No. 289: CHERRY & MacLEAN etc / My hiatus at an end, withering criticism, mislabelling of my work & various flotsam & jetsam
Say what you will about what I do, but don't call it "long-form"
First, I’d like to apologize to all you loyal subscribers out there for going dark the last couple of weeks. I was absolutely waylaid by work on a Don Cherry feature that will surface in the Kingston Whig-Standard and across the Postmedia chain in short order. The first taste of it came in a piece with Ron MacLean last Friday that caused a lot of talk, mostly complaints and denials by Cherry and others in his camp (his son Tim and Bobby Orr, most prominently).
The fallout is still falling out and alternately MacLean and I have been taking turns as pinatas. Cherry ripped his former on-air partner and a media critic in the Toronto Star no less suggested that I have my facts wrong. On the latter, what can I say? I was simply writing up an interview (recorded) with MacLean that focused on his thoughts and opinions about Cherry’s last go-round with Hockey Night in Canada and his firing in the “Poppygate” debacle. Like the Star reporter did, you might try to claim that MacLean was off base and had his facts wrong—which Cherry did and loudly—but I’m sure that you’ll believe MacLean’s credible when you read the Postmedia piece and my follow-up and notes on this SubStack.
But that’s it about l’affaire Grapes for now other than one gripe. The Toronto Star critic described my 1,100-word Whig-Standard piece as “long-form profile,” which any reader of this SubStack and anyone who’s familiar with my work will find risible. I write 1,100-word introductions to what they call long-form pieces. My words aren’t counted—they’re weighed.
I never use the term “long-form,” a coinage that gained traction ten or 20 years ago—precisely when I couldn’t tell you because I only hoped it would fade away and be forgotten. Did those I worshipped from afar like A.J. Liebling and John Hersey write long-form? Ancient heroes I talked to, the New Yorker’s Joe Mitchell and the sports scribes beloved W.C. Heinz, never described their work long-form. I don’t think it was attached to someone so recently gone as Gary Smith. Can I please be grandfathered into an exemption from the label? I’m long and, for the most part, formed, but really what I write are stories, a mix of profiles and essays. I’d prefer you called one of my first-person pieces memoir rather than auto-journalism, but whatever. Anything but long-form.
For what’s it’s worth, if you have a paid subscription, you can access my stories about Joe Mitchell and W.C. Heinz in my archive, links here follow.
No. 182: JOE MITCHELL / Visiting & revisiting the enigma in the New Yorker's offices.
That will keep you busy.
WHILE I was quiet in this space, I found a notification in my SubStack mailbox.
Now I’ve been on the list before, in the 30s, 40s and 50s usually, but I shot up higher than I’ve ever been exactly when I stopped writing. I have so many questions. How many people are Falling in Humor? Would I fare better in Rising in Humour? What would I rank if I actually tried to make this SubStack funny? (My guess, out of the top 100. Never been in the top 100 on the Substack’s Sports leaderboard.) I fell back to my previous slot in Rising in Humor this morning.
I’ll fix that. So, a priest, a minister and a rabbi walk into a bar …
I didn’t see my friend Neil Paine’s great SubStack on the Sports leaderboard and for me that’s hard to believe. He is a daily fountain of sports knowledge—I honestly don’t know how he keeps it up. His piece today about the Quebec Nordiques being the franchise that could have at least delayed Canada’s Stanley Cup drought if they hadn’t relocated to Denver in 1995 is representative of the great work he does. I have Neil’s infinitely informative and entertaining on my SubStack Recommendations list and I’d attach five stars to it if I could.
My favourite tjhrowback lid, alas not an original.
Neil’s Quebec/Colorado piece got me casting back to memories of working Nordiques games over my first year at the Globe and Mail and the Avalanche’s run to the Stanley Cup in my second year at the paper. A difference maker if not the difference maker for the Cup winner was the addition of Patrick Roy after his messy break-up with the Habs, but goaltending aside (hard to put aside, but hear me out) I’m open to the idea that the last Nords line-up > the first Avs roster. I’m just going by eye test and feel, but I can remember pretty vividly having my breath taken away at a Quebec morning skate at the Forum—they had the best or about the best record in the league at the time and were on their way to the No. 1 seed in the East. They had come on after the Canadiens’ walk through and it looked like Nords were playing an entirely different sport—a quantum difference of speed and almost casual about it.
That Nords team had Wendel Clark in the mix and he’d be gone the next year, with Claude Lemieux coming in—I’m pretty sure Wendel was a better player than Lemieux in ’95, but his play fell off when landed with the Islanders and declined fast. I want to believe, the empirical stuff notwithstanding, that Wendel would have sustained his game or close to it if that trade if he stayed in the mix in Denver. Lemieux was designed for playoff hockey and critical to those early Colorado teams … but the fanboy in me wishes Wendel, my lunchmate with King Clancy all those years before, got what would have been his best chance at a ring.
With Neil’s piece as a springboard, I’ll going to drop a couple of pieces about the Nords and things Quebecois or Quebec-ish in coming days.
One of my favourite trivia questions is Quebec-related. Q: What was the result of the last game played at theColisée? People will time travel back to the Nords, of course, but the arena where Jean Beliveau tore it up for the Aces and Guy Lafleur for les Remparts stayed in use for the QMJHL club for another 20 years. (An AHL franchise came and went in that time, too.)
