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In their image Quinn, Martin define their teams and their cities
Posted: Wednesday April 12, 2000 02:05 AM
By Mike Ulmer, Toronto Sun If Jacques Martin was marooned on a deserted island, he would devise a method to extract phosphorous from the ground, gauge the prevailing wind and use a home-made flare to signal for help. Pat Quinn would hang out a sign, Pat's Pub, and wait for the sailors to arrive. And so, it's not just the Maple Leafs against the Ottawa Senators starting tomorrow night at the Air Canada Centre. It's Pat Quinn against Jacques Martin and if you want to learn about the teams and the cities, you need only look toward the men pacing behind the bench. The Maple Leafs are built along Quinn's specifications. They are rowdy and edgy and entertaining, even on their bad nights. Jacques Martin is careful, bilingual and taciturn. He has adopted the bureaucrat's gift of camouflage as neatly as a green snake in long grass. Pat Quinn brushes his hair with his hand. Jacques Martin uses Varathane. When the Leafs coach grins, his smile takes the rest of his face hostage. We will compare his smile to Jacques Martin's, just as as soon the Ottawa coach cracks his inaugural grin. Martin is perfectly bilingual. Quinn is too if you count cuss words. The Sens have installed the hateful trap and Martin has made it sing. Martin calls it an aggressive trap, although he must worry the nickname is far too inflammatory. Maybe the "kind-of-effective trap" would be a better fit. The Leafs have no name for their game plan. It revolves around this dictum: For God's sake, try to find your way back when the other guys have the puck. Martin is, to everyone's reckoning, a fine coach. Anyone who can turn Radek Bonk into a checker, and accept Tom Barrasso without reservation can sell like Lee Iacocca and forgive like Mother Teresa. Martin speaks in form letter. Ask him about injuries, and he will end the sentence with the words "an opportunity for someone else to step up." Wonder about an opponent, and he will begin his sentence with "They're a good team," even if he is being asked about the 1974-1975 Washington Capitals or whatever club is playing the Harlem Globetrotters that night. Such was the discourse yesterday. According to Martin, the Leafs are a good club, a sound club, and we dare not debate facts that are clearly so explosive. Pat Quinn, on the other hand, dredged up a slash of Alexander Karpovtsev perpetrated by Andreas Johansson in November 1998. Johansson since has moved on to the Calgary Flames and the Tampa Bay Lightning and nobody even remembers what he looks like. Quinn made it sound worse than the Donnelly murders. " I remember one of their players broke Karpovtsev's arm last year," Quinn said, stunning the usual gaggle of eagle-eyed scribes gathered around him. "Karpovtsev might not remember but I do. I'm not allowed to break anyone's arm behind the bench." Quinn is still riled about the incident which, it turns out, was witnessed by Colin Campbell, the league's high priest of discipline. Johansson was tagged with a two-minute minor for slashing, Karpovtsev was lost for more than a month. And why wasn't Johansson, that wicked, wicked Swede, punished? "Because he (Karpovtsev) is a Russian," Quinn said. Quinn was absolutely right ... Karpovtsev had no recollection of who broke his thumb. As for the Swede getting off lucky because he hit a godless Russian, Karpovtsev shrugged. "I believe it because anything is possible," he said. "Sometimes some people prefer another country or another player. I can't say exactly, but it is possible." Alexander Karpovtsev still holds his rank from the KGB. He is supposed to speak like that. But had Quinn heard that tepid answer, he might have fined his sorry butt. Now a cynic would say Quinn is manipulating the media, sending us on a chase that involves a former Senator and a long since healed wrist and the supposed prejudice of the hockey power structure. He would have us believe Pat Quinn lays out a list of red herrings like bait on a wharf, before each news conference. Here's how it works in Pat Quinn's world. He feels like saying something, he honestly believes it, so he says it. Quinn has long since believed Russian players are subject to a higher standard of bigotry and he should know, having imported the sublime Igor Larionov and the prostrate Vladimir Krutov to Vancouver in 1989. Does anyone really believe the Philadelphia Flyers don't crash the crease, as Quinn accused them of doing on the first day of the Leafs-Flyers series last year? Has anyone who watched Curtis Joseph work through a meteor shower in his goal since the all-star break found Quinn's complaints about the current round of goalie crashing groundless? Quinn's remarks are self-serving all right, just like the run-around you get from the bureaucrat at the federal 1-800 number and the numbing banalities in which Jacques Martin trades. Everybody uses code. Pat Quinn's code just happens to be the truth. Click here for more hockey coverage at
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