Pittsburgh Penguins superstar and Team Canada hero Sidney Crosby is bummed his chances of representing his country at the Olympics for a third time appear to be dwindling.
The NHL's participation at the Beijing games in February is in major jeopardy as a COVID-19 resurgence has forced a league-wide pause through the holidays.
"It would be disappointing, that’s the best way I can describe it,” Crosby told The Athletic's Pierre LeBrun. "Obviously, I know from experience how special and unique the Olympics are. And not only thinking about my experience, but thinking of the guys that haven’t had the opportunity to be part of it.
"And knowing what they could potentially miss. Yeah, I think just 'disappointing' would be the best way to describe it."
After missing out on the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, the NHL and NHLPA negotiated 2022 participation as part of a new collective bargaining agreement signed in 2020. This past September, all sides finalized a plan to send the world's best players to China, but it was contingent on the pandemic's affect on the NHL schedule.
The NHL announced Sunday it would make a final decision on Olympic participation in "the coming days."
Crosby was one of the first three players named to Canada's 2022 roster, along with Connor McDavid and Alex Pietrangelo. Before the NHL's COVID situation drastically worsened, Sid the Kid worked to convince his potential teammates to find the positives in playing overseas this winter.
"Just trying to be part of the solution was kind of how I looked at it and understanding from talking to guys just the fact that everyone really wanted to be a part of the Olympics and understandably so," Crosby said. "It’s a unique experience, there’s nothing like it as an athlete. It’s very special. I think trying to relay that and also trying to work through the issues and understand what they are, and how we can try to make it work, it’s a complex situation, you know, this isn’t the same as the issues leading up to the Olympics in the past."
Crosby, 34, is aware the 2022 games would likely be his last as a player. He's won two Olympic gold medals in his storied career, and his overtime clincher on home soil in 2010 still lives on in Canadian lore.
A couple of days before the MLB lockout started, Jordan Romano logged on to a mid-afternoon Zoom call. He was unshaven and wore a trucker cap. Smiling, he reminisced about his year.
Romano is the Toronto Blue Jays' homegrown closer. He recorded saves in three home venues in as many months last season, the club's travels mirroring his ascent through the minors. Playing in Florida and Buffalo at Toronto's Single-A and Triple-A fields, respectively, the Blue Jays scratched out a combined home record of 22-22, achieving adequacy while in limbo.
Romano likes Buffalo. He knows the restaurants and was already familiar with Sahlen Field, the single-deck park downtown. But he wanted what he couldn't have. The Canadian border was nearby - 10 minutes from the field by car - but impassable.
"It's a great city," Romano said of Buffalo. "But it's not home."
Vaughn Ridley / Getty Images
Home as they know it eluded Toronto's teams for much of 2021. COVID-19 vaccination took time to become ubiquitous, so the NHL's North Division teams played in empty rinks from January to May, welcoming fans back only as the Montreal Canadiens bounced the Maple Leafs from the playoffs. Denied government permission to play at Scotiabank Arena, the Raptors decamped to Tampa for a season. They weren't far from the Blue Jays' Dunedin base.
Toronto's experience was unique even as the pandemic nixed sports spectatorship everywhere. In 2020, most of the fans at baseball games were cardboard cutouts. Floating heads were beamed electronically into the NBA bubble. Normalcy was promised when the calendar turned - and it happened for most people. But Canadians had to be patient for longer.
Players compete at a remove from their adoring onlookers. Walls, plexiglass, and sidelines uphold this divide. But what happens when the distance between a team and its fans becomes much greater? What does it feel like to play a season on shaky footing - living out of suitcases, having no one there to cheer you on - and then go home?
"It's been a blessing for us, man, to get that love back in the arena," Raptors guard Fred VanVleet said last week - before COVID-19 cases surged and Ontario halved venue capacity.
"It's light-years better than playing in front of nobody on the road," Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said recently. "Playing in Tampa in front of nobody or playing in front of 3,000. Going to San Francisco last year, there was nobody in the streets at all. It's so far away from all that stuff."
Vaughn Ridley / NBA / Getty Images
When the pandemic struck in 2020, the Raptors trained in Orlando for the month preceding the bubbled postseason. They returned to Florida last December - the first NBA team displaced from its market since Hurricane Katrina forced the then-New Orleans Hornets to relocate to Oklahoma City from 2005-07. The Raptors took over the fourth floor of the JW Marriott hotel next to Amalie Arena. They practiced in a ballroom with chandeliers overhead.
