Category Archives: Sports

A second team in Toronto? Puh-leeze.

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Let’s get one thing straight, OK? This rumour that the NHL is considering giving Toronto a second NHL franchise is complete hogwash. The NHL has gone to great lengths to make sure that Jim Balsillie cannot buy an existing NHL team and move it to Hamilton and the reason they’ve given for this is that it would infringe on Toronto and Buffalo territory. This is in itself mostly hogwash, since nothing is going to take money or fans away from the Leafs, though I suppose it could pull fans away from Buffalo. It could be argued that if that’s the case, then maybe the Sabres should be moved. Anyway, after fighting Balsillie at every opportunity, they’re not about to turn around and just give Toronto a second team.

Then there are the issues of where they’d play. The ACC already has three professional teams playing there during the winter, plus lots of concerts and other events; adding another team would cause no end of scheduling headaches. From a selfish point of view, this would likely mean that the Toronto Rock (who are the lowest team on the ACC totem pole) would be “evicted” from the ACC and have to play at Ricoh Colliseum, which would suck for us Rock fans.

Would a second team succeed in Toronto? Sure it would. First off, it would likely be possible to get tickets for the Toronto Whatevers, whereas getting Leafs tickets is an exercise in frustration. Plus, Toronto has a lot of people who have moved from other parts of Canada, and have hated the Leafs all their lives. Toronto loves its Leafs, make no mistake, but they’re one of the most hated teams outside the GTA. A second team in Toronto would give them someone to root for.

If the owners of the new team are smart, they will keep ticket prices down, since MLS&E have not. Right now even if it’s possible to get Leafs tickets, the prices are insanely high. Your average guy doesn’t want to (or simply can’t) spend the many hundreds of dollars required to take his family to a Leafs game. And if you want decent seats and a couple of drinks and hot dogs and to park your car within a mile of the ACC, you’d better be prepared to shell out half a grand for an evening of entertainment. (And the way the Leafs have been playing over the past few years, the “entertainment” part is questionable.) I’ve brought Ryan to a couple of Rock games and a Raptors game, and both my kids have been to Blue Jays games, but neither has ever seen a Leaf game live, since I simply can’t justify the expense.

The whole idea seems very unlikely anyway, not only because the NHL keeps preventing Balsillie from joining the owner’s club, but because they have consistently refused to investigate the possibility of moving one of their struggling franchises to Canada, whether to Hamilton or back to Winnipeg or Quebec City. In fact, the league seems reluctant to even acknowledge that they have any struggling franchises. From interviews I’ve heard with Gary Bettman, they won’t even acknowledge that a Canadian dollar that goes from 65 cents US up to $1.05 and then back down to 79 cents has any effect on overall league revenue, despite the fact that the six Canadian teams are pulling well more than their weight. I’ve heard a number of times that the 6 Canadian franchises (20% of the teams in the league) bring in over 40% of the league’s revenue. Bettman is determined to make the league a huge success in the US, despite the fact that every attempt to do so over the past however-many years has failed. It’s big in the traditional hockey markets (Boston, Detroit, Chicago, New York), decent in some (San Jose, Minnesota, Dallas), but downright lousy in many others (Atlanta, Florida, Phoenix, Nashville). Kansas City or Oklahoma City may do OK, but they’re not going to change the hockey landscape much or turn the US into a hockey-loving nation, and I think Las Vegas is a disaster waiting to happen.

Winnipeg and Quebec City would be great NHL markets. Each of them used to have an NHL team that moved, but that had nothing to do with support from the city or fans; in both cases it had to do with rising salaries and a weak Canadian dollar. With the right ownership, I think either of these two cities could flourish in the NHL. Of course, I live less than 12 km from Copps Coliseum, so I’d be perfectly happy with a team in Hamilton, but I don’t see that happening anytime soon either. The NHL just won’t allow it.

Kicked in the Saku Koivu

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I attended the first Leafs home game of the post-Kyle Wellwood era tonight. After the victory in Detroit on Thursday, Leafs fans were a little more (cautiously) optimistic about the Leafs team this year. Of course, there are the omnipresent Leafs fans who figure “This is the year” every year. They’re the ones you see on TV all the time that give other more realistic Leafs fans a bad name and make people think that all Leafs fans are moronic sheep. Anyway, I hope tonight’s game wasn’t a more realistic indication of how the Leafs will do this year. Are they going to beat great teams like the Red Wings every time? Certainly not, but hopefully we won’t see too many more 6-1 losses either.

