SIMMONS SAYS: Playing for country, instead of club, is magic

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The championship games were played 23 days apart, different sports, different events, same passion, emotion and celebration.

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You could see it on the faces of the winners and the losers.

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You could see how much the final game of the World Baseball Classic meant and how much the final game of the Olympic men’s hockey tournament meant.

Something happens to athletes when they slip on their country’s colours. Something magical, really.

We saw it at the Milan Olympics. We saw it from Miami with the games leading up to the final of the WBC.

This is sport at its absolute best. Never mind the pitch-count rules. Never mind who’s available and who isn’t that always creeps into tournament baseball in March. Whether it was involving Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Japan, Italy or even a watered-down Canadian team, the games were full of drama and moments, while the celebrating and dancing at the end was uplifting.

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It was country versus country. Single-game championships. Winner take all.

It’s what will make the World Cup of soccer so intriguing when it begins in Mexico on June 11. Once the round-robins are finished, it’s a single-elimination tournament.

Just like the WBC. Just like the Olympic hockey. You won’t see any baseball games better than the USA-Venezuela final or the USA-Dominican semifinal. And you won’t see any hockey games better — results aside — than the gold-medal game in Milan between Canada and the U.S.

It’s what sport can’t be over the course of a long season. It’s faster. It’s more intense. It’s condensed. It’s impossible to dislike.

THIS AND THAT

My view: The Leafs absolutely need to hire a president of hockey operations in the off-season. Their view: Having a president the past nine years didn’t prevent the many mistakes that led to this difficult Leafs season. The worst thing the Leafs can do is bring back both general manager Brad Treliving and coach Craig Berube. If Treliving is back, Berube can’t possibly return. How do you sell both of them returning to an already angry fan base? … The rather thin Anaheim Ducks tried to rush Bo Groulx to the NHL. They wound up hurting his development by doing so. The fact he is now doing some good late-season things with the Maple Leafs is not surprising to those who know him best. When everything in his career was going against Groulx, he never stopped working or believing. “He will never cheat you on heart or competitiveness,” a former coach told me Saturday. He also pointed out that Groulx, as the son of a coach, Benoit Groulx, who has the most AHL wins in Syracuse Crunch history, is always among his coaches’ favourites … Yanni Gourde was 25 years old and had played five seasons in the minor leagues when he finally made the Tampa Bay Lightning full-time. He was key to the Lightning winning two Stanley Cups. Groulx is 26 and has played most of his career with three different AHL teams. There’s a model here to follow in Gourde, who played his final minor-league games for a coach named Groulx.

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The best part of every Los Angeles Kings game: Watching the opposition line up at the end of the game to pay tribute to the retiring Anze Kopitar. It was especially powerful to watch New York Rangers goalie Jonathan Quick line up for his Kopitar hug. The two played 15 seasons together in Los Angeles. Kopitar is a sure-thing Hall of Famer. Quick is probably a Hall of Famer, too … If Edmonton plays Vegas in the first round of the playoffs, will it be last shot wins? The goaltending on both teams is rather dreadful … Funny, the Blue Jays are on pace to pay $31 million in luxury taxes this season and yet Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment doesn’t want the Raptors to pay any luxury tax. Different rules for different teams … It was great that Connor McDavid spoke out against the suspension process in hockey and said it’s time to re-evaluate how decisions are made. It would be even greater if he wasn’t close friends with the injured Auston Matthews and shared the same agent, Judd Moldaver. But still happy to see McDavid speaking his mind as often as possible. He has more to say than he usually shares.

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HEAR AND THERE

The NHL, and the sport of hockey itself, have a difficult conundrum regarding Russia. Without blinking, the NHL welcomes Russians into its league, some of the best and most famous players — Nikita Kucherov, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Ilya Sorokin, Alex Ovechkin, Kirill Kaprizov, Evgeni Malkin, to name just six. But it likely won’t allow a Russian team to play in the World Cup of Hockey until there is some kind of conclusion to the war in Ukraine. So Russian players can play, Russian teams cannot. The contradiction here reminds me of an old George Carlin routine about Muhammad Ali not being allowed to fight in America. Ali wanted to box. The U.S. government wanted him to go to war. Said Carlin about the American government approach: “If you won’t kill them (in war), we won’t let you beat ’em up .” … It’s amazing how large the gold-medal hockey game was to Americans, in a nation where hockey isn’t across-the-board huge. The gold-medal game drew more than 20 million viewers in the U.S., which is 10 times the number the Stanley Cup final did last year. The WBC final did almost 11 million in TV-watchers, which was more than any NBA Finals game did last June but not more than Game 7 of the World Series, which managed a huge number of almost 26 million … It’s a bad idea, being proposed by some, to move the WBC final to the all-star break. The event would lose all its momentum doing it that way … These are the largest early-season expectations for the Blue Jays in more than 30 years. After they won their second World Series in 1993, they didn’t do so well, with six consecutive seasons of non- contention: Their average finish: 21 games out of first place … The Jays will open the season without Trey Yesavage, Shane Bieber and Jose Berrios in their starting rotation, which would be reason for all kinds of concern if their early-season schedule wasn’t so easy. The first month, with 18 games against bottom-feeders, gives the Jays time to get some pitchers back into a rotation that is no longer as deep as many believed … Edward Rogers doesn’t worry about overselling his Blue Jays. On a daily basis, Rogers, the company not the man, will have 15 people assigned to Jays coverage on television, radio and online. Most days, the newspapers will have one or two people covering the Jays … Why the opening-day lineup can mean next to nothing: Last season, the Jays opened with Alan Roden in right field, George Springer in centre, Anthony Santander in left and Will Wagner as the designated hitter. When the game mattered, Roden was in Minnesota, Wagner was in San Diego, Springer was a DH and Santander was a non-factor … I expect Eric Lauer, who was an underrated part of the Jays’ success last regular season, to take a similar role this year … I love the idea of Buck Martinez being added to the new Hall of Excellence for the Blue Jays. It is more than well-deserved. But I don’t love the idea of the Jays replacing the Level of Excellence on the stadium’s outfield wall and moving the honours to the corridor at the Rogers Centre.

