The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Ron MacLean On Has The Pandemic Changed Hockey?

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

He's the voice and the face of hockey every night during the Stanley Cup playoffs and today he's on the Bridge giving us his take on how the pandemic has changed hockey. Plus the latest research on what's the safest seat to sit in on an airplane during a pandemic.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Today, the voice and the face of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Are you still trying to find ways to get into the world of crypto? Well, look no further. Bitbuy is Canada's number one platform for buying and selling Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Bitbuy has launched a brand new app and website with a new look, lower fees and new coins. Bitbuy is your one-stop shop to get involved

and super easy to use for beginners. Visit bitbuy.ca or download the Bitbuy app. Enter referral code PODCAST20 to get $20 free when you make your first deposit. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Toronto today. A couple of days away from Stratford as I've got some work to do on an upcoming documentary. So I'm here in Toronto. If the sound is a little different, that's because it's Toronto Sound. Okay, today we start off a little story. It was 15 years ago now. Can you believe Sidney Crosby's been playing for 15 years in the NHL? Sid, the kid.

Gosh, I remember the first time I met him. For two reasons. One, I had my son, Will. You know Will, he works on this program on occasion when he gives me a few minutes to help in the production end of things. So Willie was, I think, five or six years old and he came with me to do the interview was in Ottawa um and so it was a thrill for him he was already playing you know Tim Hortons or whatever in hockey and uh Sidney Crosby was the biggest name in hockey then still is for a lot of people right now anyway we got to do this interview and I'd never met Sid Crosby before. And he arrives.

We were doing the interview in one of those suites above the ice in Ottawa's arena. And he arrives. He walks in the door with his dad. So he was with his dad, and I was with my son. Anyway, he had with him a Pittsburgh sweater, hockey sweater, in his number, 87. And at that point he was an assistant captain. So it just had an A, not a C. And he'd signed it for me. So he gives me this sweater and I said, geez, you didn't have

to do this. It was very kind of you. And he said, well, you know, I used to watch you when I was small. And I thought, what? He's a news junkie? And I said something like that. And he said, no, no, no. You used to get in the way of all the hockey games during the Stanley Cup and boy have I heard that a lot during my career when I was anchoring the national of course just like today you know the national gets delayed because of the Stanley Cup but we'd have a little insert in the intermission between the second and third periods where I'd kind of give the headlines of the day's news. A lot of hockey fans didn't like that.

They just wanted hockey talk. And I guess Sidney Crosby was one of those. The way he said it, you know, I used to watch you. Oh, really? You like the news? No, no, no, you used to get in the way he said it you know i you know i used to watch you oh really here you like the news no no you used to get in the way of the hockey game i loved it anyway which brings me to today's topic which is not sydney crosby and it's not the national getting in the way of the stanley cup it's actually about the the Stanley Cup in this peculiar year of hockey. Peculiar because of the pandemic, of course.

But listen, I'm a hockey fan, have been since I was a kid. So in spite of what some people used to say about me getting in the way of hockey, I used to watch the hockey all the time, including in the studio. Sometimes I was doing the national, be on a monitor at the side. So hockey is a part of us, right? Whether you like hockey or not, it's kind of a part of being Canadian. And this time of the year is always special because of the Stanley Cup, especially if there's some Canadian teams that are doing well.

And we're about to find out how well they do. Anyway, I wanted to talk a little bit, not a lot, but a little bit, and not sort of jock talk, but talk about hockey and its kind of place in the country, especially this year as a result of the pandemic. Because if you follow hockey at all, you know things have been very different. You know, from no fans in the arenas to the way they've rescheduled the divisions in the National Hockey League. And you only play within your division.

And then during the playoffs, things move forward. Anyway, so I wanted to talk about that, what it's done to hockey, whether hockey is really still the same game as it was even a year ago as a result of the changes that had to be made. So who are you going to talk to? Well, there are a lot of really good hockey experts out there, and many of them are friends of mine, and some of them have been on the program before.

