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Edmonton Journal
a day ago
- Sport
- Edmonton Journal
Former Maple Leafs GM reveals why team passed on drafting Joe Sakic
Article content While it was well known that the Leafs passed on Joe Sakic in 1987 — as did 12 other clubs before Sakic went to the Quebec Nordiques — Stellick detailed how close the future Hall of Famer came to wearing Blue and White in a guest appearance on the Leafs Morning Take podcast. Holding the seventh overall pick that year, the Leafs had an ad hoc committee with Stellick, who was then the NHL's youngest GM at 30 years old, coach John Brophy and senior scouts, but all living with the whims of unpredictable owner Harold Ballard. Big Peterborough Petes defenceman Luke Richardson was on their radar, but as it got close to Toronto's turn, scouting director Floyd Smith made a convincing argument to consider Sakic. With 60 goals and 73 assists for the Swift Current Broncos, Sakic was certainly attractive, but lacked bulk. 'The table (at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit) is up in arms, like 'holy crap,'' Stellick recalled for the show's hosts. 'Brophy (who preferred scrappy players) was going nuts because he doesn't like small centremen.
Toronto Sun
a day ago
- Sport
- Toronto Sun
Former Maple Leafs GM reveals why team passed on drafting Joe Sakic
Former Leafs coach John Brophy 'was going nuts because he doesn't like small centremen.' Get the latest from Lance Hornby straight to your inbox Former Quebec Nordiques star Joe Sakic during a game in 1995. Postmedia files Say it ain't so, Joe. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Toronto Sun ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Don't have an account? Create Account As the Maple Leafs grapple with all-star Mitch Marner's likely departure, former general manager Gord Stellick brought up another story of a first-round pick, this one that got away at the draft table. While it was well known that the Leafs passed on Joe Sakic in 1987 — as did 12 other clubs before Sakic went to the Quebec Nordiques — Stellick detailed how close the future Hall of Famer came to wearing Blue and White in a guest appearance on the Leafs Morning Take podcast. Holding the seventh overall pick that year, the Leafs had an ad hoc committee with Stellick, who was then the NHL's youngest GM at 30 years old, coach John Brophy and senior scouts, but all living with the whims of unpredictable owner Harold Ballard. Big Peterborough Petes defenceman Luke Richardson was on their radar, but as it got close to Toronto's turn, scouting director Floyd Smith made a convincing argument to consider Sakic. With 60 goals and 73 assists for the Swift Current Broncos, Sakic was certainly attractive, but lacked bulk. 'The table (at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit) is up in arms, like 'holy crap,'' Stellick recalled for the show's hosts. 'Brophy (who preferred scrappy players) was going nuts because he doesn't like small centremen. Your noon-hour look at what's happening in Toronto and beyond. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'John Brophy was our coach and he had way too much influence as a coach because the owner, Harold Ballard, liked him … It's absurd. A coach who is even involved when you're drafting. But he had the ear of the owner.' That insured the Leafs took Richardson, but as was the case with many of their 1980s picks, they had no gradual development plan for him. He could've used another year of junior, but openly challenged Stellick's plan to demote him and, while he did play 21 years with various teams, his Toronto tenure wasn't as successful as hoped. Read More Stellick said he re-hashed the story with Sakic in 2012 at the latter's Hall of Fame induction. The irony was that Sakic wasn't even the Nordiques' first pick that year. In a draft dominated by defencemen, they took Bryan Fogarty ninth before Sakic at 15th. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Two Hall of Famers led off that draft, with Pierre Turgeon going first to Buffalo and future Leafs president Brendan Shanahan second to the New Jersey Devils. 'I always think about that … c'est la vie,' Stellick concluded his story. ' I'm sure that it worked out better for Joe Sakic.' Sakic had three 100-point seasons with Quebec, which changed addresses to Colorado in 1995 and won the Stanley Cup its first year in Denver. That was Sakic's first of two as a player, the second coming in 2001, before adding the 2022 title as the team's GM. He's now the Avalanche's director of hockey operations. lhornby@ X: @sunhornby NHL Celebrity Editorial Cartoons Toronto & GTA News
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
#ElbowsUp: Why have Canadians chosen hockey as the symbol of our national unity?