The Good

Curtis Joseph played the third and didn’t allow a single goal, much to the delight of the Joseph-loving Toronto fans. Strangely, one of the biggest ovations he got (with the crowd erupting into chants of “CuJo! CuJo! CuJo!”) was after he was beaten by a shot that rang off of the goal post.

A total of one penalty for both teams in the first period.

Twenty of Canada’s medal winners from the Beijing Olympics were there for the ceremonial faceoff. They got a well-deserved standing ovation, and then led the crowd of almost 20,000 in singing the national anthem a capella style. No matter what big musical star they could have gotten to sing the anthem, it couldn’t have been any cooler than 20,000 people singing in unision. It was amazing.

Mike Van Ryn made a very nice defensive move in the first, stripping a Montreal player of the puck. It was a play that Bryan McCabe could never have made, but of course you knew that already — I did say it was a very nice defensive move.

The Bad

The Leafs were playing their second game of the season, and it showed. There were lots of missed passes and lots of shots that missed the net by a foot or more. It seemed that there were a lot of players just out of place all night. The Habs would take a shot and the rebound (whether off the goalie or the boards) would go straight to another Montreal player. The Leafs would take a shot and the rebound would either go straight to a Montreal defenseman or would coast all the way to the neutral zone because there were no Leafs players anywhere near it. The Habs played like it was their twentieth game of the season — less missed passes, less players out of place, less penalties… though it’s possible that Montreal is simply a better team.

Penalty killing was awful. The Leafs had five penalties in the second period, leading to four Montreal power play goals. I suppose it improved in the third though, as the Leafs had four more penalties but no goals allowed.

In the second period, Carlo Colaiacovo (I spelled that right without even looking it up first! ) tripped over a Montreal player who was knocked down by another Leaf and limped off the ice in obvious pain. I thought maybe Captain Glass was injured again and would be out for a few weeks, but he returned in the third period, so maybe this should have been listed under “The Good”.

Toskala was shaky for the first two periods, though a few of the six goals he allowed weren’t his fault at all.

Toronto only scored one goal, and it wasn’t even that nice a goal. They had another one called back because Antropov directed it in with his arm. This was on Montreal’s backup goaltender — they didn’t want to waste Carey Price on Toronto.

The Ugly

Final score: Montreal 6 Toronto 1. ‘Nuff said.

The Leafs could really have used the scoring touch from their former number one center — Kyle Wellwood. Or Darcy Tucker. Or that other guy, what’s his name? You know, that Swedish guy? Anyway, the team is rebuilding and we all know that when a team is rebuilding, there are going to be some ugly games. But despite the final score, I don’t think this was really one of them. A young rebuilding team was simply beaten by a more talented team. They put up a good fight and as Andy Frost mentioned in the post-game show on the radio, the Leafs did not mail it in in the third period, they came out and played hard. You gotta respect that.

The Juice

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Twenty years ago this week, Ben Johnson was stripped of his 100m gold medal because of a positive drug test, thus dragging society (Canadian society, anyway) kicking and screaming into the era of steroids. Steroids had already been used in sports for years, if not decades, at that point, but society generally ignored it. It wasn’t until Johnson’s disgrace that it became a topic that people actually talked about.

Johnson became a national hero by (a) winning the gold medal and thereby being informally named “Fastest man alive”, and (b) beating the hated Carl Lewis on the biggest international stage possible. This was another one of those “I remember where I was when…” events — I was just starting second year at the University of Waterloo, and that particular Friday evening, I was at the student bar known as Fed Hall. When the race came on, they put it on the big screen and turned the dance music off, and everyone watched. 9.69 seconds later, we erupted into shouts of jubilation. The joy lasted three days.


The next Monday, we got the news. Johnson had tested positive for steroids and had been disqualified. The hated Carl Lewis was given the gold medal. Canada’s heartbreak was as strong as its joy had been only three days earlier. Some Canadians felt not only embarrassed but ashamed, as if the entire country had failed the drug test. It was then that people started to take drugs seriously in sports, talking about a “level playing field” and all that. It turned out that a level playing field wasn’t the problem — since everyone was on the juice anyway, you had to take the drugs in order for there to be a level playing field. Some even suggested that steroids in sports were no big deal for this reason. Never mind that the drugs made all the records artificial. Never mind that they were dangerous. Never mind that teenage athletes began taking steroids earlier than ever before, because they started to believe that without taking the drugs, they would never have a chance of success.

