caused over it, I guess I can't ignore it. The federal election? No. The American banking meltdown? No. John McCain and the debates? No. No, all newsy and worthy. But what I need to address is . . . Clay Aiken. Apparently, he's gay. I have three questions. 1. Who is Clay Aiken? 2. When was he drafted, and by whom? 3. Why on Earth would anyone care about any of this? It's an embarrassing business to be a part of some days. Honestly. - - - A really, really busy weekend for us here. The minor midget AA Rangers have their home opener tonight vs. Guelph (River Oaks B, 8:30p.) Me and Pad are off to St. Catharines tomorrow morning for not one, but two field lacrosse games -- I think the morning game is with Brampton, and the afternoon one is Barrie. I'll miss Chris's scrimmage at Joshua Creek at 10a, but I'm needed for the long-haul driving at this point and mom gets to handle the short hops until she's back in fighting form. Then Sunday me and Pad are up even earlier to drive to suburban Buffalo for a one-day field lacrosse tournament -- four games in six hours. By Sunday night, he'll be ready to crash and so will I. <Hey -- the power just came back on.> That's it from here. I may tote the camera around this weekend to capture some of the action, weather permitting, some conditions apply, offer not valid in Quebec, your mileage may vary. Have a great weekend. Thanks again to all the well wishers and helping hands this week. Sept 24, 2008 A successful and fun debut for Chris and his peewee house league teammates at practice last night. I think everyone on the team knows someone else on the team with the exception of one new player who moved to Oakville over the summer. But he didn't look at all uncomfortable and boys being boys, whatever strangeness there might have been seemed to melt like the snow off a skate blade in a warm dressing room. We seem to have a good crew of kids and parents, which any house league coach will tell you is more important than having a bunch of ringers who all march to their own drummer or a roomful of parents who can cite statistics on the average NHL salary and what year their kid is eligible for the draft. We don't actually know the team name yet, but whoever we are we're back on the ice on Saturday morning. - - - A real treat this year for the 1996 cohort white division is that our game day is Saturday mornings and we'll be playing at Joshua Creek. Not to unduly malign some of the town's other facilities, but the 1996 white division has pretty much done the all-ugly tour of Oakville since they started out. After their IP year at River Oaks, it was all downhill. Oakville Arena, where the benches should be illegal and the step down to the ice is a bit of a challenge for novice legs; then to Kinoak, where the temperature never goes above absolute zero; on to Maplegrove, where the vending machines haven't been restocked since Trudeau was prime minister; back to Kinoak, . . . anyway, you get the idea. Playing at the Twin Rinks, parents will be able to sit in the bar and drink on really bad days (actually, the bar won't be open when we play on Saturday mornings, I think) and players and parents can grab a burger and a coke after their games, tell lies about how great they played, and watch their friends play in the next game in comfort. That stuff matters. I'm glad these kids are getting their turn on a good sheet. - - - Having said that, you should see where I played my youth hockey -- East Hants Memorial Arena. It's closed now, having been replaced by a lovely new recreation complex that serves the communities in the farm country north of Halifax. But the old EHMA, now there was a barn. The closest comparison in Oakville would be Kinoak, but even then Kinoak is a bit like the ACC when juxtaposed against that old rink in Lantz, NS. Wooden boards. Wire mesh behind the nets. The World's Finickiest Ice Plant (if it was cold out, there was ice, if it wasn't, not so much.) But lots and lots of character. As kids we didn't care about anything other than having a sheet of ice and a puck. Anything beyond that was an accessory. The tiny canteen did have fries to enjoy as a treat after a special game. And the road home from Lantz was long enough that my dad had time to review every play of the game in some detail. So, don't take my comments about Oakville, or Kinoak or Maplegrove too harshly. There's much to be said for barns with character. But there's also something to be said for spacious, heated dressing rooms and an on-site restaurant. I'm getting old, you know? - - - I've been working from home this week which means I've been home when the boys come home from school. Not sure what it's like in your house but that's actually a good time of day here. The kids are awake and talkative, unlike first thing in the morning. Chris will generally rate his day for you: "It was a good day" or "It was a good day until . . ." or whatever. Often Pad will come home, eat (he always eats) and then grab his guitar for a while. Yesterday he did that and I was sitting in the family room working and not really paying much attention. And then I realized I was humming. And I was humming along with him playing Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here. It just kind of floored me, because he was playing it really well, well enough to hum (or sing) along to. Well enough that the song got stuck in my head and that later last night, I added the CDs Wish You Were Here and Dark Side of the Moon to My iPod. Pad came into the room while I was doing this and I put on Great Big Gig in the Sky and mentioned to him that the guy who wrote it, Rick Wright, died last week. Pad said he knew. I said, well, learn to play like that buddy, and you can have your own jet. He looked at me and smiled. "Actually dad, playing it isn't that hard. He wrote it. That's the part that gets you the jet." And of course, he's right. So, why was he just standing there? Go write a song! - - - Chris walked into the kitchen last evening as the Blue Jays were on TV, losing to the Yankees. "Just another Toronto team that won't be making the playoffs, right dad?" Right. Sept 23, 2008 Rubbermaid(c). The Official Rubber Product Supplier of the 2008-09 minor midget AA Oakville Rangers. A highlight reel moment worthy of the Great Lawn Chair Bonfire of '06! - - - The minor midget AA Rangers dropped a 2-1 decision to Georgetown in a road game last night, and the rubber was flying -- on the ice, and elsewhere. Games between Georgetown and Oakville are generally nasty and often irrational and this one was no exception. It was unfortunate that the timekeepers either were dealing with faulty equipment or didn't know how to make the clock stop. Among other things. It was also unfortunate that the garbage cans aren't secured to the walls. Ah, Georgetown! - - - When I think hockey, I think Def Leppard. I mean really, who doesn't? Hockey and Def Leopard go together like Georgetown and great officiating. So it should come as no surprise that the NHL has -- FINALLY!! -- incorporated an aging British metal band into its marketing and promotion strategy. Def Leppard will play a concert at the Fox Theatre in Detroit prior to the NHL's North American opening game between the Wings and Leafs on Oct. 9. This is stupid on so many levels it's hard to know where to start. The NHL wants desperately to grow its presence in the US, so, logic follows, get an aging British metal band (formed 31 years ago for those keeping score) to appeal to those young people you are trying to attract to the game. I dunno. Maybe Ozzy Osbourne and the rest of Black Sabbath have never been to a hockey game and this will finally get them into the rink. We can only hope. In the meantime: -- Did it ever occur to anyone that Detroit (interesting trivia -- the Motown sound ORIGINATED IN DETROIT!) has turned out more great bands and music per capita than any other major US market. And while I know, for a fact, that Stevie Wonder has never actually seen a hockey game, if the NHL is keen on aging music stars, I bet he was available. -- Maybe the NHL should try to attract NEW people to the game. I am of the personal view that the aging British metal band demographic is already locked down. Do they have even the remotest clue as to what people under 25 listen to now? Def Leppard is remarkably durable. But I think someone might have been a little edgier here. But what do I know. Maybe Spinal Tap wasn't available. -- There's no point in continuing. Gary Bettman is probably already being fitted for leather pants and a big-hair wig and a sleeveless Brooks Brothers dress shirt so he'll fit right in on Oct. 9. Do they have any clue at all what they are doing? If you want to read more -- and who doesn't? -- you can click here. - - - The NHL pre-season (read, meaningless, but only slightly more meaningless than the regular season) opened last night and reports are that the Leafs beat Buffalo. I'm sure this gladdens the heart of the most most cold, grizzled and cantankerous Leaf fan. But it doesn't do anything for me. Having said that, it was nice to see hockey highlights on the TV shows this morning. The air is cooler. The sun is lower in the sky even at it's highest point. It feels like pickup football, baseball playoffs and time to stand in a rink. And if you are the kind to get excited about the Leafs pre-season games, you can read more here. - - - Of course, some hockey leagues are more important than the Rangers or the Leafs. Chris has his first practice of the season tonight, and naturally it conflicts with his weekly Decloe session. Oh well. He can't wait to get on the ice with his team, so the team wins his loyalty. New helmet and gloves. New elbow pads. He's good to go. Me too. So, I'm gone. Sept 22, 2008 So, how was your weekend? Did you spend it watching the United States win the Ryder Cup, which has become almost as elusive to them as the Stanley Cup is to Canadian hockey teams? Or perhaps you spent Sunday watching NFL football? Or the last game at Yankee Stadium? Or seeing the Blue Jays eliminated officially from playoff contention. Or maybe if your children are of an age, you were at a rink somewhere going through that ritual of fall, the house league evaluation skate. My Chris did his on Friday evening and while it was a bit of panic getting there, he did great and was drafted Saturday onto a white-level team in peewee. We're really looking forward to the season starting, and in fact he has a practice tomorrow night. All in all, it was a busy weekend. Really busy, actually. - - - Just a little something for the pain, Hospital food getting you down? Honey now I'm not one to complain But this hangin' around Is wearing me out -- David Gray, Hospital Food Our weekend was, um, interesting. It may be the worst kept secret in Oakville now -- and actually, it's not really a secret -- but Laura had a bit of an adventure. Without going into chapter and verse, we got an up-front view of the Ontario health care system and came away with nothing but respect for the people who helped her along the way, from the emergency room at 5a Friday morning, to more than three days in the ICU at Oakville Trafalgar, the nurses, the doctors, the specialists, the hockey mom on the surgical team, and many others. She's fine now and she's actually home, which is a stunning about face considering where we were. A week or two of