The winner on Sunday night: Football.
The game itself. The matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills. The fabulous spectacle that can be the National Football League. Unless you’re emotionally attached to one of the teams involved.
Should the Chiefs win the AFC championship, they will go the Super Bowl for a third straight time. That’s a story by itself. Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid, the amazing quarterback-coach combination. Nobody has ever won three Super Bowls in a row.
Not the Terry Bradshaw Steelers. Not the Tom Brady Patriots. Not the Troy Aikman Cowboys. Nobody.
And that’s without getting into any of the Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift attention.
Josh Allen is the most explosive player in the NFL. A Superman figure, who can almost leap tall buildings in a single bound. He is that terrific. He is almost impossible to stop.
The Chiefs don’t lose often. They lost to the Bills in each of the past two regular seasons. But Buffalo lost in the playoffs in Kansas City last year and have lost post-season to the Chiefs before that.
In Mahomes’ past 22 starts at quarterback, the Chiefs are 21-1. The one loss was against the Bills. But the Chiefs have this inner belief and understanding of how to win close games. They won six times this season by three points or less. All of those games were in jeopardy late. But t Chiefs found a way to win each time.
Now it will be either the Chiefs or Bills in the Super Bowl. There is no wrong answer here. This would be Buffalo’s first Super Bowl trip in 31 years. The first since they lost that still remarkable four in a row. This would be the first for Allen at quarterback and the first for Sean McDermott, the head coach who would have had to beat Sean Payton, John Harbaugh and Reid in consecutive weeks to get to the big game.
There is no real loser here for fans of football. This game has everything. The Super Bowl has a built-in narrative either way. Just sit back and enjoy the show.
THIS AND THAT
Statistically, there is almost nothing to choose between Mikko Rantanen, the pending free agent traded on Friday night and Mitch Marner, the pending Leafs free agent. Marner has scored at 1.12 points per game in his career, Rantanen at 1.1 during his time in Colorado. The big difference between the two: Post-season performance. Rantanen has 101 playoff points, twice as many as Marner, who has scored at a 71-point pace in the post-season. But ask yourself this: If both become free agents on July 1, who should the Maple Leafs spend their money on? Rantanen is 6-foot-4 and 215 pounds. Marner, bless him, four inches shorter, 45 pounds lighter. The contracts both will sign will be quite similar. But Rantanen has the greater resume to date … Carolina made a bold move sending the emerging Martin Necas to the Avalanche in a complicated deal involving the Chicago Blackhawks. Necas is having his best season, scoring at just better than an 80-point pace. Rantanen was a 100-point guy the past two seasons, playing with Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar … It wasn’t a case of Colorado not being able to afford Rantanen. It was a case of them choosing that they couldn’t pay him what he was asking for … What in hell are the Blackhawks doing? They held all the cards as power broker in the making of this Colorado-Carolina blockbuster. The deal doesn’t happen, salary cap-wise, without their involvement. And all they got for it was a third-round draft pick and the opportunity to rid themselves of Taylor Hall. Poor Hall has gone from first pick overall in the draft, to MVP in Jersey, to not being wanted necessarily in Buffalo, Arizona, Boston and now Chicago.
HEAR AND THERE
Almost every day in the Big Smoke, I hear rumblings about a centre the Leafs will be acquiring near the trade deadline. The question from the other side: What do they have to offer that anybody wants? They don’t have a first-round pick this year? Their best prospects — defenceman Ben Danford, forwards Easton Cowan and Fraser Minten — may not be all that coveted. To pick up a Ryan O’Reilly or a Brock Nelson, they need to have something a rebuilding team would want. GM Brad Treliving has his work cut out for him here. He knows what he needs, but he can’t trade the Core Four, shouldn’t trade Chris Tanev, Jake McCabe or Oliver Ekman-Larsson. Can’t trade Morgan Reilly. Shouldn’t trade Matthew Knies or Bobby McMann. That leaves what to move out for quality? … And really, this is the year to go all-in in the East. The East has never been this open or this weak. Which is probably why the Hurricanes made the move for Rantanen. Question is: If they couldn’t sign Jake Guentzel last summer, who says they can sign Rantanen now? … My belief: The New York Rangers don’t have to make any trades of significance to make the playoffs. They have Igor Shesterkin. He’s 6-0-1 in January with a 1.39 goals against average and a .948 save percentage. Would you want to play Shesterkin in a playoff series? … The Tampa Bay Lightning may have the best top of the roster in hockey, with Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov, Guentzel, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Anthony Cirelli and Brayden Point. But the bottom of its roster may be among the weakest in hockey. The Bolts are paying now for their championship runs and loss of draft picks along the way … True story: I got to play in a media game outdoors when the Maple Leafs played at the Big House in Michigan several years ago. Somehow, I wound up at right wing on a line centred by NHL PR man Dave Keon Jr. I looked at him and told him: It was always a dream of mine as a kid to play on a line centred by Dave Keon. He didn’t laugh. I did after I scored the first two goals of the game, Charlie Simmer specials, both of them, on assists from Keon Jr.