However, these discussions didn’t really start south of the border until until it was discovered that Mark McGwire was using andro and then José Canseco wrote his book. Not until it became obvious that their sacred game of baseball had been tainted did the Americans become interested. At this point, however, they went nuts, launching investigations and bringing players in front of Congress. MLB had buried its head in the sand for years, never admitting that there was any kind of problem and even now, they administer all the drug tests themselves, refusing to have an impartial third party do the testing (as the Mitchell Report recommended). And since they started “policing” themselves, guess what? No major positive tests. Sure, they nailed Rafael Palmeiro, but his career was over anyway. They do throw the odd minor leaguer under the bus now and again, but since there’s no accountability for the tests, you’re never going to see a significant player get caught, even if they walk around the clubhouse with needles hanging out of their ass. The NFL is just as bad — we all know that there are steroids all over the NFL, but their testing procedures are such that very few get caught and the ones that do are suspended for all of four games. Ridiculous.

These sports leagues say that they want to get rid of the steroids for good, but that it’s just not possible. Well, they’re probably right that it’s not possible to completely get rid of them, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t bother trying. If they really want to, here’s how it can be done:

  1. Test each player at least once per season, but possibly more. Have no limit on the number of times a player can be tested in a season.
  2. Players are chosen at random and given no advance notice of when they will be tested.
  3. Tests will be administered by a company that’s not under the control of the league. The number of positive results should have no bearing on how much the company gets paid. The cost should be borne equally by the league and the players union.
  4. Players that test positive for the first time are suspended for half a season. Players that test positive a second time are banned for life. All positive tests will be publicly announced.

The goals are (a) to make it impossible for a player to know when he will next be tested, and (b) to make the risk of getting caught far outweigh the potential gains from using the drugs. Once that’s done, will the game be completely clean? No, but only the stupid players will still be using. Stupid players, by definition, will not be smart enough to avoid getting caught, and so will be tossed from the game in short order. Hopefully, this will allow the game to return to the days where you could watch someone hit 50 home runs in a season and marvel at his athleticism rather than wondering if he’s on the juice.

The Unthinkable

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The unthinkable happened yesterday.

Yankee Stadium, the baseball shrine that has been home to some of the best baseball players, teams, and moments for eighty-five years, is now closed. The Yankees and Orioles played the last-ever Major League Baseball game at The House that Ruth Built yesterday, and that’s the end for this building. The Yankees will play in the new Yankee Stadium next season, across the street from the old one, thus beginning a new era in Yankees baseball. Just thinking of all the great ball players who called that stadium home over the years is mind-boggling: everyone from Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle, and DiMaggio to Goose Gossage, Reggie Jackson, Don Mattingly, and Dave Winfield, and now the new order: A-Rod, Derek Jeter, and Mariano Rivera.

I am a huge baseball fan. I have seen countless games at both Exhibition Stadium and SkyDome the Rogers Centre, and I’ve also seen games at Fenway Park in Boston, the now-destroyed Kingdome in Seattle, New Comiskey Park U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago, Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, and even one pre-season game in Fort Myers, Florida. But unfortunately I never made it to a game at Yankee Stadium, which I now regret immensely. I even looked into arranging a weekend away for me and Gail sometime this summer, but with our trip to France, we were so busy that it was hard to find time to do it. (It was also hard to find the money to do it, also because of our trip to France.)

I have the utmost respect for the Yankees as a franchise. The logo and pinstriped uniform is probably the most recognizable sports logo in North America, even among people who don’t watch baseball. They are to baseball what the Leafs are to hockey and what the Dallas Cowboys are to football, but to a much greater extent. Having said all that, I’ve grown up a Jays fan, and have even found myself a bit of a Red Sox fan in recent years, and so I’ve always hated the Yankees. Which is why the fact that I was actually rooting for the Yankees to win in their last game in Yankee Stadium is unthinkable.

