Calder? I didn’t even know her number!

Okay, rimshot Monday. And a chance to revisit our season-long chase for the Calder Trophy, the award for the rookie of the year in the NHL. Or Auston City Limits as we call the pursuit of the prize by Toronto’s Auston Matthews.

When the NFL and AFL merged in in the late 1960s there was debate about what to call the new championship game between the leagues. Ultimate Bowl and Premier Bowl were among the names suggested. Eventually Kansas City owner Lamar Hunt, inspired by the child’s toy Super Ball, suggested calling it the Super Bowl. By year four of the game, the name had stuck.

Maybe Canadians are a little touchy lately, what with all the talk about re-negotiating NAFTA and sealing borders. You can see why some might have been upset when they turned on NBC Golfchannel Saturday to see Abbottsford B.C.’s Adam Hadwin make a run at the magical 59 score in his third round at the Tour stop in Palm Springs.

With the Super Bowl just a few weeks away, the NFL has already entered the free-agent phase of its business calendar. But this free agency is not some superstar player looking for a big pay day with another team. This free agency is the movement of NFL franchises— even longstanding franchises dating back half a century— to a market that is seemingly greener.

For a tournament that didn’t have an under-23 team, I suppose the World Junior Hockey Championships were alright. I mean, those close games and dramatic finishes are nice if you like that sort of thing, but without Team Europe as your drawing card, it’s hard to make these 18/ 19-year-olds look interesting. 

The Chicago Cubs. The Cleveland Cavaliers. Leicester City. We called them all here at IDLM in 2016. Okay, it was after they’d won, but still… so let’s set some sports resolutions for 2017. 

The year 2016 was not a great year for aging pop musicians, Democrats or the newspaper business. It was, however, a year for the shaggy dog, the longshot and the raggedy-pants rabble who walk the sporting earth.

It’s time once again for Auston City Limits, our horse-race analysis of the 2016-17 contest for the NHL’s Calder Trophy, symbolic of the rookie of the year. We’re calling it Auston, of course, in honour of the Toronto Maple Leafs wunderkind Auston Matthews, the kid from the desert who sharpened his skills in Switzerland.

There is a joke that goes a little like this: How many Torontonians does it take to screw in a light bulb? One. They just hold the bulb while the world turns around them. Yes, Toronto has a God thing. They act like they were the first to recognize opposable thumbs. What’s theirs is theirs. What's yours is theirs too. But even for those who chafe beneath the unholy yoke of the TIFF city, you had to like what you saw on Saturday night in the MLS Final at BMO Field.

Tiger Woods is back. And it’s safe to watch the PGA Tour again. At his own tournament this weekend in the Bahamas, the Hero Challenge, Woods showed enough traces of the greatest golfer ever with a sizzling 65 in Round Two and a respectable fifteenth-place finish overall. This after missing almost two full Tour seasons.

Toronto made a significant contribution to Canadian football during this year’s stirring Grey Cup Festival. Okay, it was the only contribution southern Ontarians made this year to the Grey Cup (beside the acres of empty seats that were papered over for Sunday’s game).

The election was fixed. 

No, this is not a test of the Donald Trump Emergency Warning System. We are referring to the heist perpetrated in full view last week on Detroit Tigers star Justin Verlander. Verlander, who fashioned a 16-9 record and had the lowest ERA (3.04)  for the Tigers, was denied the America League Cy Young Award by a voting scam perpetrated by two voters who failed to put Verlander in their top five selections for the award.

Back when he was the King of the NBA, Michael Jordan was constantly being sought by political groups to support black and liberal causes. Jordan always demurred. When pressed on his silence, Jordan said simply, “Republicans buy running shoes, too.” A man with a stake in the running-shoe millions through is Air Jordans understood the nature of bipartisanship in a very practical manner.

A couple of years ago, Canadian author and social behaviour wonk Malcom Gladwell famously remarked that, in 25 years, no one will play football. (He also said no one would eat red meat, but for the moment let’s focus on the dire prediction for the NFL.) In the weeks after making the remark, Gladwell expanded his hypothesis to say that the NFL is living in the past and has no connection to the society it inhabits.

This attention grabber seemed a little far-fetched when Gladwell spoke. The NFL has lapped the field in popularity among team sports and rakes in over six billion dollars a year from TV networks anxious to broadcast the games. If ever there were a lock cinch for security it’s the NFL shield and its attendant communication, marketing and gambling tendrils.