Latest news with #TheCup
Vancouver Sun
a day ago
- Sport
- Vancouver Sun
Jack Todd: Canadiens, Alouettes unlock success using mind over matter
It's all in the mind. The more time I spend observing the world of sports (and the decades on the CV are piling up like a 1970s snowstorm in Montreal) the more I'm convinced that the entire vast apparatus of scouting and evaluation in a multibillion-dollar industry undervalues that substance between the ears. Year after year, NFL teams drafted towering prototype quarterbacks who could chuck a football 70 yards downfield. Year after year, Tom Brady won the Super Bowl. Closer to home, there is no clearer example than the Canadiens and the shift from the emphasis on physical talent to character and intelligence. If Trevor Timmins had a weakness, it was his tendency to overlook those two factors entirely. From the Kostitsyn brothers to Alex Galchenyuk to Jesperi Kotkaniemi, there were clear issues that should have been flagged. Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. A welcome email is on its way. If you don't see it, please check your junk folder. The next issue of Sunrise will soon be in your inbox. Please try again Interested in more newsletters? Browse here. Mercifully, the decision to swap Max Pacioretty for Nick Suzuki, Tomas Tatar and a second-rounder was not up to Timmins. In Suzuki, the Canadiens got the player who has set the tone for the entire organization, both in the way he thinks the game and in the way he behaves away from the rink. All this was on my mind Friday evening, when I watched Alouettes quarterback Davis Alexander excel as the Alouettes drubbed the visiting Toronto Argonauts. I had my doubts about the decision to let Grey Cup champ Cody Fajardo get away and replace him with Alexander, mostly because the new QB has a meagre sample size in terms of CFL starts. Not to worry. Like Jeff Gorton, Kent Hughes and Martin St. Louis, Danny Maciocia and Jason Maas know what they're doing. Alexander plays football like Suzuki plays hockey. He makes his reads quickly. He sees the open receiver. He anticipates. What he lacks in size, he makes up for with quick feet. Alexander is also fortunate to have receivers Tyson Philpot and Austin Mack back and healthy. One game doesn't make a season, we know that. But one smart quarterback can make a team. A mere 32 years ago Monday, the Canadiens won the most recent of their 24 Stanley Cups on June 9, 1993. I was working on the copy desk at the time and my contribution was to write the headline: 'The Cup Comes Home.' We're still waiting for the Cup to come back, this time with the Edmonton Oilers carrying Canada's hopes. I thought going into the final that the Oilers would win it and I still believe that's true — but as long as NHL officials award nastiness over skill, the achingly dull Florida Panthers have the edge. If only we could loan Edmonton the 1993 version of Patrick Roy — the goalie who refused to lose in overtime. A tire fire in a dumpster: The 2026 World Cup is scheduled to begin a year from Wednesday, with Mexico playing host at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City. The following day, Canada and the U.S. begin their campaigns in Toronto and Los Angeles. In theory, the event is co-hosted by Canada, Mexico and the U.S. In truth, it's an American event all the way, with three host cities in Mexico, Toronto and Vancouver in Canada — because Montreal wisely pulled out — and 11 host cities in the U.S. Between June 11 and July 19, 2026, hundreds of thousands of people are expected to travel among the three host nations and 16 host cities before the final, played at MetLife Stadium in beautiful downtown East Rutherford, N.J. — a destination about as enticing as Irkutsk. At this point, with Mexico and Canada under economic siege from the U.S. and anyone looking to enter the conflagration that is Trump's America subject to search and seizure, such a World Cup is almost unimaginable. Mercifully, Montreal is not part of this. It won't be pretty. Lies, rumours &&&& vicious innuendo: Every great athlete needs a great rival. Muhammad Ali had Joe Frazier, Nashua had Swaps, Jack Nicklaus had Arnold Palmer. Their rivalry is in its infancy, but Jannik Sinner vs. Carlos Alcaraz is already one for the ages. … Speaking of rivalries, Sovereignty beat Journalism at the Belmont Stakes, making it two out of three and challenging Quebec, where sovereignty has beaten journalism for 50 years. … Our helmets off to the late, great Jim Marshall, who somehow played 282 consecutive games as a defensive end in the NFL, mostly with the Minnesota Vikings. Marshall also played a season with the Saskatchewan Roughriders before he went to the NFL. … When the last hockey game might take place on the first day of summer, it's time the NHL's schedule makers went back to the drawing board. Heroes: Davis Alexander, Tyrice Beverette, Isaac Adeyemi-Berglund, Shawn Oakman, Tyson Philpot, Austin Mack, Sean Thomas-Erlington, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Lois Boisson, Jim Marshall, Stephanie Hill, Charlotte Bilbault, Jannik Sinner &&&& last but not least, Carlos Alcaraz. Zeros: Aaron Rodgers, the puck over the glass rule, NHL schedule makers, the PWHL expansion draft, Auston Matthews, Daryl Katz, Stan Bowman, Joel Quenneville, Douglas Cifu, Vincent Viola, Wayne Gretzky, Bud Selig Jr., Claude Brochu, David Samson &&&& last but not least, Jeffrey Loria. Now and forever. @