taking it easy and she will be better than her old self again. First, we want to thank the literally dozens of people who came out of the woodwork and offered help in all shapes and forms. I have to say I found the response overwhelming, especially because we didn't ask for any help. I cannot begin to tell you how good those calls and emails made me feel (and I needed it), and Laura loved me reading them to her from my Blackberry which I creatively held so the ICU nurses wouldn't know I had it. BBs are verbotten in ICU. I don't actually think I fooled anyone, but it was fun trying. Second, we cannot say enough about the emergency room staff, the ICU staff, the people at Tim's at OTMH, the gang at Pizza Nova around the corner, the Swiss Chalet guy, the convener and coaches in house league peewee, the book club gang, old friends, new friends, the Oakville Rangers minor midget AA gang, lacrosse moms, co-workers . . . really, the list goes on and on and on. There's a scene near the end of the famous Frank Capra film, It's a Wonderful Life, where word gets out around town that George Bailey needs help. And people just stopped what they were doing and helped, because he had done so much for so many of them over the years. That's what the last four days felt like for me, watching people react to Laura's news. She has a lot of friends from her work with hockey, lacrosse, school, etc etc. And frankly it's a humbling thing to see when they lurch into action all at once. Like I've said, she is an amazing person. When we moved to Oakville, almost exactly a decade ago, we did so with no other family in the province, let alone the GTA. This weekend, it sure felt like family. Thank you sounds small. We mean it extra large. Oakville rocks. - - - I promise to try to resume what passes for wit and information around here tomorrow, or maybe Wednesday. Sept 21, 2008 As some of you have been good enough to point out, it is rare for me to let this space go unattended for three days. I am tired right now but happy. I will resume semi regular updates here tomorrow. I warned you blogging would be sporadic. Little did I know! Later in the day, I suspect, I will be back. It is just before midnight at this moment. I'm watching the Yankees say goodbye. And I will welcome fall by repeating what I said three days ago. I have an amazing wife. She carries this household on her shoulders. More tomorrow. The boys are quieted. Tomorrow is another day, and tonight those simple words mean a lot. For now, time to sleep, perchance, to dream. Thank you to so many for so much. We will never forget. Sept 18, 2008 Just for the record, I have an amazing wife. Anyone who has ever met her already knows that. But some things just bear repeating. And no, I'm not in the dog house. I'm just saying. She is. - - - Game on. The 2008-09 minor midget AA season began last night in Stoney Creek. A very short Ranger bench (12 skaters) was reduced to 11 early the 2nd by an injury, and the parade to the penalty box (including two misconducts, one for not having a mouth guard all the way in and the other for using the mouth way too much) made it a challenging night for the bench staff. Jack Gillis sparkled in net, Michael Wood looked like a force of nature and the team cranked out a very workmanlike 4-2 win. They led 4-1 after two periods and just grinded out the third. Next game Monday in beautiful Georgetown, the home of . . . people who live in Georgetown. - - - The highlight of the night for me was driving back to the QEW on-ramp to find that it was closed. I have to confess my knowledge of the roads of Stoney Creek is not great, and the battery on my Blackberry was just about dead, so no GPS. So, me and Pad navigated using the stars and luck, sort of a mini Louis and Clark (or maybe Martin and Lewis is more like it.) Eventually we found another ramp onto the QEW. - - - The minor midget AAA Rangers opened their season Tuesday night in Niagara Falls, losing 4-0. - - - The Ryder Cup starts tomorrow, golf fans. Without Tiger, it's kind of lost some of its star power but it is still a big event. And where is Tiger, anyway? Chillin' and, apparently, writing a blog. And you can read it here. - - - There's a new movie opening this weekend, a thriller apparently, and it stars Samuel L. Jackson. It's billed as a "home invasion thriller" (whatever that means) where bad things happen to good people. The film is called . . . Lakeview Terrace!! And every time the trailer comes on TV, with the creepy music and the dramatic voice over, me and Laura . . . laugh. When we lived in Ottawa the first time (January 1990 to April 1993) we lived on a lovely, leafy street about 300 feet from the lazy Rideau Canal, a majestic two-and-half-story old brick house that used to be owned by the late constitutional scholar Sen. Eugene Forsey. I used to ride the bus with him sometimes to downtown -- his office was in the same building as mine. The wild roses he brought from Newfoundland were still in the garden. And that house was on (insert three dramatic organ power chords here) Lakeview Terrace!!! But it being Ottawa, nothing much interesting happened on Lakeview Terrace. Once Laura and I skated downtown and had too many beverages at lunch, stayed too long at the pub and skated home in a blizzard. Excitement! The only people ever terrorized on our street were our neighbors, who had to endure our annual Canada Day parties, the only parties we ever threw that required the house to be hosed off afterwards (to get rid of the red dye from the streamers.) Lakeview Terrace. A very scary place. I lived the nightmare. (Queue Count Floyd from SCTC and his scariest wooooooooooooo!!!!) Sept 17, 2008 The one thing people are talking about more than the weather these days is gasoline prices. As in, when, exactly, will they come down? I think I'm smart enough to know when to tell you that I don't know, and maybe you're reading the wrong Oakville blog if you want insight into how that all works. There are people in Oakville who know way more about lots of things than I do. I have to muddle through life knowing a little bit about a lot of things, and when I have to, learning a lot about a few things. And even then, I screw it up. One of the things I know precious little about is retail gasoline prices and the correlation they have (if any) to world crude prices. But I know this much. Sadly for consumers, gas prices don't fall as fast as oil, but, luckily for consumers, nor do they rise as fast, or as far. Also, the prices aren't set by the guy working the cash and selling smokes in the bullet-proof booth at PetroCan. Yelling at him may make you feel better, but he's not on the chairman's speed dial. A year ago, oil was $75 a barrel. Gas was about $1.03 a litre. When oil hit almost $150 a barrel, gasoline never approached $2 a litre, which would have been the rough corollary. When crude oil peaked at about $147 dollars a barrel back in mid July, gas peaked at about $1.38. The flip side now is oil is now closer to $92, and down about 37 per cent since July. Gasoline in mid July was between $1.34 and $1.38 here in southern Ontario. Since then, it has never gone lower on average than about $1.22 -- down about 12 cents a litre from the low end of the spike, or, slightly less than nine per cent overall. For your layman, it's all one of those things that makes you go hmmmmm. But oil and gasoline are two different things with different sets of variables driving price. And as we learned a couple of winters ago when a fire at a single Ontario refinery reduced the amount of gasoline available in southern Ontario to the point where literally half the gas stations in our town were closed for some period of time, the supply management chain for gasoline is fragile. It's a complex, interdependent marketplace where supply and demand and futures commodities trading and a bunch of other macro economic considerations collide to make the entire matter completely and utterly unfathomable to ordinary stiffs like me. Or, maybe six guys do a conference call a couple of times a week, one of them throws a dart at a chart on the wall, and that's how the price is determined. I've heard of stupider explanations. So, as you berate the kid at Sunoco, remember all of that, plus the copious amounts of greed in the system -- from big oil, from speculators and traders, from you -- consumers wanting a lower price. And yes. I am, in fact, in negotiations with Exxon to sell them my blog. I suspect it will be a long discussion. If you'd like to read a story that tries to explain some of this, perhaps in better terms than I have, click here. - - - Tri County minor midget AA league action starts tonight in Stoney Creek for the Oakville Rangers. Stoney Creek played in the same tournament last week as the Rangers and the buzz around their team was that they had significantly upgraded from last season, when they were good club, just on the lower end of the top tier of the 1993 AA age group. In the Mississauga tournament they lost twice and tied one, we lost once by a single goal and tied two. What does it mean? Um, nothing. I've long given up on trying to read anything into these scores. My guess is it's early in the season, both teams will still have their share or rust and the team that's in better condition and has the legs to play well in the third period will win. - - - I'm still molting. Two weeks ago I got WAY TO MUCH SUN at a lacrosse field in Waterloo. And given the quirks of the angle of the sun, a lot of that ill-advised over-exposure was on one side of my face. Each day as my beard would grow out, it would push the peeling skin out with it, making me look like I had some weird degenerative skin condition on half my head. It was even worse for one of the other dads -- we are collectively not that bright and all had the same over-exposed features on one side of our faces. But this one particular dad works in sales for a pharma company that specializes in face products. He said he had to sit through sales meetings as his face slowly fell off. Remember kids, wear sunscreen! - - - Useless blog facts: Of the people who land on this site via a search engine, 31 per cent of them searched for oakville hockey blog. Welcome! Almost nine per cent were searching for the Oakville Oilers -- who still don't exist, as far as I know. Sorry! A little more than two per cent were searching for Jessica Simpson. Those people must have been very, very disappointed. And one person -- in Sydney, Australia, no less -- entered a search string that included the search terms: eBay, Mimico and bags. I have no clue what they were looking for. - - - At Dick Decloe last night I was, again, struck by what a good job he and his team do on not just teaching the fundamentals of the game, but doing it in a way that -- no exaggeration -- had ever kid on the ice smiling. That's a great thing. I just wish the change rooms were bigger. - - - It's been a while since I pointed you to a good-news sports story. So, let's fix that. Sometimes it's a good thing to remember how lucky you are. Jim Estes was a journeyman pro golfer -- not to be confused with PGA Tour veteran Bob Estes -- who now teaches golf at a training facility near Washington. After meeting some injured war vets from Walter Reed Hospital, Estes started a program for the veterans to get them swinging a golf club. In short order, the