Connor Bedard to Chicago, gambling athletes, and Leaf-free spaces at sanctuary ballyards: it is Wrong Answers Only Wednesday

More answers to questions someone should ask. Since the Chicago NHL club is mentioned, a CW/TW (sex assault/abuse) is needed.

OK, smart Alec. What was the NHL supposed to do to avoid having Connor Bedard land with the sex abuse scandal-tarnished Chicago club while hockey fans shouted “RIGGED” after the draft lottery?
— G.A., Carmel, Ind.

Whelp, did you ever come to the right internet hovel if you want to get on the ALL DRAFTS ARE IMMORAL bandwagon. One suspects not, since your avatar was Bedard photo-shopped into a Columbus Blue Jackets uniform.

Going with your gut, rather than the galaxy brain, is correct. It leaves a bad bad taste that the Chicago NHL club, which failed Kyle Beach, which failed the teenager who was sexually assaulted by the former video coach they vouched for, and which ignored the three simple words OBLIGATION TO REPORT, gets rewarded. Looking for moral virtue in big-time sports might seem like a snipe hunt, but no one should feel good about reading that Chicago took in more in new season ticket sales (US$2.5 million) than it was fined for the sex abuse scandal ($2 million).

Drafts are salary caps entirely fictitious exercises to foster parity and depress entry-level salaries. They prop up the organizations that are varyingly dumb, lazy, or in cities where no 20-year-old hotshot athlete would choose to start their career. The leagues have made drafts appointment viewing for some, and that’s fine. Content is king.

The NHL had options to keep Chicago from getting “rewarded for trying to cleanse all that as quickly as possible and dumping every player and employee connected to it.” It has exercised options to wrist-whack the real evildoers in the league:

• The Arizona Coyotes, whose reign as the league’s most KHL outfit is being threatened by at least two Canadian-based teams, forfeited two high draft picks for violating the NHL’s combine testing policy during the ’19-20 season. That is apples to durians compared to how the Chicago organization failed Beach and at least one other sexual assault survivor. However, if the former is so bad, then so is the much much worse thing.

• In 2019, the Vancouver Canucks and Florida Panthers were assessed salary cap recapture penalties when goalie Roberto Luongo retired with three seasons left on his long-term contract.

• Remember when the New Jersey Devils gave Ilya Kovalchuk an artificially long-term, front-loaded contract where he was paid much more than his Average Annual Value counted against the cap? The NHL docked New Jersey a first-round choice and gave the Devils a four-year window not to use it. In the last possible year, the pick was given back, but it was locked at the last pick in the first round.
  
  As Darren Dreger of TSN tweeted on March 6, 2014, “Needless to say, NHL teams are not happy with the league’s decision to let the Devils off the hook.” Flicking on the sarcasm button, they must just be jumping for joy that the NHL rewarded a franchise that dragged the image of hockey through the mud because it dumped its integrity BECAUSE IT’S THE CUP, THREE TIMES OVER.

That last option would have made the most sense. Chicago could have even been locked into the No. 16 overall choice, the lowest for a non-playoff qualifier, until the survivors believe the price has been paid.

The lottery was not rigged. Presenting the draft order in a sloppily edited 30-minute show was the NHL’s chronic stepondickitis flaring yet again. There were journos there to watch it all unfold, and as you can see, it’s so easy to see how it all works.

Only a few seconds passed between the third and fourth balls coming out of the machine, but at that moment several teams still had a shot at Bedard. The No. 1 pick would have gone to Anaheim had it been 6, 7 or 10; Columbus if it were 1, San Jose if it were 2 or 12, Washington if it were 3, St. Louis if it were 8 and Arizona if it were 11. (AP, May 8)

So, not rigged, but these days, even when presented with direct evidence, people still believe they are being fooled.

What are the chances that Connor Bedard pulls an Eric Lindros circa 1991 and decides not to report to Chicago? It would fix this whole debacle.
— K.C., Liskaerd, Ont.

Please do not be that person who expects, let alone asks, an insulated 17-year-old hockey player to take the moral stand that the suit dummies refused to do. Bedard will be a Hawk.

