All World Hockey by T. Michael Travers

  I met former NHL player / ESPN hockey broadcaster Barry Melrose at the Walmart Superstore in St. Pete, Florida. Funny that he'd choose St. Pete as a home base to live, following his own multi-city NHL career and success as Gretzky's coach in the 1990s in Hollywood with the Los Angeles Kings. As I wandered through the discount store in St Pete,  I noticed him reading labels in the sports drink aisle.  I hadn't seen him face to face for almost 30 years. He'd been a hard rock Maple Leaf defenseman from 1980 - 83 and had some great hockey DNA being a cousin of Leaf superstar Wendel Clark and Red Wing monster, Joey Kocur.  At that time,  I was part of the group publishing   The Leafs -- the team gameday hockey program and he and I had spent a little time together.  I approached him, and I reintroduced myself. He howled at some of my reminiscences of the owner, Harold Ballard, as we made our way to the checkout counter. He blended in with the ot...

My new favourite player ... the fabulous "Ace" How does Sunday's Blue Jay clubhouse champagne celebration look now? At the time, I said it was "nonsense". I was wrong.  With today's super quick departure as a playoff contender,  I can now say that the celebration was embarrassing nonsense. Last June ... at the beginning of this season, I included the following comment in an essay about the expectations for the 2023 version of the Jays: "By the end of May, the Jays had already been crushed by the Yankees, rolled over by the Orioles and clobbered by the league-leading Tampa Bay Rays. On the last day of the month, they'd limped and crawled to second last place - 10 games out of first place. That's a disaster in the high-octane AL East division". "Everything you need to know about a team is in the standings"!  There are a lot of reasons that this year's team wasn't as good as last year's team. You have your reasons and I h...

Coach Cito with a pair of World Series Trophies for cufflinks Can't imagine being beaten by Minnie? If you happened to watch the Blue Jay game last Sunday, the cameras moved to the BJ clubhouse post-game celebration. Players hooped and hollered and sprayed each other with dozens of bottles of champagne.  The "skipper", with ski goggle protection was in the middle of the nonsense.  The interviewers insisted on asking the celebrants about "the tough battle to reach the playoffs" while families of the players had their luggage sitting in the Rogers Center loading dock ... Hey! we are all going on the road to watch our boys! Nonsense. I wondered why ... the champagne ... the celebration ... the family road trip? As any TV tough guy would say ... "it's not personal ... it's just business".  When do our Jays get down to business?  They hadn't won anything and actually backed into the playoffs. They didn't earn their spot.  Their champagne cel...