Wounded Warriors program was born, and Estes now regularly does free clinics for amputees, vets with brain injuries, vets with every imaginable disability. And they keep coming. It's a great story. You can read it here. - - - I am expecting blogging to be a little sporadic and possibly a lot less fulsome in the next week or so. There are pots on the boil at work and at home. I will try to check in when I can with scores and highlights and the usual array of stupid things that happen to me. If you have questions or comments, as usual you can reach me here. I enjoy the mail, even the less flattering stuff. So until the next time, Go Rangers! And all you house league players, work hard at evaluations. Have fun. Don't forget to smile! Sept 16, 2008 Because it's my blog, occasionally non-family readers have to endure a purely inside-the-beltway family story. This is one of those days. Almost 30 years ago, before he retired to become a full-time Blue Jays fan and devote more time to being a grandfather and fan of all things minor sports related, my dad was a foreman in the machine shop in the Ship Repair Unit at the naval dockyards in Halifax, home to Maritime Command, or what us ordinary people would call the navy. He wasn't in the navy, he was a skilled federal public servant who could do things with machine lathes and other complicated equipment that would astound you and, more importantly, makes ships run. Anyway, in his job in the ship repair unit they -- wait for it -- repaired ships. And submarines. And any other machine the navy used to defend and patrol Canada's waters during the Cold War. In 1980, Maritime Command (aka the navy) presented St Mary's University with an ornate wooden mace -- the symbol of the school's academic authority to grant degrees. It's used in ceremonial events like convocations and the like. The navy presented it in the memory of the students from St. Mary's University who died in the service of their country. The mace was designed and built in the shop my father supervised and he had an instrumental role in how it turned out. And my mother, a self-taught artist, did some of the line drawings which were used in the machine work to adorn the brass plates on the oak mace. Fascinating, right? OK. Stay with me this is going somewhere. Yesterday, Gregory MacIntosh Ross, elder son of the younger of my two older sisters (did I mention they are BOTH older then me?) -- Susan and her husband Greg -- successfully defended his thesis and was awarded a Masters of Arts (History) from St Mary's University. We are all extremely proud of Mac, as he is known. I chuckle at the notion of him "defending" his thesis. Blessed of towering intellect and physical stature, I'm surprised they didn't simply toss him his master's degree and run in the other direction. FYI, his thesis was a history of boxing in Nova Scotia between the world wars. Mac has been known to practice the sweet science on occasion, even in, um, unsanctioned events. So, anyway . . . this is still going somewhere. After the successful defence, they held a little reception and my mother inquired whether the university mace was on display anywhere so they might see it. No, they were told, it's kept locked away. A university official asked what her interest was in such a thing, and she told the story from above and our family's link to the thing. Someone scurried away and a few minutes later a public affairs officer from the school appeared, carrying the mace -- it's large and heavy and was indeed locked away. Much reminiscing took place, smiles and laughs and a great time was being had by all. A grey-haired gentleman walked by the room and peeked in. He asked what was going on and why on Earth the mace was out of it's box. The story was quickly relayed and the gentleman's fascination became obvious, and he introduced himself as J. Colin Dodds, president of St. Mary's University. And he wanted a picture of himself with my parents and the mace they helped create with many others back in the late 1970s. He disappeared to put on a tie and blazer, and reappeared with a university photographer. Here's that photo, my dad in the middle with mom, and below another shot of the new grad with his parents and grandparents. Mac, who has reached a mature age unencumbered by the travails of full-time employment but with a highly developed sense of fly fishing and angling in general, will arrive next week at the University of Western Ontario to empty local streams of fish and begin work toward his Ph.D. I have no doubt he will be successful in both pursuits. Former captain of a high school hockey team from tiny Baddeck, NS, that came within a whisker of winning the Nova Scotia high school championship several years ago, we're also hoping to make him a semi-regular attendee at southern Ontario hockey rinks this winter. - - - Oakville GO station parking update. The friendly people at Home Depot have posted a sign -- and short of erecting a billboard it would be hard to put up a bigger sign -- basically warning people that their lot is for customers only, with a two-hour limit. Tires will be marked, violators will have their cars tagged, and/or towed, and possibly crushed and melted. I added that last part. Lots of fun for everyone! - - - The following email for a good cause arrived this morning. Maybe you can help. Help get a kid in the game, Jordan Moxam Memorial Golf Classic. We are pleased to announce that perennial all-star lacrosse player & long-time captain of the Toronto Rock, Jim Veltman, will be the special guest speaker at the ‘08 Jordan Moxam Memorial golf classic. The Jordan Moxam Memorial golf classic raises funds to provide underprivileged children with the opportunity to play hockey and lacrosse. This year's tournament will be held Saturday, September 27 at Deerfield golf club in Oakville. This is a great opportunity to help “Get a Kid in the Game”, and hear Jim Veltmans remarkable story. How can you help! There are still openings for a limited number of foursomes and individual golfers. We are in need of silent auction items such as sporting event tickets, hockey or lacrosse equipment, electronic items, restaurant certificates. There also limited number of all sponsorships available. If you would like to golf or help us out with the sponsorship or silent auction item, please call 905-689-3064, email dmoxam@cogeco.ca or go to Moxam.org for additional information. Thanks for your support, let's all work together to get a kid in the game. - - - About half -- no exaggeration, either -- of Pad's hockey team either have, had or are about to get a nasty virus that appears to lay low its victims for a couple of days. My kid among the plague-infected corps so he missed the 10p practice last night, which meant I didn't have to be in a rink at 11p. Minor midget rep. It's all glamour, all the time. Pass the Kleenex. - - - Rick Wright, a founding member of and keyboard player with Pink Floyd, one of the great rock bands of any era, died yesterday. One of his best known compositions was the beautiful Great Big Gig In The Sky, from Dark Side of The Moon, the best selling rock album in the history of music. He was also instrumental (no pun intended) in Shine On You Crazy Diamond. I spent a lot of my youth under big headphones listening to Pink Floyd. Maybe that explains some things, but mostly I think why it explains why we are so keen that our kids know how to play and appreciate music. Rick Wright was only 65. Read more here. Sept 15, 2008 Well, the home-front technology audit was ugly. To make the boys' old PC run like it's supposed to would mean upgrading the RAM, a new graphics card and upgrading the processor. That last one was the straw that broke the camel's back. It you're driving a 1995 Neon, do you replace the air conditioning compressor? Probably not. So we -- me and Chris, my technical advisor -- went looking for a new machine. It didn't take long to zero in on what we (he) wanted: an Apple iMac. I'll give him this much -- he has amazing taste in technology. The thing was dead simple to set up (basically, you plug it in.) There were some operating system patches to download, and it took some time to move the music and media libraries over, and some software to install. But the thing is a work of art -- spectacular in its simplicity. Now -- anyone want to buy me lunch? - - - Pad's birthday was a fairly quiet day -- other than the trip to get the computer. And then most of the afternoon was spent in the cause of moving files and standing rapt wonder before the altar of the iMac. We took the boys out for dinner and then Pad had hockey practice, where their butts were skated into the ice by a coaching staff probably thinking that the team could be in better condition than it is, even if it is only September. I have a feeling a lot of the minor midget AA players slept well last night. I hope so, because they do it again tonight starting at 10p. - - - I think I'm going blind. Well, not really. But growing old(er) isn't all softly lit sunsets and golf courses like you see in the RSP commercials.. I started wearing glasses in 1988. I'm near sighted -- I see things close to me fine, but for distance, not so much. I quickly moved to contact lenses because of sports. I never gave them up really, so during working hours I usually have contacts in. In the evening, glasses. I don't wear my glasses often -- I'm only on my second pair in 20 years, but that might be just because I'm cheap. In recent years the weirdest thing has happened. With my contacts in, I have to hold a newspaper at arms length to read it. If I'm doing close-up detail work (like, um, reading a computer manual, or dealing with computer cabling and jacks and ports) I can't see anything up close. Unless I take my contacts out. In which case I can see well enough to perform brain surgery on a flea. Sort of. You get the idea. Apparently this is part of the wonder of aging. Me? Aging? There must be a mistake . . . So, it turns out the solution in the market for people like me is reading glasses. You can't see far, so you wear contacts, but then you can't see close, so you have reading glasses for when you need to see up close. With my reading glasses on I then have two layers of artificial lenses over my eyes. Can you say "stupid?" It feels like maybe it would be simpler (and cheaper) to just not wear glasses or lenses and only see what's up close. That would make driving interesting, to say the least. So anyway on Saturday I'm sitting in the family room reading with contacts in and new reading glasses on, and Pad walks by. In all sincerity he says: "Nice glasses. They look good." I waited for the sarcastic punch line, but there was none. He meant it. So, thanks. As an old guy, I needed that. - - - Interesting column in the The Star yesterday, which posits, basically, that Cliff Fletcher is lowering expectations for Leafs fans and no doubt hoping he can over deliver. I agree. But I'll add this much: it's pretty hard to lower expectations for a team that has missed the playoffs in three consecutive years and has spent the off season offloading much of the team's core. My expectation is also that with some training, the captain of the Titanic was well positioned to be skipper a submarine. You can read The Star piece here. Sept 14, 2008 A short update as we sweat out the remains of the former hurricane/tropical