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Why Panthers Game 1 loss to Oilers was 'crushing'
Will The Canadiens Remain The Last Canadian Team To Win The Cup? This is it: the Stanley Cup final, featuring the Florida Panthers and the Edmonton Oilers, will kick off on Wednesday night in Alberta. Connor McDavid and co. will hope to avenge their Game 7 loss from last season, when the Oilers captain won the Conn Smythe Trophy but lost the ultimate prize.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Will The Canadiens Remain The Last Canadian Team To Win The Cup?
Will The Canadiens Remain The Last Canadian Team To Win The Cup? This is it: the Stanley Cup final, featuring the Florida Panthers and the Edmonton Oilers, will kick off on Wednesday night in Alberta. Connor McDavid and co. will hope to avenge their Game 7 loss from last season, when the Oilers captain won the Conn Smythe Trophy but lost the ultimate prize.
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Upper Deck introduces new authentication and security features with Rookie Patch Autographs series
Upper Deck is taking authentication and security to another level when its premier hockey release hits the shelves next week. When 2023-24 The Cup Hockey arrives on June 4, collectors will find the highly coveted Rookie Patch Autographs encapsulated with security features that will allow fans to verify the cards and its patches have not been altered. 'The trading card industry has experienced a massive patch-swapping challenge for years now, where counterfeiters will cut out and swap patches to increase a card's after-market value based on the player or colors of the patch,' Upper Deck president Jason Masherah said. 'Until now, there has been no trusted mechanism to self-verify if a card has been tampered with, and this Rookie Auto Patch Authentication is the first step in tackling this massive industry-wide issue.' Each Rookie Patch Auto in The Cup will be slabbed and photographed. The label on the holder will include a QR code that will lead collectors to a gallery of images of the card from multiple angles. The photos will be housed on The Authority, which was established under Upper Deck's Collect Forever. Upper Deck has been known for adding security features to its products and cards throughout the decades. It was the first company to include a hologram on the backs of cards to reduce counterfeits and also introduced foil wrappers to prevent the resealing of packs. 'Upper Deck was founded on a couple of principles and one was making the best trading card possible. I think the one that gets overlooked a lot was solving the issue of counterfeiting and tampering,' Masherah said. 'We have a long history of trying to fight some of the scammers in the industry, as well as trying to continually innovate.' While slabbing cards is a step to prevent patch altering, it does leave collectors with the question if they want to grade the cards. Collectors would have to remove the cards from The Authority holders to get them into one of their chosen grading company's. However, Masherah hopes the grading companies will incorporate the serial number so that collectors will be able to retain information even if slabbed by a different company. 'I think we're hoping to engage with the grading companies so that they can continue the information, whether they can add it to their labels, whether they can add it to their database, the serial number that we're providing will be able to reference that permanently,' Masherah said. Masherah feels one of the biggest reasons collectors will keep the cards in the original holders will be the big 'U' on the labels, which stands for Uncirculated, meaning no one outside of Upper Deck or the manufacturing team has handled that specific card. Essentially, it's not about the grade, but the authentication. The authentication piece has been a challenge for grading companies. Without a definitive database, there are ways that grading companies have found to determine if a card's patch has been altered. But there is no surefire way to track every single card. That's where Upper Deck's database will come into play. 'We want to put the power into their hands,' Masherah said. 'We really want to be able to catalog it, image it, protect it as it's going through all these processes, and then deliver it to the consumer in a way that is organized and easy to use." While it may seem a little late to have a 2023-24 set out in 2025, Upper Deck held the product back to ensure it gets it right. It wanted fewer redemptions, security features and a product that hockey fans will remember with some of the impressive rookies in that class like Connor Bedard, Luke Hughes, Matthew Knies and more. 'We all know that the Rookie Patch Auto is the biggest rookie card in the hockey industry every year,' Masherah said. 'Especially with '23-24, we knew the importance of the Connor Bedard Rookie Patch Auto. There's a whole crop of really important rookies, whether it's Logan Cooley, whether it's Adam Fantilli, we knew this crop was special and we wanted to do something to protect the integrity of these going forward. I wish we could have implemented this back in 2005 with [Sidney Crosby] and [Alexander] Ovechkin, but I'm happy we're at least here now."
