Nicklas Backström has done a lot for the Washington Capitals franchise, but he's not doing much lately. Nick Ashbourne YAHOO Every week of the NHL season you can find a column here on everything that may not be making headlines yet — but probably should be. There are a variety of reasons why an NHL player's production might not align with his salary. Some guys become stars on their entry-level deals, others experience surprising declines after they sign for big money or break out following an extension. Clubs can get excellent value out of players at the beginning of their contracts with a couple of rough years at the end. There's a push and pull when it comes to weighing average annual value against term, and player development is tough to predict. Age-related downturns also seem to hit some players far harder than others. It's well understood that a player's salary and what he has to offer on the ice don't always match up, but we begin this week's 'Under the Radar' examining an extreme case of disconnect. Nicklas Backstrom is in a league of his own Bäckstrom is a soon-to-be 36-year-old approaching the end of a deal signed in 2020, it would be unfair to think he'd be a steal in 2023-24. At the same time, the degree to which the Capitals are getting poor value with the Swede is unique around the NHL. Looking at the top-40 forwards by cap hit this year, every one except for Bäckstrom is playing at least 15 minutes per night with at least 0.50 points per game. Not all of them are performing at a star level, but each is giving their team something in the way of offensive production. Bäckstrom, on the other hand, has just one point this season. That one point was a second assist where he cleared the defensive zone with a backhand up the wall before his team mates started a rush. Bäckstrom's lack of production has resulted in a downturn in his ice time as he's averaged just 12:20 per game in his last three appearances after getting 15:54 in the first five outings of the season. At the moment he's a third line centre who isn't used on the top power-play unit or in critical defensive situations. We might see a touch more from the Swede — who has had an excellent career — in the weeks to come, but injuries have cost him a lot in recent seasons. Right now he's singular in how little he's providing on his $9.2 million AAV. The Colorado Avalanche's second pair deserves some shine Colorado's first defence pair is almost certainly the best the NHL has to offer. Anyone arguing that Cale Makar isn't the league's top blue liner is fighting an uphill battle, and Devin Toews is a perfect complement to the superstar who plays a complete game without discernible weaknesses. There is a reason Colorado recently signed him to a $50.25 million contract earlier this month, while Makar would make a mind-blowing sum if he were up for a new deal today. While those two deserve the credit they receive, they clearly overshadow Samuel Girard and Bowen Byram, who are in the midst of a strong start to the season. Neither blue liner has produced much offensively, but the pair has done an excellent job of facilitating and preventing opponents from creating opportunities. Of the 61 defence pairings who've logged at least an hour of 5v5 time together this season, Girard and Byram rank first in expected goal rate (68.15%) and scoring chance rate (66.67%). The Avalanche have enjoyed a 60-38 shot edge when the pair is on the ice. Unfortunately for the under-appreciated duo, just three of those 60 shots have found the net, resulting in offensive statistics that don't jump off the page. These guys are unlikely to get too much attention this season playing behind Makar and Toews, but they are exactly the type of players this column looks to highlight. Travis Sandheim is having a moment Sanheim's last 12 months have been a heck of a rollercoaster. Last October he signed an eight-year contract extension with the Philadelphia Flyers only to see them 'aggressively' try to trade him eight months later. Things have calmed down for him on that count and the departure of Ivan Provorov has allowed him to settle into a far bigger role with the surprisingly respectable Flyers than he's ever had before. Sanheim currently ranks second in the NHL in average ice time per game (25:59) after never topping 22:58 in any of his prior six seasons. The biggest specific role promotion he's received is becoming the team's power-play quarterback, averaging 2:41 of time with the man advantage per game — way above his previous career-high of 1:02. That special teams time has helped Sanheim put up some strong offensive numbers. The NHL's release of new tracking data also revealed that Sanheim has the hardest shot in the NHL at 101.49 mph, which is a good weapon for the Flyers power play to have in its back pocket. If the 27-year-old stays healthy he'd need just 0.31 points per game from here on out to reach a career-high. That offence, paired with a massive workload and solid defensive play, is a heck of a package — and it's looking like the Flyers will be glad they didn't part with Sanheim in the off season. Luke Hughes and the young defenceman dilemma There's no one way to handle young defencemen, and there's certainly a case to be made for what the New Jersey Devils are doing with Luke Hughes. By placing the 20-year-old on their third pairing but giving him plenty of power-play time, the team is trying to leverage his impressive skill and offensive creativity while easing him into his defensive responsibilities slowly. That concept is valid on paper, but in practise, it might be too limiting as to what Hughes can accomplish as a rookie. Playing on New Jersey's third pairing means teaming up with Brendan Smith — a 34-year-old journeyman who's produced 44 points over his previous five seasons skating an average of just 14:23 per night. Smith's job isn't to light up the scoreboard — but he's a replacement-level type at this point in his career. Playing with him is a little different than spending time on the third pair with another promising youngster or a more skilled veteran. Early returns are suggesting that Hughes and Smith are not a great match. Below are some with-and-without numbers for the two going back to the debut of the Hughes in 2022-23: Those numbers are a touch extreme and come from a small sample, but they also mesh with our understanding of the two players' talent levels. Giving Hughes a chance to play in the top four at even strength may result in the odd costly mistake, but the Devils are good enough to weather some bumps and bruises. Hughes projects to be a top-pair defenceman, and pushing him closer to that role could be beneficial for his development. The third pairing as currently constructed isn't working for either the team or Hughes. Trevor Zegras, Troy Terry and the perplexing ducks Entering 2023-24 there wasn't much reason to believe an Anaheim Ducks squad that ranked 31st in goal scoring last season would be even respectable on offence. The addition of Alex Killorn projected to help matters, but a broken finger in the preseason made him unable to help in the early going. Second over all pick Leo Carlsson also seemed capable of providing a boost, but he started the year dealing with an injury — and an unusual load management scheme has limited his impact since. With that in mind, it's surprising to see the Ducks' offence rank in the top half of the NHL (3.13 goals/game). The most logical explanation for that results for someone not following Anaheim closely would be that Trevor Zegras and Troy Terry have gone off, but that simply isn't the case. The team's most important offensive players have been unimpressive from a raw production standpoint, ranking fourth and 12th on the team in points. So far, Ryan Strome, Frank Vatrano, and Mason McTavish have been driving the bus. While Anaheim can't count on that trio to all generate point-per-game production, the good news for the Ducks is that Zegras and Terry should see their fortunes change soon. Possession metrics suggest the pair is tilting the ice at 5v5, particularly when it comes to scoring chances and goals. The production is coming for Zegras and Terry, and Anaheim should be encouraged by its ability to weather the duo's early-season slump.
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Story compiled by Woodrow Two-Dogs-Fucking Clithrust - that's right; I'm a wagon burner now! I'm Creehawkpunjabi. Yeah, that's right. Creehawkmi'kjabi. Now gimme the tax breaks. By Geoff Leo, Roxanna Woloshyn and Linda Guerriero - Oct. 27, 2023 When Buffy Sainte-Marie strolled onto Sesame Street in 1975, she was making history. The Dec. 9 episode was the launch of the programme’s efforts to present Indigenous culture to millions of viewers. Sainte-Marie opened her backpack and showed off an array of Indigenous jewellery and beadwork to an eager group of children and adults. “This is Cree Indian,” Sainte-Marie said, holding out a pair of beaded moccasins. “Cree Indians are my tribe, and we live in Canada.” One little boy piped up. “My sister read me a story about Indians.” “Was it a real story about Indians or was it a fairy tale?” Sainte-Marie asked, noting “some are just pretend and some are real.” “I’m real,” she said with a grin. From the early days of her career, Sainte-Marie has claimed to be a Cree woman, born in Canada. She has also allowed herself to be celebrated as an Indigenous icon and success story. In 2022, CBC broadcast a concert that was held in her honour at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, where Anishinabe musician ShoShona Kish told the audience: “Buffy Sainte-Marie has led the way for Indigenous music on this beautiful land since her first album.” However, almost 50 years after stepping onto Sesame Street, the iconic singer-songwriter’s claims to Indigenous ancestry are being contradicted by members of her own family and an extensive CBC investigation. Late last year, CBC received a tip that Sainte-Marie is not of Cree ancestry but, in fact, has European roots. She is the latest high-profile public figure whose ancestry story has been contradicted by genealogical documentation, including her own birth certificate, historical research and personal accounts — the latest chapter in the complex and growing debate around Indigenous identity in Canada.
