Bleacher Report - Articles by G P

It's Time for the Maple Leafs to Give Justin Pogge a Shot

G P — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 04:14:54 -0500

Another preventable loss last night for the Blue and White.

It pains me to say, but Vesa has been total crap in five of the last six games. The Leafs have let the most goals in as a team, and Vesa’s GAA and save percentage completely stink.

He’s in the bottom 10 goalies of the league—bottom three if you count only goalies with 10 or more starts. He is there among the bottom with names such as Raycroft, Lalime, and Joseph. (Oops!)

To those players' defense, they haven’t had even close to as many starts, and Raycroft even has a winning record.

Sure, Kipper and Turco are the other two goalies among the bottom three, but Dallas is total crap, and Kipper is still two games above .500. He might have gotten blown out in a couple of losses, but he has still stolen games for Calgary this year.

Also, if there was one thing that the Leafs could boast about at the beginning of the year, it was how strong their defense was. I still agree it is strong.

The Leafs have outshot their opponents in 15 of their 19 games played, yet they have only won six of those 15 games. That is freakin’ brutal.

Together, Joseph and Toskala make up the worst goaltending tandem in the league. Even if we had the Islanders' goalies, we would be faring better.

The first goal Vesa let in last night versus Boston, and more specifically Kessel, was downright ugly. You could even argue the third goal was stoppable.

The Leafs should have won easily 3-1, if not for the two or three amazing saves by Tim Thomas and the blown opportunities of the Leafs' weak power play.

I say it’s time to see our future—even if it’s for one game and just to rattle the cage, so to speak.

Right now, we can’t get much worse. Vesa has zero confidence, and Ron Wilson is obviously letting Toskala try to work through it. How long do you try that for? Five or six games seems good enough for me.

Let’s at least see what kind of asset we might have in the AHL. If we don’t have what we think we have, the future for the Maple Leafs will be darker than expected.

You Be The Judge: Canada's Second Anthem

G P — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 09:32:44 -0400

As all Canadian Hockey fans know, just over two months ago, in the first week of June, CBC balked and lost the rights to one of the most cherished songs in Canadian history—the anthem to our beloved "Hockey Night in Canada."

CTV scooped up the rights as fast as they could get them. Lucky for us, we will still be able to hear the song when we watch Hockey on TSN. Still, it will always remind me of Saturday nights waiting for hockey—whether the first game of the year or the last game of the Stanley Cup Finals.

I'm happy the song lives on.

Meanwhile, CBC has opened the competition to us, the fans. We are to create a new anthem for HNIC. At first I thought this seemed gimmicky, and a terrible idea. Upon further thought, I realized this is a HUGE assignment. Not only do you have the chance to win $100,000, but your song could end up being the the song future generations hum when they are waiting for hockey to start on Saturday night.

Like most people who watched the Olympic coverage on CBC, I was inundated with the constant commercials promoting this challenge, as well as samples of songs being considered.

I had been meaning to check out the Anthem Challenge website to see some of the entries. I finally did it this morning and realized that the most viewed potential anthem had only 125,000 hits. 125,000?

Now, I know there are more Canadian hockey fans—or even hockey fans in general—who should be listening to these anthems in preparation to vote on our next anthem. It's time to start promoting this more. The voting starts in October.

Also, if you are the least bit musically inclined, you still have four days, if you count today, to submit an entry and potentially "become a part of hockey history"—and 100 G's richer.

The regular season is a little more than a month away. It's time to start listening to these songs, voting on your favorites, and doing basically anything to tide you over for this last, and longest month without hockey. (I know I've tried everything else.)

I'm getting excited.

Top Three viewed from this past week: (Only 7500 for the top viewed anthem... come on people)

Voting starts October 4, 2008

Mats Sundin Retires to Pursue Other Passions (Humor)

G P — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 08:18:39 -0400

Mats Sundin is hanging up his skates. He wants to spend his last couple of “good years” trying his other passion. I mean passions.

They are as follows:

Why the Toronto Maple Leafs Are Waving Goodbye to Mats Sundin

G P — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:02:19 -0400

Mats Sundin, the all-time leading scorer in a Maple Leaf uniform, seems likely not to be pulling his number 13 blue and white jersey on for the upcoming season.

A prediction of that magnitude now seems like—well, not much of a prediction and more like reality. It's halfway through the month of August, and a month from now training camp will be in full swing.

Why is the best Maple Leaf ever to wear the uniform—yes, I said it—waiting around in Sweden with his lips firmly pressed up against one another? What is he waiting for?

The hockey world has gone crazy with these questions, among others surrounding Sundin's camp. So crazy, in fact, that true-blue Leaf fans are complaining on boards. Hell, I've even read articles about how any Sundin articles there are.

Let me be the first to tell you it's not Mats Sundin we are waiting on. It's Cliff Fletcher—and more specifically, MLSE.

As much as you Habs, Canucks, Rangers, and Flyers fans—Rangers and Flyers? Seriously? They think they have a shot at Mats? Come on—might hold out hope for number 13, he will never slip your uniform on.

He had a chance to sign with Montreal. He didn't. Was it because he wanted to test the free-agent market? Gimme a break. Was it because he didn't want to make a rash decision before seeing what other teams had for personnel and roster? How would those teams then have room for him under their cap?

No way he would ever play for under $7 million. The NHLPA wouldn't have stood for it. Mats is easily a $7 million dollar player in this league. Nothing short of fair market value would be good enough. (Okay, maybe in Detroit—but they have no line space for him.)

