Skip to main content
seven in the morning

So a reporter walks up to a baseball player at the winter meetings, asks a few basebally questions and three minutes later is having a conversation with a gun-totin' conspiracy theorist in spikes. You have to read the interview below, but first, while there are a few stray dissenters regarding the possibility raised here yesterday that Sidney Crosby is already better than Wayne Gretzky, there can be none that Sid is better than the Leafs, all by himself; Roberto Luongo finally makes a save in a shootout etc. etc.

Please continue after the jump to Seven in the morning, you won't regret it.

1. Canadian teams, B Division

• You know who's a big Sidney Crosby fan? Leafs coach Ron Wilson. He seems to admire his 'motor' and appreciate his 'compete level' (got my hockey talk on!), though because he's smiley Ronnie, he delivers his compliment to Sid backhanded, while simultaneously denigrating most of his own lineup. Having watched the game where the Leafs fell behind 4-0 on their way to losing 5-2, it's hard not to be sympathetic. Said Wilson of Crosby (via the Globe's James Mirtle): "Well he competes. You know? I wish we had more guys [like that and] our top players play as hard as he did. You get to him and he stands up for himself and when his teammates see him doing that, they play hard, too."

• And while Crosby continued his "tribute-to-the-80s" scoring pace after potting two goals last night he slapped away suggestions of scoring 50-in-50. "Honestly I think it's pretty far fetched for that to happen," Crosby said. "Maybe someday somebody will and that's unbelievable but I think it's pretty easy not to think about it because I don't see it happening. It would be incredible and whoever does it, hats off, but I don't think it's going to happen."

2. Canadian teams, A Division

• Thanks to Ryan Kesler's third-period heroics the Canucks managed to force their game with Anaheim into overtime, which was good, but then it went to a shootout, which was bad, because Robert Luongo was winless in two previous shootouts and having allowed five straight goals. He stoned the Ducks though, and improved his shootout save percentage to .375, good for 37th in the NHL. Credit goes to some extra time spent stopping breakaways, according to Canucks coach Alain Vigneault (via the Globe's Matt Sekeres): "He's been working real hard with Rollie [Melanson, Vancouver's goaltending coach] ... we've been doing more work on [shootouts] than anytime prior."

• The Canucks aren't without their issues though. Apparently the Sedins are trailing evil Sean Avery in write-in votes for the NHL all-star game. This has people in Sweden justifiably upset (via Puck Daddy and Rangers Blog) -- it's worth reading in full if only for the Google translation from Swedish: "Even worse, it is for twins Daniel and Henrik Sedin. Despite scientific progress during the season, and Henrik Sedin are the NHL's reigning king of points, they are placed on the 23 th (Henry) and 24th place (Daniel) - with a player like Sean Avery in front of him."



3. We regret the (facebook) error

Before even starting spring training, the newest Blue Jay Brett Lawrie has done a service by introducing clueless fans to a drinking game called Edward Fortyhands where you duct tape a 40 oz bottle of malt liquor to each hand until you've drunk each. Needless to say the authorities aren't big on it. Joseph Califano, chairman of the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University and former United States Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, wrote of the game, "one night of Edward Fortyhands may seem like a fun way to spend a few hours, but it can quickly spiral out of control and land your teen in the hospital—or the morgue." Anway, Lawrie assures all the next time he tapes booze to his mitts, there won't be any cameras around: "I'm still continuing to mature as a baseball player and as a person as well," Lawrie said Wednesday during a conference call. "I'm still a young guy and those pictures were just something that happened a long time ago, a couple of them three or four years ago, on Halloween night. It was just one of those Halloween things.

"And obviously, it's something I'm maturing about and I know it won't happen again. I can promise that."

4. Ask a boring question and you get an INSANELY good interview

Luke Scott of the Orioles wandered into baseball's winter meetings because he was going to visit with his agent. And because reporters have nothing to do at the winter meetings but wait for nothing to happen, David Brown of Yahoo Sports hit him up for a chat, asking him about the Orioles off-season moves and stuff. And then the subject turned to hunting, and the interview just got better and better, if you enjoy a bit unfiltered American right-wingism, that is:

• On Ted Nugent: I'm a big fan of Ted Nugent because he's a "keep it real" type of guy. He respects wildlife, he loves to hunt. I look at Ted Nugent and ... he's an American. He has the core beliefs of what it means to be an American in his heart. He lives by those beliefs and those principles. It's the same beliefs that our forefathers, who fought for our country, have. I'd be real interested in meeting him one day.