But at this time of year, there's one person who kind of stands above everybody else, if for no other reason than he's on the air every night, and we listen to his wit and charm and expertise and knowledge and that of course is ron mclean at hockey night in canada so i called ron yesterday and i peculiar year for everybody and no less so in uh in the nhl and now we're into the playoffs but as we get into it what what do you think we we learned about hockey this year given the you, you know, the, the, the extraordinary nature of the way the schedule played out and the way the players had to put up with some,

you know, difficult times. Well, Peter, there's so many levels to this. One is crowds. Of course, we did the bubble playoffs a year ago and there was tremendous lighting and energy created by the audio engineers, but this time through the regular season, it was more limited, and I felt we really missed the fans. And in the first weekend of the Stanley Cup playoffs, you surely noticed how important the fans are to the experience. So that was fantastic. I mean, you have divisional playoffs for the first two rounds

where you had teams who faced each other nine to ten times, and familiarity is clearly breeding contempt which is great and coaching which means close games so I think we learned all that and but lastly I go back to what I said a year ago in Tampa won the cup Stephen Stamko stepped in after missing seven months played five shifts three minutes scored one of the biggest goals of the final you saw what Kucherov did last night I think of Sidney Crosby returning from his concussion after the Olympics in 2010. He missed basically two years, 61 regular season games. He stepped into his first game against the Islanders and scored four points, two goals, first star.

I saw Tyler Sagan come back from double hip surgery after missing seven months and score a really meaningful goal. And I think it's encouragement to all of us that are going through this ridiculous year and a half that's been so trying to just remind ourselves that with the foundation of all that we are, we're going to be okay. Is the game any different than it was, you know, what do we say, before pandemic BP? Is it any different?

No, I don't think it is. And that's also a lesson that I gleaned from a year ago was that in the end, the Stanley cup felt extremely real. And the first weekend of it has felt extremely real. You know, Glenn Gould predicted that there would be no live performing. He hated that, you know, perhaps the entertainer, the musician panders to the audience or gets out of itself or himself or herself in

order to win and curry favor with the crowd. I always remember seeing Bruce Springsteen at Massey Hall do an acoustic set without the E Street Band. And he began singing and we all started clapping along. And he says, hold it just just a second here. You know, you don't need to clap. I know how to keep time. And I'm thinking, well, hold it. You're the greatest showman of them all. And I'm not allowed to participate. Glenn Gould was that way. He said, you know, just give me the purity of excellence and perfection. And that's all he wanted. He felt that the definitive version of the song was the one created in the studio. And that's how I feel about the hockey is inside the glass. McDavid has been McDavid with or without 16,000 fans. Having said that, David Byrne had the great quote, you know, the talking heads.

He said, I love a good story. And sometimes I love to just stare at the sea. Do I have to choose between the two? So I think with or without crowds, the game hasn't changed a whole lot. I think there probably is not a player in the nhl who wouldn't have minded you comparing them in some in some way to glenn gould and to bruce springsteen so good for you you'll get marks for that no doubt um the what i find interesting uh that has happened as a result of what they had to do to actually get a schedule up is the split in divisions.

And I, you know, obviously I'm particularly interested in, in, in the Canadian one. And, you know, I think it's great.

I mean, I think as the way it has just happened to play out in terms of where the final standings in the Canadian division, where we have now this, you know, Western playoff series, and we have an Eastern playoff series. It's kind of like the old way they used to play the Grey Cup, right?

Right. East versus West, you know, in a real way. But is this a once-in-a-lifetime thing? Sadly, it is. And, you know, it's too bad we had COVID intervene. It really created problems for Montreal. I mean, they got off to a gangbuster start, and then a COVID shutdown really affected them,

and for sure the Vancouver Canucks. See, the problem always was for Vancouver, this east-west alignment meant they were traveling out of their time zone all the time, really hard on the Canucks. And they could point to that going forward and saying, look, we love it, it's great for the ratings, everybody appreciates the Canadian rivalries, but for us, I mean, it's a no-go. It's not fair to our compete to have this travel.

