{"id":938962,"date":"2026-10-19T15:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T15:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/938962\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T15:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T15:48:10","slug":"monday-morning-halfback-canadian-tennis-mckennas-benching-and-questioning-an-mlb-lockout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/938962\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Morning Halfback: Canadian tennis, McKenna\u2019s benching and questioning an MLB lockout"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Gabriela Dabrowski of Canada and Luisa Stefani of Brazil won their second doubles tennis title in a week after taking the Wuhan Open on Sunday. Dabrowski has been a part of six doubles titles this season and has 26 over her career.Di Yin\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Jamie Ross is the Globe\u2019s Sports editor; Cathal Kelly is the national sports columnist.<\/p>\n

Jamie Ross: Cathal, Gabriela Dabrowski won her second doubles title in a week<\/a> on the WTA circuit with her partner Luisa Stefani. They took the China and Wuhan Opens back-to-back. That gives her six titles this season and 26 over her career. Whatever happened to that golden era of Canadian tennis we were supposed to be enjoying, where did everybody else go?<\/p>\n

Cathal Kelly: I think what you\u2019re asking me is \u2018Should Tennis Canada secede?\u2019 As best I can tell, that\u2019s the answer to everything these days. <\/p>\n

Maybe ask the Americans for their support. They love a financially remunerative revolutionary opportunity. Get a few Russian hackers working on the case, and now you\u2019ve got yourself a real grassroots Canadian movement. \u2018Make Tennis 2019 Again\u2019. <\/p>\n

I will grant you that it\u2019s not what it was back when Canadians were making Wimbledon finals and winning U.S. Opens, but let\u2019s attempt some proportion here. It\u2019s still pretty golden. <\/p>\n

I can remember a time when just hearing a Canadian\u2019s name at a major tournament felt like a \u2018Who? US?\u2019 moment. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve still got Dabrowski, F\u00e9lix Auger-Aliassime (ranked fifth in the world) and Victoria Mboko (16th). That\u2019s not a bad line-up. England or Australia would swap with us in a second. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s been missing recently is a long march into the very late stages of a grand slam. I\u2019m waiting for Auger-Aliassime to be the guy who does that. He\u2019s one of the very rare pros I keep my fingers crossed for. <\/p>\n

If he or any of the others do that once, the \u2018golden era\u2019 stuff will be back in a big way. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Toronto Maple Leafs rookie Gavin McKenna, left, was benched during his team’s loss to the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday.Nathan Denette\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

While we\u2019re on golden eras, the Leafs\u2019 new one hasn\u2019t lasted long. Losses are one thing, but besmirching the reputation of their next future non-Stanley-Cup-winning hall of famer is another. Where were you when Toronto benched Gavin McKenna<\/a>?<\/p>\n

J.R.: Oh god, this again. I kicked us off with Dabrowksi because I thought to myself, \u2018There is no way Cathal can bring this back to the Maple Leafs.\u2019 I am a fool. <\/p>\n

Is it really that big a deal that McKenna, a rookie, rode the pine for a night against the Sabres? I checked out the time-on-ice stats from Saturday\u2019s loss to the Islanders and he clocked the third-most among forwards. <\/p>\n

C.K.: I don\u2019t know how they did your Globe intake, but were you left with an impression that this is a government job? <\/p>\n

Here on the private side of media, we give the people what they want, not what we think they should need. <\/p>\n

And what the people want is for new Leafs coach Jim Hiller to be ejected from Toronto with great force, since he clearly doesn\u2019t get how things work up here. <\/p>\n

Benching McKenna was one thing. I\u2019m not sure how it helped, since he wasn\u2019t on the ice for the team\u2019s late collapse that night. <\/p>\n

The issue was the way in which Hiller handled the benching. He couldn\u2019t or wouldn\u2019t explain why he was upset at McKenna. Then, when asked how he\u2019d played, said, \u201cHe was okay.\u201d<\/p>\n

This kind of passive aggressive weirdness might work in L.A. (though it didn\u2019t for Hiller). In a Canadian market, it creates hysteria. <\/p>\n

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Toronto Maple Leafs head coach Jim Hiller, top left, caught the ire of fans when he opted to sit rookie Gavin McKenna (92) on Thursday in the team’s loss to the Buffalo Sabres.Sammy Kogan\/The Canadian Press<\/p>\n