• On his favourite gun: "The most powerful gun I've ever used? I killed those two deer [and yes, he has a picture with him] with a 7 mm Magnum — which is a really nice weapon. It's very powerful. I killed that red stag with a 4570, which is another heavy hitter. I've got a gun to kill elephants — a 458. I got a Weatherby Magnum — which is pretty much an anti-aircraft gun [laughs]. It's an exaggeration, but [the Weatherby] is for shooting big game at long ranges, like when you go to Wyoming or Utah and you have 500, 600-yard shots and you've got to cut wind with a heavier bullet, well, a 7 mag isn't going to do it. You either go to a .338-378 or a 338; Something that's going to work better."

• This may surprise you, but Scott does not believe Barack Obama was born in the United States: "That's my belief. I was born here. If someone accuses me of not being born here, I can go — within 10 minutes — to my filing cabinet and I can pick up my real birth certificate and I can go, "See? Look! Here it is. Here it is." The man has dodged everything. He dodges questions, he doesn't answer anything. And why? Because he's hiding something."

Update: Bruce Arthur does a nice job making sense of Scott's rant and our own Don Cherry's recent performance at Toronto City Hall: "It has been quite the week for freedom of speech. And hey, it's part of what makes modern democracy great, along with the nachos"

5. Our hospitals suck, but our animals die just fine: Brock Lesnar

For those of you who don't know Brock Lesnar, he's the UFC star with the giant dagger tattooed on his chest and who, after getting sick on a hunting trip in Manitoba a few years back and getting what he thought poor treatment, blasted the Canadian medical establishment calling Canada a Third World country etc. Regardless, he still likes killing our wildlife as he returned recently for another successful hunting trip.

6. The manliest of ballets: MMA

For those of you who do know who Brock Lesnar is, here's an interesting breakdown of the headline bout at the UFC event in Montreal on Saturday featuring Georges St-Pierre and Josh Koschek. It's a rematch of their bout in 2007, won by St-Pierre, but each fighter has evolved since.

• Feared more for his grappling, Koschek is now a more adept at hitting guys: "He was still very much in the early stages of his MMA career [when they fought before]," Koscheck coach Bob Cook said. "He was fighting at a pretty high level even then, but he was still trying to figure it out and learn it." Koscheck realized after that fight that in order to compete in the upper echelon of the UFC, he would need to diversify his game. As a result, he spent long hours in the gym, drilling his standup in an attempt to add a dimension his game lacked. Without a respectable standup game, he was like a golfer who couldn't putt. He wasn't going to beat the division's elite men with just his wrestling.

• St-Pierre has traveled the world to find coaches to work with each of the elements needed in the octagon, the result is a fighter who can do anything required of the situation: "In warfare, if you want to kill a human being, you're going to use a gun," St. Pierre said. "You're not going to use an atomic bomb. When you want to explode a car, you're going to use a bazooka. You're not going to use a bomb. Everything I do, there is a place for it. If I'm fighting one type of guy, I'm going to do certain things to beat him. I'm not going to use all my cards and show the whole world what I've got. Every time I step into the Octagon, everything I do, I've been thinking about it. "

7. Raptors lose the good fight to the Knicks. A referee conspiracy?

• Says Dave Feschuk: "Thorough analysis also demanded the casting of a disparaging eye at an officiating crew helmed by Dick Bavetta, occasionally known as Knick Bavetta for a whistle that — and surely it's just random chance — sometimes appears to favour the Gothamites. Putting forth an admirable effort in the wake of two blowout defeats, the Raptors lost two possessions in the final four minutes to questionable calls. Toronto's Amir Johnson was called for offensive three seconds, this as the Raptors hoisted a field-goal attempt that should have stopped referee Violet Palmer's count. And coming out of a timeout with 57 seconds remaining and the Raptors down 110-107, Linas Kleiza was called for failing to inbound the ball in an allotted five seconds that seemed to pass extremely quickly."

Interact with The Globe