A: Oshawa 2 Kelowna 1 OT. Yes, the last game at the Colisee featured an OHL team beating a B.C. team in the Memorial Cup final. As if fate hadn’t been cruel enough with the loss of the Nords. Anyway, my quick filing post-game you’ll find below the video of the game—I’ll boldface the two players most prominently flagged having gone on to major roles in the Show and for dedicate followers they’re really worth watching in this game footage I link to here.
(And as the text below was a draft filed, it might have a typo or something goofy that was caught and pulled by editors—from what I can tell the finished copy doesn’t live online anymore.)
The best game of the Memorial Cup was saved for last, thankfully. I doubt that the 2015 tournament will land on anyone’s best-ever list but for drama the Oshawa Generals’ 2-1 overtime victory over the Kelowna Rockets would rank up there with any championship games.
When the two teams met in the first round, the score was also 2-1 for the Generals, a win the OHL champs pulled off in regulation. That game was a chess-match by comparison to the action-packed final.
I would do a list of winners and losers among draft-eligibles and prospects off the game but that would be grossly unfair at the end of the season and after such an entertaining tilt. And really, if a prospect gets as far as a Memorial Cup final, it would be hard to say that he’s hurt his stock. So I’ll just focus on winners.
Winner: Oshawa centre Anthony Cirelli. A draft eligible, Cirelli finished at No. 67 on the NHL Central Scouting Service’s rankings of North American skaters. He was trending in the right direction having being slotted at No. 88 at the mid-term. His numbers would suggest those are fair assessments: 13 goals and 23 assists in 68 games. And the measurements don’t build a great case for him, just under six feet but a reedy 160 pounds on Central’s scale. But pretty clinical finishes on two goals in the championship game should have scouts going back over their notes—the first last night was a great wrist shot, a goal scorer’s goal, and the OT winner was a cashing of a rebound, fighting through the wrap-up of Rockets blueliner Devante Stephens. Maybe Cirelli would have had more time to shine with a team whose line-up wasn’t as deep as Oshawa’s this season. At least it will be a conversation starter when he gets to the combine.
Winner: Oshawa goaltender Ken Appleby. An interesting call for NHL teams this time round, the 20-year-old Appleby has managed to pass through drafts. Central ranked him 27th among netminders in North America in 2014 and listed him as a C prospect this season, basically an afterthought. He’s regarded as an honest worker with NHL size (6-foot-4-and-a-half and 209 pounds) but not super athletic. He had a couple of hiccups in the post-season against North Bay in the Eastern Conference final but in the Memorial Cup championship game he was sensational, turning aside 37 or 38 shots. The Rockets could have easily stretched their first-period lead to two or three goals. I thought Appleby set the course of the OHL final when he kept the Erie Otters at bay with the scored tied after the second intermission in Game 2—Connor McDavid and his crew had the Generals reeling but stole two or three goals off their sticks. He might have won an audition then and there but he’s bound to get one now.
Winner: Oshawa centre Cole Cassels. The play of former NHLer Andrew Cassels has been the subject of a couple of missives in this space over the last few weeks. He didn’t have his best game in the final but his body of post-season work suggests that Vancouver landed a great pick when taking him in the third round a couple of years back. Again, USA Hockey didn’t think he could help at the world juniors? He was exactly the player the Americans needed.
Winner: Kelowna right winger Nick Merkley. The most significant draft-eligible in Quebec this week, Merkley had to help his stock. Scouts here said that they thought he will fall somewhere between No. 20 and the end of the first round. Maybe. Size does work against him. Still, more than a few of those who will be called in the top couple of dozen can be hard to find on the ice on occasion and that’s seemingly never the case with Merkley. “Pest” doesn’t quite do him justice. On the shift right after Tomas Soustal’s opening goal Merkley went through traffic, carried the puck to the edge of the Oshawa net and forced Generals netminder Ken Appleby to do the splits, toe to the post, to make a five-star save. Virtually every shift Merkley did something to get under the skin of one of the Generals, most often the biggest on the ice, either Hunter Smith or Michael McCarron. When he wasn’t jabbing and needling Generals, he was creating scoring chances. I don't know why he dropped from No. 13 in the midterms to No 23 in the final rankings issued last month but, again like Cirelli, his performance in Quebec should re-open some teams' discussions at the combine.
Winner: The Edmonton Oilers. There’s a good shot that the one year when they didn’t win the lottery they still landed the kid who’ll turn out to be the best player. Leon Draisaitl had a couple of powerhouse performances in Quebec. It looked like he was going to dominate in the first period but his play tapered as the game went on.
Winner: Kelowna defenceman Madison Bowey. I’ll admit that I wasn’t blown away with Bowey’s play in the world juniors, but he stepped up in the final. He projects to a third or more probably fourth D—not really a guy you’d pin on the point on the powerplay at the next level. Still, for Washington to grab him late in the second round two years ago ranks as a win. At the end of the night Bowey was inconsolable in defeat, face down on the ice, like he was going to try to tunnel his way out of the Colisee.
When the Sun story mentioned you were an award winner, did they mean the one you got for writing leads for "Bob"?