  Don Cherry is advocating moving an NHL team to Winnipeg- again. (Brian Donogh/SUN MEDIA) |
These days Don Cherry, when he’s not doing his shtick on Hockey Night in Canada, is the spokesman for a cold medication.
But I’ll bet every time he comes to town he gives everybody over at True North Sports a headache.
Because, inevitably, he’ll say something about the NHL coming back to our city and, inevitably, the folks who own the Manitoba Moose and the downtown arena will issue a terse, “No comment.”
It happened again yesterday, this time on a local radio station. And this time Cherry went one further, suggesting our old friends, the Phoenix Coyotes, could be back in the ’Peg before too long.
Maybe even next year.
The statement was as outlandish as the pink and orange jacket he was wearing at city hall when he made it.
Later, in a downtown hotel room, getting ready to have his daily sauna and dressed like the 75-year-old every-man he really is — rumpled shirt, pinstriped navy pajamas and slippers — Cherry toned it down a tad.
“In a year, you’re really stretching it,” he said. “You can’t put a time limit on it. It’ll happen within five or 10 years.”
What does Cherry base this on?
Not inside information from the NHL. Not any particularly high-flying contacts.
Just his gut.
Like the rest of us, he’s seen NHL commissioner Gary Bettman soften his stance on letting Winnipeg back into his circle of multimillionaire friends, and he sees hockey failing in places where it should never have gone in the first place.
Exhibit A: the Coyotes.
Not only that, Cherry was here on April 28, 1996 — a scene that’s still with him today.
“I remember that last game,” he said. “The sea of white. I know everybody’s got it now. It started here. I don’t remember, ever, seeing more enthusiastic fans. Ever.”
That outpouring of emotion, plus the existence of a nifty 15,000-seat rink on Portage Avenue, provides a better environment for hockey than anything you’ll find in Phoenix, Atlanta or Florida, Cherry says.
He’s right, of course.
But that doesn’t mean there’s a Winnipegger, or a group of them, who wants to write a cheque for $200 million to acquire a bad team — and hope it can attract 15,000-plus every, single night.
“I would bet they can do it here,” Cherry said. “It would be tough, but I’d rather have it here, if I owned the team, than going into Florida, where you know for sure it’s not selling out. At least you have a shot, here.”
And he insists he’s not just blowing smoke up our north end.
“I don’t have to say this,” he said. “I live in Toronto. It’s not like I’m the favourite son of Winnipeg. I don’t go to other places and say this. I really believe it.”
He believes Southern Ontario will get another team, too, probably after someone pays a few hundred million for an expansion franchise.
Winnipeg, he knows, will have to come a little cheaper.
Grapes sees another, more subtle difference in us, too, one he doesn’t like.
We’re more sour.
“The thing I find out here, there’s a lot of negative thoughts,” he said. ‘Whereas in Hamilton, they get kicked in the nuts, 30 years ago, and they’re still, ‘We can do it.’ That’s what you gotta be. You can’t be negative. Gotta keep plugging along.”
Yeah, but our kick in the nuts is more recent, I suggested. We’re still feeling the pain.
Cherry just laughed.
“I’m going to have my sauna,” he said, trundling off in his pajamas and slippers, an ordinary guy, believing something extraordinary is going to happen.
I hope it happens while he’s still alive.
So he can put on one of those loud jackets and say, “I told you so.”