At the arena, the locals admitted under strict attendance limits tended to root for the opposition. A midseason COVID-19 outbreak sidelined VanVleet, Pascal Siakam, and the coaching staff. The Raptors went 1-13 in March, presaging a final record 18 games below .500 and their first losing season in eight years. Kyle Lowry barely took the court from that point forward.
Up north, the Maple Leafs holed up for consecutive days in Montreal, Vancouver, and Canada's NHL cities in between, playing baseball-style series to minimize travel. They won 18 of 28 home games and 17 of 28 on the road. Barren and sanitized, no rink conferred much of a home advantage. Scotiabank Arena was eerie, not electric.
"It kind of sucked," said Maple Leafs forward Wayne Simmonds, the 14-year NHL veteran from the suburb of Scarborough, who signed with Toronto in the fall of 2020.
"Toronto being my hometown, I wanted to play for the Leafs. Part of that was the experience of having fans in the stands. Having my friends and family be able to come watch me. My wife and my daughter. Unfortunately, last year, it just wasn't reality."
Mark Blinch / NHL / Getty Images
This season began differently. Before the Omicron variant prompted 50% capacity, the Maple Leafs and Raptors had returned to filling almost every seat.
"I felt like my first real game was when we stepped on the ice this year," Simmonds said last week. "The building was buzzing. I've played in Toronto before, obviously, on the visiting side. I didn't think the fans were that loud, particularly. But when we stepped out on the ice, and we did those (player) introductions, it sent chills down my spine."
Romano grew up in Markham, Ontario, close enough to run the bases on kids' days at what was then the SkyDome. Drafted out of college in 2014, he stuck with the big club in 2020 for the 60-game season the Blue Jays spent based at Sahlen Field. Players were grateful Buffalo accommodated them. Blue Jays fandom is common there, though New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox fans - just as they did in Dunedin in April and May - swarmed Sahlen on some nights in June and July.
Joshua Bessex / Getty Images
Nothing excuses Toronto's middling start to 2021, Romano said. Once the team received approval to return home, though, "everyone got rejuvenated." Allowed to host 15,000 fans starting on July 30, the Blue Jays reeled off 25 wins in 37 games at the Rogers Centre. They finished with 91 wins and stayed in the American League wild-card chase until the season's last at-bat.
"We are human. You try to tune (the noise) out as much as you can when you're on the field," Romano said. "But it does make a difference having your hometown crowd really cheering for you. As opposed to when you're going on the road and everyone wants to see you do bad."
Before Toronto's teams could return home, silver linings became discernible as each squad's season went on. Simmonds enjoyed the extended stopovers in opponents' cities, a novelty in the NHL. Facing the same six Canadian clubs also fanned the flames of new and dormant rivalries.
"Winnipeg, we wouldn't have maybe as much animosity between the two of us if we hadn't played 10 times last year," Simmonds said. "We got the opportunity to play teams from the west that we don't usually play and reignite some of the passion - some of the fire - that the guys have."
Darcy Finley / NHL / Getty Images
At the end of the Raptors' Tampa sojourn, VanVleet told reporters that the city was great. The residents and arena staff were welcoming. He'd spotted an alligator from his rented house's back porch. It didn't snow. But he described the season as inconsistent - logistically, medically, emotionally. He spent weeks in the spring wishing it was over, pining for familiar routines and for "where we're supposed to be."
A couple of weeks ago, Nurse shared his perspective on the homecoming.
"This is the first time in ages that I feel like I'm back in a rhythm. I come to practice, go to work, go home, play with the kids, put them to bed, and then get in front of my TV and start locking in on watching games," he said.
"I was just enjoying game-surfing last night. I haven't had much of a chance to do that, for whatever reason, in the environment that I'm used to."
Beyond Toronto, one lamentable trend emerged when fans returned to games: Fewer of them could control their impulses to misbehave.
A pattern emerged during the opening week of the NBA playoffs. In Utah, three people in the stands made racist remarks to Ja Morant's parents. In Philadelphia, a season-ticket holder poured popcorn on Russell Westbrook's head. One Madison Square Garden patron spat on Trae Young as he waited to inbound the ball. At TD Garden, one spectator hurled a water bottle at Kyrie Irving, triggering assault and battery charges.
Then someone ran onto the court midgame in Washington to slap the backboard. He came up short, and security tackled him.
Less serious misadventures included the New York Mets' tiff with boobirds. Emboldened by a couple of wins that snapped a 2-12 skid, some players aimed thumbs-down gestures at the Citi Field crowd. Second baseman Javier Baez outlined his logic: "When we don't get success, we're going to get booed, so they're going to get booed when we're a success."