Sundin then got rocked by the $20 million dollar offer from Vancouver. I'm sure he expected bids from other teams, but nothing of this magnitude. He politely said, I'm flattered—but no thanks.

You Canucks fans had quite the time trying to convince us otherwise. They were pretty good arguments too. If he signs on for two years with the Canucks, he will be skating on home ice when the 2010 Winter Olympics are in Vancouver. A definite advantage for a Swede who always dreamt of winning gold for his home country—too bad he did that in Torino in 2006.

Meanwhile this whole time, the Maple Leafs have stayed in the background—if Toronto can ever be in the background, much to the dismay of most hockey fans—with their quiet, but strong, $7 million dollar offer. Let's face it—they know what Mats is worth, and they know he bleeds blue.

He made a bold statement at the trade deadline. Those of you who took time to read into it and see the true meaning would have heard: "I am a Toronto Maple Leaf, I can't imagine winning the Stanley Cup with another team. Besides, if I even wanted to, I would do it from the start of training camp—and not midway through the season."

That is where all of the other teams, mostly the media, started to talk about Mats with another team. He couldn't have given his hand away and said "I will either play for the Leafs or retire."

Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto all know what the situation is—and it is quite simple. MLSE wants Mats, but without a no-trade clause. Mats would rather retire than accept a deal without one.

Montreal and Vancouver are only holding onto the hope that Mats' passion for the game of hockey will shine past his passion as the captain (and best player, ever) of one of the most storied franchises in hockey history.

MLSE is using that against Mats. I find it quite deplorable, to be honest. MLSE will inevitably be able to say one of the two following things. "We tried our hardest, Mats wanted to play somewhere else." Or, "The greatest Maple Leaf of all time has decided to hang up the skates."

Either quote leaves MLSE clear and free to their fans, and ultimately to the people who pay their bills—us, the fans.

It's not like us Leaf fans are used to misery or anything. I have never witnessed a cup final. Almost—twice.

But Mats is being made to look like the villain here. It's simple—who is classier? MLSE, or Mats Sundin?

When the puck drops at the beginning of October and Mats is not taking his usual spot at centre ice for the opening faceoff, no matter where he is, or what he's doing, this Leafs fan will be cheering for him.

No. 13, our captain—always.

How Canadian Alexandra Orlando Won Gold... Of a Different Sort

G P — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:25:41 -0400

The Olympics is about sportsmanship, perseverance, pure athletic ability, national and international unity, and a sense of kinship among all people.

This article touches on none of those subjects. This article is to tide over a Canadian boy waiting for our first medal. Which, by the way will be won tonight (tomorrow in Beijing) in the pool. When the men swim the 4X200m relay. (You heard it here first)

Still though, no medals for Canadian Athletes at these, the 2008 Summer games in Beijing. No medals, but bragging rights for one Canadian athlete.

That athlete being Alexandra Orlando.

I was standing in line at the grocery store picking up milk, and bread. (Of course…You always think you have enough when you don't. Or you always think you need it when you don't. Isn't that a Jerry Seinfeld bit or something?)

Anyway...I was waiting my turn, standing around, looking at all the chocolate bars I wanted, and then I started the usual time waster when standing in lines. Magazine browsing.

You get your usual fix of ridiculousness out of the way first. "Riots: Toilet Paper Shortage," or "Oprah: The Alien Who Wants To Help." Then you move to other magazines, like People and Us to see who's adopting what kid from where or "Who's Bikini Bod Is All Bad." when I happened to see the cover of Chatelaine magazine. (Chataline is a Canadian Women's magazine for those of you who are interested)

Of course, you guessed it. Canadian Olympic rhythm gymnast Alexandra Orlando was donning the cover for the month of August. (Along with two other Canadian Olympians)

Normally that would be the end of the story, however when I returned home and flipped the Olympics on they were showing gymnastics. The men’s, not women’s. Just before the commercial break I was reminded to check CBC's website for some athlete blogs. Hey, why not, I was after all watching men’s team gymnastics. (In my defense they were flipping between that and swimming)

So, whose name popped out at me? You guess it. Alexandra Orlando. I decided I would type her name into Google to see what else I could find out about her. (Don't tell me you haven't done anything like that before. Bunch of liars)

To my surprise I found a couple of sites that happened to catch my eye. One being WebTvHub's "The 50 Most Beautiful Women of the 2008 Beijing Olympics" and an article from The Independent, that states "World-class pin-ups: Meet the Olympic contenders for the gold medal in glamour."

In their defense (and mine) I will quote The Independent; "In Beijing, it's speed, strength and stamina that matter. But in the age of the sports star, glamour counts, too."

Now there aren't any other Canadians in the top 50 of WebTVHub's list. However, we did manage to take the golden spot in the list. That's right. Alexandra Orlando is #1.

I did find it shocking that no other Canadian made the list, which is dominated by American athletes. After watching Canada, and specifically Lauren Bay Regula, who pitched a one hitter through five innings, to defeat Taiwan (Chinese Taipei) 6-1; I found it hard to believe she didn't crack the top 50. She is after all, the younger sister of the newest Boston Red Sox, left fielder Jason Bay. That's got to score her some points.

In all seriousness, as I mentioned before the Olympics is about athletic ability and international unity. Still these articles (this one included) are more for fun... and beautiful, talented women. There can't be anything wrong with that.

So keep Day 13 in mind and circled in your calendar. It's when Rhythmic Gymnastics and our own Alexandra Orlando goes for the real gold. Go Canada!