“It’s theft of opportunities, resources. It’s theft of our stories,” she said. For many years, Sainte-Marie claimed she was born on the Piapot First Nation near Regina. For example, in the 1971 Buffy Sainte-Marie Songbook, which she wrote and illustrated, Sainte-Marie said: “When I go home to the Cree reserve in Canada where I was born, I usually spend a few hours of every day teaching the Cree language.” In a 1986 interview with the Los Angeles Times Magazine, she said: “I was born on the Piapot Cree reservation near Craven, Sask.” Then, her story goes, she was adopted by a Massachusetts couple, Albert and Winifred Santamaria, who raised her near Boston. She has said later in life, she was reunited with her Piapot relatives and adopted into the community. Sainte-Marie, whose music career took off in New York City’s Greenwich Village in the early 1960s, even wrote a song about her Saskatchewan connection. “Take me back to where my heart belongs — Qu’Appelle Valley, Saskatchewan,” the lyrics say. But some members of Sainte-Marie’s family believe her story is built on an elaborate fabrication. “She wasn’t born in Canada.… She’s clearly born in the United States,” said Heidi St. Marie, daughter of Sainte-Marie’s older brother, Alan. “She’s clearly not Indigenous or Native American.” That claim is supported by documents obtained by CBC, including Sainte-Marie’s Stoneham, Mass., birth certificate. The investigation also shows that her account of her ancestry has been a shifting narrative, full of inconsistencies and inaccuracies. In a Sept. 18 email to CBC, Sainte-Marie’s Ontario-based lawyer, Josephine de Whytell, said: “At no point has Buffy Sainte-Marie personally misrepresented her ancestry or any details about her personal history to the public.” Any perceived inconsistencies CBC has found in Sainte-Marie’s story, de Whytell said, “can be explained by the truth.” Sainte-Marie declined CBC’s requests for an interview. But in a video statement posted to Facebook Thursday, she reiterated that she is “a proud member of the Native community with deep roots in Canada” and said there are many things she doesn’t know about her ancestry. However, CBC’s investigation found many instances over the years of contradictory statements from the singer regarding that personal history. An Indigenous icon for 60 years Sainte-Marie rose to fame in the early 1960s. She launched her career alongside folk artists like Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell. Her songs were covered by Elvis, Barbra Streisand and Glen Campbell, to name a few. A New York Times article from 1963 described Sainte-Marie as “an Indian girl” who was “one of the most promising new talents on the folk scene today.” In this story, we use the word “Indian” when it is a direct quote from a historical publication or an interview and when it provides information that is key to understanding the story. The following year, she was named Billboard Magazine’s best new artist of the year. The Brantford Expositor quoted her as saying: “My main aim is some day to be the world’s best Indian girl singer.” She is considered the first Indigenous person to win an Oscar, which she was awarded in 1983, for co-writing Up Where We Belong for the movie An Officer and a Gentleman. She’s also the recipient of numerous Indigenous music awards, including four Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards, two Aboriginal Peoples’ Choice Music Awards, four Junos designated for Indigenous people and four Indigenous lifetime achievement awards. Sainte-Marie has been named a companion of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honour. In addition, her website says she has been awarded honorary doctorates from at least a dozen universities. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest in Sainte-Marie. In 2021, she appeared on a Canadian stamp. Last year, she was the subject of a travelling exhibit featured at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre. She was also the focus of a five-part CBC podcast about her life and legacy and a one-hour concert televised on CBC that celebrated her leadership in Indigenous music. Also in 2022, American broadcaster PBS and Canadian streaming service Crave aired Buffy Sainte-Marie: Carry It On, a documentary examining her influence as a champion for Indigenous people and their rights. It is the only Canadian production to have been nominated for a 2023 International Emmy. Earlier this year, Sainte-Marie, 82, announced she was retiring from public performances because of health concerns, including arthritic hands and a recent shoulder injury. And her butt hurt since she was found out. A birth certificate comes to light A simple Google search shows that virtually every available source says Sainte-Marie was born on the Piapot First Nation in Saskatchewan. But that was contradicted late last year when a tipster provided CBC with a copy of what appeared to be Sainte-Marie’s birth certificate, obtained from a small town hall in Massachusetts. That record said Beverly Jean Santamaria, who started going by the name Buffy Sainte-Marie early in her music career, was born in 1941 in Stoneham, Mass., north of Boston, to Albert and Winifred Santamaria — the couple Sainte-Marie claimed adopted her. Mother, father and baby were all listed as white. Sainte-Marie’s story fits an all-too-familiar pattern, said Métis lawyer Jean Teillet of Vancouver. She said that for decades, non-Indigenous people have been falsely claiming Indigenous ancestry and using those claims to take opportunities and honours for themselves that were created for genuine First Nations, Métis and Inuit people. She points to high-profile examples such as author Joseph Boyden, former judge Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond and professor Carrie Bourassa. “They’ve all become stars in their field,” said Teillet, who in 2022 completed a comprehensive study called Indigenous Identity Fraud for the University of Saskatchewan. “They’re taking that opportunity from a real Indigenous person…. It’s prestige, it’s money, it’s grants and awards and positions and work that they would never have gotten otherwise,” she said. Given the doubt cast upon her ancestry by the birth certificate, CBC decided to investigate Sainte-Marie’s ancestry claims. That review, examining genealogical records and media stories along with interviews with some members of her family, confirmed the facts presented in Sainte-Marie’s birth certificate. It also uncovered a letter that some family members believe shows the lengths to which Sainte-Marie would go to silence those questioning her story. Heidi St. Marie remembers the moment her father, Sainte-Marie’s older brother, received a threatening letter from his sister and her high-powered Los Angeles attorney. “It blew up my whole world,” St. Marie told CBC. 'She didn't know who she was' Sainte-Marie was raised by Albert and Winifred Santamaria in the town of Wakefield, Mass., along with her elder brother, Alan, and a younger sister, Lainey. Albert’s parents were born in Italy, while Winifred’s mother and father were of mostly English ancestry. The family changed its name from Santamaria to St. Marie “because of anti-Italian prejudice that developed during the Second World War,” according to a 2012 biography — Buffy Sainte-Marie: It’s My Way, written by Blair Stonechild. Mentions of her in the local newspaper show that from an early age, Sainte-Marie was active in the arts, performing in dance and piano recitals and choirs. Buffy Sainte-Marie: An Authorised Biography, written by CBC Music associate producer Andrea Warner in collaboration with Sainte-Marie in 2018, outlines a variety of stories Sainte-Marie says she heard as a child. “She didn’t know who she was or where she came from,” the biography says. “I was told that I was adopted. I was told that I was just born ‘on the wrong side of the blanket.’ In other words, one of my parents was my parent and one wasn’t. I was told that we were part-Indian, but nobody knew anything about it,” she is quoted as saying. In the biography, she goes on to suggest that sort of uncertainty is common among Indigenous people. “So many of us were either taken away to residential schools, or some other school, or we were adopted out or we got lost in the system, or we were otherwise ‘bleached,’” she said. Sainte-Marie’s 2012 biography suggests she was put up for adoption after her biological mother died shortly after giving birth to her near the Piapot First Nation. The Britannica website says her Cree mom was killed in a car accident. In 2022, PBS reported that “she was taken from her family against their will” as a result of the “cruel and racist” practice in Canada known as the Sixties Scoop. This is a claim Sainte-Marie also made in a 2018 interview with National Public Radio in the United States, when she was asked to describe her own adoption. “In Canada, we had something that, sometimes, a little bit later referred to as the ‘Big Scoop’ where Native children were removed from the home,” she said. “They’re assigned a birthday. They’re assigned kind of a biography. So, in many cases, adoptive people don’t really know what the true story is.” The Sixties Scoop is widely recognized to have started in 1951. Sainte-Marie was born in 1941. While Sainte-Marie has claimed she’s Cree, born on the Piapot First Nation, CBC hasn’t found any reference where she has directly identified her biological parents. In a report in the Ottawa Citizen in 1966, she was quoted as saying: “My real mother wasn’t in a position to keep me, but I always knew who she was and that I could go back to the place of my birth when I wished.” Yet the very next year, the Montreal Gazette quoted her as saying: “I don’t know who my real mother was.” Teillet finds this shifting narrative suspicious. While it’s not uncommon for people to get some facts about their early life confused, Teillet said “the whole story is not usually completely inconsistent, like ‘I knew my parents,’ ‘I never knew my parents.’ Right? “That’s two things that can’t live together.” In a phone conversation in September with Sainte-Marie’s younger sister, Lainey, 75, CBC asked if she recalled her parents ever suggesting that her sister was adopted. She said no, adding that the first time she heard that claim was when Sainte-Marie was in her early 20s. CBC has found no indication that either Albert or Winifred St. Marie, who are both deceased, ever publicly commented on Sainte-Marie’s ancestry claims. 