Two weeks ago, the Chicago Blackhawks won their third Stanley Cup in six seasons. There was another parade with 2 million people watching fro the streets and in Soldier Field. But, once again, the demon hard salary cap was not going to allow the champions to remain intact. Patrick Sharp and Bryan Bickell were on the trading block to free up enough money to resign 22-year-old “Man-Child”/ start in the making Brandon Saad. That was the team’s number one priority said GM Stan Bowman. Saad said that he wanted to stay in Chicago and would give the Hawks a “home town” discount. Saad was becoming a superstar of his own, scoring 52 goals and 74 assists in 208 career regular-season games with the Blackhawks, including 23 goals and 29 assists in 82 games last season.
Two weeks later, Saad finds himself a member of the Columbus Blue Jackets part of a seven player deal cemented just one day before the July 1st free agent period to begin. Saad, another forward, Alex Broadhurst and defenseman Michael Paliotta were traded to the Columbus Blue Jackets for forwards Artem Anisimov, Marko Dano, Jeremy Morin, Corey Tropp and a 2016 fourth-round pick. Bowman didn’t have much choice – if a team signed Saad to a big money offer sheet, the Hawks would have had to let him go for three draft picks in compensation. Instead, the Hawks get four NHL caliber players instead of taking a chance on untested talent.
Reportedly, the sides weren’t at all close: Bowman wanted to pay Saad in the $3.5 million range for three years, a “bridge deal” shorter term deal for lower money, but a commitment to give the player more money later in his career. Similar deals were given to Jonathon Toews and Patrick Kane, albeit for over $5 million each per season, but they were given big new contracts that kick in this coming season (nearly $10 million each per year). In three years, Marion Hossa’s deal will be done, and hopefully, the salary cap would be higher to allow for Kane, Toews and the other players.
Saad wanted a five year deal for $6 million per season, longer than the Hawks wanted and almost impossible to fit under the cap since neither Sharp or Bickell seemed to interest any other suitors. Bowman reportedly has wanted Anisimov for awhile, already signing him to a five year deal. The most interesting part is that the Hawks reacquired Jeremy Morin was traded after falling into Coach Joel Quenneville’s doghouse and requesting to be traded since he couldn’t make the lineup regularly. Reportedly, Morin has to work for a spot in the lineup lie before. It will be very interesting to see what happens there.
I understand Saad’s wish for the money now – injuries can always occur, and promises can easily turn empty when situations change. Still, Bowman has shown himself to be upfront with the top performers on the team. In addition, as someone who has met President John McDonaugh, I don’t believe that they would be underhanded. However, this is a business and players and teams have to look out for themselves. In addition however, one may also say that Bowman was sending a message to all of the players not in the nucleus (Toews, Kane, Keith, Hossa, probably Seabrook) – you can make more money, but have a good time in a small market backwater like Columbus.
As a fan, it is depressing to have the annual salary dump, but the team has done a great job in remaining Stanley Cup contenders. Brandon Saad may turn into the 21st Century Phil Esposito, or he may not, but he will always be a member of the Stanley Cup champions and will probably never have to buy a meal in Chicago for the rest of his life. We wish him the best, and we hope that Stan Bowman has worked more magic.

One of my favorite overlooked movies is a Roy Scheider, John Badham directed thriller called “Blue Thunder.” The film was about a plot to bring military style helicopters to Los Angeles (sounds eerily prescient, doesn’t it). Anyway, the part of the tired, put upon sergeant was played by the great Warren Oates in his final performance. Scheider is an ex-Vietnam pilot who was grounded on a Section 8 (mental illness) discharge and in the film, he is flying LAPD helicopters and is asked to fly Blue Thunder. Of course, Scheider gets into trouble and Oates speaks a line that has stayed with me ever since the film premiered in 1982: “when you’re walking on eggs, don’t hop!”
