JUST IN:Simons says, “Has Boston not kicked sand in Toronto’s face long enough?

admin | April 28, 2024 | Toronto Raptors | No Comments

It should be Toronto’s time — shouldn’t it? — if only because Boston has taken up too much of our sporting time over the years. Just to be fair.

Year after year we’ve seen it, team after team, individual star after freaking individual star, and in truth, we’ve been kind of overwhelmed if not mesmerized by Boston’s teams and athletes.

They have a list of incomparables unlike almost any other city — from Tom Brady, Bobby Orr and Ted Williams to Larry Bird, Bill Russell after Carl Yastrzemski, Raymond Bourque and Bill Belichick. How do you find room for all those statues?

Six Super Bowl wins for the Patriots. Toronto doesn’t have an NFL team. Three Stanley Cups for the Bruins and seven other trips to the final since the Maple Leafs most recently won it in 1967. Four World Series victories for the formerly cursed Red Sox since the Blue Jays last won anything. Two championships and one trip to the NBA Finals for the Celtics since the Raptors arrived. In total, it’s Celtics 17 championships, Raptors 1. That’s a whole lot of parade routes to plan.

The Raptors have played the Celtics just once in the playoffs. The Celtics won. The Leafs have played the Bruins in the playoffs four times since 2013. Still waiting for a Leafs series win. The Patriots won six Super Bowls since 2002. Fourteen NFL teams make the playoffs. There are only nine teams in the CFL. The Argos have won four Grey Cups since the Pats’ first Super Bowl victory. And while the Jays and Red Sox play in the same division, historically the most competitive in baseball, they’ve never met in a playoff series.

Which makes this Bruins-Leafs series — big picture, right now — all the more important. You can only have so much sand kicked in your face. Eventually, you have to kick back.

THIS AND THAT

My Mount Rushmore of hockey broadcasters: Bob Cole, Dan Kelly, Danny Gallivan and Doc Emrick. Honourable mention: Foster Hewitt … Gallivan was best known for calling Montreal games. Hewitt was best known for calling Toronto games. Cole was best known for calling hockey games. Didn’t matter who played. He’s first on my list … Honestly, I tried to stay up to watch three periods of Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers Friday night. Didn’t get there. McDavid ended up with three points, I was awake for one of them. Why is the NHL and its broadcasting partners making it so difficult to watch hockey’s best player … Does anyone else hate the puck over glass penalty? I know why they have the rule. I understand the purpose. I just can’t stand it being called, especially, when a team is already shorthanded and especially at playoff time … The math after the first three games of the Bruins-Leafs series: Brad Marchand has six points. Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner, combined, have four. Regular season math: Matthews and Marner scored 192 points, Marchand 67 for the Bruins … Orr was the greatest hockey player I’ve ever seen. My dad told me Williams was the greatest hitter ever. Many insist Brady is the greatest of all time. That’s a touch of overkill for one city … Toronto did have two seasons of Doug Flutie and one season of Kawhi Leonard, though, and three titles go along with that … Doug Gilmour’s Toronto playoff stats: 52 games played, 17 goals, 60 assists, 77 points. Matthews’ playoff stats heading into Saturday night: 53 games played, 10 goals, 38 assists, 48 points … Watching the Colorado Avalanche is like watching hockey played at another speed. It’s like something is wrong with your television and the game is on fast-forward … First year Leafs GM Brad Treliving was hammered in the early going for his free-agent signings last summer. So let’s recap. The bad signings of Ryan Reaves, Max Domi and Tyler Bertuzzi have turned out to be good late season/playoff additions. The crummy John Klingberg signing, accompanied by a season-ending injury, provided Treliving with cap space he otherwise wouldn’t have had, to improve the roster. The smaller late-August signings of Martin Jones and Simon Benoit turned out to be significant. So a terrible early-season grade for the GM would have a totally different kind of grade in the second semester … This coming off-season challenge for Treliving — which includes finding a way to keep Domi and Bertuzzi with very little cap space and Matthews and William Nylander getting substantial raises — is finding a way to improve a roster in need of improvements with almost no money to spend … Time was, going into Chicago or Boston for a playoff hockey game was a matter of early survival. If you got through the first five minutes, you had a shot. So why is coming into Toronto for a playoff — or regular season — games so comfortable for the opposition?

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