Dustin Satloff / Getty Images
That same Sunday in August, Bryson DeChambeau walked uphill to the clubhouse at the PGA TOUR's BMW Championship, sour after missing birdie putts on three straight playoff holes. "Great job, Brooksie!" one heckler yelled, staking out a side in DeChambeau's feud with Brooks Koepka. DeChambeau spun and shouted at the fan to "get the f--- out!"
These scenes coalesce and present a dilemma to Daniel Wann, a Murray State psychology professor who studies sports fandom. Scientists don't draw definitive conclusions from small samples. But it sure seems clear this friction was a product of the times.
"Look at it this way: These fans, for the previous 12 months or so, all of their interactions were via online communities and social media. It's pretty easy to be, let's say, less than civil in those scenarios," Wann said.
He added: "Maybe some of them got used to the freedom that you have and the anonymity that you have when you're online. ... But now we see (this misconduct) dying down. Maybe people realized, 'Oh, yeah, I should behave myself. I can't just hide behind my computer screen.'"
Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images
At many more games and tournaments, good manners have prevailed. The same goes for the thrill of having fans back in the action.
Simmonds feels this in warmup when his wife and daughter tap on the glass. In October in Chicago, during the Maple Leafs' first U.S. trip since March 2020, he bounced on his skates as fans cheered Jim Cornelison's operatic national anthems. Games crackle because people watch them live, he said. They add oomph.
Romano agreed.
"The fans definitely mean more," he said. Before the first pitch on July 30, avid Blue Jays supporters welcomed players back in a video that aired on the Rogers Centre jumbotron. They thanked the ballclub for enlivening the city, diverting their attention, and giving them cause to jump off the couch.
"You don't think of that sometimes when you're playing," Romano said. "Some people use sports as their outlet to escape."
Some fans haven't raced back to the stands. Piped-in crowd noise is a 2020 relic, and Wann said arenas have looked and felt as they're supposed to. But they are a little emptier than usual. As of last week, attendance in nine NBA markets and 13 NHL cities was down by more than 10% compared to 2018-19 - the last uninterrupted season. There are other factors, but not everyone is comfortable thronging indoors as the pandemic continues.
Wann shared a rosier counterpoint: All things considered, 10% isn't much of a drop.
"If I was in charge of putting rear ends in those seats, I might be concerned," Wann said. "(But) to say that your attendance is 90% of what it was before a global pandemic - I mean, doesn't that tell you just how important fandom is to people?"
Last week, COVID-19 outbreaks upended the NBA and NHL seasons. Health protocols sidelined dozens of players in each league, including Siakam, Simmonds, and other members of their respective teams. Some NBA games and cross-border NHL matchups were postponed, and the NHL is pausing early for the holidays. The end of the year feels like the beginning.
The Maple Leafs blew Game 7 against Montreal last spring, but as their season pauses, they again rank high in the NHL in points, goal differential, and home wins. Lowry's departure has forced the Raptors to retool. Half the team didn't experience the Tampa season. Half the team is under 24. To try to climb the standings is to weather growing pains - pains like starting this season 2-8 at home before improving to 7-9.
"These young guys are understanding what it takes to use the crowd and get the crowd into it," VanVleet said last week.
"When we're at our best, this is probably the best home court you can find in the NBA. I just want these guys to be able to experience that. We've got to be a good team to experience it at its best. I think we're getting there."
Cole Burston / Getty Images
With baseball on hold, the Blue Jays wait. Before the lockout, the 91-win team that missed the playoffs moved on from Robbie Ray, the departed AL Cy Young winner, by extending Jose Berrios and agreeing to pay Kevin Gausman $110 million over the next five years. The front office has signaled, as Romano puts it, that 2022 is "go time."
As he made the point, his mind wandered to 2016. Romano's minor-league season was over that October when he took in the Blue Jays' ALDS finale against the Texas Rangers. Capitalizing on an errant double-play throw in the 10th inning, Josh Donaldson scampered home to secure Toronto's series victory. The crowd erupted, and Romano saw the rubber beads dance on the Rogers Centre turf.
He wants to witness that in uniform. He got a glimpse in September when the playoff chase crescendoed and capacity for Toronto's last homestand doubled to 30,000 people.
"It felt like 50," Romano said. "But I can only imagine what 50,000 will feel like again."
Joe Pavelski built on his four-point night against the Chicago Blackhawks on Saturday, opening the scoring less than two minutes in. Defenseman Esa Lindell made it 2-0 by striking shorthanded for his first goal of the season.