It was this that I thought of when I read the story about Los Angeles Kings center Mike Richards. With his career in Los Angeles all but formally over, the Kings had at first, put him on waivers over the weekend, but then it was reported that Richards was held for at least four hours at the Canadian border carrying OxyContin pills. Seeing an opportunity to save money, the Kings terminated Richards’ contract as the investigation continues on the two-time Cup champion.
Richards has been a shadow of his former first line, top performer self since the Kings won their first Stanley Cup in 2012. Kings’ General Manager Dean Lombardi could have used a compliance buyout on Richards’ contract last summer but instead took the player’s word that he would return in better shape for the 2014-15 season. That didn’t work out: Richards had five goals and 16 points and a minus-10 defensive rating in 53 games, as well as three goals and 14 points in 16 games with the Kings’ farm team in Manchester, N.H. The Kings, after placing Richards on waivers Sunday with the presumed intention of buying out his contract, instead terminated the contract, citing a “material breach of the requirements of his standard player’s contract.”
The 30-year-old center remains under investigation in connection with the alleged possession of a restricted substance. OxyContin, a/k/a oxycodone, is a narcotic pain reliever prescribed for moderate to severe long-term pain. According to the Winnipeg Sun, anyone who attempts to cross the border with OxyContin pills without a prescription would risk having them seized and could be charged with possession under the criminal code’s Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, or with smuggling under the Canada Customs Act.
One has to wonder if the years of playing hockey have taken their toll on Richards, which led to the painkillers. We don’t know if Richards has an addition problem with this medication, but celebrities such as Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, Courtney Love, Wynonna Ryder and athletes such as Brett Favre had problems and went into rehab for the substance. That is the first and most important issue here – Mike Richards’ health. For the Kings, who have already had a domestic violence issue with another player, they are able to juggle the salary cap and should be better on the ice next year. Off the ice, however, is the glare and sparkle of La La Land affecting the players, especially now that they have won two Stanley Cups?

There are places in sports where, if you play there, you are the number one attraction, the biggest star of stars. With that fame and usually fortune, there are gargantuan expectations. You are expected to be the superstar; the face of the franchise; THE MAN. Some players thrive in the attention (Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and many more); others struggle (too many players to mention).
One of those situations is being the best player on the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Leafs have the longest active streak without a Stanley Cup, now 48 years and counting, but the fans still pack the Air Canada Center and the Leafs are considered the most valuable franchise in the NHL/
As the captain and leading scorer on an underachieving team, Phil Kessel was the poster boy for underachiever. I think that his “portly” appearance and talk of his being lazy on defense didn’t help even though Kessel, 27, scored 25 goals and added 36 assists for Toronto in 82 games last season, and has now scored 20 or more goals in seven straight seasons and 30 or more goals in five of those years.
Sometimes, a change of scenery is in order; Kessel has been trade bait since the season ended and today, he was traded to Pittsburgh. Along with Kessel, the Penguins acquired Tyler Biggs and Tim Erixon in return for Kasperi Kapanen, Nick Spaling, Scott Harrington and a 2016 third-round draft choice.
The trade gives the Penguins, already a high scoring team, another weapon. However, I don’t think this addresses the team’s weakness on defense and, in my opinion, playoff goaltending that has kept the Pens from doing deep into the Stanley Cup playoffs since winning in 2009. The Leafs lose a big time scorer, and I don’t know anything about the players they acquired. However, it does clean the slate for both Kessel, who no longer has to be the main man in Pittsburgh since Crosby and Malkin are the centers there, so he should feel a lot less pressure.
I don’t know if the Leafs are closer to ending their Stanley Cup draught, but maybe the locker room will be calmer.

Of course, I pay very little attention to golf – I have never had any interest in it. But I am often interested in its personalities: Tiger, Rory McIllroy, and Phil Mickelson. The big left hander who always looks to me like Hugh Grant having a bad day has not won a major tournament in a very long time, but it seems like Mickelson has bigger problems. Last year, he was attached to an insider trading investigation (he was reportedly cleared on one investigation involving Clorox stock, but there is another insider trading investigation on a Dean Foods stock that is still ongoing). This time however, it isn’t securities laws, but bigger charges: gambling and money laundering.