This fence isn’t very comfortable

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So the Jays are out of the postseason again, for the umpteenth year in a row. After their 10-game win streak, they did have a small-but-legitimate shot at making the playoffs, so it could be argued that they played meaningful baseball in September for the first time since J.P. Ricciardi took the helm. I wrote back in August that Ricciardi should be fired, and now I’m not sure. It’s true that he’s ultimately responsible for putting together the team, but it really isn’t his fault that Marcum will miss next year, that McGowan missed half of this year, that Accardo and Janssen missed all of this year, that Ryan missed all of last year, and on and on. Ricciardi has put together one of the best pitching staffs in baseball, even with all the injuries. Injuries to Wells and Aaron Hill are also not Ricciardi’s fault. Also on the upside, this Travis Snider kid (drafted by Ricciardi) looks like the real deal as well. If he can keep it up, an outfield of Snider, Wells, and Rios might be the best Jays outfield since Bell, Moseby, and Barfield.

On the flipside, it is Ricciardi’s fault that Reed Johnson is a Chicago Cub (I still shake my head over that move). The Shannon Stewart experiment was a total failure. The David Eckstein experiment didn’t work out either. Is Scott Rolen really much of an improvement over Troy Glaus? The bottom line is that the Jays missed the playoffs again and despite the late-season winning streak, we knew that they never really had much of a chance. From that point of view, after seven seasons of not having a chance, Ricciardi should be fired. I heard the other day that of all the GMs that were in place when Ricciardi was hired, he’s the only one left who hasn’t made the post-season. Every other team that hasn’t made the playoffs in that time has fired their GM. But not the Jays.

But it’s not like the team sucks and has no chance next year — if they manage to resign Burnett (for a zillion dollars, since that’s what it will likely take) and McGowan returns OK and they pick up a big bat in the off season, then the Jays could seriously contend next year. Maybe we should give him one more year. Of course, that’s what I thought last year too.

My ass is getting sore from this fence-sitting.

Sluggers season is over

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My annual baseball tournament was this past weekend. We played three games on Saturday (won two and tied one), and then one more game Sunday morning, which we lost. The 2-1-1 record put us third in our group, and our first playoff game was Sunday at 11:30. It was a close game, but we didn’t get the bats going enough and we lost by a couple of runs, so we were done. I’m in some pain today, but I managed to get up on time and after my 50-minute commute, even managed to get out of the car without falling on the ground. And I took the stairs up to the third floor; I didn’t wimp out and go to the elevator. And I didn’t even take any Tylenol today (though I did a couple of times yesterday and Saturday). Go me.

Personally, I played OK in the tournament. I hit pretty decent in the first and second games, not so much in the third, and pretty crappy in the last two. Defensively, I did pretty well, except for one play which is still haunting me. (More on that later.) In the second game, I made a pretty awesome over-the-shoulder off-balance catch followed by a fall and roll, though the runner on second tagged and went to third because it took me a second to get up again. In the playoff game, I was part of two separate double plays. (I play right field and right rover, so I’m not involved in double plays all that often.) Early in the game, someone hit one way over my head, I went to get it and threw it in to Gerald who heaved a bullet home, beating the runner by a step. (Edit: Duh, this wasn’t a double play.) Later in the game, another fly came out to shallow right field, and I guess the runner on first didn’t expect me to get to it, but I did. He was halfway between first and second, and I fired it into first and doubled him off.

I caught at least one other fly ball in that game, but the play that is haunting me was a fly ball that I missed. The batter was left-handed, and had hit very deep to right field before, so I was playing pretty deep. He hit one a mile in the air, and I originally thought it was going deep again. I told myself “This ball is not going over my head”, so I backed up a couple of steps. Then I realized that it wasn’t going deep at all and I was way too far back. I sprinted in to get to it, but those first few steps backwards cost me and I missed it by a foot. I was fully outstretched when I reached for it, so I fell and rolled again, but immediately got up and went for the ball. Luckily, Matt the centre fielder (who has unbelievable range) was right there and backed me up. The batter got to either second or third, and when the next batter hit a single up the middle, he scored, so I put that run squarely on my own shoulders. That was the only run they scored that inning, and we lost by more than one run, so it’s not like that play singlehandedly cost us the game, but I am still angry at myself for blowing what should have been a completely routine pop fly.

So baseball is over for another year, and now I’m in full Mats Sundin mode about baseball next year. Do I continue playing ball next year, or do I “retire” from softball and do something else athletic once a week (eg. hit the driving range, or maybe even go to an actual golf course) or maybe dedicate one night a week to two hours of uninterrupted guitar playing? Or do I just stop playing ball and have some extra free time which will likely be eaten up by common household things like laundry? Lemme tell ya, the laundry thing is pretty tempting, but I think I’m gonna need some more time to decide.