It\u2019d be one thing if McKenna had been a mess out there from the start of the year. But he\u2019s been somewhere between fine and good. What was the point of embarrassing him? Shades of Hiller\u2019s former boss, Mike Babcock, there. <\/p>\n

Even more hilariously, I think Hiller thinks that it\u2019s over now that McKenna has publicly shrugged it off. In Toronto, it\u2019s never over. <\/p>\n

End of rant. You tell me what you want to talk about. Is there a charity darts league you\u2019d like to highlight?<\/p>\n

J.R.: What Babcock did to Mitch Marner, privately asking him to rank teammates in order of laziness, and then sewering him in front of the entire team by sharing said list, was deliberately cruel. <\/p>\n

What Hiller did was less Babcock, more Blue Jays CEO Mark Shapiro, who once balked at calling Vlad Guerrero Jr. a generational player before giving him a half-billion dollar contract. See what I did there? One minute we\u2019re on your 20th take of the Leafs season, and just like that, onto baseball, where the mighty Dodgers will not repeat<\/a> in the Fall Classic after being humiliated by the Brewers in the Championship Series. <\/p>\n

Does this mean we no longer need to worry about a lockout, since it\u2019s now been proven that limitless money doesn\u2019t mean making it to the World Series? No salary cap fight after all?<\/p>\n

C.K.: This was never about rationality. It\u2019s about money, and the owners hanging on to as much of it as they can. That said, I suspect a salary cap is a bridge too far for the players. <\/p>\n

My lockout guess is that spring training gets cancelled, but that there is a breakthrough around the time that the season is meant to start. What does that look like? Salary cap-lite. Ceilings, but not basements \u2013 because the Miamis and Clevelands of MLB don\u2019t want to be told they have to increase spending to a minimum. Something that looks like a salary cap, but isn\u2019t called a salary cap. <\/p>\n

Then a quickie warm-up and an egregious, injury-filled April\/May. Then they can fight about that, too. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

The Milwaukee Brewers spoiled the L.A. Dodgers’ three-peat bid, sweeping them out of the National League Championship Series on Thursday.Luke Hales\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

My favourite thing this week was only tangentially sports related \u2013 Mark Zuckerberg vs. a pint of Guinness<\/a>. Can you trust someone who doesn\u2019t enjoy God\u2019s Irish elixir?<\/p>\n

J.R.: You cannot. <\/p>\n

It looked like he had a mouthful of Listerine. Thank goodness they didn\u2019t ask him to \u2018Split the G.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Speaking of Zuck, I took in The Social Reckoning Saturday night. Totally forgettable and average. Pass on it if you\u2019ve not already wasted your money. One thing that stood out on my going to and from the theatre, however, was that I saw five different men wearing sweat pants. And these weren\u2019t attempts at street style or \u2018athleisure\u2019, not that that would be a good enough excuse to wear sweats in public. <\/p>\n

They looked like the kind of pants you wear on the sofa during a The Sopranos binge. In the past in this space we\u2019ve made pit stops on dress sneakers and shorts, so tell me, where do you stand on sweat pants? <\/p>\n

I refuse to dress down when I travel. In fact, it\u2019s time to get fancy<\/a><\/p>\n

C.K.: It\u2019s right there in the name. Are you planning on sweating in these things? <\/p>\n

If not, don\u2019t wear them out to dinner. If you are both going to dinner and planning to sweat, Google \u2018hyperhydrosis<\/a>\u2019. There are effective treatments. <\/p>\n

Every time I say anything about these topics \u2013 shorts, dress sneakers, et al \u2013 my inbox swells. It\u2019s mostly people taking offence, but I have a few fellow travellers fighting back against Big Sloppy. A few dedicated individuals ready to be the change they want to see in the world \u2013 this is how Lenin got his start. <\/p>\n

The pandemic was a long time ago. Everybody had fun letting themselves go. Now it\u2019s time to let yourself back in. Even if that requires letting your old pants out. <\/p>\n

That said, everybody should do as they like. I encourage more middle-aged men to go out in public looking like they were dressed by their moms. It just means more jobs for me. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Gabriela Dabrowski of Canada and Luisa Stefani of Brazil won their second doubles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":938963,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[49,48,321809,82],"class_list":["post-938962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mondaymorninghalfback","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=938962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/938962\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/938963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=938962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=938962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=938962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}