storm/tropical depression/post-tropical depression/rain storm know as Ike. Today is Pad's 15th birthday. I'll spare you my sentimental recollections of that day except to say the night before he was born Laura complained of not feeling great as we sat up and watched Conan O'Brien's debut on NBC as the replacement for David Letterman, who had jumped to CBS. As soon as the show was over, we headed to University of Alberta Hospital and pulled an all-nighter. The big news on the front pages on the day he was born was then-president Bill Clinton getting Anwar Sadat and Israeli prime minister Yitzak Rabin to shake hands in the White House rose garden after the Oslo accords. (Hmm. That fixed that whole Middle East thing, right?) And on Sept 14, Robert Bourassa announced his intention to retire from politics. A self-confessed sun worshipper, sadly he died barely three years later of malignant melanoma. So for a kid born to news people, Pad came into the world during a fairly news worthy couple of days. He's still in bed as I write this -- spent physically from a very busy Saturday. Pad is a great kid. His mother has done a wonderful job with him. Happy Birthday, big guy. - - - The minor midget AA Rangers faced off against a much-hyped Barrie squad Saturday morning at the Mississauga Early Bird. Barrie was 2-0-0, the Rangers 0-1-1. Neither team looked particularly sharp and they skated to a 2-2 draw, which assured Barrie a quarter final spot and assured Pad that he could sleep in on his birthday. Barrie lost in the quarters last night. After the hockey game, Pad threw his hockey gear into his mother's car and his lacrosse gear into my car and we sprinted off to Brampton for the second Oakville Hawks fall field lacrosse game of the day. The midget Hawks beat the "Oakville 2" squad 7-5 in the morning but faced a much tougher St Catharines team in the afternoon draw (St Kitts beat Oakville 2 12-0 last week.) After the score was 5-0 for St. Catharines, everyone agreed that the opposition was, in fact, as good as their hype. Then a curious thing happened. The Hawks started to fight back. 5-1. 5-2. 5-3. 6-3. 7-3. 7-4. 8-4. 8-5. 8-6. 8-7. And then, to start the 4th quarter, 8-8. At that point the Hawks, missing two of their big offensive guns for this match, ran out of gas and St. Kitts won 11-8. But good on the boys for fighting back. And we finished the game just as the rain started, which was a bonus. Pad never left the field for the entire game and on the heels of the morning hockey, he was pretty well baked by the time we got home. Me too, and I just watched. - - - Why do I even watch? The Jays squandered a great opportunity last night and now find themselves 7.5 games out of a playoff spot with just 12 games left. Done. Like dinner. More here if you still care. - - - The PC the boys use for homework and recreation (making videos, MSN, gaming, etc.) is going wobbly on us so I have to do a cost-benefit analysis of replacing/upgrading various parts vs just replacing the seemingly Soviet-era, diesel-powered technology that is becoming more hassle than productive. Either way, it's going to cost me. Tonight we'll be taking Pad to The Keg and we're all going to be careful not to put a hand or arm in front of him while he eats, lest it get chewed off. Ranger practice later tonight (he usually eats pasta before a game or practice, but hey, it's his birthday), and back to the grind tomorrow. I hope your Sunday is less expensive than mine is shaping up to be. Sept 12, 2008 The minor midget AA Rangers gave up a pair of goals in the final two minutes last night to settle for a 3-3 tie with the Mississauga Braves at the Mississauga Early Bird. In spite of having three guys out with illness and injury and another four borderline decisions to play, the Rangers led all the way, till the last bell. Bummer. They play Barrie tomorrow in a game they have to win, or they are eliminated. I once again was not at the game. It's not a boycott; it's work and parenthood. However, I plan to be at tomorrow morning's game. I'll do a brief media availability, take a few question (national media only) and then tour the facility. I'll then move my box seats for the match. (Eds note: He's delusional. Too much election coverage. He will be there an hour early, struggle to find ways to keep Chris entertained, which will mean getting talked into buying French fries at 10a, and various sale-table tournament trinkets destined to be garage sale fodder when Chris leaves for university. He will walk aimlessly around the Hershey Centre in hopes of seeing someone he knows. People will politely pretend to find his jokes funny.) - - - Spike the Beta Fish, perhaps the greatest and most personable Beta fish in the history of domesticated aquatic life, has slipped his mortal coil to touch the face of God. Loosely translated: the fish died. Chris alerted us on Wednesday night that he didn't think Spike -- named for the flourishing array of pointed fins that adorned his form -- was at all well. By the time Chris came home from school yesterday, it was thus. Spike succeeded Gill who succeeded a Beta fish who didn't live long enough to get a name. Gill (no offence to blog readers out there with a similar handle) was a bit of a boring creature compared to Spike. From his bowl in the kitchen, Spike would follow people around the room in the usually vain hope someone would feed him again. If you came close to his bowl, he'd starting darting around the water and splashing. As you fed him he would lurk on one side of the bowl and then pounce on the freeze-dried blood worms that were his personal favourite. In the grand scheme of pets loved and lost, a single goldfish doesn't move the needle much. But we'll miss him. Or her. Or it. The loss of our cat a few years ago -- I think Kitty was 17 and had been with us almost from the start of our marriage and all of the kids' lives -- was a trauma all agreed we didn't want to revisit anytime soon. (Not to mention litter boxes and shredded furniture.) I could write 10,000 words about the day in the 1980s when the dog of my youth, Pepper, was put down. I was on a date with Laura -- I was emcee at a best friend's wedding, she was my date. It was the day before Father's Day. All in my family agreed to keep the news of Pepper's demise from me until after the wedding duties were behind me. That plan fell apart, as did I, and legend has it Laura decided a guy who could care that much about a dog must have something going for him. No doubt, she's regretted it ever since. - - - A lot of you hockey dads -- and some moms -- are also big fans of NCAA football. It's not really university sport -- it's big, big business with huge TV contracts and bowl appearances. Successful programs bring millions of dollars to their respective schools. What's less well known is that really mediocre, and even awful programs . . . bring millions of dollars to their schools. There's a fascinating story on Forbes magazine's web site on how the math works, and how a school team like the Florida Atlantic Owls (don't feel bad if you've never heard of them) get almost a million dollars for a single game to be cannon fodder for a powerhouse like the Texas Longhorns. You can read the story here. - - - Is Maple Sports and Entertainment Ltd. run by morons? (It's rhetorical. Stop yelling YES at your computer.) The ~~teachers' pension fund~~ company that owns the Leafs released some results of a recent market survey that shows support for the Leafs in the GTA is on the decline. I've covered and/or supervised coverage of many elections, federal and provincial. I have some experience with polling data. Here's my analysis. Well, duh. First, for most of the last half century the Leafs have put a not just inferior, but outright lousy product on the ice. Children in Oakville are running and playing on my street who have never been alive for a Leaf playoff game. That's a fact. Second, more than half the people living in Toronto today were born somewhere other than Canada. That makes for a rich cultural experience and great Thai restaurants, but it doesn't expand the hockey base much. Add to that, unless you're brother in law is on the board of a big bank you have as much chance of getting a ticket to a hockey game as I do of being People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive (been there, done that, BTW.) And if -- IF -- you can buy tickets, you are left deciding whether your kids want to see the legendary Jiri Tlusty in person, or, would they like to eat this month? So, if the Leaf brass have the audacity to act like any of this is a bulletin, it's time to rip the ice out and move on to cricket. Hypothetically, let's say you are a self-made billionaire. Say, for example, you helped create a nifty communication device called, I dunno, a Raspberry. And suppose you had the bright idea to put a second NHL team in southern Ontario and you take a serious run at doing so. After all there are two teams in greater New York. Two in southern California. You get the idea. Do you think that would send the home team scrambling to take all kinds of defensive postures, like, um, a market survey and then lots of woe-is-us claptrap about the state of the house they built? MSLE is brilliant at making money, which is why the teachers are parked there, with both feet in the trough. I'll forego the obvious lipstick reference that begs to be made. They are decidedly less brilliant at building a winning hockey team. Anyway, you can read the lament from MSLE here. - - - Weekend plans: Pad turns 15 this weekend, so a vast quantity of red meat will be burned and eaten. The rest of us will watch in awe. He has at least one Ranger game, perhaps more depending on how things go. He has lacrosse tomorrow afternoon. He has a Ranger practice Sunday night, again depending on the tournament schedule. Me and Chris have to go get him a new bucket for hockey season -- his helmet is way past its best before date. He might even get a new stick out of the deal. We'll see. Enjoy your weekend. Scores and highlights as they become available. Sept 11, 2008 Seven years after the fact, who would have believed we'd still be hunting this guy? Who would have believed those responsible for this atrocity had not stood trial? Who would have believed that it could even happen? Who believes it could never happen again, in some other shape or form? Today is a profoundly important anniversary of an event that shaped much of the geopolitical landscape since then, not all of it terribly good. For starters, just consider the thousands of Canadians fighting an ugly war in Afghanistan, and the dozens of them who have died in that far away land. Take a moment to think about it as we sit listening to leaders on both sides of our borders fight election campaigns. - - - There are hockey fans, and then there are hockey fans. Most people who come here regularly fancy themselves fans. We like what we like -- minor hockey, complaining about the Leafs, celebrating the achievements of our kids -- all of our kids. Every now and then you catch word of really special moment for a fan. Guy Bradford is a Pittsburgh Penguins season ticket holder. Bradford was expecting his tickets to be delivered Wednesday. He even had friends over, a Pens banner draped on his porch and everyone was wearing Pens regalia. So imagine Disney's surprise when he opened