You suck, Halladay

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Well, OK, he doesn’t really suck. He had an off night is all. But if he’d had an on night, the Jays would have tied the team record for the longest winning streak in team history at 11 games! Who’d have guessed that Doc would be the pitcher to end the streak? And even with Halladay sucking not pitching his best, they came this close to doing it anyway.

I only saw the last three or four innings of the game, but the Jays were down 5-0 and simply weren’t in the game at all. Then in the 8th inning, Mark Buehrle walked Bautista and Ozzie Guillen inexplicably took Buehrle out. Buehrle looked kind of amused by this, but then Octavio Dotel gave up a 2-run homer to Alex Rios, which I’m sure took some of Buehrle’s fun away. Dotel got out of that inning, and then Chicago scored what turned out to be a critical run in the bottom of the 8th. Toronto came up in the top of the 9th, down 6-2, and facing one of the tougher closers in the AL in Bobby Jenks. Zaun struck out, then Inglett singled, Rolen walked, and Overbay singled Inglett in. Scutaro (what an awesome pick-up he was) then doubled in Rolen, and Bautista grounded out scoring Overbay. Now it’s 6-5 with 2 out and the tying run at 3rd base, and your best hitters coming up in Rios and Wells. Rios struck out (on a third strike that I’m not convinced was a strike) to end the game, but if you can ever be happy about a loss, especially one that ends a 10-game winning streak, this is one of those times. The Jays went from not being in the game at all to needing a base hit to tie it in less than two innings. That says something about this team.

There’s been a lot of talk about this streak and whether is means anything at all. I’m not sure that it does, since the Jays are basically out of the playoff race anyway. They’re 7½ games back of Boston for the wild card with less than three weeks left in the season, so unless they go on another phenomenal streak and Boston loses a bunch and Minnesota loses a bunch too, it ain’t happening. It looks like the end of any one of the last few Leafs’ seasons — wait until there’s no chance of making the playoffs and then start playing really well. Can the Jays simply not perform under pressure, or was it just bad timing that they all got healthy and hot at the wrong time?

Worst of all, does the streak mean that J.P. Ricciardi will still have his GM job next season? After all, if you put together a team that is good enough to win 10 straight games, all against very good teams, you shouldn’t be getting fired, should you? Or is it more fair to say that if you put together a team that good and yet they aren’t contending for a playoff spot, that you should be fired?

Is this streak an anomaly, or are the Jays really this good? Hard to say. We found out this year thanks to Tampa that a team not expected to do anything can be a serious contender, so there’s always hope.

The Trade III?

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Weird — I just finished writing about two different blockbuster trades that the Rock made with the San Jose Stealth, and they go and make another one. This time, they threw the Rochester Knighthawks into the mix.

The Rock traded Aaron Wilson and a draft pick for next year to Rochester in return for Stephen Hoar. Rochester sent their draft pick for this year to San Jose, who sent Luke Wiles to Toronto. So Toronto gives up Aaron Wilson and a draft pick for Luke Wiles and Stephen Hoar, Rochester gives up a draft pick and Stephen Hoar for Aaron Wilson, and San Jose gives up Luke Wiles for a draft pick. Got all that?

As much as I like Aaron Wilson, I think this looks like a good deal for the Rock. I don’t know much about Luke Wiles (since the Stealth have never played in Toronto), but from the numbers, he looks like a similar player to Wilson anyway. Hoar, who has one of the best names in the NLL (he’s heard “Hey Steve, your mama’s a Hoar!” all his life, and now replies with “Not until she married my dad!”), is a solid defender and transition guy. It kind of sucks to have traded an offensive star like Wilson to a division rival, but it may not matter. The Knighthawks lost John Grant, Jr. for the season today, so I guess the K-Hawks are hoping that Wilson will make up for that loss to some extent. You simply can’t replace a talent like Grant, but if you have to try, Wilson will do as good a job as just about anyone.

