from Rosie DiManno of the Toronto Star,
There was a time when big-personality NHL coaches walked the Earth and stomped the narrow confines behind team benches.
Pat Burns, on heated occasions, would jump atop the bench to holler at referees or gesticulate menacingly at his opposing number. Or Red Kelly, as well-mannered as they come, deployed pyramid power — placing five plastic pyramids beneath the Maple Leaf bench during the 1976 playoffs against Philadelphia — to blunt their Kate Smith anthem talisman. Can you imagine such colourful silliness and shenanigans today?
What a sober lot the NHL has become.
These are robotic and dim wattage days, depleted of characters on and off the ice. Perhaps because so much of the game has devolved to analytics doffins, hockey sadly following in the footsteps of baseball, worshipping at the altar of arcane eye-glazing metrics, video up the wazoo.
A pair of relics, however, will go cerebrally and charismatically mano a mano on Monday evening at Scotiabank Arena: Mike Babcock versus John Tortorella.
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