his door yesterday to be greeting by a Penguins' representative delivering his season tickets -- Sidney Crosby himself. The Pens say none of the randomly selected season ticket holders knew that Crosby or other Penguins were delivering the tickets personally. It was intended to be a surprise. Sure, it was a publicity stunt by the team. But it was a really good one. Read more here. - - - Want to go to Vancouver in 2010 to watch the men's Olympic hockey final? Well, unless you have a special contact with a sponsor or an IOC or COC official, invest your time and money in a good TV instead. Only about 30 per cent of the tickets for that game will be available for public offer, and you're not likely getting one of them, assuming you can afford it. But that hasn't stopped some people from plotting how to go about getting tickets. Here's a hint: bring cash. Read more here. - - - The Jays' streak came to a screeching halt last night in Chicago. Unless they have another 10-game run in them and they get an awful lot of help, they're done. Game over story here. - - - Minor midget Ranger action tonight back in Mississauga. A 9:30p start, so it will be a late night and early Friday. Hey, it's hockey season. Suck it up! Sept 10, 2008 I pay about as much attention to the Toronto Argonauts as I do to a car fire on the 403 (and the analogy of a burning wreck isn't a bad one in this instance). That's to say I slow down a bit and take a look at the flashing lights and flames and smoke and the other characteristics of someone's very bad day. And then I move along without giving it a second thought. So that's about as much consideration as I'll give the return of Don Matthews to the head coaching spot on the Argo bench, announced yesterday. Matthews' hiring completes the hat trick of desperation on the Toronto sporting scene: the Leafs hire Cliff Fletcher (again), the Blue Jays hire Cito Gaston (again), and now the Argos and Matthews. So far the evidence would suggest that for the Blue Jays (now on a 10-0 run and seven games out of a playoff spot) the move paid off big. Maybe, just maybe, Cito is a better manager than people ever gave him credit for and he deserved another shot in the bigs after he left the Jays.) Does anyone -- anyone! -- out there think that Cliff Fletcher is the answer to the Leafs' problems? <Insert sound of crickets chirping here.> And as for Matthews -- I dunno. I can't pretend to know enough about football to say one way or the other. But surely there are bright people out there who have earned a chance to drive the bus. Why not be creative? Read more on Don Matthews and the Argos here. I bet none of you do. - - - Under adventures in parenting: Halton police ordered a lock out at Abbey Park High School yesterday, which then triggered a decision by the Halton school board to also do the same at five nearby elementary schools, which meant both my kids were behind locked doors as parents were told very little as to why. As luck would have it Laura was a couple of hours away at business meetings -- she normally works from home -- so she pinned me on by Blackberry. Not really knowing WTF we were dealing with, I packed up and headed home. Sadly, I missed a bi-monthly management committee meeting, but I'll get over it. But kidding aside, such things are worrisome. This sort of thing seems to happen every 18 months or so and you absolutely want school and police to do whatever is best for the kids. At the same time, you also know from experience it is likely nothing. Usually, when my smarter half is working in Oakville, no big deal. But all the way back from Toronto, you worry about the ugly "what if." The lockout (as opposed to a lockdown) meant a bunch of kids were not able to walk home for lunch and I understand the school did the best it could to find something for them. Anyway, you can read about the entire incident here. - - - I finished my calls to peewee house league homes last night, thus escaping the wrath of the division convener, a ruthless tyrant of protocol, promptness and asset and revenue allocation. The coolest thing about calling people early in the evening is that about 75 per cent of the time, you can tell they expect the call to be from someone trying to sell them something. When they find out you're calling to lift the curtain on hockey season, they practically leap through the phone to hug you. Well, maybe not quite. Those with three older kids tend to sigh heavily. But it changes their demeanor right away. - - - Commuters will know what I'm talking about is true, but there will shortly be a major crisis revolving around the Oakville GO station and parking. Since the spike in gas prices there has been a noticeable increase in ridership on the train into Toronto. And GO and the governments are responding by increasing capacity on the trains by 20 per cent. And that means pressure on parking and transit to the stations, which have no room to expand. I used to take the bus every day to and from the station from home. As the boys got older that became less tenable because as often as not I have to sprint directly from the GO station to a rink or field or gym or school to retrieve or relay my kid and others from one place to another, or back home, while my smarter half deals with the other kid and his similarly busy schedule. It's a lifestyle thing, and I'll confess frankly, I like the convenience. Like many, I'm spoiled. If I'm responsible for chipping off a few thousand acres of Arctic ice shelf, um, sorry. But there's a 6:30p practice. Anyway, it is my habit to arrive at the GO Station by 7:30a, sometimes earlier. Lots of options for trains, and the traffic hasn't hit the panic stage yet. And it gives me time to clear some overnight email. I'm a polite and courteous guy and I get a lot of email and I like to reply to every one. Debt consolidation? No, I'm good thanks! I'm heir to the riches of the former royal family of Nigeria? Who knew! Where do I sign? Make my wife happier than ever? Um. Well, thanks for thinking of us, but she has credit cards already. Anyway, panic stage starts about 7:40a at the GO station. Today was insane -- there was a line of traffic from the northwest lot where I was all the way out to Cross. Many of those people had a better chance of seeing Mats Sundin's name on the Stanley Cup as Leaf captain than of ever finding parking. Never mind the commute, just walking across the parking lot now is a chapter from Death Race 2008, as people careen to mount a curb and park on a piece of empty lawn. Separating people from their cars is a tough challenge. For many, they are not an accessory, they are necessities. Try telling the young mom to take a bus to day care to pick up her kids when she gets off the train. (But tell me when and where you're going to tell her first -- I want to be there with a video camera because I've never seen a decapitation.) No, giving up on or limiting use of cars is not nearly as easy for us as it is for Big Oil separating us from our money. One person on the train today told me they were going to start looking for work in Oakville-Burlington for less money, because the commute just to get to the train -- never mind the train trip itself -- was becoming too onerous and stressful. I haven't reached that point yet. In any event, interesting times. Sept 9, 2008 The minor midget AA Rangers dropped a 2-1 decision to the Toronto Royals last night -- I think it marks the third time in four seasons with the Rangers that Pad's team has lost their first game, and each season thus far has been pretty successful. So I'm not going to read much into it. Especially since I wasn't there and can offer no opinion on the quality of their team's play. Parenthood reared its head and my day took a funny turn and well . . . every parent out there knows how that goes. The Rangers will be back at it Thursday night against the Mississauga Braves. - - - The highlight on the sporting calendar yesterday -- other than the start to our hockey season -- was Roger Federer beating Andy Murray to win his 5th straight US Open, his first Grand Slam event of the year, and his 13th Grand Slam event in his career. That puts him one behind the record, held by Pete Sampras. In all the fuss (well deserved) about Tiger Woods and his run at Nicklaus' records, Federer gets a lot less ink, at least in my view. But Federer is setting a standard that may last a lot longer than Sampras' record did, assuming he catches and passes him. Read more on Roger's big night here. - - - As part of a Q-and-A thing at school, Chris was asked to name something he didn't like. Socks. He doesn't like socks. Good answer, I think. - - - Today is one of those days where you stand staring at the calendar, thinking that maybe if you stare at it long enough there will be some act of Divine intervention that will either knock some of the events to other days or perhaps swallow them whole. Or, maybe add a few hours to the day between 3p and 8p. Guitar lessons. Dryland training. Dentist appointment. Dick Decloe. Homework. - - - The latest rumour de Sundin has Tampa Bay now interested in him. I've never met Mats but he doesn't come across as a Machiavellian type. I don't think he's working all the angles. I think he's tired, and he's 37, and he's sitting on a pile of money in Sweden that means he can go to Ikea and buy as much stuff as he wants AND pay someone to assemble it for him, leaving them to decide what to do with the six screws and four washers that will inevitably be left over. But this is getting really tiresome. He's becoming the most sought after 37-year-old since, hmmm, maybe ever. At least in NHL terms. Or something. You can read more on the Big Swede and Tampa here. I have it on good authority that New England needs a quarterback for the next 15 games. Can Mats throw? - - - My project for the night -- after guitar lessons, dryland, the dentist appointment, homework and picking up Chris's socks -- will be to make a bunch of phone calls to peewee hockey households regarding the evaluation skate in a couple of weeks. Important things for peewee parental readers to know: First, I'm not a convener, I just play one on TV. I'm a worker bee, helper, clipboard carrier, <insert your own label here.