The Detroit Lions cut players who gambled using the Wi-Fi in the team facility. A college baseball coach was recently fired after suspicious gambling activity on one of his team’s games. Over 40 athletes at Power Five¹ schools Iowa and Iowa State are suspected of violating gambling rules. So how long until a player’s suspension for being involved in gambling will be so normalized that we view it the same way as a minor injury?
— C.N., Wyoming, Ont.

Four to six weeks, and there are probably gambling odds already available on it somewhere. One should not underestimate our capacity to get used to something

Follow-up in case one of the previous 53 people already asked. What sports leagues in Canada need to be worried about their athletes getting caught up in gambling activity, and should the media write speculative reports about it?
— D.H., Toronto

Well, clearly if you tell young athletes who have grown up with sports betting being normalized, and who let warnings go in one ear and out the other to just not gamble, then there will be no problems. Asking young people nicely to be abstemious works so well.

Any sports league in so-called Canada that falls into the vector of (a) underpaid talent pool and (b) just high enough of a profile to have games and events listed at sportsbooks, while also accepting gambling ads, should be really worried. That is literally the capsule description of every domestic sporting concern in Canada, so it is just a matter of when. Unless we think athletes are just impervious to the effects from having nearly 9 minutes of sports betting ads in every NHL telecast in Canada; welcome to Doug Ford’s Ontario.

• The Canadian Hockey League’s Ontario, Québec, and Western circuits accept gambling ads, and their ‘student-athletes’ are paid less than minimum wage due to exemptions from provincial and state laws. A practical bodily function for the adults in charge in the CHL is just hoping the messaging gets through to their teenage and young male workforce. The heavy bus travel in the Québec and Western leagues, and the OHL’s weekend-heavy 3-in-3 scheduling also introduce a fatigue factor that creates the possibility for seemingly anomalous results.

• The Canadian Premier League recently signed a Lithuania-based official sports betting and online casino partner. The 10-team soccer circuit is not well enough established yet to pay high wages, so the susceptibility and temptation might be there. Just saying!
  
  It was not so long ago that another Canadian soccer league was found to have manipulated outcomes in 42 percent of its games. That predates the five-year-old CPL, but a new label does not mean that the culture is any different.

• I am too precious about the Canadian Football League to be clear-eyed about its incorruptibility. The literal inventor of football was probably the first person to create a point spread, and the CFL is the only form of throwball that plays in the June-July-early August dog days of summer.
  
  The league seems to be on top of the challenge, and Canadian football has been around for a century without a game-fixing scandal. That might be a lot to take on faith. But besides, who wants to bet on a kind of football where single points for missed field goals and errant punts make a mockery of the Scorigami?

• Hello there, Premier Hockey Federation, with your Isobel Cup champion Toronto Six and the Montréal Force who literally have a forward named Ann-Sophie Bettez.
  
  The PHF is building slowly, and it has not contracted with a gambling company. This is very smart, sustainable, and sensible. Do not change this up, PHF, and go Saroya Tinker.
  

  

  Saroya Tinker hoisting PHF’s Isobel Cup with the Toronto Six last season.

• The saving play for U Sports? It is not commercially relevant enough to be posted online.
  
  That is for the best. University football would not be well-served by seeing the Western Mustangs listed as a minus-57½ favorite against the York Lions… with an over/under total of 63.

None of this is based on being a basic scold about sports betting. You do you, and the leagues need the revenue and profile that comes from being on betting apps. Suspicious betting activities at NCAA schools getting tracked might well illustrate that the “system work(s).” But no one should be shocked when the jocks gamble on the games, or pass on info that should stay in the room. Seminars and webinars about gambling have long odds against youthful indiscretions.

How can I get amped to track the WNBA in order to juice my pursuit of stoke?
— C.K. and J.T.P., San Bernardino, Calif.

“Stoke” comes right after “stake” in the dictionary for a reason. Place a futures bet on anyone but the Las Vegas Aces or the New York Liberty to win the 2023 championship. It is an entire field of longshots beyond the superteams, the Aces of A’ja Wilson and Kelsey Plum, and the Liberty now with Breanna Stewart and Courtney Vandersloot alongside Sabrina Ionescu.