So that's the problem. They're going to revert to the old system next year, but I did love it. And I do think the fact there was a little bit of fatigue in the 8, 9, 10 meetings between the teams, but I attribute a bit of that to no crowds. Had we had just a little surge of the live audience toward the end of it, I think it would have been fantastic. You're right, though, about the frequent playing has breeded a degree of contempt in certain situations where certain players are looking at the other team

in a certain way, and it's not about dipsy-doodling around them. It's about going straight through them. So it's provoked that kind of arrangement between the teams too. And it reminds me also of our history, the Winnipeg Jets playing Edmonton. It used to be that Winnipeg had 630 goal scorers, but they could not get past Gretzky and Messier. Now they've got this.

If you were to ask any expert, I think the deepest six forwards in the NHL belong to the Winnipeg Jets. Unfortunately, there's McDavid and Dreisaitl coming their way. So that's fantastic. And then over on the other side, you know, 42 years, you and I vividly remember what it was like in the 70s when the Marner and Matthews was Lanny McDonald and Daryl Sittler and the Habs. What maybe people don't remember about Montreal and Scotty Bowman,

because they remind me a little of the way Chicago imploded. They lost Ken Dryden and Scotty Bowman. The next year, 1979-80, Montreal having won four in a row Stanley Cups. They almost had 350 goal scorers. They had, I think it was Pierre Laroche came within three of getting to be the other 50 goal. Marksman, LeFleur and LeMer had hit 50. But. They had, I think was Pierre LaRouche came within a three of getting to be the other 50 goal marksman, Lafleur and LaMer had hit 50. But that was actually their demise.

They got away from what had made them great. The Bob Ganey, the Doug Rysbrow, the Mario Tremblay, the Yvonne Lambert, they were all checkers. Nobody checked like the Montreal Canadians. And then Lafleur added some color and maybe Steve shut.

But yeah, that, that was a great time in hockey, as you know, the late seventies. And it was a time when the game had also gone through a transformation, by the way, Peter,

I so loved when you were doing the viewer mail, I don't know, two, maybe three weeks ago now, when you had a Colonel from London, Ontario speak about the difference between transactional and transformational leadership. Remember that?

Right. Right. Oh my God. It was good. He was just discussing how the military can't work with a transaction as its basis. You know, I'll give you X, you give me Y. It has to think about the greater good or the greater.

And that's what Montreal was in the seventies. We had the Broad Street bullies kind of running amok and no offense to Don, but the big bad Bruins, you know, there was a way to intimidate your way to a title and the Habs got us around that with the flower. So it's a very fond memory that we'll rekindle having a a title and the Habs got us around that with uh with the flower so it's a very fond memory that will rekindle having a Habs play the Leafs yeah well you know there's been a lot of attention to that and then I'm glad you you talked about the Jets Oilers series because

that's going to be a great series and it has a tradition and a basis to it as you explained sure um yeah but the Leafs Habs thing you know somebody told me I don't know whether it's true but somebody told me that the Montreal had a game last week or the week before last where there wasn't a single Quebec-born player on their team for that game. Which also tells us something, I guess, about the way the game has changed and the way, you know, certain traditions have changed. I mean, you know, you mentioned Don. He used to rant not that long ago about how the fact that Leafs didn't have any players from Ontario. Now they've got a lot of players from Ontario, right? Yeah, because he felt, especially the team coming in, Buffalo loaded up.

They had 10 Toronto or Ontario-based players, and they came in with all their moms and dads in the crowd, and they put on a show. So it was very difficult. And Brian Burke referenced it when he felt his team fell off a cliff, like an 18-wheeler driving over the cliff. He realized that they lacked the Toronto. Now, having said that, they've been drafting again the Leafs away from Ontario.