Minnesota was able to claw back, with Ryan Hartman and Kevin Fiala each scoring to tie it up, but Tyler Seguin fired off a wrister late in the opening frame to regain the lead.
The Stars punished the Wild for a couple of turnovers in the final period, with Jacob Peterson and Miro Heiskanen scoring one minute apart to seemingly deliver the dagger into Minnesota's comeback hopes.
The Wild pulled Talbot with 9:20 left in the contest and Fiala scored his second to bring them to within two goals, but they would get no closer as Benn scored on the empty net with a minute-and-a-half left.
Wild forward Joel Eriksson Ek left midway through the second period after taking a hit from Stars blue-liner Jani Hakanpaa in the corner. Eriksson Ek was unable to return to the contest with an upper-body injury.
Talbot made 22 saves on 28 shots, while Jake Oettinger fared a bit better for the Stars, making 19 stops on 23 shots against.
The Wild fell to 19-9-2 on the season, while the Stars improved to 15-12-2.
With a 6-0-0 record since moving on from head coach Travis Green and general manager Jim Benning, life under the Vancouver Canucks' new regime has been pretty good.
Before the management change, the Canucks toiled in the Pacific Division's basement with an 8-15-2 record.
For captain Bo Horvat, better communication between the players, new head coach Bruce Boudreau, and new president of hockey operations and interim general manager Jim Rutherford is at the heart of his team's massive improvement.
"They listen to what we have to say and are willing to change things or do things to help us not only off the ice but on the ice as well," Horvat said to the media Monday, per Sportsnet. "I think that's a good thing to have, communication between everybody and not have any disconnect."
The Canucks owned a dreadful minus-20 goal differential prior to the organizational changes. In the six games since the shakeup, Vancouver has outscored its opponents 19-10. The team has also tightened up defensively, allowing just 1.67 goals per game during that span.
The Canucks' special teams have also come alive. They've bid farewell to their horrific 64.6% success rate on the penalty kill, and it's been operating at an 83.3% clip since Dec. 6.
"(Boudreau and Rutherford) have been great ever since they stepped in. I think the biggest thing is they've been really willing to do whatever it takes to help us win hockey games," Horvat said. "They know what it takes to win. ... Obviously, things have been going really well so far, and we gotta keep that going."
Vancouver is expected to defend its unbeaten record under Boudreau on Dec. 27 against the Seattle Kraken.
There were already no games scheduled for Dec. 26. A hefty 14-game slate is currently on the docket for Dec. 27.
The pause is the NHL's latest attempt at halting the spread of COVID-19 across the league.
With the postponement of Tuesday's contest between the Seattle Kraken and Arizona Coyotes, 44 games have been put off so far this season, according to Seravalli. Thirty-nine have come in the past seven days.
The Jack Eichel sweepstakes are far behind us now, with the Vegas Golden Knights being the eventual victor of the months-long saga. Trade rumors swirled for weeks up until the center was sent to Sin City in early November, and among the teams reportedly interested were the Anaheim Ducks.
However, it doesn't appear the Sabres and Ducks were close to a deal, as Buffalo wanted a massive package for the 2015 second overall pick, according to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman.
"I heard what the Sabres asked Anaheim for was (Trevor) Zegras, (Jamie) Drysdale, and two first-rounders. Anaheim wasn't willing to do that," Friedman said on Monday's edition of "32 Thoughts."
The Sabres ultimately pried forward Alex Tuch, prospect Peyton Krebs, a top-10-protected first-rounder in 2022, and a 2023 second-rounder away from the Golden Knights in exchange for Eichel.
Friedman also noted that he doesn't know if Anaheim's doctors were ever comfortable with allowing Eichel to undergo his preferred artificial disc replacement surgery to replace the herniated disc in his neck, but since the Ducks were in on Eichel early, their thoughts on the procedure could have changed over time.
Zegras, 20, has already made headlines in his young career thanks to his creativity in the offensive zone. The forward went viral earlier in December after pulling off a ridiculous lacrosse-style assist to teammate Sonny Milano. Zegras has 38 points in 54 games.
Drysdale was taken sixth overall by the Ducks in 2020. The 19-year-old blue-liner has the potential to be a top two-way defenseman. He's accrued 22 points in 56 career contests and has averaged the third-most ice time among all Ducks skaters this season.
The pair had been playing with the AHL's Ontario Reign before getting a shot with the big club.
Byfield, the second overall pick in 2020, has been sidelined for the majority of the 2021-22 campaign due to a fractured ankle suffered in October. He's gone pointless in four games with the Reign since returning to the ice.