The “Worldwide Leader” ESPN’s Outside The Lines program is having quite a great couple of weeks: first the Pete Rose betting while playing baseball story hit; this week two of their reporters: Mike Fish and David Purdum have reported that “nearly $3 million transferred from golfer Phil Mickelson to an intermediary was part of ‘an illegal gambling operation which accepted and placed bets on sporting events.’”
The report lists two people and court documents as their sources for their report. So far, Mickelson has not been charged with a crime and isn’t under investigation, though “a 56-year-old former sports gambling handicapper, acting as a conduit for an offshore gambling operation, pleaded guilty last week to laundering approximately $2.75 million of money that two sources told Outside the Lines belonged to Mickelson.” Gregory Silveira of La Quinta, California, the handicapper, recently pleaded guilty to three counts of money laundering.
It remains to be seen if Mickelson will become the subject of an investigation as the gambling client referenced in Silveira’s plea, or if prosecutors were more interested in targeting Silveira.
I know that athletes are often thrill junkies – they are looking for a similar “high” away from the field, course, pitch, court, ice or whatever, that they get when they are competing. Many athletes have had run-ins with their respective sports regarding gambling: Michael Jordan may or may not have “retired” from the Bulls the first time as a result of it; Paul Hornung, Mickey Mantle, George Steinbrenner were all suspended for cavorting with gamblers; and of course, there is the poster boy for sports gambling, Mr. Rose.
I even understand not wanting to have it public that you are gambling, but there are private VIP rooms in Las Vegas. I guess that you can’t bet wherever you want, and you want high money, high stakes betting, and the only place to get that outside of Nevada is through bookies and organized crime types. But that is where simple gambling becomes more criminal. Just keeping your bets and losses private is one thing, but if you win, the IRS wants to know where that money came from, and in either case, international authorities and very interested in the flow of funds to make sure that other criminal and even terrorist activities and not being funded in this way.
Only prosecutors know if investigations or charges will be forthcoming on Mickelson; but if so, he is in a world of trouble,

According to medieval theologians, poets and artists, the “Limbo of the Patriarchs” or “Limbo of the Fathers” is seen as the temporary state of those who, despite the sins they may have committed, died in the friendship of God but could not enter Heaven until redemption by Jesus Christ made it possible (Wikipedia). Since then limbo has come to mean “limbo” is any status where a person or project is held up, and nothing can be done until another action happens. I believe that this is the current status of my old friend Alex Rodriguez.
The twice shamed user of performance enhancing drugs has returned to the Yankees, and now that Derek Jeter has retired, he is the biggest name on the team and he is delivering – hitting .282 with 14 home runs (tied for 19th in Major League Baseball) and 40 RBIs (tied for 31st), and the Yankees have surprised everyone, being near the top of the American League East when most people thought they would be also-rans.
After serving his one-year suspension, I think that the Yankees ownership and front office and many fans around baseball would have preferred that Rodriguez be finished. Without the PEDs (or with better cover-up measures), at the age of 39 (turning 40 in less than a month) a lot of people probably expected his skills to have atrophied. However, whatever he did in his free time last season, he has played respectably well.
Here’s where the limbo comes in: having played 21 seasons in the majors, Rodriguez has put up historic numbers and last week he reached the 3,000 hit plateau, and doing so in style, with a home run, only the third player to hit a home run for his 3,000th hit. Of course, many of those hits, home runs and RBIs were hit when A Rod was on PEDs. How many were there? Only Rodriguez could tell us for sure, and he never will.