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SCENE AND HEARD

I would happily vote for Evan Bouchard to win the Norris Trophy if I didn’t have to vote for Cale Makar, Quinn Hughes, Zach Werenski, Moritz Seider and Miro Heiskanen ahead of him. There are five choices on the awards ballot. And I’m still not certain that rookie Matthew Schaefer isn’t one of the top five … Bouchard’s Oilers are 29th in goals against in the NHL … The inaccurate narrative around is that the leading scorer among defencemen wins the Norris Trophy. This has been true the past three seasons. But over the past 10 years, only four Norris winners were defencemen scoring leaders. Bouchard leads all NHL defencemen in scoring … George Parros is a Princeton graduate. Brian Burke has his law degree from Harvard. These are hardly the poster boys for Ivy League educations … Gold medal or not, Doug Armstrong would have been replaced as Team Canada general manager for the next Olympic Games. Now, the transition is easy because he announced his resignation via Pierre LeBrun. After two gold-medal wins, Steve Yzerman stepped down as GM of Team Canada and was so emotionally beaten up after the Sochi Games that he barely celebrated the one-sided gold-medal victory and took little enjoyment from the accomplishment … This is the best Ottawa Senators roster since the days of Jason Spezza and Daniel Alfredsson, but what does it say about this group if they can’t make the playoffs? … If you listen to radio or watch the sports networks across the country, you would think the Leafs are the only terrible team in Canada. They are not. Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver are in equally awful shape. And who knows what the Oilers are right now? … It might take as many as 98 points to get in the playoffs in the Eastern Conference of the NHL. The lowest-qualifying playoff team in the West won’t have even 90 … Sam Rosen left last year. Howie Rose, Joe Bowen and Steve Carroll are leaving this year. The sporting voices of our lives, so important in their own markets, are becoming fewer and fewer … The oldest story becomes new again: Hockey is returning to Hamilton. How many tries is this now for the Steel City?

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AND ANOTHER THING

Macklin Celebrini’s Hart Trophy chase appears to be all but over. Celebrini has slowed down over his past 20 games with the San Jose Sharks, scoring 23 points in that time. The Sharks have won just eight of those games. In the same 20-game span, Kucherov has scored 44 points with the Tampa Bay Lightning, McDavid has scored 30 in Edmonton and Nathan MacKinnon has 29 in Colorado … The Leafs spent a decade trying to win by putting their faith in what they believed were four generational players. Mitch Marner is now in Vegas. John Tavares is turning 36 in the fall. If Matthews and William Nylander are still considered generational, it may be only the optimists who think that way. The 10-year attempt was valiant and possible, but ultimately an artistic failure. The real challenge now is how you proceed from here … It’s perfectly understandable that Jack Hughes would want the game-winning puck from the Olympic gold-medal game. Wouldn’t you? It’s also perfectly understandable that the Hockey Hall of Fame had a deal with the Olympic people and the IIHF to get that puck. It took Hughes’ agent, the exceptional Pat Brisson, to set the record straight here on Hughes not knowing the particulars of the winning puck … The Dodgers won the World Series, back-to-back. The Panthers won the Stanley Cup, back-to-back. Now, it is possible that Oklahoma City wins the NBA title back-to-back with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander as a back-to-back MVP. Before the Dodgers’ titles in 2024 and 2025, the most recent baseball team to win consecutive titles was 25 years ago … A thought that stayed with me throughout the WBC: What would Team Canada have looked like with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Freddie Freeman in the top third of their batting order? … This is among the many reasons I dislike social media: I received a BREAKING news bulletin the other night on my phone, informing me that Wilt Chamberlain had passed away. For a moment I had to think about this and was sad about losing a legend the magnitude of Chamberlain. Then it hit me: Chamberlain died years ago, in 1999 to be exact. I looked it up. This wasn’t breaking, this wasn’t news, it was nonsense. Who sends this crap out? And how do they get away with it? … Happy birthday to Dave Keon (86), Ernie Clement (30), Al Iafrate (60), Luis Leal (69), Aaron Hill (44), Glenallen Hill (61), Edwin Diaz (32), Marcus Camby (52), Adrian Peterson (41), Sven Butenschon (50), J.J. Watt (37) and Jim Kyte (62) … And hey, whatever became of Kelvim Escobar?

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