Wayner proves he's been a Weener all along

Back in the day, when a lot of beer guzzling mullet-heads in rec-rooms across this great nation watched Hockey Night in Canada religiously, we referred to The Great One as "Wayner," or the Trumpesque "The Wayner," and later in the evening, after a few beers and maybe a bottle toke or two had taken the edge off our religious experience, "Weener."

We were a million Bob and Doug Mackenzies in basements across the land, and the day Peter Pocklington sold The Great One to Bruce McNall, we wept as one.

Both McNall and Pocklington ended up in jail, but not for the crime of trading Wayne Gretzky to the Kings.

For his part, Wayne got over his betrayal by Peter Puck and struck up a bromance with McNall. Today's news that he's endorsing Big Steve shouldn't come as a shock. As great as he was as a hockey player, he's consistently been a failure as a judge of character.




Seems The Wayner's been a Weener all along...

Ranger's GM Sather flouts NYC smoking laws with impunity

I used to put Glamorous Glen Sather right up there with Brian Burke as one of the worst General Managers in the hockey business. Now that his Rangers are in the second round I guess I could just shut up. At least as far as comparing him to the hapless Burke is concerned.

After all, you're not seeing Burke's Leafs in the second round, are you?.. or the first, come to think of it.

But lucky for me I've found a new quibble with Sather, the GM who has milked his association with Wayne Gretzky for more than anyone ever imagined possible.

After all, it was The Great One who brought those Stanleys to Edmonton.

It wasn't Glen.

But Glen is sitting fat and happy in New York City. When I see him on the TV, he's usually sitting in his suite at the Madison Square Garden.

Fat, happy, infinitely pleased with himself as always, and puffing on a jumbo stogie.

Wait a minute! He's smoking a cigar in Madison Square Garden?

Isn't that against the law?

Doesn't New York City boast some of the most progressive anti-smoking legislation in the land?

Last I heard you can't light up a Marlboro within ten blocks of a playground for fear that the juvenile delinquents setting the playground equipment on fire might get the idea that it's OK to smoke.

Bloomberg is dead set against that sort of contamination of juvenile minds.

But tune in the latest Rangers game and there's the Supreme Leader puffing on his Cuban cigar (and there's a whole 'nother blog-post; is Sather a secret commie symp?) with utterly no repercussions whatsoever!

Wake up, Mayor Bloomberg! This man is sending millions of impressionable young hockey fans down the road of nicotine addiction, and you're not doing a damned thing about it?

Send those by-law enforcement officers into the MSG tonight.

I'll be watching.

Celebrating great entrepreneurs - Peter Pocklington

In May of 1979 I watched Wayne Gretzky in the penultimate game in the history of the WHA. Next game was in Winnipeg. Wayne's team lost, the Jets won the Avco cup. By September the WHA was no more, and both the Jets and the Oilers were in the NHL.

Peter Pocklington owned the Oilers. He owned a lot of stuff back in the day. You could hardly get through the business section of the paper without reading about Peter Pocklington. The slobbering sycophancy of the Canadian business press was so over the top it was embarrassing. High school drop-out makes good. One of the richest men in Canada... yadah yadah blah blah blah. Day after day, the greatness of Peter Puck.

(A quick p.s. to any investor types who may peruse this; said press is still on with the over the top stuff. A quick countervailing opinion: short RIM big time. There is no possible way they can compete with Google and Apple in the long run. However, they are a sturdy little company with a lot of patents etc, so you can bet that before they go through the floor somebody (I'm guessing Google) will scoop them up at a nice premium to share price, so hedge your bets with a pile of call options. You're welcome.)

As he was rocketing into the ranks of the entrepreneurial elite, at least in the minds of most Canadian business journalists, he picked up a mid-size meat-packer called Gainers, I suppose to complement his collection of sports franchises, trust companies, and car dealerships. I think it's called 360 degree integration.  Over-leveraged out the ying-yang in a time of rising interest rates, Pocklington decided to do what every self-respecting entrepreneur would do under such circumstances; fuck the workers.

Now, slaughterhouse work is a shit job no matter how you look at it. It's always cold. It's always wet. You're up to your knees in animal guts all day long. I frankly don't know how anybody can do it for ten minutes. But people did it. And over the years, the union that represented those people had won them wages that would at least enable a half-decent life. So you put in your daily eight hours in hell, but you could go home to a modest bungalow in the suburbs,  feed your family, pay your mortgage, and save for your children's education to make sure they never had to do what you did.

Pocklington had a vision. Bust the union! Why should a business genius like him pay union wages? After all, somewhere on this planet there's gotta be people willing to do the job for less. True entrepreneurial thinking. There followed one of the most violent and divisive strikes that Canada has seen in the last half century.

Long story short, Pocklington won. Slaughterhouse work in Canada today is marginally above minimum wage and done mostly by recent immigrants. There was a picture in the paper recently, eight Somali's living in a little company owned trailer outside one of the big meat plants. They're grinning like they won the lottery. And they did! Instead of starving to death in some African refugee camp, they're making more money than they ever dreamed of. Sure, they'll never own a bungalow in Edmonton, but what the hell, times change.

Don't know what happened to the original Gainers crew, but that's their problem I suppose. As for Peter Pocklington, he's gone bankrupt a couple of times. Wasn't ever one of the richest men in Canada after all. Just finished a six month spell of house arrest for bankruptcy fraud.

The Gainers workers arrested on the picket line while trying to save their livelihoods got far harsher sentences.