Meet your new favourite Winnipeg Jet — this dog: Hot Buttered Post for Monday, Nov. 13
Your midday sports snack.
Toast points
• Winnipeg Jets fans have chosen to salute one of their own in an online vote to name the final member of the team’s adorable canine security squad. The third of three black Labrador retriever puppies the team is training to sniff out bombs will be called “Lenny,” a nod to Len Kropioski, who drove 200 kilometres from Kenora, Ont., to sit in the front row at every Jets home game before his death at age 98 in 2016.
The other dogs are named Grace, after a Tragically Hip song, and Ryp, in memory of the late Rick Rypien, who played for the AHL Manitoba Moose for parts of five seasons.
• Carlos Beltran announced his retirement this morning in a post on the Players’ Tribune. Beltran, who turned 40 at the beginning of the season, goes out a champion as a member of the Houston Astros.
• Four sets of curlers clinched spots in their sport’s most competitive tournament — the Canadian Olympic trials — over the weekend. Vancouver 2010 gold medallist John Morris won the men’s A-side bracket at the national pre-trials, while Brendan Bottcher’s young Alberta rink outlasted Glenn Howard in the B final. Krista McCarville emerged victorious from the women’s A final and Julie Tippin advanced from the B side. The nine-team men’s and women’s trials will be held concurrently from Dec. 2-10 in Ottawa.
• The Saint Mary’s University football team won the chance to play in their conference’s championship game in Nova Scotia Supreme Court yesterday. A judge ruled the Loney Bowl should proceed Tuesday afternoon, three days later than scheduled, even though Atlantic University Sport officials had disqualified Saint Mary’s from the title game for dressing an allegedly ineligible player this season. Saint Mary’s will travel to Wolfville, N.S., to face Acadia; the winner plays Western on Saturday in the national semifinals.
• San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Marquise Goodwin said on Instagram after the team’s first win of the season on Sunday that he played despite the death of his newborn son a few hours earlier. The baby was born prematurely to Marquise and Morgan Goodwin, he said. The reaction to his 83-yard touchdown catch tells a different story now.
• GQ named Colin Kaepernick its Citizen of the Year today. The quarterback whose silent protest against police brutality has apparently dissuaded any NFL team from signing him since the end of last season is being honoured in the magazine’s December issue for evoking the resolve of Muhammad Ali and Jackie Robinson — “athletes who risked everything to make a difference.”
• It’s Kinesiology Week in Canada and the Canadian Kinesiology Alliance definitely wants you to exercise more.
Nutritional information
Michael Grabner has an interesting statistic that came to light Sunday in a post by Adam Herman on the Rangers blog Blueshirt Banter.
When Grabner scored with two seconds left on Saturday afternoon against the Oilers, it was his fourth empty-net goal of the season, which represents half of his goal output so far. (Eight goals puts Grabner in a tie for 21st in the league this season, although it is a 19-way tie.)
The question for Blueshirt Banter was whether this means anything or just makes Grabner a vulture. On the face, empty-netters may seem to be empty calories on the goal-scoring buffet, but the conclusion was that they have a certain value.
Empty-net goals are generally scored by players who are trusted by their coaches in late, one-goal situations, and who are good or lucky at acquiring the puck when short-handed. The empty-net goal is also the definitive dagger in the trailing team’s comeback try.
New York Rangers forward Michael Grabner (left) scores an empty-net goal against the Columbus Blue Jackets on Nov. 6.
There have only been 34 player-seasons in the NHL.com database with five or more empty-net goals. Pavel Bure, playing for Florida in 1999-2000, had nine empty-netters among his 58 goals that season. Keith Tkachuk had eight for Phoenix in 1996-97 and Mario Lemieux had seven for Pittsburgh in 1988-89. Wayne Gretzky has three of the five recorded seasons with five empty-netters, two with the Kings and one with the Oilers.
Herman ranked all the players who have as many career empty-netters as Grabner does (17) using a figure of ENG per 500 games.
We expanded a little to grab the top 175 players, which takes us down to 10 career empty-netters. We also expressed our ranking factor as per 80 games, sort of mirroring the length of a NHL season (which has fluctuated between 76 and 84 since the 1968 expansion to 12 teams).
Even with the expanded input, Grabner is still ranked fourth behind Bure, Gretzky and Lemieux. Interestingly, a contemporary of Grabner, Bruins forward Brad Marchand, is right behind him in fifth place.
Below is a table with the entire list of 175.
The NHL’s expanded database, which came online earlier this season, records the earliest empty-net goals to Detroit’s Herbie Lewis and Chicago’s Paul Thompson in the 1933-34 season. There are only seven in the database from the entire 1930s. Only three were recorded from 1940-49. It’s impossible to tell whether this is a record-keeping failure or an accurate look at the prevalence of pulling the goalie in the old days.
Photo of the day
Alright, we know you all want to see more of Lenny.
The Winnipeg Jets have named their new security puppy Lenny, shown in this handout image, after one of their oldest and most beloved fans, Len Kropioski.
At nationalpost.com
• When the Hockey Hall of Fame welcomes its newest seven members tonight, Paul Kariya will refrain from talking about head injuries. Post-concussion symptoms forced Kariya into premature retirement in 2011, but even though he has remained vocal about the lasting damage of headshots, Curtis Rush writes, he and other inductees haven’t seen the Hall as the right place to press the issue.
• The Quebec government plans to pour at least $200 million into replacing the roof at Montreal’s Olympic Stadium — and Jack Todd is not happy. Here, the longtime Gazette columnist pleads with his province’s politicians to move on from the Big Owe, “an ugly, ruinously expensive concrete stain on this city.”
TV tonight
All times Eastern
2:30 p.m. Soccer: World Cup playoff, Italy vs. Sweden Sportsnet
3:30 p.m. Curling: Canadian mixed championship, round robin CBC.ca streaming
7 p.m. CHL: Russia vs. OHL Sportsnet
7 p.m. NHL: Dallas at Carolina TVAS
7:30 p.m. NBA: Cleveland at New York SN One
8 p.m. Hockey Hall of Fame Induction ceremony TSN2
8 p.m. Curling: Canadian mixed championship, round robin CBC.ca streaming
8:15 p.m. NFL: Miami at Carolina TSN, RDS
9 p.m. NHL: St. Louis at Calgary SN West
10:30 p.m. NBA: Orlando at Golden State SN One
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