Faced with American tariffs and threats of annexation, Canadians have been using hockey as a way to express our discontent. Canadian fans have booed The Star-Spangled Banner at NHL games, and Canadian singer Chantal Kreviazuk — performing O Canada before the Canada-U.S. final at the 4 Nations Face-Off on Feb. 20 — changed the lyric "in all of us command" to "that only us command" as a protest against American expansionism. That 4 Nations final match became a kind of surrogate for the political conflict between our two countries. The game was one of the most-watched in North American history and, when Canada won, the celebrations had a distinct nationalist edge. Even then prime minister Justin Trudeau tweeted "You can't take our country — and you can't take our game." It's perhaps no surprise, then, that ever since Canadian comedian Mike Myers mouthed the words "elbows up" at the camera during an appearance on Saturday Night Live, the reference to legendary hockey player Gordie Howe has become a national rallying cry. In this moment of crisis, why is hockey our metaphor of choice for Canadian unity? It's been called "Canada's game" and a "national religion," but hockey's popularity as both a pastime and a spectator sport has declined in recent years. Youth participation has dropped 33 per cent since 2010, and hockey viewership is shrinking, too. When asked in 2022 how important they felt hockey is to our national identity, Canadians ranked it well below the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our public health-care system and our education system. Since the weakening of relations with our neighbour to the south, the importance of hockey to our collective imagination seems to have bounced back. As a multicultural society with a colonial past, we have few touchstones that bind us all together. "For a country that often feels fragmented," literary scholar Jason Blake has written, "the hockey arena is a convenient gathering place and focal point." Howe, 50 at the time this photo was taken, delivers one of his well-known elbows to the head of Quebec Nordiques forward Curt Brakenbury in 1978. An oft-repeated, but incorrect, explanation of a 'Gordie Howe hat-trick' is a fight, a goal and an assist. (The Canadian Press) Hockey reflects a neutral, natural aspect of Canadian living — our northern climate — though even that isn't universal. Rarely does any pond on Vancouver Island freeze thick enough for skating. Hockey also has the benefit of being a multicultural Canadian innovation, combining settler ice sports like English bandy, Scottish shinty, and Irish hurley with Indigenous baggataway (lacrosse). Still, at the professional level, hockey has always lacked diversity. Contemporary ice hockey was developed by young, privileged, male students at McGill University in the 1870s, and even today most professional players are white men. The NHL is the least racially diverse professional sports league in North America, and the Professional Women's Hockey League launched only last year. Yet despite their historical exclusion from white men's leagues, other Canadians refused to be written out of the sport. Women began organizing their own hockey teams at the collegiate level in the 1890s, and in 1895 Baptist community leaders in Halifax and Dartmouth founded the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, which lasted into the 1930s. Asian leagues popped up in the mid-20th century, and Dick Loiselle and Jean Lane introduced sledge hockey to Alberta in 1980. Hockey was codified by students at McGill University in the 1870s. This photo shows a student match on campus in 1901. (Library and Archives Canada) Even early hockey was progressive in its own way. In 1870s Montreal, most local athletic clubs were restricted to affluent English speakers. Hockey, in contrast, accepted French and working-class players, breaking down class and cultural barriers. The sport represents values many Canadians share regardless of demographics, like team spirit, tenacity, and integrity. It embodies not only resilience but audacity in the face of hardship: give us winters so cold our eyelashes freeze, and we'll literally make a game out of them. But hockey's dark side is impossible to ignore. In his poem "Hockey Players," Al Purdy calls hockey a "combination of ballet and murder," replete with officially sanctioned violence that seems at odds with our international reputation for courtesy. This very aggression, though, may be what's made the sport such a powerful and lasting emblem of Canadian sovereignty. Hockey surfaced in the wake of Confederation, at a time when Canadians were keen to map out an identity separate from the British, who had previously governed them, and the Americans, who were hoping to govern them next. The sport's violence distinguished it from genteel national games like British cricket and American baseball. In cross-border matches between Canadian hockey teams and American ice-polo teams in the 1890s, the Canadians' ferocity made them dominant on the ice. According to news reports, "many a man had to be carried to the dressing room," and, in at least one instance, police were called in to break up a fight. There weren't many black hockey players in rural Ontario in the 1950s, let alone hockey lines with multiple black players. Howard Sheffield, Arthur Lowe and Gary Smith played on a line together for the Mount Forest Redmen during the early 1950s, where they got the nickname the 'Black Flashes.' (Mount Forest Museum & Archives) During the 1972 Summit Series, an eight-game exhibition tournament between Canada and the former Soviet Union, Team Canada struggled against the swift, skilful Soviets until the Canadian players dialed up the aggression, roughing their way to victory. Like the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Summit Series took on political overtones. For the Canadian public, their team's win represented a triumph of democracy over communism and of freedom over tyranny. Today, as Canadians borrow the language of hockey to push back against a new international rival, our choice of phrase reveals something meaningful about our national self-image. After all, it's not easy to assault someone with your elbow. Gordie Howe's signature move wasn't for offence but for defence — he used his elbows to ward off opponents who were coming after him. Canadians won't attack first, "elbows up" seems to say. But anyone who threatens us had better watch out, whether we meet at the hockey rink or in the political arena. Download our free CBC News app to sign up for push alerts for CBC Newfoundland and Labrador. Sign up for our daily headlines newsletter here. Click here to visit our landing page.
