If an NHL team held a Christian night, and players were forced to wear jerseys with a crucifix, would you defend a player who opted out because of his conscience? Or would you go full Proteau and say he's a "shameful human being whose religious intolerance is only going to get more shameful over the years”? No one in the chattering class wants to take that on, of course.

Are today’s superstars a product of more than talent? Are they also the products of an expensive, exclusive grooming process that leaves the Bobby Hull farm-boy archetype in the dust? It’s no longer a sport for paupers.

It’s the nature of fairness that it sometimes take a winding road. But in the end all the participants will accept the winners, however grudgingly”.  If only the rest of the culture could do the same. But that horse has left the barn.

The hasty puddings believe the NHL should treat the pioneers of the game like some statue of Sir John A. Paint and pitchforks. In the rush to institutionalize the more recent legends while they’re still with us it’s okay with them to toss away the pedestal the NHL is built upon.

It’s been a tumultuous year here at IDLM. Most time it was stories on the field to the court. But many times the story was a continuation of the Covid-19 disaster, the war in Ukraine, climate confusion or the cultural clash in society. We’ve tried to get past the obvious and bring insight or humour to our columns. Here’s a selection of our favourites.

There is evidence that with Cherry gone and Ron Maclean playing Goodbye Mr. Chips that a sea change is occurring on at least one front at HNIC One is the emergence of former Canuck Kevin Bieksa as the new tone-setter of the editorial. It means that ,for the first time since Cherry left, the show has a reason to stay tuned in for intermissions.

Coming in the week when Quebec commemorates the 2014 École Polytyechnique massacre, Carey Price’s political message on Bill C21 backfired. Quebec’s media exploded against the man who was so recently their hero. Price tried to clarify his stand, to no avail. He’s now been shunned.

Imagine the Academy Awards coming out in favour of returning The Dreamers to their home country. That’s the equivalent of the NHL’s Twitter site announcing “Trans women are women. Trans men are men. Nonbinary identity is real.” For a league that celebrated its inner Don Cherry for over a century this sudden assertion that biological gender is deader than Eddie Shore has to qualify as a game changer.

Today’s NFL is indeed a changed beast at the QB position. Call it the attack of the Run/ Pass Option. The League is now Brady’s Bunch versus Pat’s Ma-Homies. Traditional maestros of structured football like Tom Brady against the chaos artists led by Patrick Mahomes, Lamar Jackson, Josh Allen, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts.

The progressive scolds who’ve controlled the spread of opinions on Twitter since the Obama administration of social justice now want to abandon the site because Musk had the wacky idea of allowing a former president back on the site. This after conducting an informal poll about reinstating The King of Mara Lago. Even people like Mark Cuban you’d thought sane about the new tech have lost their marbles over the prospect of hearing things they find vexing.

Somehow the NHL has lost the thread on international hockey. Proof positive was the news last week that the league and the NHLPA have discontinued plans for a World Cup of Hockey in 2024. This time the problem is, like so much these days, the war in Ukraine and Covid protocols.

Speaking of Qatar, let us be the umpteen millionth person to ask FIFA, WTF? A tournament in the desert in the midst of the regular season for almost all the major leagues from the Premiership to La Liga? Is there some unanswered market demand from the 2.6 million subjects of Taman bin Hamas Al Thani? Are there not other regions that deserve the honour more?

Put simply, the salary cap/ draft system implemented for half a century at great labour strife in the major sports leagues has incentivized two things. Winning it all. And losing a lot— to recruit the talent you need to win it all. It’s a case of be careful what you wish for if you own a pro sports team.

For sheer Woke narrative management few things will top the press conference in Tampa Bay last week in which squish white ESPN reporter Jenna Laine decided to read Bucs coach Todd Bowles his progressive Miranda rights in a question over black coaches. It didn’t go well.

For fans with longer memories this team feels like the 1984-1990 teams that boasted homegrown George Bell, Lloyd Moseby and Jesse Barfield as its core. All dressed up but no party. Outside of division titles in 1985 & 1989, management couldn’t get the right championship combination till GM Pat Gillick ran up the payroll, getting veterans such as Dave Winfield, Paul Molitor, David Cone, Dave Stewart and Joe Carter. Oh, and Roberto Alomar.

Perhaps it’s a hangover from being lied to about The Science of Covid-19 by the mahatmas of healthcare. But if the NFL medics were hoping the public would give them the benefit of the doubt about their treatment of the gruesome Tua Tagovailoa head injury the past ten days they are sadly mistaken.

The greatest hockey ever? Certainly the Soviets played their best. But the Slap Shot quality of Canada’s winning effort could not hold a candle to the 1987 Canada Cup squad that beat a Soviet team in a three-game final as the USSR was collapsing. Without Bobby Orr, Bobby Hull and Gerry Cheevers in the 1972 lineup— and lulled into complacency by homer media— Team Canada squandered its obvious advantages by arriving out of shape for Game 1.

Bill 69 is the sort of red meat that used to energize people outside Quebec to protecting the sacred dream of bilingualism. In the past Justin Trudeau’s Daddy believed that everyone should be served in his own language across the nation. Now? His son thinks Canada has dozens of languages and 32 pronouns. So he’s not saying squat.

The British Empire created the structure of team sports and leagues that we know today— all sprung from their passion for sport. From the stem sports of soccer, rugby and cricket come the world’s most popular team sports— FIFA soccer, NFL football, World Cup Rugby, NHL hockey, Australian Rules Football, Canadian Football, Major League Baseball and many more. Only basketball among the world’s most popular sports was a purely North American invention.

How about those hockey heroes who played for the nation? Who brought excitement to generations of Canadians? Who suffered injuries and mental health issues without a proper union or agent representation? What did they get? It was all chump change to John Turner. And, apparently, to a long list of political, media and business leaders at the time.