'I'm probably going to get into trouble here ...'

The sweetest words to a journalist's ear are sentences that begin with "I'm probably going to get into trouble here …" Which were the exact words from the unguarded mouth of documentary filmmaker Michael Moore, in town to talk up his latest release, Capitalism: A Love Story. "I'm probably going to get into trouble here," Moore told the Globe and Mail, when asked about the current drama of the National Hockey League, "but the Toronto Maple Leafs should concentrate more on trying to have the best team possible instead of trying to shut out the competition."

Moore, a native of Flint, Mich., sister city of Hamilton, was commenting on the speculation that the Maple Leafs were employing some sort of veto power to disallow the bankrupt Phoenix Coyote franchise to relocate to hockey-mad Southern Ontario. "[The Leafs]should believe in democracy, and they should believe in fair play and competition - it's about sports for Christ's sake."

The latest documentary from the hurly burly provocateur rails against the "evils" of capitalism, which is a popular economic system he suspects has wrecked the "national sport of Canada" as well. "You've allowed a piece of your soul to be ripped out and made into a commodity," the left-winger Moore said, referring to the 1996 relocation of the Winnipeg Jets to Phoenix. "I can't believe you've allowed any Canadian hockey team to be bought by and taken to a place where there's palm trees."

Maybe Moore's next movie, then, is Hockey in Canada: A Love Story.