Paul Tutka wrote a piece in NLLInsider.com today about the moves the Rock have made this off-season, and when you put them all together, it does look pretty good:

In: Luke Wiles, Stephen Hoar, Craig Conn, Jason Crosbie, Chad Thompson (injured last year), Lewis Ratcliff

Out: Josh Sanderson, Aaron Wilson, Jim Veltman, Mike Poulin, Dan Ladouceur

The goaltending situation is a little dicey. Watson is coming off a Goaltender of the Year award, so no real worries there but if he gets hurt, the backup will be Mike Attwood (not sure if he’s ever seen action in an NLL game) or one of the two goalies they drafted the other day, neither of which has ever played in the NLL either. Poulin didn’t see a lot of floor time last year, but he was the goaltender of the year in the OLA this past season, in a league featuring Cosmo, O’Toole, and Brandon Miller. Might have been good to protect Poulin instead of Watson, but then make Watson a franchise player so Boston would be unlikely to draft him.

The Trade II

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In July of 2004, the Rock made a blockbuster deal with the San Jose Stealth which came to be known to Rock fans as The Trade. Two and a half years later, the Rock made another trade that is still being talked about, but not in the same way. These were the two biggest trades in Rock history, and while the first directly contributed to the Rock’s 2005 NLL championship, the second was not-quite-but-pretty-close directly responsible for the two worst seasons in Rock history.

The Rock won the NLL championship in 2005, but struggled in 2006, beginning the season 0-4 and ending up with a worst-ever 8-8 record. The Rock management adopted a “What have you done for us lately” attitude with head coach and GM Terry Sanderson, and fired him within weeks of the end of the season. Former player Glenn Clark was hired as head coach, and Mike Kloepfer got the job as “Director of Player Personnel” (don’t know why that’s different from “General Manager” as it’s called for every other team, and for the Rock prior to this). A couple of weeks before the start of the 2007 season, Kloepfer made his mark on the team by making The Trade II. Kloepfer traded Colin Doyle and Darren Halls to the San Jose Stealth for Ryan Benesch, Kevin Fines, Chad Thompson, and two draft picks.

Doyle had played his entire career with the Rock organization; one year in Hamilton when they were the Ontario Raiders, and then eight years with the Rock. He won five championships with the Rock, and finished either first or second on the Rock in scoring every year from 1999 to 2005. In 2005, he actually led the league in scoring — the first player not named Gait or Tavares to do so since 1990 — and was named league MVP. Doyle was also named MVP of the Championship game three times, something nobody else has ever done more than once. Needless to say, Doyle was the offensive heart and soul of the Rock. He was also a fan favourite who gave his all whenever he hit the floor, and from all accounts, he was also a popular guy in the locker room. The trade shocked the lacrosse community, and even Doyle himself did not see it coming. Many Rock fans were absolutely incensed, and some even cancelled season tickets because of it. Management never really gave a good reason for the trade, other than the typical “going in a different direction” crap. When you’ve won five championships in seven years and then have one bad season, you don’t need to go in a different direction; you want to get back to the direction you were going in the previous year, and trading your best player away is not the way to do that.

Of course, Doyle wasn’t the only player involved in the trade. Darren Halls was a rookie who was traded to the Rock from Arizona only the previous month. Ryan Benesch was the first overall pick in that year’s draft, and was touted as a very exciting young player. I had never heard of Fines or Thompson, but despite the others involved in the trade, it essentially came down to Doyle for Benesch — the current superstar for the up-and-coming rookie. Perhaps the Rock was hoping that Doyle was on the downside of his career and Benesch would turn into another, well, Colin Doyle. But in 2006, Doyle was only a year removed from his MVP season, he made the All-Star and All-Pro teams, and finished third in league scoring. In short, he was not showing any signs of being on the downside of his career.

Doyle only scored four points in his first game in San Jose, but got nine assists in his second game and seven in his third (plus a goal). He ended the 2007 season with 81 points, fifteen less than his total with the Rock the previous year. Rather than attempt to be the goal leader, he seemed to take a page from Josh Sanderson’s book, and let Jeff Zywicki, Gary Rosyski, and Luke Wiles score all the goals. Doyle led the team in assists, and the Stealth made the post season for the first time in three years. In only the second playoff game in Stealth history, Doyle, who thrives in the post-season (did I mention his three Championship game MVP awards?), scored a goal and added ten assists to help the Stealth beat the defending champion Colorado Mammoth 15-14 in OT. The next week, however, the Stealth were bumped from the playoffs by the Arizona Sting. Last year, Doyle scored 88 points, and the Stealth won the west division, though they lost in the opening round of the playoffs to the LumberJax.

