Regular game, historic broadcast

“It’s gameday in Calgary and with puck drop still a few hours away, 29 women gather at centre ice. A freshly-cleaned sheet glistens beneath heels and work boots and sneakers. The soft sounds of careful shuffling and chatter and laughter carry through the empty Scotiabank Saddledome stands that will soon house fans.”

 

Emily Sadler – Sportsnet – March 2020

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The Game Inside the Game

“I got into basketball the way some people get into drugs or religion: during a bad time, as a means of cheap transcendence. This was a few years ago, in the middle of a dark and difficult winter, when I was feeling particularly vulnerable—deep in the kind of permeable, thin-skinned state that best primes a person to join a cult.”

 

Emma Healey – Hazlitt – February 2020

The power of Paul Bissonnette

“As he devours his order – filet mignon cooked to medium with two salad appetizers – Bissonnette’s frenetic mind jumps from one subject to the next: hockey, politics, sex, hockey. When I ask if we can dig into an interview, he demurs. There’s lots of time. We can get to the questions in my notebook later. ‘We have a big few days ahead,’ he says.”

Jamie Ross – The Globe and Mail – February 2020

She was a running prodigy. He was the most powerful man in track. How her promising career unravelled

“Mr. Scott-Thomas was in luck: the mysterious prodigy went to St. James Catholic High School, just up the road from his office in Guelph. He’d found his first raw yet pure talent. She would be his to mould. But Ms. Brown did not go on to lead the University of Guelph to a championship. She did not represent Canada at the Olympic Games. Instead, it was the beginning of a relationship that would destroy both Ms. Brown’s and Mr. Scott-Thomas’s careers in running, albeit years apart.”

 

Michael Doyle – The Globe and Mail – February 2020

The Template

“Like every kid on the ice with his under-18 team, Jack Hughes has never known hockey without Sidney Crosby. They were lacing on skates for the first time when Sidney Crosby was in Rimouski. They were in junior kindergarten when he was in his rookie season in Pittsburgh, in Grade 3 when he hoisted the Stanley Cup for the first time. More than they can know, they’re playing a game that Sidney Crosby created or, at least, remade.”

Gare Joyce – Sportsnet – November 2019

Nice Guy Finishes First

“Apparently, Masai Ujiri likes torturing himself. At the moment, it’s not clear why. We’re in Studio K-O, a box-fit training facility on King Street west of Bathurst. Not 20 minutes ago, having just landed on a delayed flight from Chicago, Ujiri drove up in a black Chevy Suburban. In the change room he donned shorts and zipped a camo-patterned nylon hoodie to his neck. Now, his hands encased in 12-ounce boxing gloves, his playlist of Nigerian Afrobeat music throbbing around him, Ujiri pounds the thick mitts his trainer wears on her hands as she moves around the room calling out punch combinations. He repeats each combo 15 or 20 times for 30 minutes, giving it everything he has, while his trainer introduces footwork and body movement to mimic a fight. Halfway through, he’s hanging off a heavy bag like a man clinging to life itself.”

Trevor Cole – Toronto Life – November 2019

Death at Howse Peak: How three climbers perished on an Alberta mountain

“Although Howse Peak is little known beyond the climbing world, adventurers regard it as one of Canada’s most inhospitable and unassailable mountains. It looks unapproachable from the Icefields Parkway, like a quilt nature patched together from diabolical elements. It has a sheer, 1,300-metre-tall striated grey wall, and unsteady rocks as sharp as razor blades. In winter, there is deep snow and a glacier to traverse. Hundreds of cornices hang from ledges all over its upper reaches. Shards of ice cling to cliffs. Along its sides, skinny remnants of avalanches look like fingers that clawed their way down.”

 

Marty Klinkenberg – The Globe and Mail – November 2019

First of her kind

“That Huitema is so comfortable is especially great to see given she faces the most daunting task in Canadian soccer history: Following in Sinclair’s incredible footsteps. The 18-year-old happens to play the same position as her favourite player — they’re both B.C. born strikers with a penchant for goal-scoring. But once Sinclair calls it a career, how can Huitema hope to follow the greatest ever for Canada? The five-foot-11 product of Chilliwack has it figured out. She’s going her own way and blazing a new trail for soccer players in this country.”

Kristina Rutherford – Sportsnet – August 2019

Behind the scenes of the NBA 2K League, where Toronto chases more hoops glory

“At the 2K League’s inaugural draft in 2018, NBA commissioner Adam Silver told reporters at Madison Square Garden that his league was about to welcome “a new generation of athletes” – more than a hundred video gamers who play a variation of basketball at an elite level, and who therefore would be considered members of the NBA in their own right.”

 

Nick Faris – theScore – July 2019

The Hustler

“One game is every game for Brendan Gallagher. It’s almost as if the Montreal Canadiens right winger skates in front of a green screen, performing the same actions over and over while the images change behind him. It doesn’t matter whether he’s playing in Boston, home of a blood rival, or in California on a once-a-year trip. Or if it’s in front of empty seats in Arizona or at home in the ever-humming Bell Centre. To No. 11, every sheet of ice is the same and the job he has to do doesn’t change.”

Ryan Dixon – Sportsnet – December 2018