SCENE AND HEARD
What got attention: One idiot Hall of Fame voter didn’t include Ichiro Suzuki on his baseball ballot. Just one. What should have gotten more attention: In a world where nobody seems to agree about anything, 393 of 394 voters all saw Ichiro as a Hall of Famer. He got 99.7% of the votes from the baseball writers. In what world do 99.7% of people agree on anything? … I voted for Ichiro and for CC Sabathia and both will be inducted into Cooperstown. I also voted for Andruw Jones, Carlos Beltran and Omar Vizquel, none of whom got enough votes for selection. My son asked a good question yesterday: How is Sabathia in the Hall when Curt Schilling is not? Schilling was the better pitcher. Sabathia was the better guy. They were not on the ballots simultaneously,so the comparison was never made. But statistically, Schilling belongs in the Hall, no matter how miserable a person he may have been … Here’s hoping that when the Classic Baseball Era committee gets together to vote on players passed over as Hall of Famers, they find a way to include Carlos Delgado’s name on the ballot and eventually find a way to elect him. The list of those shut out by the Hall, and possibly deserving of induction, includes Don Mattingly, Luis Tiant, Lou Whittaker and Tommy John … The Blue Jays fans are funny. They’re excited about an apparent pursuit of free agent Max Scherzer, who is all of 40 years old and managed to get through 88 innings, as a starter, the past two seasons … I have difficulty with voting closers into the Hall of Fame unless they are Mariano Rivera. Billy Wagner was just voted in. He pitched 903 innings in his career, over 16 big-league seasons. Jones, the former Braves centre fielder, came up 35 votes short of election. He played the outfield about as well as anyone has ever played the outfield. Over 17 seasons, he played in more than 19,000 major league innings, won 10 Gold Gloves in a row (Roberto Clemente won 12). How is it that a pitcher of 903 innings is more Hall of Fame worthy than a brilliant outfielder with 19,000-plus innings, with 453 home runs and a career OPS of .823? … What’s exciting about Anthony Santander as a Blue Jay? He hit more home runs last season than everyone in baseball not named Aaron Judge or Shohei Ohtani. What’s not so exciting: He makes George Bell look like a Gold Glover in left field and he runs the bases with all the acumen of Alejandro Kirk.
AND ANOTHER THING
The suspension conversation nobody had: A well-meaning patron purchased the apparent trip of a lifetime in a charity golf tournament auction last summer. The auction win included flights to Edmonton, tickets to an Oilers game, dinner out with hockey personalities, an in-person meeting with Connor McDavid and, ironically, an autographed Connor Garland cap. The winning bid was around $10,000. The winner paid all that and never banked on McDavid being suspended for the game … What a guy, Corey Perry. One day he is talking about how the NHL has to do more to protect its superstars. The next day, he’s going after Canucks star Quinn Hughes, unprotected on the ice … With so much talk about the officials favouring the Kansas City Chiefs, you can almost bet they won’t get a break of any kind from the flag-throwers on Sunday … The Toronto Sceptres are first in attendance in the PWHL and last in the standings … This is all you need to know about the KHL. Josh Leivo is running away with the scoring title … Jamal Murray, who had a dreadful Olympics for Team Canada, is back playing his kind of basketball with the Denver Nuggets. When the Nuggets won the NBA title, Murray averaged 20 points a game that season. This year, he’s averaging 19.7 … Another lost Olympian who’s been found this NBA season: Raptors backup Kelly Olynyk. He looked terrible in Paris. He’s been a nice contributor in this Raptors season going nowhere …Men’s tennis was the best sport in the world when Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic were in their prime. But I have almost no interest in a Jannik Sinner-Alexander Zverev Australian Open final on Sunday. We were spoiled with all those years of tennis royalty … There are few sports as unpredictable as women’s tennis. The Aussie Open has had five different champions the past six years. Both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open have had six different champions in their events the past six years. Individual sports are better when one athlete dominates … Mainstream fighting has all but disappeared from hockey and it’s easy to understand why. Ryan Reaves had a tremendous hockey fight with Mathieu Olivier. A real old-style classic. How did it impact the crowd or the game? It didn’t, in any way at all … Tommy McVie, who may have coached two of the worst teams in NHL history, one in Washington one in Winnipeg, passed away the other day. He was a treasure of an old-school hockey man, with a raspy, scratchy voice, a huge personality and full of funny stories. He was the kind of character you couldn’t invent and he made this job better … As someone who grew up consumed by Ken Read and the Crazy Canucks, it’s more than incredible to see Jack Crawford, who skis out of Georgian Peaks in Collingwood, win the famed downhill at Kitzbuehel on Saturday. And with another Canadian, Vancouver’s Cameron Alexander finishing third. The previous time a Canadian won Kitzbuehel was 42 years ago. The skier, Todd Brooker … Only in the NHL does this happen: Necas gets traded Friday night to Colorado. On Saturday afternoon, he’s playing for the Avalanche. If this were the NBA or MLB, he’d be taking his sweet time in reporting to his new team. Never mind that the Avalanche lost 3-1 to Boston and Necas was minus-3 … Happy birthday to Wayne Gretzky (64), Vince Carter (48), Rick Bowness (70), Dale McCourt (68), Philippe Myers (28), Scott Milanovich (52), Chris Chelios (63), Sebastian Giovinco (38), Carl Elder (83), Manti Te’-o (34), Honky Tonk Man (72) and Milt Stegall (55) … And hey, whatever became of Paul Stastny?
X: @simmonssteve