'No Indian blood in her' The first published mention of Sainte-Marie’s claim of Indigenous ancestry that CBC could locate came in the March 19, 1961, edition of the Springfield Republican, a newspaper in Springfield, Mass. It mentioned an upcoming concert involving “Miss Buffy Sainte-Marie, an American Indian girl.” In November 1963, Sainte-Marie was quoted in the Wakefield Daily Item, saying that she was “half-Micmac by birth.” That’s the earliest reference CBC discovered in which she has been directly quoted claiming Indigenous ancestry. A profile in Look Magazine in December 1964 said Sainte-Marie was “born of Cree Indian parents” and adopted by Albert and Winifred Santamaria. That reference caught the eye of Arthur Santamaria, Sainte-Marie’s paternal uncle. “After reading the story,” he told the Wakefield Daily Item in a Dec. 4, 1964, story, “I thought I should come down and tell you the truth about Buffy. She doesn’t sound in this magazine story like the girl who grew up here.” He told the paper that, contrary to the Look article, Sainte-Marie “has no Indian blood in her” and “not a bit” of Cree heritage. In an interview with CBC earlier this year in her Phoenix, Ariz., home, Heidi St. Marie said the rest of the family did not believe she was Indigenous. “Nobody except for Buffy ever talked about Buffy being adopted,” St. Marie, 58, said. Bruce Santamaria said his family told him Sainte-Marie’s claim that she was adopted was incorrect. “We were told flat out that she was my Uncle Albert’s child,” he said. Despite the family’s concerns, his aunts and uncles followed Sainte-Marie’s career with passion and were proud of her, Bruce Santamaria, 61, said. “She was a really talented musician,” he said. “And she was also authentic in her support for the Native Americans. She really cared about them. She was a voice for them.” He said the family believed her claim to Indigenous ancestry was some sort of publicity stunt. Whispers began to swirl that Sainte-Marie had threatened family members, including her own brother, with legal action or worse if they publicly questioned her ancestry claims. “I remember those stories growing up … ‘Don’t talk about it. We don’t want any trouble…. Let her do what she wants to do because we don’t want to lose our house. We don’t want lawyers coming and suing us for defamation,’” Santamaria said. A shifting world view Sainte-Marie’s career began just as the hippie movement was emerging across North America. It was characterised by a rejection of Eurocentric culture and an embrace of Indigenous spirituality, according to Teillet. “The hippies are in the process of throwing out the traditional churches and adopting spiritualism, and they reach out to Indigenous people to adopt some of their ways.” In a 1967 interview with the Berkeley Barb, an underground newspaper in Berkeley, Calif., Sainte-Marie is reported to have expressed annoyance with this trend. “It doesn’t make any sense to me — these kids, trying to be Indians,” she is quoted as saying. “They’ll never become Indians.” According to Sainte-Marie’s 2018 biography, her studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst led to a paradigm shift in her world view. “Studying philosophy and world religions reinforced her church-less spirituality as well as the connection she’d always felt between herself and something that is bigger: the earth, animals, ancestors and life itself,” the biography says. She began spending time with members of the National Indian Youth Council (NIYC), an organization made up primarily of Indigenous law students. “The group offered her a chance to meet people who were a lot like her: young, college educated, politically charged and ready to make a change,” the 2018 biography says. In the early 1960s, Sainte-Marie travelled to Oklahoma with members of the NIYC. She said she witnessed racism. “There were signs in windows: ‘Help wanted, Indians need not apply,’” she told her biographer. (Well, can you blame 'em?) Over the decades, she used her fame to fight for Indigenous rights. In the late 1960s, she established a foundation that offered scholarships to Indigenous students. In the early 1970s, she reportedly paid hundreds of dollars every week to supply water to Indigenous protesters who had taken over Alcatraz Island. In the 1990s, her Cradleboard Teaching Project developed Indigenous curricula for schools. “Do you really think you can save the Cree culture?” a Los Angeles Free Press reporter asked her in 1967. “I can save the culture,” she is quoted in reply. Indigenous persona 'greatly elevated her career' Sainte-Marie’s growing fame in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with a critical moment for Indigenous issues in the U.S., said Prof. Kim TallBear. “This is a moment when you see Native issues are beginning to come more into the public consciousness, as you see these red power and Black power social movements … where people that have been silenced for so long are suddenly in the news.” TallBear said Sainte-Marie’s “long black hair and this kind of exotic sort of image she’s cultivating,” combined with her claim of being Indigenous, “greatly elevated her career and her visibility.” “I’m not saying she’s not talented,” said TallBear. “But she is very much this representative image of a Native American singer.” Media reports during her early career credited her rising fame in part to her Indigenous heritage claims. “Buffy’s Indian extraction and her adoption by the Cree nation has inspired a great interest in the music of her heritage and her repertoire reflects this interest,” said the April 15, 1964, edition of The Broadsides of Boston, a prominent folk publication of the day. Algonquin, Mi'kmaq, or Cree? When it comes to Sainte-Marie’s claimed Indigenous ancestry, newspaper and magazine references reveal a story full of inconsistencies and contradictions. Early in her career, she was referred to generically as “an American Indian.” But over time, the references became more specific. In March 1963, Florida’s Fort Lauderdale News said she was “a full-blooded Algonquin Indian.” That was echoed in a New York Times article in August of that year, which called her “a young Algonquin Indian girl.” Then, in October, the Detroit Free Press reported that “Buffy was born a Micmac (Mi’kmaq) Indian in Maine,” adding that “her Micmac name is Tsankapasa, or Dark Fawn.” Later that same month, the Boston Herald said she referred to herself as “half-Micmac by birth.” The first reference to Sainte-Marie being Cree that CBC could locate came in December 1963, when the Vancouver Sun referred to “Cree Indian folk singer Buffy St. Marie.” In the space of those 10 months, she was referred to as Algonquin, full-blooded Algonquin, Mi’kmaq, half-Mi’kmaq and Cree. “It’s immediately problematic when you see something like that,” said Teillet. As part of her report on false Indigenous identity claims, Teillet included a list of what she refers to as “red flags,” warning signs that might indicate someone isn’t telling the truth about their ancestry. One of those flags is shifting Indigenous identities. Teillet said if those reports accurately reflect what Sainte-Marie told the publications, it is hard to understand how she could claim such dramatically different ancestral lines. She pointed out that the Mi’kmaq live on the East Coast, Algonquin people are from Ontario and northern Quebec and Cree people are primarily from the Prairies. “It’s really difficult to believe that somebody could mistake being Cree for being Mi’kmaq,” said Teillet. “Those are so far apart that it’s a little bit ludicrous, right?” The Saskatchewan connection In Sainte-Marie’s 2018 authorised biography, she claims to have reconnected with her Saskatchewan community, the Piapot First Nation, in the early 1960s. While playing gigs in Toronto and hanging out at the Native Friendship Centre, she told friends that she had been born to an Indigenous family in Saskatchewan. Her friends said they believed she could be related to Emile Piapot, the son of the famed Cree chief of the Piapot First Nation. “Emile and [his wife] Clara had reportedly had a daughter taken from the reserve around the time Sainte-Marie was born,” the biography says. Wilfred Pelletier, one of Sainte-Marie’s Toronto friends, was organising a powwow on Manitoulin Island in Ontario at that time. Sainte-Marie went to the event, where she met Emile Piapot. The powwow was an annual event that drew Indigenous people from across North America. In an Oct. 30, 1963, article in the Boston Herald, Sainte-Marie is quoted describing how she and Piapot met in the summer of 1962. She said she was at the powwow performing “exhibitions of Indian dancing and singing.” According to a 1994 article in the Regina Leader-Post, Piapot “vividly” remembered watching her. “After her performance, she called over to me and my cousin,” he told the paper. “She wanted us to give her an Indian name.” He agreed to do just that and adopted her into his family. “You can imagine how honoured I felt they had accepted me,” Sainte-Marie is quoted as saying in the Boston Herald. “My Cree name is Piyasees Kanikamut, which means ‘Singing Bird.’ I’m a recognised member of the reservation now.” Later, in CBC’s 2022 podcast, she said “the Piapot family and me, myself, we have never known whether I’m related to them.” In an email to The Fifth Estate, some members of the Piapot family said: “Buffy is our family. We chose her and she chose us.” They said Sainte-Marie’s adoption by Emile and Clara Piapot makes her part of the Piapot First Nation and that community acceptance “holds far more weight than any paper documentation or colonial recordkeeping ever could.” “Every understanding of our spiritual practices, the history our grandparents shared with us and the traditions of the Cree refute your suggestion that our Auntie Buffy is not Indigenous or a member of our community,” they wrote. However, Teillet has a different view, saying being adopted “doesn’t make you Indigenous.” “It simply makes you a member of that family. It’s a very serious and lovely thing that they’re bringing you into their family and that gives you lifelong familial obligations, which are serious. But it doesn’t have anything to do with whether you’re Indigenous or not.” TallBear said it’s clear the Piapot family have long-standing personal relations with Sainte-Marie, but she agrees with Teillet that relationship doesn’t make her Indigenous. “I don’t think anyone is probably going to disrespect their decision to continue claiming her as kin,” said TallBear. However, she said, Sainte-Marie’s ancestry claims went well beyond her adoption by the Piapots. “That does not contradict or make up for five decades of fabrication of one’s story of origin, one’s childhood, the disavowal of one’s biological family,” said TallBear. 'She had no birth certificate' The search for the facts about Sainte-Marie’s origin story has had one central challenge: finding clear documentation. On the first page of his 2012 biography about Sainte-Marie, author Blair Stonechild wrote: “It has been impossible to locate definitive information on Buffy Sainte-Marie’s earliest days.” The most glaring missing piece: “She had no birth certificate.” In an interview with the Rogue Folk Club in January 2017, Sainte-Marie said she had asked a Cree lawyer friend to find her birth certificate. Though the search was unsuccessful, Sainte-Marie said they learned “that six years of birth records were destroyed at the hospital that would have been servicing Piapot Reserve at the time in Craven.” According to the Saskatchewan government, it has “no record of a hospital operating in Craven, Sask., in the 1940s or since.” It also said that since the 1920s, birth records were stored in secure government facilities, not in town halls or on reserves. “We are also unaware of any records destroyed by fire or flood, or missing for any other reason,” the province said in an email to CBC. In her email to CBC, Sainte-Marie’s lawyer said many adoption records were destroyed by Canadian governments. CBC asked the Saskatchewan government if any adoption records, dating back to the 1920s, have gone missing. “No. All adoptions that occurred within the province of Saskatchewan have an adoption record on file with the Ministry of Social Services,” the government said. During a 2022 interview, Sainte-Marie told CBC Q host Tom Power her adoption records are inaccessible. “The records are sealed. You don’t get to find out anything.” However, Saskatchewan’s Ministry of Social Services told CBC that since 2017, adult adoptees can easily access their birth records. Kim TallBear said it’s very common for pretenders to claim “there was no documentation. The documents all burned in a courthouse fire or they burned in a house fire.” However, TallBear said Indigenous children were, in fact, often better documented than non-Indigenous children because of the onerous rules imposed on them. “We have to be well-documented so the settler state can manage … Indian Affairs, so it can manage land allotments, so it could manage residential schools,” she said. 