Ron Wilson

Sidney Crosby lifts his team—and the nation—in what might go down as the greatest game of all time

Understand here that I may actually know less about hockey than Angelo Persichilli does about national politics. Today’s USA-Switzerland game was my second trip inside a hockey arena in two months, and also my second in 30 years. (I have now already seen more hockey and more ballet in 2010, in person, than in the entire period from 1980 to 2009. The two endeavours are eerily similar. Basically I can’t do either.)

The Toronto Maple Leafs, in their infinite institutional wisdom, have decided that uncertainty is a bad thing. So, they have made a bold statement by keeping Cliff fletcher on for one more full season as “interim general manager.”  The statement is this: we don’t want any more uncertainty…so we have decided to let everyone know, definitively, that the uncertainty will last for another 12 months. Now that we have that all cleared up, we can get on with losing a lot of hockey games, and getting ourselves a nice high draft pick to present to our new GM next summer as a welcoming gift.

The Toronto media is, thus far, giving the thumbs-up to the Leafs new coach Ron Wilson. That, in itself, is no surprise. The Leafs always hire good coaches, or at least, coaches that seem competent and well-qualified until they get behind the bench. Paul Maurice, Pat Quinn, Pat Burns – all came with pretty strong professional credentials, and so does Wilson. I will spare you the obligatory skepticism – I’ll refrain from mentioning that he’s never won a cup, and that the San Jose Sharks massively underperformed under his leadership the past two seasons. Fair to say that Wilson is a good hockey guy, is respected around the league, and should have no problem establishing authority in the dressing room.