I have never wished a man dead. But I have read some obituaries with great pleasure.” Mark Twain

We have a friend who works in the same Toronto neighbourhood where several of the stars on the Maple Leafs live. One day he came to us to complain that Auston Matthews never waves back when he greets him on the street. “What’s it going to hurt him to say hi?” he asked. “(William) Nylander always turns to hi, takes pictures and rides the subway.”

We tried to tell him about the overwhelming pressure of being a visible Leafs star in Toronto. If you stop for one fan you must stop for all fans who accost you. Or else there will be a video of you acting like as jerk.. And the Leafs, it’s safe to say, have a million fans in southern Ontario. Most are nice, considerate. But the needy ones make you want to stay in your house full-time between games.

Nylander finds a way to accommodate his local fame. Others, like Matthews and Mitch Marner, do not accept blame for the Leafs’ entire 58-year Stanley Cup drought that tortures fans. In Marner’s case public pressure, in part, led him to leave Toronto for Las Vegas where he will be way, way down the celebrity chain behind Kelly Clarkson and Boys II Men. The gnawing blame for repeated Cups in Toronto since 1967 had to go somewhere. It was laid at Marner’s door.

For those fortunate not to live Days of our Leafs on a daily basis, Marner is a skilled centreman who made his living in Toronto as a setup man for others. In his career so far, all in Toronto as part of their “Core Four” players, he had 221 goals and 520 assists. He’s not likely to dig the puck out of the corner or crash the net often.  In that manner he resembles the late Johhny Gaudreau who left Calgary for similar “faults”.

In a town that loved Tie Domi and Wendel Clark this was not seen as commitment to winning in the tough zones during the playoffs. So when the Leafs boxed themselves into a salary cap hell that meant Marner was unaffordable, the resentment of his play grew. He was called effete, a whiner, a no-show for his $8 million salary. When the Leafs gambled at the trading deadline, keeping him to help the team win the Cup in 2025, the target on his back grew larger. Fans who dreamt he’d take a hometown discount were dreaming.

You know the rest. Toronto gakked again in the second round. Marner went to free agency, signing longterm in tax-free Nevada. The team received nothing in return for a star player. The locals needed a scapegoat for thieir repeated frustrations. So when Marner, who has kids, described being doxxed by fans, the unwanted threats, the people hanging around his home late at night, needing security, the unrelenting pressure of playing for his hometown team, the dam broke among critics .

The result was measures of spite and resentment. “Why does he always seem so full of shit?” asked one fan. “That crybaby Marner who doesn’t like that his hometown hates him and has never taken responsibility for why that is, ever.” And, ”Go enjoy your millions in Vegas bro where you can underperform when it counts and the vast majority won’t know the difference.”

And that’s the nice stuff. Then there was Toronto Sun writer Steve Simmons who can always be counted on to make things more toxic. “This was classic spin-doctoring — taking a piece of slight truth and stretching it to sell a narrative that isn’t necessarily believable…And it was, or is, believed by some who must also believe in fairy tales, that Marner’s life and that of his family was in danger because of his lack of playoff performance.” Simmons apparently believes, like the mayor, that life in Toronto has never been safer.

Forget that team captain Matthews had a paltry three goals and 11 points in the same playoff swoon that Marner is alleged to have caused. Matthew’s annual $16.7 million went unmentioned. In the eyes of Toronto fans and media Marner’s departure was the purgative. (They’ll change their mind when they fully realize that a franchise player was allowed to leave for nothing.)

The bigger picture here, easily glossed over, is that elite players like Marner now control the league. They wrap up eight-year contracts with no-trade/ no-move clauses. They and their agents talk around the NHL about places they’d like to play. For some Toronto still remains the pinnacle, but they are fewer every year who want the incessant media scrutiny, the visibility in the community and the tax situation compared to U.S. states with no income tax. To say nothing of the car-jacking that Marner suffered a few years ago.

Some of these players will dismiss Marner’s dystopian portrait of Toronto. But a growing number don’t want the hassle of Toronto— or other Canadian fish bowls. Montreal has long ago lost the lure for French Canadians to play there. Too much language politics, too many taxes, urban street crime. Ditto Vancouver, which his still in shock from the 2011 riots after the Canucks lost Game 7 of the Final. Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg are too cold and their street crime in an embarrassment.

There are better options. Play in a warm American city, collect your riches then spend the summer in your Muskoka or Laurentian cottages. Lest Toronto’s embedded sports media and fans, whose passions have often dictated the progress of their sports teams, think they are still in charge, watch this winter as the dithering Blue Jays face life without star shortstop Bo Bichette.

Bichette is a free agent and if he’s still willing to return to Rogers Centre (no guarantees) the Blue Jays will pay another king’s ransom like the $325 M. they paid Vlad Guerrero Jr. Leaving little money for the other parts of the team. More likely they missed their window to sign Bichette and will see him return in another uniform next summer—  possibly of an AL East rival.