Unlike other players nearing 3,000 hits, there was no countdown by the Yankees, and once he achieved the feat, there was no stoppage of play, little attempt to get the ball back from the fan (who has said he is keeping it). The Yankees, baseball’s winningest and most storied team, usually revels in their history – in fact over the weekend, they celebrated infielder Willie Randolph and former pitcher and pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre at Old Timer’s Day, a regular sell out at Yankee Stadium. But while the fans cheered loudly for Rodriguez, the Yankees’ response was nonexistent. In fact, the Yankees did something that most people would have almost thought impossible: make Alex Rodriguez a sympathetic figure. There were articles written that Rodriguez’ achievement should be celebrated PEDs or not.
Which is what I have said for over two decades: since we can’t prove all of the players who took steroids, perhaps on the numbers, they should be in the Hall of Fame; but I said that there should be an asterisk on every player who was proven to have used steroids, HGH and other substances. Some people would like to see a “Steroid Wing” of the Hall, where Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, and eventually A Rod would be enshrined, but I think that’s a bit harsh. The Baseball Writers of America seems to agree, with no player with positive steroid tests or allegations of its use getting anywhere the 75% vote rate to gain induction.
Of course, no people are more openly against the steroid bunch entering the Hall than the living Hall of Famers. I have read numerous quotes from recent enshrinees who are adamantly against anyone tarnished by the stain of PEDs. Rodriguez, one of the only players with Hall of Fame credentials, is also one of the few who have tested positively, and not once or twice, but reportedly numerous times. Not helping A Rod were his lies and denials and apparent attempts to bully and silence people who knew the truth.
The lies and denials are enough for me to keep him out of the Hall forever, but the New York fans don’t seem to care, they cheer his feats as if nothing ever happened. I wonder if the same reception would happen if he played for any team in the game? On the road, visiting fans boo him rousingly, but they have been doing that since he signed the $252 million contract over a decade ago.
Meanwhile Rodriguez goes about his business, collecting his millions through 2017, and every hit, RBI and home run puts him in the rarified air of the games greats. Commissioner Rob Manfred has quite a quandary on his hands.

I have argued for years that Pete Rose belongs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, because no one could prove that he bet on baseball while amassing 4,258 hits, the most in the game. After years of lies and denial, Rose admitted betting on baseball several years ago, but he said he only bet while he was managing the Reds.
My old Northwestern friend Willie Weinbaum works for ESPN’s “Outside The Lines,” is reporting that the show has obtained documents that show that Rose bet on baseball between 1984 and 1986, while still playing for the Reds. The documents are from pages of a notebook seized from the home of former Rose associate Michael Bertolini during a raid by the U.S. Postal Service in 1989, just after Rose was permanently banned from baseball. The authenticity of the documents was corroborated by two people who participated in the raid, and the network had John Dowd, the former federal prosecutor who led the Rose investigation review the documents. Dowd was quoted as saying “this does it. This closes the door.” Dowd also said that his team had tried to get Bertolini’s documents but were unsuccessful. The documents show that Rose bet extensively on baseball and never bet against the Reds.
So, where does this leave us? Both present Commissioner Rod Manfred and former Commissioner Bud Selig considered reinstatement to baseball, and in fact, with this year’s All Star Game to be played in Cincinnati, Rose is going to be allowed to be part of the festivities.
Where does this leave us? I have been one of the few people who believe that Rose belongs in the Hall of Fame, but he should never be “reinstated” – that is, should never be allowed a job in baseball. I still stick by that assessment. I have also said that it is ludicrous to have a morals clause for entrants to the HOF because Ty Cobb was one of the first men to be enshrined. I know that there is a just released biography of Cobb that tried to rehabilitate his image, but I think that even if half of the stories about him were true, Cobb was a racist, unpleasant SOB.
I now think that Rose will get into the Hall after he dies or when he is so sick that he is close to death. Of course, Rose wants to be enshrined just for his ego (and probably his autograph would go up in price). There would be no greater indignity if Rose was enshrined after his death. It would probably be apropos.

