Sporting Madness

It's remarkable how insane the Vancouver Canucks - Boston Bruins rivalry has become lately following Saturday's Stanley Cup rematch . It's led to everything from fanbase and organizational fights to media going after bloggers who cover the other team to reporters verbally duking it out with opposing players to allegations of media defacing the NHL's media guides merely because a player they didn't like adorned them. There are some serious questions about the media's role in all this, and I talked about some of them this morning in an excellent discussion with Jessica Quiroli and others. Serious discussions aren't a lot of fun, though, so instead, I present one of the wackier ideas that came to mind; rewriting Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" (original quotations available here ) to cover the Vancouver-Boston rivalry, and particularly Boston's Brad Marchand's polarizing hit on Sami Salo and subsequent suspension . Thanks to ...

Today's announcement [ Jose Romero , The Seattle Times ] of Portland as the 18th MLS franchise could mean great things for the league, especially considering how Vancouver was named as the 17th franchise [ Marc Weber , The Province ] on Wednesday. Of course, there are many great reasons behind this pairing, but one of the most interesting is the history between the cities. Way back when Duane first called the race for Vancouver and Portland on March 3 , his MLS source stated that the decision was made due to "stadium plan, political support and geographical factors". The stadium plans and political support are obviously crucial, but much ink has been spilled about them already, so it's those geographical factors that deserve further examination. Vancouver, Portland and Seattle have had a natural soccer rivalry since the days of the old NASL, and that rivalry has carried on through the USL; all three cities had USL teams from 2001-2008, rekindling the old flame. Mor...

Photo: Dave Pratt co-hosting his radio show (photo from the TEAM 1040 website ). This dropped in from out of the blue. The Vancouver Province has terminated its regular column from TEAM 1040 AM broadcaster Dave Pratt after he plagiarized a line from a 2000 Sports Illustrated piece by famed writer Rick Reilly ( now of ESPN ) on U.S. college basketball coach and broadcaster Al McGuire and used it to refer to Bob Cole in a piece published yesterday. For those of you unfamiliar with Pratt, he's one of the most prominent Vancouver sports media personalities: he co-hosts the TEAM's afternoon drive show with Don Taylor of Sportsnet , and an hour of their show is usually televised on Sportsnet Pacific each day (sort of the West Coast version of Prime Time Sports , but without the business focus). Here's the original : "They say he was born 72 years ago last Thursday, but don't believe it. McGuire dropped straight out of Guys and Dolls with a martini in one hand and a b...