But they certainly brought in, in order to try and get over the hump here, they brought in all Ontario guys, whether it was Foligno or Simmons or Thornton or Spezza. These are all GTA or Ontario kids who will supposedly give them that catalyst with the talent that they have to get further into the playoffs. What's your take on that? But Serge Savard, sorry to interrupt, but Serge, that was the thing he did, Peter, when he came in and took over Montreal. Kind of the end of the heyday for the Habs was Serge immediately went for Francophones Quebec based players because he knew that on the golf course that summer

they would be held accountable he really believed in Patrick Roy he gave him the start as a kid he Claude Lemieux got a prominent role and he built the team with an emphasis on Quebec based players and they ended up winning in 86 and 93 because of it. And the lesson had been they had drafted Doug Wickenheiser, not Denny Savard, and they should have gone Savard, is what Serge felt. Just a quick one on the point of the Greybeards. You mentioned them all on the Leafs team. Has that paid off this year?

I think undeniably. I still think you know that you're going to win with your one two down the middle that's I always kind of look at Kopitar and Carter in the Los Angeles uh you know two cups in three years Jonathan Taves is interesting because he actually went to Stanley Bowman the manager there and said we're not big enough to take on Kopitar and Carter can you bring me somebody I love Andrew Shaw but he can't be in the two hole as our center iceman so they brought in Brad Richards for their third attempt, who was bigger. Not by any means a monster on the ice, but just big enough to handle the checking of Kopitar or Carter.

And so for Toronto, their one-two punch is obviously Tavares and Matthews. And this gives, you know, everything is about them and how they distribute and how they check. But these other guys will keep it even keeled. You know, they've seen and done it all. And I think, you know, that's where, sorry, where Edmonton got into a bit of a pickle. They have the same, if not a better one-two punch, I guess you would say a better,

in McDavid and Dreisaitl than Toronto. But they had signed all the kids. You know, they had Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle and Neil Yakupov. And it just was continually coming down the pike that they were bolstering their lineup with talent, but it was all young talent who hadn't seen it done at all. And anytime there was a moment of adversity,

it was like too much. You've set us up great for what's to come, and especially in these first two series, the Canadian series. I'm calling, by the way, when East plays West, I'm calling that the real Canada Cup. The North Division Championship, that's going to be something else. It's going to have the whole country talking, you know, in many ways.

But I want to close on this because you mentioned a name which immediately made me think of another name, and that's when you mentioned Doug Wickenheiser. And we think of Hayley. Isn't it great? Her story is remarkable. Over the weekend, she passed the final exam. She's a doctor now.

So she's a doctor. She's one of the greatest, if not the greatest, female hockey player on the planet. And she's what? Isn't she part-time coaching for the Leafs as well? She's just got a promotion. She's now been made the head of player development for the Toronto Maple Leafs, and they're bringing in Danielle Goyette, who'd been coaching at UFC,

to be on the Leafs staff with Haley. You know, Peter, I don't even know where to begin on that story because she's, first of all, she's a two Olympian athlete. She did the summers as a softball player and competed in Sydney, Australia in 2000. Obviously, five-time Olympian on the winter side to do her med studies, to be on the front lines and telling all her colleagues who were, I mean, they were at the breaking point a month and a half in, never mind a year and a half in. And she would always tell, for the sake of sustainable high performance, she would always tell her colleagues this is our olympics we have to treat this like our olympics dr cal botterill always said you know to be part of the future is to have inner peace that's the way you deal with it is knowing that you're having a huge role to play in the future and that gives you such meaning that that you'll be able to sustain but hayley's that and she was inspired

peter by living in shaunavan saskatchew, just tucked away in a corner of the prairies. She was inspired by the torch relay headed for Calgary in 88. And she begged her parents, you know, as I said, she could play every sport, but she wanted to get to Calgary. The only tickets they could get were to see the ski jumping. So her inspiration would be kind of like your inspiration england eddie the eagle uh so she she's just beyond the pale what she has accomplished uh you know in medicine and sport and yeah really nice and in life and they're related of course doug and hayley and and in life too right i mean we both know her you know we're you know much better than i do but what are just a really down- earth, good person, you know, in spite of all the other things that she's got on her mantelpiece. Well, and one last thing about that, you know, you're, you're a great dad. You know, I know you put up with Will Drumming, let alone everything else, but that's because you love Ringo Starr. So there was probably a purpose in it, but you know, she,