Yahoo
28-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Upper Deck introduces new authentication and security features with Rookie Patch Autographs series
Upper Deck is taking authentication and security to another level when its premier hockey release hits the shelves next week. When 2023-24 The Cup Hockey arrives on June 4, collectors will find the highly coveted Rookie Patch Autographs encapsulated with security features that will allow fans to verify the cards and its patches have not been altered. 'The trading card industry has experienced a massive patch-swapping challenge for years now, where counterfeiters will cut out and swap patches to increase a card's after-market value based on the player or colors of the patch,' Upper Deck president Jason Masherah said. 'Until now, there has been no trusted mechanism to self-verify if a card has been tampered with, and this Rookie Auto Patch Authentication is the first step in tackling this massive industry-wide issue.' Each Rookie Patch Auto in The Cup will be slabbed and photographed. The label on the holder will include a QR code that will lead collectors to a gallery of images of the card from multiple angles. The photos will be housed on The Authority, which was established under Upper Deck's Collect Forever. Upper Deck has been known for adding security features to its products and cards throughout the decades. It was the first company to include a hologram on the backs of cards to reduce counterfeits and also introduced foil wrappers to prevent the resealing of packs. 'Upper Deck was founded on a couple of principles and one was making the best trading card possible. I think the one that gets overlooked a lot was solving the issue of counterfeiting and tampering,' Masherah said. 'We have a long history of trying to fight some of the scammers in the industry, as well as trying to continually innovate.' While slabbing cards is a step to prevent patch altering, it does leave collectors with the question if they want to grade the cards. Collectors would have to remove the cards from The Authority holders to get them into one of their chosen grading company's. However, Masherah hopes the grading companies will incorporate the serial number so that collectors will be able to retain information even if slabbed by a different company. 'I think we're hoping to engage with the grading companies so that they can continue the information, whether they can add it to their labels, whether they can add it to their database, the serial number that we're providing will be able to reference that permanently,' Masherah said. Masherah feels one of the biggest reasons collectors will keep the cards in the original holders will be the big 'U' on the labels, which stands for Uncirculated, meaning no one outside of Upper Deck or the manufacturing team has handled that specific card. Essentially, it's not about the grade, but the authentication. The authentication piece has been a challenge for grading companies. Without a definitive database, there are ways that grading companies have found to determine if a card's patch has been altered. But there is no surefire way to track every single card. That's where Upper Deck's database will come into play. 'We want to put the power into their hands,' Masherah said. 'We really want to be able to catalog it, image it, protect it as it's going through all these processes, and then deliver it to the consumer in a way that is organized and easy to use." While it may seem a little late to have a 2023-24 set out in 2025, Upper Deck held the product back to ensure it gets it right. It wanted fewer redemptions, security features and a product that hockey fans will remember with some of the impressive rookies in that class like Connor Bedard, Luke Hughes, Matthew Knies and more. 'We all know that the Rookie Patch Auto is the biggest rookie card in the hockey industry every year,' Masherah said. 'Especially with '23-24, we knew the importance of the Connor Bedard Rookie Patch Auto. There's a whole crop of really important rookies, whether it's Logan Cooley, whether it's Adam Fantilli, we knew this crop was special and we wanted to do something to protect the integrity of these going forward. I wish we could have implemented this back in 2005 with [Sidney Crosby] and [Alexander] Ovechkin, but I'm happy we're at least here now."