> You will get a call. If you haven't got a call by the end of the week, then email me. Me and Dr Phil will help. I will personally track down the convener and stand on his doorstep ringing the bell every three minutes until you get a call. I've done it before. The restraining order expired. I'm good to go. When you do get a call, don't bother asking the guy on the phone why your kid wasn't already drafted into red, because he won't know the answer. He's helping with calls, just like me, only probably better looking. - - - Chris is going to be a timekeeper for MOHA this year. A devout capitalist, his motivation is ~~supporting the community, staying close to the game he loves, learning new skills, taking on new challenges, and~~ money. Actually Chris will be a great game official -- he's a stickler for rules and details, he has a command of technology that would qualify him to co-pilot an Airbus A320 tomorrow, and he has really strong communication skills. Plus, he has interesting penmanship. Having been left to decipher game sheets for years, my personal opinion is that 90 per cent of all timekeepers in any sport, anywhere, are destined to be brilliant doctors, because no one can read their handwriting. Full disclosure: My hand writing has been known to make people leap from office buildings. That's why I learned to type. Sept 8, 2008 The winters of my childhood were long, long seasons. We lived in three places - the school, the church and the skating rink - but our life was on the skating rink. *-- Roch Carrier, The Hockey Sweater* Tonight at the Hershey Centre, the Oakville midget AA Rangers play their first game of the 2008-09 hockey season -- part of the Mississauga Early Bird Tournament. Even as an old coot, I remember the excitement that would surround the start of a new season. It was a feeling without equal. Everything was possible. The sky was the limit. All you had to do was believe, and work hard. How far the season will go for this or any of the other Ranger teams is a book yet to be written. The same goes for the many promising young Oakville players toiling in the GTHL -- one of whom I hope to also see tonight in the same tournament in another division. It's hard to fathom, but this may well be Pad's last season wearing Ranger colours. Kids grow up. Their interests take them elsewhere. The prospect of playing midget hockey in an empty rink in front of your parents Orangeville at 10p on a Wednesday night isn't nearly as appealing as playing a 4p in Oakville in front of 700 screaming girls. High school hockey is very good, very fast, very tough. And a much easier fit with the academic rigours of Grade 11 and Grade 12. So, we'll see. But I gotta tell ya -- for all the stuff I delude myself with about how it keeps me young to race around to the rinks with him and Chris, the reality is it just underscores how fast the time goes by. To me it feels like about three or four years ago that Pad started off in the Canterbury Hockey Association in east Ottawa, hitting the ice for the first time the day before his fourth birthday. Pad turns 15 next week, so, do the math. Time flies. Although we lived in Ottawa's west end, we played in Canterbury (on the same team with the twin grandsons of Ottawa 67s coach Brian Kilrea -- me and the Killer's son coached that IP team) because they would take Pad as a four year old. That was hockey for the pure joy of it. No garment bags or shirts and ties or track suits or showing up an hour before game time or dryland or . . . you get the idea. Not that there is anything wrong with those things. There's a reason for them all. But those days a decade ago were simple: racing off for a 7a IP session, followed by just me and him having breakfast at McDonalds, him asking me how many sleeps until he played again, and him usually falling asleep in the car seat in the back of the car on the way home. Nothing unique in any of that -- the story plays out that way every winter for thousands of families, and it's part of what defines us as more than a geographical land mass, but rather as a nation. And tonight, it starts again. Good luck to all the Ranger teams over the next seven or eight months. Play hard. Have fun. Stay safe. - - - House league drafts started around town this weekend. Evaluation skates are still a couple of weeks away but a lot of busy people are beavering away behind the scenes. More on all that later. - - - The midget 2 Hawks had their team party yesterday -- billed as a pool party until Mother Nature decided to send more rain. Which was richly needed, since it hadn't rained in about 16 hours. The parents sat around a talked and laughed. The kids ate everything in their path then left to play touch football in the rain. Perfect. - - - Two big season premieres last night -- Weeds, on Showcase, and Entourage on TMN. Interesting how more and more, the most entertaining and edgiest shows with the best writing aren't on the old traditional networks, but on the new specialty channels. - - - It will admit that it's fun to watch the Jays go on an eight-game winning streak. But only the truly demented and/or delusional would believe they can make a wildcard berth. The rubber hits the road in Chicago. More on the Jays here. - - - I won't pretend that I'm an NFL guru. I know what I like, I sneak a peek when I can, but I'm not one to sit in front of the TV for eight hours on Sunday (like that would be an option!) But when Tom Brady goes down with a knee injury in Game 1, that gets my attention. More on the Patriots' QB here, and the prospects for their season without him. More here. - - - I probably rank somewhere between Jacques Cousteau and Donald Trump when it comes to my commitment to saving the planet. But I'm willing to do my part. Just the same, green polar bears just seem, well, wrong. They're not "green" as in, they recycle and compost. They're green as in, they look like relatives of Kermit the Frog. Read more here. Sept 7, 2008 We got up Saturday to trek to Waterloo for a pair of field lacrosse games and naturally -- it was raining. The midget Hawks hold few records of grand distinction, but one they enjoyed for sure was an unblemished slate of playing in lousy weather. So me and Pad loaded up the car -- gear bag, sticks, cooler of food for lunch, two boxes of weapons-grade plutonium, lawn chair, iPod, iPod-gadget-thingy-for-the-car, Amelia Earhart's flight plan, Blackberry, umbrella, rain gear, and some other stuff. We took my small car as there was just the two of us -- Chris was still asleep, Laura had got up to help with lunches but wasn't making the trip -- and we needed to make a quick stop for gas and then roll to RIM Park. When we got to the gas station I jumped out and . . . the lid on my gas tank would not open. I don't mean the cap, I mean the external lid. It opens when you push on it -- it's kind of a spring-loaded thingy so that you give the cover a crisp push and it pops open. Except that I was pushing it and nothing was happening. And the crisper the push, the same result. Hmm. So, with about a quarter tank of gas, I didn't feel brave enough to risk the hour drive to -- and hour back -- from Waterloo. So, back home to swap out all the gear from my car into Laura's car. I ran into to get keys and asked (actually, ordered would be a better description) Pad to start moving everything over. Gear bag, sticks, cooler of food for lunch, two boxes of weapons grade plutonium, lawn chair, ipod, ipod-gadget-thingy-for-the-car, Amelia Earhart's flight plan, Blackberry, umbrella, rain gear. I jumped in the car. "You moved everything over?" Pad looked at me with that mix of indifference and incredulity that only teenager can muster. "Yuh." "OK, let's roll." We took off again, now about 15 minutes behind schedule. There are times when one really wishes there was a really long on ramp to the 401 from west Oakville. Sort of a Milton bypass. This was one of those times. As we drove carefully and prudently and certainly well within accepted norms for traffic patterns on Highway 25, the rain started coming down hard. I said to Pad, "you put the umbrella in the car, right." Pad looked at me with that mix of . . . I don't know what. Something. It's not a good look. "No." You're standing in the driveway, in the rain, loading the stuff from one car into the other, in the rain and the ONE thing you don't move, in the rain, is the umbrella? "Um, yeah." Arggh. We finally reached the 401 and the rain eased off and eventually stopped, revealing clear skies ahead of us to the west. By the time we got to Waterloo (ahead of almost everyone else on the team, I might add) it was cool, but the sun was blazing. I never actually needed the umbrella, except maybe to keep the sun off me. Which if you could see the way I look today you might agree would have been a good thing. A hap hazard, last minute sun screen application didn't help much and, suffice to say, by the end of the second game shortly after 3p you could stick a fork in me, because I was done. Under the sun I tend to go from pasty white guy to lobster man, with not much of a pause in between. The first game was a rout -- Six Nations played hard, fast and well and beat us thoroughly. There was little about the game to commend for the Hawks, who were simply thoroughly outclassed. The second game was a different story. We played Guelph, and after falling behind early 1-0, the Hawks rallied and never trailed again, cruising to a 9-6 win. It was the first field win in Canada for this team this year (they won a game at a US tournament in July.) The score flattered Guelph, as the Hawks led by five for most of the game. The recipe for fall field lacrosse includes the unpredictable nature of player availability. Many of the rep lacrosse athletes are also rep hockey players, and early season practices and tournaments inevitably toss a wrench at every team. We were missing a couple of guys yesterday; next week Pad and some others have hockey commitments that take priority over lacrosse at this time of year. But it was all fun. In the sun, no less. - - - Once home again, we had about three hours to kill before Pad's Ranger practice, and I still had the car in the driveway with the gas tank I couldn't open. Discussion with parents at RIM Park offered no fruitful suggestions. Such as, wait until the car runs out of gas, throw it away, get a new one. Or, force open the lid with a screwdriver (scratch!!) On the drive home I pondered the problem. Going to a dealer was out of the question because first, the service department wouldn't be open and second, they seem to charge $100 just to stand with their hands on their hips looking at the car. So I kept thinking, which as many of you know is hard for me. Maybe some piece of debris was jamming the mechanism. If I could get something behind it . . . . When we got home, I told Laura I was going to try snaking a piece of dental floss behind and around the lid to see if it would free up something. I grabbed some floss and disappeared into the driveway. I unlocked the car and tried the lid again. Nothing. I stared at the car. I opened the trunk. Oh look -- an umbrella! But also inside the trunk was a green button with a picture of a gas tank on it. As the guy on the kids TV show would say: A Clue! A Clue! A Clue! (Yes, I know. Insert your own joke here.) It wasn't actually so much a button as it was the end of a tether. I pulled it, and the tank lid popped open. Look, I never said I was smart, OK? But with all the stuff that was in the trunk earlier (gear bag, sticks, cooler of food for lunch, two boxes of weapons grade plutonium, lawn chair, iPod, iPod-gadget-thingy-for-the-car, Amelia Earhart's flight plan, Blackberry, umbrella, rain gear) I would never have located that little green button at the gas station without emptying the trunk. With the mechanism successfully reset, the lid popped open again and again. Problem solved. I triumphantly returned to the house, walked into the kitchen and put the dental floss down on the kitchen counter like MacGyver or one of the guys from the A Team. "You fixed it?" Laura asked, trying desperately to hide the surprise in her voice. "Piece of cake." "You're amazing." Awww. It was nothing. - - - Circle Oct 14 on your calendar. Federal election. It will be hard to avoid the noise until then. Sept 4, 2008 There are a few certain indicators that summer is ending. Like: Parking is hard to find at the GO station. The weather is better than it was in July and August. Lacrosse gear and hockey