I'll never forget in 2002 when Canada finally got its Olympic gold and then they've won several since but uh she and Noah her boy were on the ice together you know with the Canadian flag draped and I think of Iserman going out to receive the cup from Gary Bettman in 2002 with his daughter Isabella and even if you go back to 67 when the Leafs got the Habs and their last Stanley Cup. George Armstrong went to Centre Ice to receive the Stanley Cup from Clarence Campbell with his son, Brian. And Brian, George's boy, helped lift that Stanley Cup. So Haley is that too. She's a great parent in addition to all that we said.

Listen, Ron, I know you've got lots of work now. I'm exhausted. You're always a busy guy. But for the next couple of months, you're going to be very busy. So I look forward when we can get out on the golf course again at some point. And tell us some tall tales. But listen, this was great. I really appreciate you doing this.

Take care. Me too, Peter. Now, really, seriously, you too peter now really seriously can you imagine sitting down with anybody else to talk about hockey and you managed to bring in glenn gould into the conversation that's ron mcclain with this photographic memory too right i've worked with ron in different parts of the world doing olympic broadcasts and you know he he's not looking at notes it's all in there it's all in his head he remembers these things and he can pull quotes and memories and things out of nowhere and uh it's always remarkable to talk to Ron. So I appreciate his time,

especially in the busiest time of year for him. We're going to take a little music break. Very little music break. And then right after it, we're going to talk about one of my favorite topics. And that, of course, is the airline business. Peter Mansbridge back again with the final segment of The Bridge. And after talking hockey, we're going to talk airlines just for a second.

And we're going to hook it up to the issue of the pandemic. Because we have kind of followed the travails of the airlines over this past year and a few months. As passenger traffic absolutely plummeted. No surprise there. And is it slowly coming back? Well, yeah, it appears that it is in parts of the airline business. Certainly, it's starting to happen in the U.S.

It's starting to happen in parts of Europe. That's a long way from normal as normal used to be, but it is coming along. In the States, since March 11th, the Transportation Security Administration, reading here from Huffington Post, has screened more than a million passengers every day. On May 2nd, just what, two weeks ago, that number exceeded 1.6 million for the first time since March of 2020. But as people ease back into flying, there are still lingering questions about the risk involved in spending time on an airplane,

especially now that airlines have ended their middle seat blocking policies. Remember at the beginning, when nobody was flying anyway, they didn't put anyone in middle seats. So you had some social distance from other passengers if there were other passengers on those planes. There were times, there were times that I heard from friends who had to fly, that they were the only people on the plane. Like there was no one else on the plane. So I'm sure they felt pretty safe. Now, I think you've got to keep in mind that airplane travel is pretty safe.

You know, it's one of the safest ways to travel. It was before the pandemic. You know, there's one of the safest ways to travel. It was before the pandemic. You know, there's always the fear of an accident of some kind. But really, when you consider the millions and millions of miles that are being flown by commercial airliners every day with no accidents, that's a pretty safe way to travel. It used to be the term, flying an airplane is safer than walking. Well, the

concern, of course, in the last year has been, what's the air like in the plane? What's air circulation? And as a result, the question that comes up every once in a while about air travel, where's the best place to sit on a plane is there a preferred seat above all others when it comes to this question of air circulation well keep in mind for starters that airplanes generally have these filters on the on the movement of air within the plane. HEPA filters, high-efficiency particulate air filters. They circulate a mix of fresh and recycled air and minimize exposure to contagious droplets. Now, I'm looking at this article in the Huffington Post,