Yahoo
15-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Elbows Up! Saskatchewan village in the heart of the Prairies lives up to its name
The sign at the village's entrance says "Elbow Welcomes You" and, indeed, Joan Soggie wants every Canadian to visit her hometown to throw some elbows. On Friday, Soggie and small but patriotic contingent of Elbow locals held an "Elbows Up" rally to support and inspire the newfound national unity sweeping the country as it tangles with U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and threats to make Canada the 51st state. About 350 people live in the Village of Elbow, near the community's namesake bend in the South Saskatchewan River and about 135 kilometres south of Saskatoon. Event organizer Joan Soggie, right, made sure to bill the rally as a non-partisan, family-friendly event. (Jeremy Warren/CBC News) "The situation right now in the world with the United States and with Trump, it feels like it's a time that we all have to really pull together and we need something like this to give us some symbols to use," Soggie said after the rally. "I think everybody in Canada should come and have their picture taken here." About 15 people — mostly decked in red-and-white winter gear and other Maple Leaf swag — braved the open prairie's cold wind to take photos of each other throwing elbows in front of the village's welcome sign. Soggie says she was inspired to organize the event after her daughter told her about attending a large "Elbows Up, Canada!" rally in Ottawa. The movement launched after Canadian actor Mike Myers after he mouthed the words "elbows up" and tapped his left elbow on while credits rolled on a recent episode of Saturday Night Live. The slogan is likely inspired by Saskatoon hockey legend Gordie Howe, nicknamed Mr. Elbows for his habit of punishing opponents with his sharp elbows. Blue fingers on a cold, windy day at the Elbows Up rally on Friday. (Jeremy Warren/CBC News) Gordie Howe, 50 at the time this photo was taken in 1978, delivers one of his well-known elbows to the head of Quebec Nordiques forward Curt Brakenbury. An oft-repeated, but incorrect, explanation of a 'Gordie Howe hat-trick' is a fight, a goal and an assist. (The Canadian Press) Soggie, who has lived in Elbow for 61 years, fears tariffs and an extended trade war will hurt farmers and small businesses in Elbow and other nearby communities in the centre of province's grain belt. "I don't think there's any sector that's not going to be touched," Soggie said. "It affects everybody. And besides that, we all have close associations with people in the United States. Many of us have family there and it's very worrisome." Elbows Up demonstrators stand beside the village's welcome sign on Friday. (Jeremy Warren/CBC News) Soggie made sure to bill the rally as a non-partisan, family-friendly event so it didn't exclude anyone. She says it's about more than politics. "We thought Elbow, Saskatchewan is a perfect place to be the epicentre of Elbows Up," she said. The village office in Elbow, Sask. (Jeremy Warren/CBC News)
CBC
21-02-2025
- Sport
- CBC
Home and Away by Mats Sundin, with Amy Stuart
Growing up in Sollentuna, Sweden, on the outskirts of Stockholm, Mats Sundin skated on the lake downhill from his house, a house his father had built with his own hands, on land his mother insisted on buying for their future. In the darkness of the Scandinavian winter Sundin would chase after his older brother on that lake for countless hours. Summers spent in nature with his grandparents instilled a lifelong love for the outdoors. Playing hockey in their driveway, the three Sundin brothers imagined scenes of suiting up for Sweden's national team and scoring a game winning goal against their favoured rival, the Soviet Union. It wasn't until his late teens that he caught the eyes of scouts and coaches from the other side of the Atlantic. At the 1989 NHL draft, eighteen-year-old Sundin was as surprised as anyone when he was selected first overall by the Quebec Nordiques. After a few years as a Nordique, Sundin was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for the highly popular Leaf captain, Wendel Clark. In his early years in Toronto, he felt both at home and from away, working extra hard to gain acceptance in the world's toughest hockey market. Even once he was named captain, Sundin didn't deviate from his quiet nature but instead lead by example, never asking anyone to work harder than he did. Over thirteen seasons with the team, he would learn just how fiery the cauldron of Leafs Nation could be. In Home and Away, Mats Sundin writes openly for the first time about what it was like for him to uproot his life in Sweden to embark on a long hockey career an ocean away. Home and Away is an elegiac, heartfelt, and honest story of a man who followed his passions, cherished his family, faced heavy scrutiny, and ultimately earned his way into both the hearts of fans and the hockey record books. His journey transcends the rink and shows what it means to be a quiet and unpretentious Swedish kid who went on to become one of the most accomplished players in the history of the game.