So criticize Marner all you like, Toronto. He’s more likely to win a Cup in Vegas than any in Toronto. Then who will Leaf Nation send to the stocks?

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

Our weekly Monday column is nominally a sports column. But sometimes we are lured by a sporting theme other than on the field. And with the capitulation of Mark Carney’s cringeworthy Elbows Up theme this week we can now safely reflect on the impact of the nation’s hockey obsession on tariff wars.

For those who don’t know by now, Carney’s Elbows Up meme popularized in cringeworthy commercials with actor Mike Myers was a reference to going into the corners with the legendary Gordie Howe. Legends abound on the lethality of Howe’s elbows that separated opponents from their senses. Thus, the message of Carney and Myers in Team Canada jerseys quoting Mr. Hockey was as simple as it was ridiculous.

Canada was going to go into the corner to separate Donald Trump from his tariffs? How? Carney has boasted of his hockey savvy as a goalie for Harvard. Where other nations were collapsing Carney’s Canada promised to be a stout backstop. 51st State? Hah! Locking arms with Myers and Doug Ford, Carney would show the Americans what Canadians are made of. At least that’s what they said in the election campaign to restore the Liberal brand to the nation.

The hockey theme was buttressed by the emotional victory by Team Canada over Team USA in February’s Four Nations Tournament. Having been filleted in the round-robin by the Yanks, Canada won the final game, reinforcing the nation’s dominance in a sport most Americans ignore 365 days a year. To those looking for any reason to anger Trump (hello, Andrew Coyne) it seemed like destiny for the Elbows Up crew.

As an example of the Team Canada approach Carney and his paid media wind therapists savaged Alberta premier Danielle Smith for trying build bridges with the Americans. Smith had the idea there was more to be gained from energy negotiations than from sulking. Traitor! They cried when she was seen with Trump. Consorting with the Cheeto was tantamount to selling nuclear secrets.

Elbows Up Canada, like China, would inflict counter tariffs on the U.S. after a decade of Justin Trudeau frippery. It would shut down the accusations that Canada was now a benchwarmer in global affairs. It never occurred to Team Carney or the Boomer midwits who elected him that launching a trade war against a nation whose economy was ten times the size of Canada’s might be a seriously bad idea. (Like hoping to wear down the Russian military.) Anyone pointing out this small problem was immediately denounced as hating hockey, ergo hating Canada.

To further illustrate his hockey pluck Carney’s backers bragged that the former head of the Bank of Canada and Bank of England was a skilled negotiator who would wipe the floor in negotiations with the erratic Trump. Nobody gets away with publicly declaring a post-Trudeau Canada as a failed state that should ally with the U.S. The Americans will come running to Canada when they want water, oil, aluminum, steel and maple syrup.

Then a funny thing happened. While Canada stood by, Zambonis running, ready to take it to overtime, the Americans simply ignored the taunts. Trump acted as if Elbows Up was a mirage. As trade deals were announced with other nations and international meetings convened, Carney’s Canada was left outside. In spite of the tough talk on tariffs, a blasé Trump whacked Canada with 35 percent tariffs.

The meme of Carney as a potted plant at the Ukraine White House summit came to epitomize the afterthought that is post-Trudeau Canada in this climate. Inspired by their allies at CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Canada’s purchased media fought back with all their favoured/ debunked  Russian conspiracy theories and stories of Trump’s alleged mental incapacities. To no avail.

At just the moment that embarrassment was too great for even Team Carney’s most fervent media pals, Trump last week summoned him like a call-up from the minors to be told how it was going to be. Suddenly the implacable Carney was declaring how swell it was that Canada had the best treaty in the world. Elbows Up had suddenly become Pants Down.

Of course the beaming banker acted as if it was all part of some master plan he’d worked out between periods of the game with USA. Sure, his bluster about going into the corners was all bluff, no stuff. The Master Negotiator thing was all a cover for him to reduce government spending, re-commit to the futile climate war and (don’t tell anybody) recognize Palestine as a state in the near future.

Sure. Go with that. Anyone wanting an apology from the Potted Plant will wait a long time for satisfaction. For while Liberals talk a tough game they don’t talk at all when they’re been exposed. Even more sepulchral are the media that so readily grabbed the Elbows Up hustle to defeat Pierre Poilievre. Remember the Little Trump jibes? The Sloganeer slurs? The riding defeat?

Now that Trump had blocked their righteous elbow with a right cross they’re acting as if nothing is wrong. They’re off chasing stories about Poilievre being parachuted into an Alberta riding or Trump with Jeffrey Epstein. They’re reviving the murdered Rez babies hoax. And they’re ignoring international concerns about money laundering and drug trafficking.

Anything but the utter futility of Elbows Up and the next four years of watching the decline of Canada’s formerly respected position in the world. In heaven Gordie Howe is just shaking his head.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, his new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.