gear are now mixed in a fetid pile at the bottom of the basement stairs. And the blog readership is back. Having been at this since December 2005, I'm now well familiar with the rhythm of the readership. And in August, they check out. But as if someone flipped a switch on Tuesday, everyone came back. Odd, that. Or not. Sitting at your desks, surfing blogs is maybe more interesting that that spreadsheet your avoiding. - - - Pad's hockey practice last night included trying on the new jerseys, which are of, shall we say, interesting dimensions. Apparently they aren't the only team with sizing issues and it's being addressed. As a former convener in house league, I can tell you that jersey distribution and installation of sponsor bars is the one task that inevitably went sideways. If you have eight teams, seven will be fine, one will be a disaster. It happens in lacrosse, too. Good luck to whoever is handling it. - - - Filed under just when you thought it was safe to sleep in on a weekend: Fall field lacrosse season starts tomorrow morning at RIM Park in Waterloo. And there's another Ranger practice tomorrow night, and another on Sunday. And the summer lacrosse team's wrap party on Sunday afternoon. And . . . you get the idea. - - - I came home from work the other night around 8p and was immediately told to be quiet. That's not unusual -- the new wrinkle is that it wasn't my lovely wife telling me that whatever I might want to say wasn't interesting (I also have a fair number of blog readers who tell me to shut up). No, it was Chris, who apparently in the spirit of the Toronto International Film Festival, had a buddy over and they were making a movie. Quiet on the set, all that sort of thing. I slunk off to another room. I'll post a link when the flick makes Youtube. - - - Here's a link to an obituary for a Quebec journalist. For whatever reason, seeing his passing triggered a couple of memories. I'm going to bore you. - - - His name was Michel Vastel, but he was known simply as Vastel. In my years in Ottawa I don't think I ever heard his first name used once. This guy was a giant in Quebec opinion shaping. I cannot overstate his influence. Gruff and a proud Quebec nationalist, watching him work and interact with political elites and interject his view of the world into his columns was an education for me, a young rube from rural Nova Scotia. I had very little direct contact with Vastel, which was probably a good thing. Getting in his crosshairs was not a career objective for me. But at the same time, in my limited direct contact with him, I saw more of his gentlemanly, intellectual side than his often very abrasive, confrontational demeanor. During the 1992 federal referendum campaign on the Charlottetown accord (son of the Meech Lake accord) I was living on airplanes and bad food, listening to prime ministerial stump speeches as the government of the day tried (in vain) to sell Canadians on the complex deal to get Quebec's signature on the Constitution. During a stop early in the campaign in Sherbrooke, Que., Mr. Mulroney dramatically ripped a document in two while in rhetorical full flight, the essence of his message being that to vote against the deal would be to usher in Quebec separation. A week or so later, in Charlottetown, the prime minister -- in the face of overwhelming polls that showed the accord would be defeated -- wisely climbed down from that position, trying to calm the nation (and the markets) by saying a No result would not mean the end of Canada. I rushed off to file this bit of news as it was a significant change of position at the time. Mr Vastel had already filed his column for the day -- he filed his column while the rest of us trouped in to hear the prime minister give what he and the rest of us thought would be the same speech we had already heard that day. Vastel's account was missing the new information and was at odds with mine. Shortly after my dispatch hit the wire, Mr Vastel got a call from his office and an animated conversation took place. After his call he stood in the aisle of the media bus and yelled, "Who is this guy?" Meaning me, after he used my name on second reference. I raised my hand and he came over an sat with me. He politely asked if he could see what I filed, so I turned on my old Tandy (we called them Trash 80s, the forerunner of the laptop), He read every word. He snorted, "Hmmmpt." And then, "Merci." He spent the next 40 minutes pounding on his keyboard and he filed at the next stop. Later than night as we checked in at a hotel somewhere, he tugged my sleeve from behind. "Merci, monsieur." - - - Later when I was chief of our Ottawa bureau, a different day. Nothing to do with Vastel, but like I said, the memory came to me and I'm going to bore you. It was Flag Day -- Feb 15, 1996. It was bitterly cold and we had sent a reporter and photographer to cover the official ceremony, which included then prime minister Chretien. I was sitting in my office when the phone rang. I don't recall whether he spoke to the news desk first or called me directly, but it was the reporter from the scene, rather breathless. He said, in much more colourful language, that the prime minister had just grabbed a protester by the throat and thrown him to the ground. Um, huh? He repeated what he said, assured me he had witnessed it personally, was standing only 10 feet away when it happened and we were bulletproof to go to the wire with it. I called in my news editor, the 2IC in the office, and put the reporter on speakerphone because I was quite convinced I would be accused of being insane. In the parlance of the wire, there are three grades of breaking news -- Urgent, Bulletin, and the rarely used Flash. These codings come from the early days of news service work before computers. Text would flow across the wires into newsrooms and print out at painfully slow speeds on printers. Depending on the ranking of the story that was printing, a higher ranked story -- maybe an urgent, and for sure a bulletin or flash -- would interrupt the printing of the story in progress. For example, a routine story updating stock markets would get cut off by a bulletin: "BULLETIN -- DALLAS _ Shots fired at presidential motorcade." And off you go. So anyway, we put out an urgent on the prime minister mugging this guy and fired it out. The other thing that an urgent did was, in some newsrooms they triggered bells on the printer, so sleepy editors would look to see what's happening. (These don't really exist now, since the data flows right into computer databases.) The Prime Minister's Office paid to receive news wires for monitoring purposes and they had a printer with bells. And that morning, the bells they did ring. And then my phone rang, too. On the other end of the phone was a very, very, very senior official from the Prime Minister's Office, in a very very very bad mood. In between thinking of new ways to describe my lineage he also denied, fully and categorically, that the prime minister had grabbed anyone. I'm here to tell you getting a call like that from the Prime Minister's Office gets your attention. Whatever else you think of some people, it's the highest office in the land. You take the call, if you get my drift. We went back and forth. I asked him if he was actually at the scene. No. Then what was the basis for his denial? Well, it just wouldn't happen because this is the prime minister. Un huh. I said we had an eyewitness. We were getting more. Cameras were there. Thanks for the call, we stand by the story, but we're happy to note that you're saying it didn't happen. I turned to my news editor. "Man, I sure hope there's a photo." There was, of course, a spectacular photo of Chretien with both hands around the guy's throat. And the story didn't do a thing to harm the prime minister's image and it made for a very interesting day that electrified official Ottawa. Much later that day the official from the PMO called me back. This time he was laughing. "Well, I guess he did sort of grab him." Yes, he did. When the reporter who called that one in left Ottawa, we threw a party and as a gift we doctored that photo to replace the protester's face with the reporter's, and we got the prime minister to sign it, which he happily did. - - - The weather looks good for the weekend, so I hope you don't have to spend too much of it standing in a rink for great lengths of time. Enjoy the final days of summer. Sept 4, 2008 I'm late today. Trust me, I know. - - - I didn't make it to the big MOHA volunteers meeting last night. I did get several emails from coaches, conveners and friends telling me that I was missed (ha!) and that the meeting was well run, and some things are a little behind. It doesn't sound to me like it's anything major at this point, and given that this was the earliest date for a volunteers' meeting that I can recall (the last two years it was Sept 6, and in 2001 -- I remember for obvious reasons -- it was Sept 12) there's still time for things to fall into place. It also doesn't help that a lot of the association's scheduling templates and similar materials apparently disappeared this spring, requiring them all to be re-created. Odd, huh? In spite of some people's most fervent hopes, the kids are going to have a blast this season -- which is right around the corner -- AND the new folks have a learning curve for sure, and they'll figure it out. And there are an awful lot of very good people working hard for the association who don't care about the politics as much as they care about the kids. Amen for them. They are my kind of people. - - - One of the most progressive steps forward for MOHA was shown to me yesterday. All rep game schedules are now online, sortable by team and level. House league is being added. My guess is that this move alone will save managers of rep teams somewhere in the range of $750,000 annually in gasoline, time, and aggravation in getting updated schedules. It also means that hockey fans (like me) can go online to see when the minor midget AE Rangers are playing a home game, or the peewee AAA Rangers, or whoever. It is a wonderful leap forward for the program. Online house league stats apparently will also be centralized, too. And online registration is also part of it. Praise be to Bill Gates, or Al Gore, or someone. It's a good thing, after the screw up the association endured after trying to get something going on this front a year ago. You can see the new online schedule here. Sept 3, 2008 We got through the first day of school relatively unscathed, and I hope you did too. Everyone crashed early last night. It felt like a long day. Notwithstanding that, and Chris showing up for his first Dick Decloe session on the new hockey season without his gloves (a big thanks to Dick for stepping in with a substitute pair!) hockey news was busting out all over yesterday. - - - One of the great defining characteristics of any hockey household is the odour from wherever you keep the hockey gear. It can truly be a sinus-clearing moment, a sort of smelling salts to jump start that part of your day. Or it can knock you on your ass. Visitors to your home who have no hockey players in their house usually accuse you of burying bodies in your basement and then they call the police. The more hockey players you have, the bigger the aroma. So when someone claims to have invented odourless hockey equipment, your first call should be to the store to see if it's in stock. The second call should be to the people who give out Nobel prizes. As a hockey parent, I'm dubious. On the other hand, what do we have to lose? Pad claims to be in need of several new pieces of equipment and we may look into this option. All other things being equal -- safety, comfort and price considerations -- I'd consider the odour-free armour. You can read more here. - - - I should have made mention that the country's largest, wealthiest university finally won a football game on the weekend, ending an 0-49-0 streak dating back centuries (or so it seemed.) The U of T Varsity Blues edged Waterloo 18-17, triggering the biggest celebration in downtown Toronto since . . . I dunno. People don't celebrate much here. If you care, more here on the big game. - - - Attention all hockey helmet owners: a product recall involving some RBK and CCM buckets. Get the details here and act accordingly. - - - Still with helmets, minor hockey coaches in Calgary have been ordered to wear helmets whenever they are on the ice. The order follows a near fatal accident in which a coach slipped and fell, striking his head on the ice. No pun intended, but this really seems like a no brainer. I have always worn a helmet as a coach, even before various associations, including MOHA, deemed it mandatory. Accidents happen, coaches and kids collide, and the ice surface is a cruel pillow for your skull. Oddly, Hockey Canada has no plans to implement a policy nationally. Whatever. Like the old saying goes, you can't legislate common sense. I am told that in Ottawa, even Zamboni drivers have to wear helmets after one of them fell while walking on the ice to clear some debris in front of his machine. Read more on the Calgary order here. - - - The stuff that is going on at the Republican national convention in St. Paul, Minn., is not to be believed. It sure makes it interesting to watch, read and listen to. Some young jock from a small town in Alaska is now the most famous high school hockey player in the world. One day you're a BMOC at a rural high school in Alaska and -- literally -- the very next day you're staring at the prospect of being an 18-year-old father and husband, possibly living in the White House and there's a CNN truck parked on your lawn. What is happening in those families is (or should be) largely private and I'm sure, intensely difficult for them to cope with. What is happening politically in the swirl around those events is much more instructive and illuminating to those who might want to consider the judgments and decision making skills of politicos of every stripe as they ponder who should be the next president. Anyway, one of my favourite columnists has an interesting view of it all today. Read more here. - - - MOHA coaches/volunteers meeting tonight. Not sure I'll make it but I'll try. Sept 2, 2008 Welcome to reality. School starts again today, which is bad enough for the kids to get their heads around. Worse still, their travel plans yesterday were sideswiped by Hurricane Gustav and instead of landing in Toronto at 8p last night, they arrived at 12:10a. It was after 1a by the time I got them all home. The good folks at Sunwing -- who run a summertime charter twice a week from Toronto to Cape Breton -- needed to get some of their customers out of Cuba on the weekend as Gustav bore down on the island. And guess which plane was diverted for the project? The result was that Laura and the boys had a day that was only slightly more fun than a barrel of influenza. The three of them were in amazingly good spirits in spite of the long day and they all agreed that if they had been in Cuba they would have been awfully happy to see a plane arrive to get them out of harm's way. But nonetheless, it was a trying day. Luckily they actually checked before heading for the airport (most people didn't) so they didn't end up spending an extra four or five hours in a small airport with screaming kids and a closed restaurant. - - - It will be interesting to see what everyone's enthusiasm is like later today. Chris has Dick Decloe ice time tonight. Luckily it's fairly early but I expect he's going to be deep fried by then. His older brother was in Nova Scotia when he should have been handling his registration at high school, so he's destined to spend a lot of time standing in line today. I did what I could -- cleaned, bought groceries, did all the laundry that was in the same time zone as me -- but I expect Laura's day will be no picnic, either. - - - Bryan McCabe is expected to be shipped off to Tampa today, ending another standoff between Leaf management and a no-trade contract. Read more here. - - - Mike Weir got a really nice pay day, but once again on a Sunday afternoon with the lead, he didn't get it done. In fairness, I'm not sure anyone could have beaten Vijay Singh yesterday, who was putting like the hole was the size of a 45-gallon oil drum. It was stupid-amazing how well he putted. Read more here. - - - The MOHA volunteers meeting is tomorrow night. Although I have no official role in minor hockey this year for the first time since 1997, I am going to try to attend. I'm going to help with the 1996 evaluation skate and do some seminars on proper beer handling techniques. Expect a sellout crowd. More information here. - - - Ranger hockey is already busy across all divisions. Pad and the rest of the minor midget AA team have three practices in four nights starting Thursday, before launching into action in the Mississauga Early Bird tourney next Monday. The great thing about midget hockey is that the practices and games just get later and later, plus the kids smell worse and worse. Don't even get me started on the aroma from their hockey bags. Sheesh. - - - Speaking of hockey, I noticed on the weekend that Canadian Tire's weekly flyer was featuring hockey gear and snow blowers. This flyer arrived at my house while it is still summer. I understand that some people may be in the market for hockey gear right now. That makes sense. But snow blowers? Can't we just enjoy the end of the summer? Please? Hallowe'en crap will soon jam the aisles of the stores and then it's the slippery, expensive slide into Christmas. - - - I watching the storm coverage on CNN yesterday, I couldn't help get the sense that the journalists -- who kept saying how glad they all were that the storm wasn't as bad as feared -- were actually disappointed the storm wasn't as bad as it was feared it might be. To Anderson Cooper and all the other business-class storm corros: better luck next time. - - - I had a nice communication from a blog reader yesterday who said that as a blog read he preferred the blog when my family is away, his theory being that when I'm home alone I tend to write more. He even referenced a seven-day publishing cycle. Nice to have a fan. I think. Sept 1, 2008 Happy Labour Day. My day began at about 6:20a this morning when I was awakened by an annoying beep, recurring every 30 seconds or so. One of those high-pitched beeps a smoke detector makes when a battery is dying. So I hauled myself out of bed and began the process of elimination. It's harder than it sounds. Our house has a smoke detector in almost every room (Laura's dad is an insurance adjuster. When it comes to smoke detectors, you can never have too many.) Anyway, turns out it was actually a carbon monoxide detector (yes, we have those too) that had a dying backup battery. It only took 15 minutes to find it, and of course once I did I was wide awake. So I turned on the TV to see how the poor folks on the gulf coast are holding up and it's going to be an ugly day there. Spare a thought for them. I do get a bit of a perverse kick out of watching the network TV correspondents standing out in the wind and rain to tell us that the hurricane comes with a lot of wind and rain. Um, thanks for that. I've covered my share of storms and written lots of what we call "storm roundups" over the years. In my considered opinion, it doesn't do a blessed thing to illuminate my understanding of the story to have a goof with a microphone standing in a Costco parking lot in suburban New Orleans leaning into the wind. I get it. Hurricane=Big Wind and Rain. But that's just me. Maybe there are great swaths of the population who do not understand that hurricanes -- typically -- bring a lot of wind and rain. Or maybe TV news producers get really excited by dramatic pictures of rain-swept parking lots. - - - Laura and the boys come home later today, having wrung almost every last bit of vacation from their summer. They will barely get home in time to get up and go to school tomorrow. In the meantime, I've been stocking the house with food for school lunches and starting in on tidying up around the house. I'm not suggesting that I let things go when I am home by myself, but . . . Anyway, I invited some of the neighbours over to help with the tidying and as the saying goes, many bulldozers make light work. - - - In between baseball, NFL pre-season, PGA golf, college football, and US Open tennis -- and storm coverage -- I've also found time in the last few days to watch some movies. I actually paid to go see Tropic Thunder, which was mostly a big disappointment with isolated chuckles. You'd think Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr and Ben Stiller would bring the screen to life. It was just OK. Wait for the DVD, and don't let your kids watch it. The language is bad -- nothing worse than what you'd hear in a bantam-age hockey dressing room -- but it was what the language was used to bring descriptive life to that might cause your hair to stand on end. On TV, I watched a new HBO production, Thank You Mr. President, a documentary on the life of famed Washington reporter Helen Thomas. It was very good. I watched An Inconvenient Truth, which when juxtaposed with what is happening in the Gulf coast, is a bit sobering. Because I like to laugh, I watched No Country for Old Men, and, There Will Be Blood, virtually back to back. Sheesh people. Lighten up. After watching those two movies I was ready to book one-way cab fare to a high bridge over fast moving water. No country for old men? No country for anyone, unless you like being stalked by a soulless automaton. Brilliantly acted, but dark dark dark. Not as much blood in There Will Be Blood as I expected, until the very end. And then the title promise is delivered in spades. They told me there would be blood, and by gar, there was blood. You'll never look at a bowling pin the same way. And I also saw Catch-22, which I had seen years ago but I forgot how good it is. Most of the actors were fairly young men at the time it came out in 1970. Norman Fell. Martin Sheen. Alan Arkin. Richard Benjamin. Jon Voight. Bob Newhart. Buck Henry. Martin Balsam and Orsen Wells also shine. It's worth watching again if you're looking for a good honest laugh. And I read Money Ball. - - - Killer Kowalski is dead. He was 81. I cannot imagine there is anyone of my vintage that didn't spend a lot of time booing The Killer, a legendary villain of the wrestling ring in the days before every pumped-up-steroid-riddled chump was made into a bobble head or action figure. It was, of course, all an act. And a great one. Read more about his life here. - - - That's it for now. Back to the cleanup. *August 2008 and other archives here*