The Aces running it back would be no fun. No one wants to see any New York team win anything, with the possible exception of football’s Jets reaching a Super Bowl just for the chaos. The Washington Mystics are anywhere from 11-to-1 to 16-1 as a nominal third favorite, so cha-ching.

At this stage of the game, any new rooting interest is 92 percent based on the referential potential of from the team’s key players. The Dallas Wings have that over everybody: Crystal Dangerfield! Diamond DeShields! Satou Sabally! With great names presumably comes some game. And, Big Ten nerd alert, Wings guard Veronica Burton is a Northwestsern Wildcats alumna.

What are the ethics of wearing hockey jerseys to a Major League Baseball game?
— J.F., Belleville, Ont.

Permissible if you are in the Incited States. The NHL is niche enough that the sight of someone wearing their Seattle Kraken jersey at a Mariners game will induce a “hey, hockey!” reaction. Any vaguely Canadian reference is welcome in that context.

Within Canada, rocking Toronto Maple Leafs gear at a Blue Jays game is a major jersey foul. It should be punishable by having to spend three hours in a corner booth at a chain restaurant talking to three male Postmedia columnists. The TVs are all showing poker. From 2005.

There is no way to prevent the cross-over. The fanbases of the Leafs and Blue Jays have significant overlap. The hockey team and the Toronto MLB ballclub literally share corporate parenthood and media partners. But the passionate plea is that any hoser who watches baseball while it coincides with the Stanley Cup playoffs deserves benefits of the doubt and respect that they are making a conscious choice to mute hockey.

The ballyard should be a sanctuary from all the hockey hullaballoo. No Leafs jerseys should be allowed at Jays games. There are second screens and smartphones available to anyone who really needs an update on that Carolina-New Jersey score.

Let us review what happened about 10 days ago, hours after the Leafs advanced to the NHL’s second round. The Blue Jays brought a six-win streak into action against the Mariners on April 30. All sorts of slappies, basking in the reflected glory of an actual playoff series victory, showed up in their Leafs apparel.

And the Blue Jays, facing a Mariners team that is fifth-worst in MLB in both on-base and slugging percentage, contrived to score eight runs and lose the game. The gameflow this time, granted, did not involve a blown 8-1 lead (only 8-4), but it is not for nothing that this happened. It was also cool that Matt Brash of Kingston, Ont., earned his first MLB save.

But it was bad jujubees to bring so much Leafdom into the ballyard. The Blue Jays are 3-6 since that blue-and-white befouling of the Skydome sanctum. The three wins were against NL Central opposition, which counts, but probably should not.

And everyone knows what the Leafs’ record is since that happened, and we let it happen.

Why did you not chip in, or chirp in, after the death of Gordon Lightfoot last week?
— N.D., Orillia, Ont.

Gordon Lightfoot was such an acclaimed genius by the time I heard of him that one need not add to the noise. Before I had even lived on this earth for a decade, Bob Dylan had even come to the Juno Awards to give a testimonial.

Who dares compete with Bob Dylan in paying tribute to a lyricist? Moreover, who can hold a candle in the wind to the winsomeness of the Very Serious Leader of the Opposition?

Whelp yes, Pierre Poilievre actually quoted the Canadian Railroad Trilogy, which Lightfoot penned and performed at the behest of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. The same CBC that the Very Serious Leader of the Opposition demonizes on the regular, creating that toxic climate where journalists, especially female journalists, face threats and harm.

(Just ask Rachel Gilmore, formerly of Global News).

That deserves whatever cheesy cut-rate Canadian award there is for self-serving cognitive dissonance.

Perhaps Tucker Carlson can present that. His calendar seems clear. Anyway, to wash out the taste of saying the names of those demagogues, it seems best to close out on some Lightfoot.

That is more than enough for now. Please stay safe, and be kind.

1. The Power Five refers to five NCAA conferences: ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12, and SEC. Oh, and Notre Dame, which is in the ACC for many sports but is totally independent in football even though the Fighting Irish play six ACC teams per season.