As for the Rock, Ryan Benesch lived up to most expectations, finishing with 58 points and was named NLL Rookie of the Year. In total, Benesch, Fines, and Thompson finished with a total of 104 points, even more than Doyle could have been expected to get. But Doyle, Josh Sanderson, and Blaine Manning made up a very potent offensive threesome, and losing part of that group really hurt the team. Call it team chemistry or whatever. Sanderson’s points total dropped by thirteen, and Manning, whose point total had already dropped by twenty five the previous year, saw his total drop by another three. The Rock finished the season 6-10, their worst record ever. They managed to back into the playoffs thanks to tiebreakers, but were soundly defeated in the first round by the eventual-champion Rochester Knighthawks. Last year, the Rock finished 7-9 and out of the playoffs for the first time ever.

It’s hard to say that the Rock’s decline from dynasty to also-ran was caused by the Doyle trade, since they were no better than mediocre the year before the trade. But things got quite a bit worse after the trade. Fines was traded away the next year, and then Sanderson near the end of last season. Benesch was benched for the last two games of the 2008 season, and there were rumours that he’d played his last game as a Rock. Nothing ever came of it, and Mike Kloepfer has since gone on the record saying that Benesch was never on the trading block and is a big part of the Rock’s future. However, no explanation was ever given for the benching.

While it could be argued (and I did) that the Stealth basically lost the Sanderson/Cosmo deal, there’s no argument that they ended up on the winning end of the Doyle/Benesch trade.

Quite honestly, I was not a very big fan of Colin Doyle during the first few years that I watched the Rock (i.e. starting in the the 2001 season). There was no question that he was talented, but he seemed like too much of a hothead to me. It always seemed like he wanted to get out there and fight someone (and my opinions on fighting in sports are very well documented), and the only reason that he didn’t was because his coach refused to let him, deciding (correctly) that he was too valuable on the floor to be spending time in the penalty box.

Over the years, however, he matured and became a superstar. The hothead thing vanished, and he now seems perfectly happy to let others do the fighting while he just goes out and scores goals. Something else that impressed me about Doyle was unrelated to lacrosse — during the national anthems, he stands perfectly still and even sings along to O Canada. I don’t understand why players have to keep shifting around during the anthems. Do they think it helps them stay loose? Then why do they sit down on the bench when they’re not playing? Why not stand behind the bench, shifting from foot to foot? And players who take off and continue their warm-up before the anthems are over really annoy me. Anyway, kudos to Doyle for showing respect.

The Doyle trade is one of those “I remember when I heard about…” moments for me. I am an occasional Wikipedia editor (OK, more than occasional, I have made over 7,000 edits to Wikipedia pages), and the day after the trade, I went to Wikipedia to look at my watchlist (a list of changes to pages I’m interested in), and one of the changes was to the Colin Doyle page, which I created. The only thing that was changed on the page was the first line:

Colin “Popeye” Doyle (b. September 8, 1977 in Kitchener, Ontario) is a lacrosse player for the San Jose Stealth of the National Lacrosse League.

“San Jose Stealth?” I thought, “Stupid vandals.” Vandalism is something that happens all too often on Wikipedia, so I was all ready to revert the change, but then I noticed a new paragraph that described a trade in more detail (i.e. who was involved). The next thought I had was not “vandalism”, but more something along the lines of “no fucking way!” and went screaming over to NLL.com to see if it was really true. It was.

In the two seasons since he was traded, while watching the Rock struggle to score goals, I came to realize just how valuable Colin Doyle was to the team. This coming season, the Stealth are playing in Toronto for the first time since the trade, so I’m looking forward to seeing Doyle play again, even if it is against the Rock rather than for them.

The Trade I

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As I wrote about the other day, Anthony Cosmo was traded from San Jose to Chicago. Cosmo is a former Toronto Rock goaltender, and was traded to San Jose in the summer of 2004, essentially for Josh Sanderson (at least, they were the two biggest names in the trade). This was the biggest trade in Rock history, up until the Doyle trade of two years later, and was known to Rock fans simply as The Trade (just as Jays fans used to think of the Alomar and Carter for Fernandez and McGriff deal).

Though excited about having Josh Sanderson on the Rock, I remember thinking at the time that trading Cosmo would come back to bite the Rock later on. Despite the fact that Cosmo has blossomed into one of the best goalies in the league, I was wrong on this one. This turned out to be a fabulous trade for the Rock.

For four seasons, Cosmo was the Rock’s backup goaltender, behind the legendary Bob “Whipper” Watson. During most of that time, Whipper was the definite #1 goalie and Cosmo was the backup. Beginning in 2003, Cosmo began playing more often, and when Whipper got injured, Cosmo took over. He played in nine of sixteen games in 2004, as he and Whipper more or less shared the goalie job. Whipper was in his mid 30’s at the time while Cosmo was more than seven years younger. I distinctly remember one game where Whipper started but didn’t play very well and was pulled in the first quarter. Cosmo finished the game, and played amazing. I remember wondering if we had just seen the unofficial transition from the Watson era of Rock history to the Cosmo era. Beginning that night, I assumed that Cosmo would be the starting Rock goaltender the next season, with Watson serving as the backup, if he didn’t retire. Never happened. The Cosmo era, if it ever truly began, ended a couple of months after the 2004 season ended.

In a blockbuster deal, Toronto traded fan favourite Steve Toll, defenseman Darryl Gibson (later to become an all-star), two draft picks and a player to be named later to the San Jose Stealth for the single-season assist record holder and master playmaker Josh Sanderson, his cousin Phil Sanderson (another soon-to-be all star defenseman), and Rusty Kruger (who happened to be a good friend of Josh). It wasn’t officially part of the trade announcement, but it was widely known that the Rock “player to be named later” was Anthony Cosmo. It was weird that someone as good as Cosmo was a “player to be named later” in a trade, but that wasn’t the weirdest thing about The Trade.

The league was about to hold an expansion draft for the new Minnesota Swarm. Each team was allowed to protect a certain number of players and the Swarm would be allowed to pick one unprotected player from each team. As part of the deal with the Stealth, the Rock were obligated to protect Cosmo. Not only was this weird because it meant that they had to leave someone else unprotected, but the Stealth already had two very good goalies (Brandon Miller and Rob Blasdell), both of whom were protected. So the Stealth, essentially, forced the Rock to protect one of their goalies, allowing them to end up with three. This made little sense, as Cosmo started the majority of games for the Stealth the next season, with Miller and Blasdell seeing little floor time. Blasdell was left unprotected in the next season’s expansion draft, and was selected by Edmonton (who immediately traded him to Arizona).

Many lacrosse fans raised a Spockian eyebrow at The Trade announcement since Josh’s father Terry Sanderson was the GM and head coach of the Rock at the time. Some wondered if he gave up too much to acquire his son, his nephew, and his son’s best friend. But nepotism aside, The Trade turned the Rock into an offensive powerhouse. Josh Sanderson combined with Colin Doyle and Blaine Manning to make the Rock one of the most potent offensive lineups in NLL history. In 2005, Doyle led the league in scoring, Manning was tied for second, and Sanderson was tied for fourth. Josh set a new single-season record for assists. Doyle, Manning and Josh were named to the All-Star and All-Pro teams, and Doyle was named league MVP as the Rock won their fifth championship in seven years. In 2006, all three were again All-Stars, as was Phil Sanderson, Josh led the league in both assists and points, and Doyle and Josh made the All-Pro team again.

After 2006, the Rock went downhill quickly. Terry Sanderson was fired, and Colin Doyle was inexplicably traded to the Stealth. Without Terry to fight for him, Josh became unpopular with management, and he was traded to the Calgary Roughnecks during the 2008 season. The Rock finished below .500 in both 2007 and 2008 (their worst records ever), and they missed the playoffs in 2008 for the first time in team history.

But what about Cosmo? He became the starter in San Jose that Rock fans knew he would. He made the All-Star team in 2005 and 2006, was named Goaltender of the Year in 2007, and is now widely regarded as one of the best in the league. And yet the Rock traded him away — so why was this still a great trade? Because of Bob Watson. In the four seasons since The Trade, Watson has simply been outstanding. He made the All-Pro team in 2005 and 2008, and was named Goaltender of the Year in 2008 at the age of 38 — on a team that went 7-9. He’s had a couple of different backups (Phil Wetherup and Mike Poulin), neither of whom has played often because Watson is a workhorse. Trading Cosmo didn’t hurt the Rock because even if they hadn’t, he wouldn’t have gotten much playing time. The fact that the Rock pretty much sucked last year and the year before is irrelevant — their suckage was not Watson’s fault, and having Cosmo in goal wouldn’t have changed things.

The Rock had an excess of talent and traded some of it away for a championship. That’s the quintessential example of a great trade.