'Hey, I want this birth certificate' In the fall of 2022, freelance journalist Jacqueline Keeler was excited to sit down and watch the documentary about Sainte-Marie on PBS. Keeler, who is Yankton Sioux and a member of the Navajo nation, has become a lightning rod for criticism because of her focus on exposing what she calls “Pretendians” — pretend Indians. While watching the film, alarm bells went off for her. She said Sainte-Marie’s explanation of her birth and her childhood was rambling and imprecise, without any documentation. “I’m just like: ‘Wait a minute. This is just like those stories I hear Pretendians tell,’” said Keeler. “She has an adoption story which has no proof. “It just sounded fake.” That prompted Keeler to dig into genealogical records and found mention of Sainte-Marie on the Massachusetts birth index. She asked her colleague Doug Buchholz, a New Hampshire-based researcher, if he could help. He told her the index reference wasn’t good enough to know for sure. “You have to see the physical record,” he told her. So he called the Stoneham town hall. “Hey, I want this birth certificate. Her name is Beverley Jean Santamaria, born on Feb. 20, 1941. Do you have that record?” he asked. They had it, and $22 US later, so did he. '100% certainty that this is the original birth certificate' CBC travelled to Stoneham, Mass., three kilometres from Sainte-Marie’s childhood home, to see the birth certificate she has claimed for years doesn’t exist. Town clerk Maria Sagarino showed CBC the secure vault that contains all Stoneham birth certificates. She flipped through a 1941 binder until she reached Feb. 20 — certificate No. 49. She pulled Sainte-Marie’s original, handwritten birth certificate from its clear plastic sleeve. It was signed by Dr Herbert Land — the same doctor who delivered Sainte-Marie’s sister, Lainey, in 1948. He certified that Sainte-Marie was born at 3:15 a.m. to Albert and Winifred Santamaria. “This is the original that came from the hospital,” said Sagarino, who has worked at the Stoneham town hall for more than 20 years. “There’s no refuting this because it’s in my custody from my files in my vault.” In her email to CBC, Sainte-Marie’s lawyer said: “Research has also revealed that children adopted by parents in Massachusetts were commonly issued new Massachusetts birth certificates with the name of their adoptive parents.” CBC asked Sagarino if that happened in this case. She said no. “It doesn’t appear that she was adopted in any way, shape or form,” Sagarino said. She said if Sainte-Marie had truly been adopted from Saskatchewan, the file would contain her legal adoption records and proof she entered the United States. Instead, her file only contains an original Stoneham birth certificate. “If you were to look at all the other ones in the book you would see the same thing,” she said. “They’re all set up the same way with the same information because it is a template.” Furthermore, she said, as each certificate is registered, it is given a number and filed in chronological order. So if Sainte-Marie was truly born in Saskatchewan on Feb. 20 as her 2018 biography indicates, and weeks or months later adopted into Massachusetts, it would be difficult to explain how birth certificate No. 49 sits neatly between baby 48 born on Feb. 18 and baby 50, born Feb. 24. “I can say absolutely with 100 per cent certainty that this is the original birth certificate. Beverly Jean Santamaria was born in Stoneham, Mass., at New England Sanatorium and Hospital on Feb. 20, 1941,” said Sagarino. That’s consistent with several other documents obtained by CBC. In a life insurance policy taken out for her in 1945, her mother swore that Sainte-Marie was born in Stoneham in 1941. The 1950 U.S. census says nine-year-old Beverly was a white girl, born in Massachusetts to the St. Maries. When Sainte-Marie’s older brother, Alan, enrolled in the military in 1956, he filed a statement of personal history in which he certified, on penalty of fine or imprisonment, that his sister was born in Stoneham, Mass., in February 1941. Even Sainte-Marie herself confirmed that she was born in the United States. In March 1982, she signed a marriage certificate making her union with Hollywood composer Jack Nitzsche official. On the certificate, obtained from the County of Los Angeles, Sainte-Marie certified that she was born on Feb. 20, 1941, in Massachusetts to Albert and Winifred St. Marie. In an email, CBC asked Sainte-Marie for an interview about these documents. “Ms. Sainte-Marie is entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy about her personal genealogical and family history,” her lawyer told CBC in a letter. Transition and turmoil By the mid-1970s, Sainte-Marie’s career was in transition. At the same time, behind the scenes, there was growing family turmoil and questions about her identity. According to an article in the Globe and Mail in 1975, her long-term contract with her record label had ended the previous year, and she was trying to shift from folk music to rock, country and pop. However, she was having a tough time selling records and concert tickets. Then Sesame Street came along. According to a Children’s Television Workshop quarterly report, in early 1975, she began talking with the executive producer of the PBS programme about how it “could best approach its first presentations of Native American Indians.” Sainte-Marie was to play a starring role. Around that time, Sainte-Marie’s brother, Alan, a commercial pilot based in Denver, was in the midst of a letter-writing campaign. He was writing to newspapers and publishers that were printing his sister’s claim that she was Indigenous. Heidi St. Marie says she has these letters because Alan made carbon copies of important correspondence, a habit he picked up in the military. “Buffy St. Marie was not born on a reservation…. She was born of Caucasian parents in Stoneham, Mass.,” he wrote to the Denver Post in May 1972. “To associate her with the Indian and to accept her as his spokesman is wrong.” A chance encounter In 1975, as Heidi St. Marie’s father, Alan, was greeting passengers after landing a plane in New York City, he was surprised to discover that his sister was one of them. What follows is Heidi St. Marie’s recollection of what her father told her. She said they were both thrilled by the encounter, noting that “at this point, there’s no animosity between them at all.” Sainte-Marie introduced Alan to a man travelling with her — a producer from PBS. Weeks later, that PBS producer called Alan to confirm that he was, in fact, Sainte-Marie’s biological brother. Heidi St. Marie said the producer told her dad he didn’t appear to be Indigenous. Alan had light-coloured hair. Alan told the producer he and Sainte-Marie were white and shared the same parents. St. Marie said her dad didn’t think much more about that call until Nov. 7, 1975, when a letter from a Los Angeles law firm arrived in his mailbox. “This firm represents Buffy Sainte-Marie,” said the letter from a lawyer who had represented the likes of the Rolling Stones and the Beach Boys. “We have been advised that you have without provocation disparaged and perhaps defamed Buffy and maliciously interfered with her employment opportunities,” the letter said. It said if he continued, Buffy would “spare no expense in pursuing any and all of her legal remedies.” Inside the law firm’s letter was an envelope addressed to Alan — a handwritten letter from Sainte-Marie. “Alan, you no doubt remember your continued sexual abuses to me throughout my childhood,” she wrote. “According to my memories and my childhood diaries, you are nothing but a child molester and a sadist.” Then she made what appears to be a reference to Sesame Street. “The guilt of it has induced you to try to hurt me through a children’s show,” she said. “If you ever try to hurt me again, I will explain the roots of your sickness to your employers and wife, and I will send the police after you.” In a letter to his mother, Alan described his reaction. “I returned home from work to find the most vile letter I have ever read,” he wrote. “Her wrath is connected to a conversation I had with a man from PBS in New York in which I denied she was Indian.” To verify Sainte-Marie wrote the letter, CBC turned to Docufraud Canada, which has expertise in handwriting analysis. It confirmed the letter matched other samples of Sainte-Marie’s handwriting, including letters submitted by family members and a sketchbook entry known to be written by Sainte-Marie. Allegations of abuse One of the earliest references CBC was able to locate of Sainte-Marie alleging she was sexually abused was in a 1994 interview with author June Callwood, in her book National Treasures. Later, in her 2018 biography, Sainte-Marie pointed her finger directly at her brother, Alan, saying his bullying expanded to “physical and sexual abuse.” Heidi St. Marie said until the chance meeting on the airplane, her father’s relationship with Sainte-Marie was good. In letters, she invited Alan and the family to visit her in Hawaii and spoke fondly of him. She said in her view, it’s noteworthy that Sainte-Marie didn’t begin explicitly and publicly airing her allegations against Alan until after his May 2011 death. It’s not uncommon for survivors of sexual abuse to maintain cordial relations with their abusers or to wait to tell their stories. It’s not possible to know for sure which version of Sainte-Marie’s childhood is accurate. Heidi St. Marie said she believes Sainte-Marie was trying to silence Alan through her allegations. And, she said, it worked. In a letter from Alan to his father shortly after receiving Sainte-Marie’s letter, he said he had decided to back off. “If I pursue getting the truth out,” he wrote, “she has great sums of money and could tie up a case for a long time.” 'Did she have to do it in red face?' On Dec. 9, 1975, just one month after Alan St. Marie received Sainte-Marie’s legal threat, she appeared on Sesame Street for the first time, backpack slung on her back. She was greeted by a small group of adults and children. “I’m just coming down from visiting my folks on a Cree reservation in Canada,” Sainte-Marie told them. “A reservation? Are you Indian?” One of them asked. “Yes,” Sainte-Marie replied. Kim TallBear said growing up as an Indigenous child in the United States, she recalls watching Sainte-Marie on Sesame Street with pride. “I watched that in school, you know,” said Tallbear. “Every little kid watched this, right? This is huge … millions of people, not just in Canada, not just the United States, around the world.” TallBear said she travels widely in Indigenous circles across North America and she believes revelations about Sainte-Marie’s ancestry will hit hard. “You’re going to hear people say, ‘I’ve lost another hero,” but she says because of Sainte-Marie’s unsupported ancestry claims, she’s “a flawed hero.” For more than a decade, TallBear has been studying and commenting on the “Pretendian” phenomenon. She hopes this revelation may be a turning point. “This one should make it obvious that we have a real problem we have to address and that organisations and institutions and governments need to get on board and figure out how to stop this problem,” she said. “And if it doesn’t happen after this case, then I don’t know where we go.” Teillet said in hindsight, Sainte-Marie could have had a successful career without her claims to Indigenous ancestry. “She’s talented. She’s wonderful. Did she have to do it in ‘red face’?” Teillet asked. “I would argue that she didn’t have to. She chose to do that.” 'On certainty' In recent weeks, Sainte-Marie has backtracked from central claims she made through much of her career. In the September letter to CBC, Sainte-Marie’s lawyer, Josephine de Whytell, said the artist “has never claimed to know exactly where she is from.” That same month, Sainte-Marie told Canadian musician Jann Arden on her podcast that others, such as journalists, have become confused about her story and engaged in speculation. “People tend to fill in the blanks, I think, when they don’t know.” Sainte-Marie told her 2018 biographer that she has struggled with her identity for years and never really knew where she belonged. “The conclusion that I finally came to is that I had been lucky to have two families,” she said. “In each of those families, I may or may not be a blood relative.” Her video statement Thursday offered a similar message. “I don’t know where I’m from, who my birth parents are or how I ended up a misfit in a typical, white, Christian New England town,” she said. The 2018 biography contains an interlude — a reflection by Sainte-Marie “on uncertainty.” In it, she talks about her life as one full of apparent contradictions. “Discrepancies are something that I’ve lived with since I was very little. I learned early on that what was ‘absolutely’ true was not necessarily true for me. “Think of the creative process of song writing. On Tuesday, the song doesn’t exist. You cannot prove that it exists. But on Wednesday, all of the sudden, something exists that didn’t exist yesterday. “A lot of things that have happened to me are not true on Tuesday, but by Wednesday, the world is different.”
TSN.ca Staff
Former Montreal Canadiens forward Tomas Plekanec announced his retirement from professional hockey on Saturday.
Plekanec played parts of 15 season with the Canadiens beginning in 2003-04 and also had a brief stint with the Toronto Maple Leafs. The 40-year-old began this season with the Kladno Knights in his native Czechia but decided to hang up the skates due to health problems. Plekanec was drafted in the third round (71st overall) by the Canadiens in 2001 and tallied 233 goals and 375 assists in 1001 career regular-season games. Plekanec was traded to the Maple Leafs in February 2018, but returned to the Canadiens for his final NHL season in 2018-19 when he appeared in three games.
NOTTINGHAM, England (AP) — American hockey player Adam Johnson, who appeared in 13 NHL games with the Pittsburgh Penguins, has died after a “freak accident” during a game in England on Saturday, his club said.
The 29-year-old Minnesota native was playing for the Nottingham Panthers in a Challenge Cup game against the Sheffield Steelers when he suffered a slashed neck during the second period of the game at Sheffield’s Utilita Arena. “The Nottingham Panthers are truly devastated to announce that Adam Johnson has tragically passed away following a freak accident at the game in Sheffield last night," the team said Sunday morning. “The Panthers would like to send our thoughts and condolences to Adam’s family, his partner, and all his friends at this extremely difficult time. Everyone at the club including players, staff, management and ownership are heartbroken at the news of Adam’s passing."
Johnson spent 13 games over parts of the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons playing for the Pittsburgh Penguins in the National Hockey League before spending the 2020-21 season in Sweden with the Malmo Redhawks. He had a goal and three assists for the Penguins. “The Pittsburgh Penguins join the entire hockey world in mourning the life of Adam Johnson, whose life tragically ended far too soon,” the Penguins said Sunday morning in a statement. “We offer our deepest condolences to Adam’s family and friends, as well as all of Adam’s past and present team mates and coaches. Adam will always be part of the Penguins family.” — Pittsburgh Penguins (@penguins) October 29, 2023 Johnson played college hockey at Minnesota-Duluth, helping the Bulldogs reach two NCAA tournaments. He scored an overtime game-winner in the 2017 tournament, sending Minnesota-Duluth to the Frozen Four by beating Boston University. He also played for three American Hockey League clubs during his career, was in Germany with the Augsburg Panthers in 2022-23, then agreed to join Nottingham for the 2023-24 campaign. “Our thoughts are also with the fans and staff of both clubs, especially those who attended or were following the game, who will be devastated following today’s news," the team added. “The Panthers would like to thank everyone who rushed to support Adam last night in the most testing of circumstances. Adam, our number 47, was not only an outstanding ice hockey player, but also a great team mate and an incredible person with his whole life ahead of him. The club will dearly miss him and will never ever forget him." The UK Elite League announced that the three games scheduled for Sunday in Belfast, Fife and Guildford have been postponed following Johnson’s death. Iain MacIntyre SPORTSNET VANCOUVER – With the sky falling in Edmonton and Calgary these days, it’s unusually sunny around the Vancouver Canucks. Even the weather is good. The National Hockey League team that has been ducking towering clouds of cumulonimbus the last three years on Friday followed its best game of the season with its best period, throwing thunder and lightning at the St. Louis Blues by outshooting them 19-3 in the opening frame on their way to a 5-0 victory at Rogers Arena. Shot attempts in the first 20 minutes were 35-4 and, no, that does not seem possible. But it happened. The Canucks are still at the formative stage of their rebirth as a defensively-stout, two-way team under coach Rick Tocchet, and seven games in is still an eternity away from 82 games completed. But they simply overwhelmed and over-ran the Blues, themselves typically a professional, conscientious group, in the first half of the game when Vancouver scored four times over a spell of 21 minutes. The only guy who was behind the Blues defence more than the Canucks was St. Louis goalie Jordan Binnington, who tried to keep his team afloat but eventually was bested by Vancouver netminder Thatcher Demko. The Canucks seem to be getting faster, or at least playing faster, by the game as they apply Tocchet’s teachings to meet pressure with pressure and defend by moving forward against their opponents rather than retreating when the other team has the puck. The new-look Canucks will be tested again Saturday when they face the New York Rangers, with Vancouver the “tired” team playing on a second straight night like St. Louis did Friday after dusting the struggling Calgary Flames 3-0 less than 24 hours earlier. For the moment, the Flames and equally-troubled Edmonton Oilers are streaking away from the Canucks as the teams move in opposite directions in the Pacific Division. Like we said, it’s early. But Vancouver’s well-earned 5-2-0 start amid a difficult, road-heavy schedule, would have sounded preposterous a year ago when the Canucks went 0-5-2 in their first seven games under previous coach Bruce Boudreau. “It's a good feeling,” veteran defenceman Tyler Myers said Friday. “It's a good feeling to know what's expected of you when you step on the ice. When you dive into the details of it, I think that's really what it comes down to. When you make as many changes as a lot of guys have been through the last couple of years, it's easy to get discombobulated -- a lot of different thoughts running through the mind. So to have the stability that we've had the last six or eight months. . . and to see it paying off, it's nice to see that success. “We had moments last year where it seemed like we put together a good grind on the road and we'd come back and we'd almost take a step back. We want to start changing the way we approach each and every game and start developing some consistency within the room. It was a great mindset coming in tonight; we knew they were coming off a game last night and we wanted to jump on them early. And we did. We have to show that we can do it again tomorrow night.” The most impressive big-picture aspect for the Canucks over the last few days is that they ended a marathon road trip Tuesday in Nashville by holding the Predators to just 18 shots in what Tocchet described as a “professional” victory, then built another one to open the homestand when there might have been a lag in energy or attention or at least a loss of momentum. Instead, they simply steamrolled the Blues. “That's about as well as you can play in a sense of playing fast and (getting) pucks to the net, and shots and opportunities,” Canuck J.T. Miller said. “You're not going to get periods like that all the time. But I think the important part is when you get one ... keep playing the same way.” “I think we were just ready to play,” captain Quinn Hughes said. “We just jumped on them in the first and were ready to play. We're going to have to try to bring that again tomorrow.” After targeting his offensive-zone play for improvement during summer training, Hughes scored the first two Vancouver goals on Friday, one a laser wrist shot and the other a lucky bounce off Blues centre Kevin Hayes as the Canucks poured rubber at the net like they were shift workers at the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company. Hughes now has three goals in seven games, nearly half of the seven he scored all of last season. Incredibly, the Canucks have now outscored opponents 16-1 this season in all situations when their best player is on the ice. “I’m happy,” Hughes said. “I've specifically told you in the last couple of years that I could see myself scoring a little bit more. Last year it didn't really happen for me, but I thought that my mindset was changing a little bit and then this year just carried (over). “I feel really dangerous. Part of it is my body, just being able bring it every night. Like, I feel really good. And then just working on the things I worked on the summer: attacking and beating guy and being able to get a shot off. My whole mindset is attacking more and shooting more. And the last part of that is playing with a guy that can really, really give (me the puck). I mean, he's a great, great player. He's finding me so much and it's getting me three or four extra touches a night.” Hughes was speaking of new defence partner Filip Hronek, who has five assists and is plus-nine in his first seven games. Phil Di Giuseppe, Miller and Ilya Mikheyev all scored on breakaways for the Canucks. Miller’s was the most important one, coming shorthanded to make it 4-0 at 8:52 of the middle period after Blues defencemen Torey Krug atrociously passed the puck on to Canuck Elias Pettersson’s stick in the neutral zone.
Demko finished with 22 saves, all the hard ones coming with his team comfortably ahead in the second half of the game. Shot attempts finished 70-35 for Vancouver. “He was probably pretty bored the first half of the game there,” Miller said of his goalie, “but then. . . he made some unreal saves in the second half where I thought we could have been a lot sharper than we were. He was a big part of the win like he always is. “We have to be mature in a sense that this is just a game. Enjoy it, and we get to play again tomorrow against a really good team that's hungry and that's been playing well. Learn from what we didn't like. . . and keep building off what we did like. We talked about (preparing) day by day the first day of camp, and nothing's changed.” Actually, a lot has changed. Late Maple Leafs Salming, Amirov first recipients of special medallion Shanahan had created28/10/2023 'I wondered a bit if I was the right person to be giving them out. But you get to know the stories of players such as Borje and Rodion and think what can we do to recognise that?' Lance Hornby TORONTO SCUM Brendan Shanahan does not want it misconstrued as “an award you get before you die.”
But Borje Salming and Rodion Amirov, the first recipients of a special medallion the Maple Leafs president created in the past year, had put on the bravest of faces in battling their no-win medical conditions. Shanahan knew the high admiration the two generated within the Leafs family and legions of fans across the world. He sought to recognise that without intruding on the grief surrounding their final days or their family’s privacy. During Salming’s final visit to Scotiabank Arena last November, ravaged by ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) that robbed the pioneer Swedish defenceman of speech, Shanahan chose a quiet moment to give him the first bronzed memento, about half the circumference of a puck. One side features today’s team motto, ‘Honour, Pride, Courage’ that is sewn into each Leaf game sweater, the other embossed with variations of the team’s logos through its first century. “I had the idea from the medallions the Canadian military often presents,” Shanahan told the Sun, though he doesn’t wish to publicise the images at present. “I can tell you the players truly appreciated it.” Shanahan does keep a picture on his I-phone of the beaming Salming accepting his memento. Their existence might have remained quiet had Ruslan Amirov not mentioned how much his son treasured his as part of emotional ‘thank you’ post to Shanahan, former general manager Kyle Dubas and Leafs Nation after 2020’s first round pick died of brain cancer in August. Shanahan lamented it was a rather rushed presentation to the Amirovs at 6 a.m. one morning a year ago as they were off to the airport. Rodion had improved enough to attend 2022’s training camp as an observer, only to have his condition worsen and be sent back on short notice for treatment in Germany. Amirov tried to live as normal a life as possible, working out off ice and going to the movies despite failing eyesight. “Rodion brought this award to Ufa (his hometown in Russia) and was very proud of it,” Ruslan said. Acknowledgement of intangible off-ice fortitude is a Leaf tradition in many forms through the decades. Each year the Toronto chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers Association joins all 32 NHL teams to nominate a candidate for the Bill Masterton Trophy for ‘perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey’, won once here by leukemia survivor Jason Blake in 2008. The in-house J.P. Bickell Memorial Cup used to be a more prominent team platitude. It was created by the board of directors of Maple Leaf Gardens in the 1950s and given ‘to a player at such times and for such merit as may be designated and determined’. Named for the club’s first president, who had a vital backroom role in keeping the Leafs in town in 1927 and building the Gardens with partner Conn Smythe, it went annually to stars such as Ted Kennedy, Harry Lumley, Tod Sloan, George Armstrong, Bob Pulford, Johnny Bower, Red Kelly, Dave Keon, Allan Stanley, Terry Sawchuk, Tim Horton, Bob Baun and executive King Clancy. Harold Ballard nearly mothballed the Bickell in the ‘70s and ‘80s, until ensuing directors dusted it off for Doug Gilmour’s magical ’92-93 season. Respected player-scout Bob Davidson received it in ’95, a year before he passed, while Mats Sundin and Curtis Joseph were both chosen for their prominent part in the ‘99 run to the conference final. Pat Quinn got it at the height of his success as GM/coach. Shanahan resurrected it once, when Ian Turnbull, one of the top 100 players chosen for the team’s centennial, ended a long estrangement from the club in 2018. By the way, the original Bickell wasn’t made on the cheap at your neighbourhood hardware store with a plastic player glued on top. It cost $10,000 at the time, one of the costliest hockey baubles ever, 14-karat gold on a silver base, no doubt in tribute to Bickell’s Northern Ontario mining background in precious metals. Each winner received a replica cup. But the new medallions will continue to be low-key presentations by Shanahan when a recipient is deemed appropriate. “I wondered a bit if I was the right person to be giving them out,” said Shanahan, whose Hall of Fame career did not include playing for his hometown team. “But you get to know the stories of players such as Borje and Rodion and think ‘what can we do to recognise that’?” ONCE A LEAF Featuring one of the more than 1,100 players, coaches and general managers who have played or worked in Toronto since 1917. Centre John Pohl Born: June 29, 1979, in Rochester, Minn. Sweater numbers: 53, 21 Seasons: 2005-08 Games played: 114, 16 goals, 21 assists, 37 points, 24 PIMs THEN It was a favourite meal time story in the Pohl household when John’s wife would tell their three daughters Dad was traded to the Leafs one summer “for a bag of pucks”. The minor deal was actually for the ubiquitous ‘future considerations’ from the St. Louis Blues, a low draft pick had Pohl made the Leafs at their 2005 training camp. But their parents love relating the ‘pucks’ yarn to this day. “My youngest believed it and she couldn’t understand why the Leafs didn’t take their own bag of pucks with them,” laughed Pohl over the line from St. Paul, Minn. “Another funny part about the trade was how fast it happened. It seemed I was in St. Louis one minute, on a plane and in a Toronto hotel the next, not really knowing much about the deal. “I woke up, a Sun newspaper landed at my door with the huge headline ‘How The Big Trade Went Down’. I’m thinking ‘Holy cow, was I part of something for Sundin’? But it turned out to be the same day Ottawa traded Marian Hossa (to Atlanta for Dany Heatley).” The move east was an NHL lifeline for Pohl, who’d come all the way from 255th in the draft from the University to Minnesota, a pick pushed by Blues’ hockey operations boss John Ferguson Jr., who retained him when he became Leafs’ GM. In ’06-07, Pohl got to contribute full time on the same team with Hall of Famer Sundin, Darcy Tucker, Bryan McCabe and Tomas Kaberle under coach Paul Maurice. Pohl was pencilled in a few places in the line up. “It was an awesome time, though not growing up in Canada, I knew very little about the Leafs and their history. Maybe it was a good thing I was so naïve, because people there can be psychotic about hockey, really passionate.” He encountered a bit of that when given sweater 21 on a full-time basis. Salming’s number had not yet been retired and its significance was often pointed out to an oblivious Pohl. “Had I known, I’d have taken another number. I’d grown up watching the North Stars and then the Wild, never the Leafs. But then there was a rumour we were going to get Peter Forsberg from the Flyers. I thought ‘I can probably send one of my kids to college with the money he’d give me to pass on 21’. “Kidding aside, the Leafs treated me first class. Once you leave there, you realise how fortunate you were.” Pohl had personal highlights, his first NHL goal on New Jersey’s Martin Brodeur in a New Year’s Eve win. “It was a 5-on-3 power play for us, they told me just to stand in front. Mats is out there with the stars and they’re whipping the puck around with about 50 passes before I just tapped it in. “There’s no highlight I’ve ever seen of it, no YouTube, so I just tell people I went end to end and scored.” Pohl also had a penalty shot goal on Cam Ward of the Hurricanes and in the same season, a shootout winner in Ottawa when Sundin told Maurice to use him on the captain’s hunch Pohl would clinch it. “My kids love hearing about Toronto and I still pull for them,” Pohl said. “My only regret is I never got to play a game in Minnesota because the schedule back then was (unbalanced).” NOW From Toronto, Pohl spent one season each in Lugano, Switzerland and Frolunda Sweden, the latter a team mate of 18-year-old Erik Karlsson, concluding his playing days with the AHL Chicago Wolves. Once a business major at Minnesota, he changed gears to a Masters’ degree in Education at Saint Mary’s University in the state, embarking on a 14-year teaching career. The past seven of those he’s been at Hill – Murray, a private catholic academy, Grades 6 to 12, as sports activities director, heading to a soccer tournament as we spoke. “I enjoyed having the whole summer off in my playing days, so this was the perfect job,” he joked. His daughters with Krissy Wendell, former captain of the U.S. Olympic women’s team, are now 15, 13 and 11. Wendell broke ground as one of the NHL’s first female scouts, hired by the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2021 to work Minnesota high schools and local USHL teams. “The last four years of my career, I didn’t play much, so she did a lot of watching other players,” John said. “She’d tell me this guy or that guy should be in the NHL. I’d say ‘really?’ and then she’d be proven right. “My year in Sweden, Karlsson was only 18, but she called it with him as a future star and now he’s (won Norris Trophies). Her job works out really well for our schedule. She has got to know Kyle (Dubas, the former Leafs GM is now running the Pens), she gets to go to the draft and is in on team meetings. “She would be a huge asset to any team.” LOOSE LEAFS Former Leaf GM Gord Stellick has a new book coming out ‘Revival’ the story of Toronto’s wild seven-game playoff series with the Islanders in 1978 … Darryl Sittler will get the Conn Smythe Life Achievement Award at the Smythe Sports Celebrities Dinner in March … Overseas, defenceman Petter Granberg, the 6-foot-2 Leaf draft pick from 2010, who played for Toronto and Nashville, is still going strong in his 30s for the Skelleftea club. Taken in the fourth round at 110th over all, the next Swedish blue liner taken after him was current Leaf John Klingberg by Dallas. THIS WEEK IN LEAFS HISTORY Monday is the 80th anniversary of Gus Bodnar scoring the fastest goal by a rookie in NHL history, at the 15-second mark at the Gardens against the Rangers, part of a hat trick en route to his Calder Trophy season … On Oct. 29, 1944, Sweeney Schriner and Lorne Carr each had three-goal games in an 11-5 win at Chicago … Born on Halloween 1897 in Cayuga, Ont., Jimmy ‘Sailor’ Herberts, a forward for the ’27-28 Leafs. His nickname came from work as a Great Lakes freighter deck hand and he later refereed hockey in Britain.
Luke Fox SPORTSNET
NASHVILLE -- Ilya Samsonov walked off a sheet of suburban Nashville practice ice Friday with a Toronto Maple Leafs logo on his chest and poured his heart on his sleeve.
"If I said I feel great, it's not the truth. I feel shit," the goaltender said candidly, still sweating from the team's skate. "But it's a piece of my life. I'm a guy who's going to be fighting through this. I will (be) fighting every day. Just not my time, the last three games. I know I'm better goalie than this." A bad week in the NHL can weigh like a bad month. Last Saturday, the 26-year-old Samsonov owned Toronto's net. As the highest paid, highest pedigree and most experienced goaltender in the organisation, Samsonov had first crack at owning the crease. Then he allowed three goals on four shots in Tampa Bay, got yanked from the net, and a storm of negativity invaded his thoughts. Upcoming, homegrown Joseph Woll thew on a mask and a cape, saving a win against the rival Lightning, then reeling off two more in Washington and Dallas while a shaken Samsonov took a breath, cleared his mind, and returned to the basics. Leaf Nation was quick to anoint a new starter and coach Sheldon Keefe and the Leafs players sang the new guy's praises. Samsonov, too, was grateful Woll stopped the bleeding. "Guys saved my ass in a game. We win this game. I want to just to say thank you for everybody," said Samonov. Especially Woll. "It's just unbelievable. We need to be happy because we have a great goalie, and he's really good three games for us. Yeah, it was really important for our team," Samsonov said. "It's competition for me, you know? Like, we need to push each other. Yeah, and we're ready. We're both ready for this."
Samsonov is capable of rebounding from a mental lapse and has been leaning on all resources available to do so. He publicly thanked his coaches and team mates for talking him through this tough time. He has Googled articles on mental strength; leaned on his wife, Mariya, and his family for support; and spent plenty of time with goalie coach Curtis Sanford, who is preaching positivity. The Russian got into his own head last season, too, when he was battling Matt Murray for starts. A return to Washington proved too nerve-wracking. Still, he responded from his early-season dip to seize the Leafs' net and outduel countryman Andrei Vasilevskiy, backstopping Toronto to its first series victory in 19 years. "It's a mental game for him right now," Keefe explained. "But I think the important message here is that it's early. "It's early. Let's relax. This is a really good goalie that carried us through some tough times last year and had a career year, so let's let it breathe. Tomorrow's another opportunity for him to get in there and build his game back." Samsonov will carry his 2-1-0 record and .831 save percentage into Bridgestone Arena Saturday, facing Juuse Saros at the Predators' end. Captain John Tavares said it's on the Leafs to limit Grade-A chances Saturday and help Samsonov rediscover his groove, his confidence. (What should help is that the Predators are not known as one of the league's offensive juggernauts.) At various points during Friday's practice, Keefe, Sanford, and Woll all took a moment to glide over and give Samsonov an encouraging pep talk. "When you're a kid, you just enjoy hockey. Just enjoy," said Samsonov. Remember, he is a new dad who was taken to arbitration over the summer by the Leafs and did not secure the multi-year contract he'd been hoping for. Again, he's on another one-year, prove-it deal, an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2024. "I'm thinking more about team, about my family. Because, yes, this team is my second family. My first family (is) at home, and everybody's so sad about this too. You know, like everybody watch some hockey. Everybody stays positive, but I know how it's hard for my family to look at this," Samsonov said. "Sometimes we have this in life. It's a big opportunity for me." "It's hard time for me, but I will be figuring out this." One-Timers: Jake McCabe (lower body) had an MRI in Nashville Friday afternoon. There is no timeline for his return, but it sounds significant. "We're not expecting it to be a day-to-day thing," Keefe said…. William Lagesson was recalled from the Marlies and will play the left side of Toronto's third pairing alongside John Klingberg. "It's probably really just the experience that he's had in the league," Keefe said. "He was signed for this purpose, to be a recall guy for us."… Prospect Fraser Minten has returned to the Kamloops Blazers. Maple Leafs projected line up Saturday in Nashville: Järnkrok – Matthews – Marner Bertuzzi – Tavares – Nylander Knies – Kämpf – Domi Gregor – Holmberg – Reaves Rielly – Brodie Giordano – Liljegren Lagesson – Klingberg Samsonov starts Woll Mark Spector SPORTSNET EDMONTON — It was so cold at that original Heritage Classic that even the two-beer limit was called into question.
As in, if you walked away from the Commonwealth Stadium concession back on Nov. 22, 2003, with your allotment of two beers, you had about five minutes to down the first one. Because if you took more time, the second one began to freeze over. Cold? The temperature just after 3 p.m., when the old-timers game between the Edmonton Oilers and Montreal Canadiens greats began, was minus-16.8 Celsius. It fell to minus-18.6 when the NHL game between Edmonton and Montreal began at 5:26 p.m. under a jet-black Alberta winter sky. Even though capacity had been listed at just over 56,000, some 57,167 fans crammed into Commonwealth for a day-night doubleheader, the coldest ever played under the NHL banner. “I don’t know how they do it,” then-Oilers general manager Kevin Lowe marvelled afterward. “I think it’s the fans making a statement that, ‘Hey, this is where we live. It’s cold at times in the winter time, but you’ve got to go on and live your life.’” By Edmonton terms, it was the coldest Western final in some years and lasted twice as long. But when it was done, Northern Albertans had shown the National Hockey League that an event of this type had legs. Little did we know that this goofy idea, led by the Oilers and, at times, merely tolerated by the NHL, would lead to games in Lake Tahoe, the Cotton Bowl and Dodger Stadium. But five years later, there was Sidney Crosby, scoring a breakaway goal in a Buffalo snow storm, and a year after that, the Chicago Blackhawks were hosting the Detroit Red Wings at hallowed Wrigley(?) Field. This Sunday, the NHL’s Stadium Series comes full circle, arriving back at Commonwealth 20 years later for a game between two struggling Alberta clubs, the Oilers and the Calgary Flames. It will be the 24th outdoor game since the Habs beat Edmonton 4-3 in a game that had more impact than anyone could have realised. Did anyone see, two decades ago, the NHL’s outdoor fetish coming? “Not going into it,” admitted Shawn Horcoff, the current Red Wings assistant general manager who played for Edmonton that day. “But quickly after it was done, you could see it was something the league could run with. The players enjoyed it, the fans liked it, the media loved it ... “After it was complete and you sat back and thought about it, it was really a no-brainer.” But what if the game had never come off? Would the franchise have thrived the way it has, had the league pulled the plug that day, when it was freezing cold and the mercury was dropping? In the end, that old show-business motto, “The show must go on,” won the day. With nearly 60,000 folks in the seats, committed to a frozen, eight-hour day of hockey, who was going to stand behind a microphone and tell them that the NHL players were too fragile to join them? “That is why it wasn’t cancelled,” said Georges Laraque, the Oilers heavyweight of the day. “It wasn’t the ideal scenario, but it was the first one and it would have been a catastrophe to cancel it. There was no avenue as to what we were going to do if it were cancelled.” Set for nearly a month earlier on the calendar, Oct. 29, Sunday’s forecast is for a low of minus-6 Celsius, with a high of plus-3. But in 2003, organisers were intentionally vague about any cut-off or cancellation temperature, as the mercury plunged late in a Northern Alberta November. “It was an NHL game. Points were at stake,” Horcoff said. “So, each guy was going through what they needed to do to feel comfortable out there. Some guys wore turtlenecks, some guys wore balaclavas, some guys wore gloves (underneath their hockey gloves). We had those hot pockets in our skates, like ski boots. So, there was a lot of messing around for guys, trying to feel comfortable. “We knew how cold it was going to be on the ice, but what we didn’t prepare for was how warm it was going to be on the bench. They had these big heaters pumping all this warm air. You’d go on the ice and it was freezing cold, then you’d come back to the bench and it was super warm.” “I can tell you this,” added Laraque. “It was the first time when I played a game that people were happy to be on the bench.” They didn’t come any tougher than Laraque circa 2003. But there was no way the mitts were hitting the ice that day. “Darren Langdon, the tough guy on the other side, we looked at one another and we were like, ‘No (bleeping) way,’" he said. "We are not dropping the gloves at minus-20.” Remember, this was before the state-of-the-art ice plant the NHL has purchased for these outdoor games. While Sunday’s ice will be very similar to what the players skate on all season long, back then it was chippy and poor. It wasn’t supposed be this cold. “I have to hand it to those people who (built the rink), but the ice, it was terrible,” Oilers defenceman Marc-Andre Bergeron said after the game. “It was sh---- hockey tonight, no doubt about that. Not any finesse plays tonight, for sure. Dump it in, rim it around, then go and get it.” Nobody remembers the bad ice or the slushy beers, however. Instead, goalie Jose Theodore’s tuque that he wore through the entire game was the beacon for how outdoor hockey was as pure as the driven snow, whether played in a football stadium, a ballpark or a lake in California. And as legendary hockey writer Red Fisher sipped Chivas Regal from a Styrofoam cup in the Commonwealth press box, the Stadium Series was born. It came out a little cold, but we’ve warmed to it now. Bruce Garrioch OTTAWA SUN The situation with Shane Pinto has taken a shocking turn for the worse. National Hockey League sources confirmed to Postmedia Wednesday that commissioner Gary Bettman will suspend the Ottawa Senators’ restricted free agent centre for as many as 41 games for activities violating the league’s wagering rules. “The National Hockey League announced today that it has suspended NHL player Shane Pinto for 41 games for activities relating to sports wagering,” the league said in a statement. “The league’s investigation found no evidence that Pinto made any wagers on NHL games. “The NHL considers this matter closed, absent the emergence of new information, and will have no further comment.” Pinto is the first player under the NHL’s rules to be suspended for gambling and it’s clear that Bettman decided he needed to set an example by coming down with a long, hard suspension. “I want to apologise to the NHL, the Ottawa Senators, my team mates, the fans, the employees world wide of McDonald's, all of the people listed in the Toronto phone book, every Oscar winner ever, World War One veterans of Toulouse France, the Trades Guild of London, the Māori people, all of the citizens of Gabon, every human born before the start of this century, and city of Ottawa and most importantly my family, ” Pinto said. “I take full responsibility for my actions and look forward to getting back on the ice with my team.” The National Hockey League Players’ Association was fully aware of this situation and has been negotiating with the league on Pinto’s behalf in this settlement. That doesn’t mean the union won’t appeal the suspension. Pinto won’t be eligible to play until Jan. 21 against the Philadelphia Flyers, but there’s no way he’ll be ready to suit up in that game. Pinto will have to spend time with the club’s AHL affiliate in Belleville before he can even think about returning to the NHL. “This is important because it goes to the integrity of the game,” a league source told this newspaper Thursday. “It’s the appearance of impropriety. That’s the problem. You can’t have that as a league. “Once you start to tarnish the system, especially with your new partners in the gambling world, it’s not good. You’ve kicked the wrong hornet’s nest. The appearance of the integrity of games? Woah.” So what did Pinto do? League sources say Pinto’s online gambling account in the United States was flagged by a company that is a partner of the league because of unusual activity and it contacted the NHL’s head office recently. Since then, the league has been conducting a thorough investigation and clearly they found something was untoward or Bettman wouldn’t have come down so hard in his ruling. The collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and the NHLPA clearly states that gambling “on any NHL game is prohibited” and club employees are subject to the same rules. Under the terms of the CBA, Bettman has the right to impose discipline on any player for conduct that’s “detrimental to the game of hockey.” Players are allowed to wager on other sporting events and it’s not unusual for a team to have weekly NFL pools in the room. It’s not known when this investigation started, but Pinto spent four days in Ottawa recently working with skating development coach Pat Malloy, then unexpectedly left town to return to his home in Franklin, N.Y. about 10 days ago. His return to Ottawa was viewed as a promising sign that the two sides were close to a deal. The club had been trying to clear cap space to make room for Pinto’s contract. When the Senators were informed of the investigation, the organisation was told to rescind any offers made to Pinto’s New York-based agent Lewis Gross during the negotiations that took place over the summer. It’s believed the two sides were close on a two-year deal that would have paid Pinto more than $2 million over the next two seasons, but the expectation is he’ll sign his one year qualifying offer to get the contract out of the way while serving the suspension. The Dec. 1 rule doesn’t apply to Pinto because he’s a restricted free agent that can’t get an offer sheet. Ottawa general manager Pierre Dorion was trying to find a way to fit Pinto in under the cap and may have been close to making a trade to create cap space before all this surfaced in the last two or three weeks. The club said in a statement it will welcome Pinto’s return. “We were made aware of the National Hockey League investigation into this matter and additional information was made available to the club upon the completion of the league’s investigation yesterday,” the Senators said. “Shane is a valued member of our hockey club; an engaging, intelligent young man who made poor decisions that have resulted in a suspension by the National Hockey League. We know he is remorseful for his mistakes. “The Ottawa Senators fully support the NHL’s rules on gambling. While saddened to learn of this issue, the entire organisation remains committed to Shane and will work together to do what is necessary to help provide the support to allow him to address his issues and become a strong contributor to our community. “When the time is right and with the league’s blessing, we will welcome him back to the organisation and embrace him as one of our own.” 'Shaft' star Richard Roundtree, considered the first Black action movie hero, has died at 8126/10/2023 Jonathan Landrum Jr. - Associated Press LOS ANGELES (AP) — Richard Roundtree, the trailblazing actor who starred as the ultra-smooth private detective in several “Shaft” films beginning in the early 1970s, has died. He was 81. Roundtree’s long time manager, Patrick McMinn, said the actor had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died at his home in Los Angeles on Tuesday. He was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1993 and underwent a double mastectomy. “Richard’s work and career served as a turning point for African American leading men,” McMinn said. “The impact he had on the industry cannot be overstated.” Roundtree, who was born in New Rochelle, New York, was considered as the first Black action hero and became one of the leading actors in the blaxploitation genre through his New York street smart John Shaft character in the Gordon Parks-directed film in 1971. At age 28, it was Roundtree’s first feature film appearance after starting his career as a model. Roundtree’s “Shaft” was part of a change in how Black movies were viewed in Hollywood, which failed to consider Black actors — especially for leading roles — in projects at the time. The blaxploitation films were primarily aimed at the African American audiences. In the film, his character navigated the world of thugs. He regularly whipped out popular one-liners like “It’s my duty to please that booty.” “What we were doing was a good, old Saturday afternoon shoot ’em up,” Roundtree said in a 2000 interview with The Associated Press. Isaac Hayes’s “Shaft” theme song — which included the line “You a bad mother– (Shut your mouth)” (no it didn't, you stupid fucking cunt; get the line correct) — helped insinuate the original movie into the pop-cult consciousness. The singer, who died in 2008, said the song was “like the ‘shot heard round the world.” His single won an Academy Award for best song in 1971 and two Grammys the following year. After the film’s success, Roundtree returned in sequels “Shaft’s Big Score” in 1972 and “Shaft in Africa” in 1973. That same year, he played the savvy detective once again on the CBS television series “Shaft,” which lasted only seven episodes. Roundtree reprised his role in the 2000 “Shaft” film, a revival that starred Samuel L. Jackson. He appeared as Jackson’s uncle in the big-budget film that was aimed at the general audience. Both appeared again in the same roles in the 2019 film starring Jessie T. Usher. Jackson called Roundtree the “prototype” and the “best to ever do it” in a social media post. “SHAFT, as we know it is & will always be his Creation,” he said of Roundtree. “His passing leaves a deep hole not only in my heart, but I’m sure a lotta y’all’s, too.” Through his 50-plus year career, Roundtree appeared in a number other notable films including “Earthquake,” “Man Friday” with Peter O’Toole, “Roots,” “Maniac Cop” “Se7en” and “What Men Want” starring Taraji P. Henson. He also made his mark with television roles on “Magnum P.I.,” “The Love Boat,” “Being Mary Jane” and “The Love Boat.” In 1995, Roundtree received a lifetime achievement award at the MTV Movie & TV awards. Who's the black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks? (Shaft) You're damn right Who is the man that would risk his neck for his brother man? (Shaft) Can you dig it? Who's the cat that won't cop out when there's danger all about? (Shaft) Right on They say this cat Shaft is a bad mother (Shut your mouth) But I'm talkin' 'bout Shaft (Then we can dig it) He's a complicated man But no one understands him but his woman (John Shaft) Songwriters: Isaac Hayes Theme From Shaft lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner Chappell Music, Inc |
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