and it's, you know and it's not bad. Here's the only issue about HEPA filters, and this can make you make a decision about whereabouts on the plane you want to sit. Because as you know, there's a lot of time spent not in the air, but on the ground in airplanes when you first board, the amount of time it takes to get everybody else on board and then the you know the getting ready to move away from the what do you call it the entrance gate the boarding gate when you get to moving away from that to when you taxi out onto the get towards the runway that can

take up a considerable amount of time and some of that time there's no filtration system on when planes aren't in the air that same filtration system we were just talking about a moment ago isn't necessarily running, certainly when you're at the gate. So you may not have the same level of air circulation the way you do during the flight, so that can make you conscious of where you are sitting. There was one airline that for a while anyway, United, was running their air filtration system the whole time. You know, they'd hook up to auxiliary power at the gate

and they'd run it all, all the time. That's expensive. So where do you sit, given that? And given other reasons on the plane. Most experts believe the bigger COVID-19 risk in air travel comes from the time before you even board the plane, thanks to things such as dining at airport restaurants, queuing on board, waiting on a crowded jet bridge.

And that can be a real pain, both getting on and getting off, when you get stuck in that line that people are trying to rush. Anyway, get to the point, Peter. Where to sit. Some airlines responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by keeping all those middle seats empty on their flights. But those days are over. Nobody, I think Delta was the last one to no longer block middle seats. So the window seat is judged to be the safest place to sit

compared to an aisle seat, as you do not have other passengers walking past you at close proximity. Also, choosing a seat near the back of the plane. Now, this is unusual, right? It's not usual that you'll have people say, go to the back of the plane, because the back of the plane, certainly with some aircraft, certainly at altitudes where you're engaged sometimes in some bumpiness, the back of the plane is not a pleasant place to be sitting. It kind of waves around back there. That may be too strong a description, but you know what I mean. The window seat, say the experts, is the safest option due to the direction of airflow within the cabin. Another way to potentially reduce risk could be splurging

or cashing in your points. If you get a lot of points, they do tend to build up fairly quickly, especially with the addition of points accumulated on credit cards. And so this advice is use those points now. Don't save them for some faraway holiday you might take. Use them now and bump up to business class where there's more room, more space,

more likelihood that you're going to be distant from other people. I don't know. Do you want to do that? Do you want to burn off those points now? Or do you want to save them for that holiday in Barbados? We can dream. Make efforts to distance yourself from others. For example, by limiting carry-on baggage, checking in online,

and avoiding crowding into a line while boarding or deplaning. That's that same point again. Stay away from the lines. The importance of washing and sanitizing hands when touching airplane surfaces and trying not to eat or drink during your flight. Why? There's nothing wrong with the food, but you have to keep taking your mask off.

And on airplanes still, masks are a requirement. You have to wear a mask, even in this time of widespread vaccination. Minimize your time in airports. Airports can get crowded. And so can the spaces within airports, you know, like dining areas, areas where you're sitting next to a lot of other people

waiting for the plane to come to your gate. Anyway, most of this is self-explanatory, but I don't know what i took from it window seats and some people hate window seats they don't like the idea of looking down i love them i love window seats so that's not a big change for me but i will keep in mind this issue about getting on and getting off the plane and not being in that crush to do either. You know, we sometimes think, man, we can, you know, I can save 90 seconds by getting up fast and, you know, rushing through in the line to get out.

I think I'll just sit and wait the next time and wait as long as I can before I get on the plane. That can cause problems, obviously. You don't want to cause problems. All right, a little tip. A little tip about air travel. We're going to wrap it up. Tomorrow is Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. The Radish Farmer getting ready.

Don't know what we're going to talk about, but we always find something. And we'll look forward to doing it tomorrow. So enjoy your day. The heat has hit southern Ontario. It's supposed to go up to like 27 or 28 by this afternoon. 29 maybe tomorrow. Summer's here. For a moment, anyway.

Let's see how long it lasts. All right. Watch Ron McLean tonight. Think Glenn Gould when you see him. We'll talk tomorrow. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening to The Bridge. Enjoyable, as always. If you've got anything to say, drop me a note. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.