Los Angeles drafted Turcotte with the fifth pick in 2019. He's recorded 31 points in 50 career games in the minors and has yet to make his NHL debut.
The Kings' next game is scheduled for Thursday versus the Vegas Golden Knights, but the NHL has postponed dozens of games over the past week as COVID-19 cases soar across the league.
"When Goalies Were Weird" is a six-part narrative podcast about 1990s-era NHL goalies. In the '90s, the position was undergoing a revolution in style and substance, as the butterfly goalie replaced the stand-up while advancements in equipment technology helped usher in a modernized, more athletic playing style. The old guard's quirks and the new guard's innovations melded together to produce an era of pure chaos in the blue paint.
Curtis Joseph was the loveable workhorse among 1990s-era goalies. He was a down-to-earth star who thrived in hectic, pressure-filled playing environments. After an improbable rise through the ranks, "Cujo" manned the crease in 19 NHL seasons for six teams, most notably the Blues, Oilers, and Maple Leafs. This is his story.
To hear the full Curtis Joseph episode, click here to listen on:
(Note: This excerpt has been lightly edited for clarity and length.)
Curtis Joseph possessed an internal index of tape jobs. As in, he could instantly recognize an opposing puck carrier solely by his stick tape color and the pattern in which the stick was taped.
This was part of Joseph's charm as the ultimate thinking man's goalie.
And it helps explain how he developed his awkward puck-moving technique.
Joseph caught with his left hand but struggled to handle the puck in a normal fashion with a left-handed stick. So, one day he decided to start moving the puck on his backhand. After hundreds of reps in practice, he had polished it enough for game use. From there, he showcased the unique technique fairly often.
Actually, that may be underselling it: Joseph learned to backhand the puck to the red line like nobody's business.
It was efficient and smooth. He resembled a football quarterback.
Or, as former Toronto Maple Leafs teammate Mike Johnson remembers it, Joseph was a puck-moving "maestro."
"We'd be five-on-five or killing a penalty and somebody would dump it in, and Cuj would stop the puck behind the net, and you'd see him flip his hand over so his catcher would be on the knob and his blocker would be down by the middle of the stick, and he'd get ready to do a big scooper," Johnson said, laughing at the memory.
"And he could drop them out at center, just so perfectly. We would joke that we'd be having a forward-line meeting out at the red line waiting for him to drop one in our breadbasket for a breakaway."
Bruce Bennett / Getty Images
Strategizing was a joy for Joseph. He would talk shop for hours on end with teammates, most notably St. Louis Blues star Brendan Shanahan and Phoenix Coyotes captain Shane Doan.
Former Leafs defenseman Cory Cross recalls several in-depth conversations.
On a two-on-one, Joseph once said to the 6-foot-5 Cross, "Why don't you go down early to force the shooter to try to pass over you?"
This went against conventional wisdom. Typically, a goalie prefers to focus on the shooter while the D-man takes care of the second attacker.
With shot-blocking, Joseph liked when his teammates stood up straight and squeezed their arms against their body. In Joseph's mind, this reduced the number of funny bounces off equipment and also allowed him to concentrate on covering certain parts of the net.
Forward Dean McAmmond was around for the entirety of Joseph's three-year tenure with the Edmonton Oilers. McAmmond says a major takeaway from their time together is a piece of advice Joseph dished out during a quiet moment in practice.
"One time I came down on him, and he was giving me all glove hand," McAmmond recalled. "After I shot there, he just moved over and made the save. It was like, 'What's this guy doing?!' Like, he's not squaring up. He's just cheating, right? And I remember him saying to me, 'Well if you ain't cheatin', ya ain't tryin'.'
"And that's one phrase I actually used with my players when I was a coach. Cuj wasn't a cheater off the ice, but on the ice, you try to get any advantage."
Johnson, who also played with Joseph in Arizona for one season, can relate to McAmmond. Joseph may have been on the back nine of his career when the two crossed paths in the desert in 2005-06, but the goalie certainly wasn't afraid to instruct or teach.
"He was maybe not quite the only, but certainly the most prominent goalie willing to talk about scoring in practice," Johnson said. "He would talk about how I'm doing or how I'm shooting and what he's seeing, and maybe, 'Try this,' or 'Think about that.' Or, 'Goalies struggle with this.' And, 'This is a trickier one …'
"He wasn't just worried about his job of stopping pucks, doing his own thing in practice. He would talk to you, work it through with you, and break it down from a goalie's perspective."
To hear the full Curtis Joseph episode, click here to listen on:
