Mats Sundin

The night before he was found dead of a suspected suicide, the former NHL enforcer was out on the town and in good spirits

Dear Mats Johan Sundin,

… for two hours, according to a diligent blogger’s account of a public appearance Gainey made in St. John’s. If you want to see a rare, useful example of “citizen journalism,” check it out. According to the blogger, known to her readers as J.T., Gainey laid it on the line for Mats during a meeting Saturday in Toronto: “I told him to make a decision. I said, if you feel like you want to retire, then retire. But if you’re not sure, you should play and the emotion will come.”

A fellow Macleans.ca blogger—a Habs fan who’s well aware of both my love for the Maple Leafs and my bizarre prejudice against comparing Canada to Scandinavian nations—thought I’d enjoy the following quote in The Province: “Vancouver is so much like Sweden. The culture is similar and so is the physical geography.” Grrrr. That’s Darren Hanson, manager at Ikea in Coquitlam, attempting to lure Mats Sundin to Lotusland with outrageous falsehoods. “We’ll even throw in a free bag of Swedish meatballs for every week he’s in Vancouver,” he says.

La première étoile: The entire nation of Spain! Viva Espana! Spain Spain Spain! Land of fine hams and lovely weather! Also, really good at soccer! Hurrah!

La première étoile: Brian Colangelo. By sending T.J. Ford, Rasho Nesterovic and the Raps first round draft pick to Indiana for Jermaine O’Neal, Toronto has finally acquired a legitimate centre who can absolutely dominate a game. O’Neal is entering the prime of his career and, if he can stay healthy, this trade will most definitely take the Raps to the next level. Let’s hope this ends up better than when Hakeem Olajuwon joined the Raps at the age of 37 and pretty much became nothing more than a cheerleader

Two minutes for … Not knowing when to give up. Jeremy Roenick should head up to the press box instead of signing a contract extension with San Jose. He’ll be 39 next January and is only sticking around to have one last shot at winning a Stanley Cup. Problem is, he kind of sucks now. In each of the past three seasons he hasn’t recorded more than 33 points in an entire campaign and is a woeful -31.

Who’s got tickets? Today’s semi-final game between Spain and Russia. Both teams love to go on the attack and have already made huge impressions at this year’s tournament. They also have a history of completely imploding and falling short of the prize. Who is going to prevail? My gut tells me the Russians are just too fast to be stopped.

Fun police: Just please get this Mats Sundin thing over with. I have a crying booth set up in my basement to deal with his departure, complete with a box of Kleenex, a 60 oz. jug of Jack Daniels and an old Rick Vaive jersey to catch my tears. Oh, one other thing. When Mats finally does go, who the hell is going to be the Leafs first-line centre? Matt Stajan? Yikes.

Extra bases: There’s a very easy way of solving this mysterious war of words that has arisen between the Cincinnati Reds’ Adam Dunn and Blue Jays GM J.P. Ricciardi. All J.P. has to do is check the number of the person who called him and phone it to figure out who placed the call. The fact that he has hesitated to do so is a little weird.

The saga continues. According to this update from TSN’s Bob McKenzie, whose information is generally solid, Sundin is likely going to wait it out ’til July 1. Contrary to earlier reports (to which we foolishly linked), Bob Gainey has not yet flown to Sweden. He’d just like to.

So much has happened, hockey fans. Let’s recap.

First Star: I nearly failed grade nine french, and I already have to deal with the indignity of knowing that the Habs are a solid young team, getting better, while my Leafs are a terrible team committed to get worse before they begin to improve, so excuse me, but on Mondays this section is going to be called “first star.”  (Plus, I don’t know how to make accents on this keyboard.) Anyway, the first star today is Spanish goalkeeper Iker Casillas who led his team to victory over Italy yesterday making several key stops, including the one you’ll see below, and stopping not one but two penalty kicks to decide the game.

Foghorn Dreghorn, TSN’s “Insider,” reports that the Habs are still interested in landing Sundin, and suggests the Leafs are shopping the rights to the big galoot in advance of tonight’s draft. So what price the privilege of negotiating with Shrek II over the week before the July 1 signing deadline? 

The appropriate line for the video grab here might have been “Sundin Ponders Role as Shrek.”