Growing up a Chicago sports fan, one became used to losing. The Cubs had not won when I was growing up (and still haven’t) but we were cruelly tempted by the team in 1969. The White Sox never won; the Bulls were an expansion team, and I was too young to remember the 1962 Blackhawks or the 1963 Bears.
We saw Butkus, Sayers, Artis Gilmore, the South Side Hit Men, Jeremy Roenick, Ed Belfour and Chris Chelios, players who were great, but still no championship. In fact, we almost wallowed in the losing (much like the Red Sox fans did). We just had a feeling that if we got close to winning, our teams would find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Then came the Super Bowl Shuffle Bears; they weren’t a football team – they were a force of nature on and off the field. The went one win from an undefeated season; defensively, they dominated and destroyed the opposition. Off the field, the players were bigger than life: Walter; McMahon; Mongo; The Fridge; Singletary; Ditka; Buddy Ryan – they were larger than life. But I remember watching the Super Bowl and on the first series, the unthinkable happened: Walter Payton fumbled away the ball on a run and the Patriots were set up deep inside Bear territory. The defense held them to a field goal, but you could hear the air sucked out of the entire city. Even though we were a better team on paper, Chicago fans somehow knew that the fates were against us.
Of course, while we didn’t know it at the time, the rout was on: the defense attacked New England early and often (probably ruined Tony Eason, their QB for life) and the offense rolled to the 46-10 bludgeoning, the biggest spread in the game up to that time. While the rest of the country got bored and changed the station, here in Chicago, we watched every moment – enjoying something that we had never seen before.
Then came the phenomenon that was Michael Jordan. Once the Bulls got Scottie Pippen and assembled the rest of the supporting cast, Jordan, a man who doesn’t like to lose at anything, led the team to six NBA Titles in eight years, with the two years broken up by his retirement and attempt to play baseball. We got spoiled by this exhibition of unbridled excellence.
Then came the White Sox of 2005; robbed of a potential World Series by the 1994 lockout and cancellation of the end of the baseball season, when the White Sox were among the best teams in the sport that year, but the team put it all together under Ozzie Guillen and did what no baseball team had done in 88 years, win a World Series.
If there was one snakebit franchise, it was the Cubs. One win away from World Series appearances in 1984, and of course, the Steve Bartman year of 2003. The Cubs’ streak of futility stands at 107 years and counting.
Then came the 21st Century and the Chicago Blackhawks; after over a decade of irrelevance in which “Dollar” Bill Wirtz’s cheapness and mismanagement almost killed hockey in an Original Six city. Son Rocky Wirtz made all the right moves: keeping Dale Tallon at GM, hiring former Cub marketing ace John McDonough as President; bringing in Joel Quenneville as Coach. Of course there was luck too: drafting Jonathan Toews was a no brainer, but the team also lucked into the top pick the next year and drafted Patrick Kane. The rest of the core was built quickly: Hossa, Keith, Seabrook, Sharp. When the team won in 2010, I admit that I was satisfied – a bucket list event had happened – I lived to see a Stanley Cup title in Chicago. Little did I know that more would follow – the dominance of 2013 and the struggling, hard fought team this season.
Leave it to my old Sportswriters on TV buddy Sun-Times columnist Rick Telander to put it into perspective. In the 25 years since 1990, Chicago has won more championships in the major sports: football, baseball, basketball and hockey; than any city in the United States. When I passed this on to coworkers in Boston and friends from New York, many said I was crazy, but I gave them the rundown:
• Chicago 10 – Bulls 6; White Sox 1; Blackhawks 3
• New York 9 – Giants 3; Yankees 5; Rangers 1;
• Boston 9 – Patriots 4; Red Sox 3; Celtics 1; Bruins 1;
• Los Angeles 9 – Ducks 1; Angels 1; Kings 2; Lakers 5.
Read ‘em and weep.