SIMMONS SAYS: Dylan Larkin is crazy to veto a trade to the Canadiens

Dylan Larkin is a fool.

He has played 11 years in the National Hockey League with a Detroit Red Wings team going nowhere. And during that time, he played five playoff games as a rookie and hasn’t played in one since.

Demanding to be traded was not a poor decision, even though he had agreed to a no-trade clause in his contract years earlier. But refusing to be dealt to the Montreal Canadiens? Now that is hockey nonsense at its finest.

What do you want as a professional athlete, aside from stability and money? You want success. You want the opportunity to win. You want to be paid. You want to live in a great city.

With Larkin and Nick Suzuki at centre on the same team, the Montreal Canadiens would be as equipped as any team east of Edmonton up the middle. Playing together in Montreal, the two Olympians would be complementing each other in probably the greatest hockey market in the sport. In the best home building. Montreal is a city that lives and breathes hockey.

This should be the dream come true for any hockey player — American or not — looking to discover new life after living through the death of Hockeytown.

The Canadiens are Stanley Cup contenders, even without Larkin or a second-line centre of significance.

With him, they would be among the Cup favourites in the East, right alongside the previous champions in Carolina and Florida. Where most players would want to be.

THIS AND THAT

The last thing the Maple Leafs need are unnecessary issues. You get enough of those being around Toronto without them being real. The benching of Gavin McKenna was creating an issue when there wasn’t one in the first place. It was amateur hour for coach Jim Hiller. And it was completely unnecessary … In his short time coaching the Los Angeles Kings, Hiller was known for making unusual or erratic decisions. And then he had trouble explaining them, which is what happened on Thursday night with the McKenna benching. There are occasions when chopping ice time can be used for teaching purposes with a young player and a growing coach. This wasn’t one of those times … This tells you how troubled the Maple Leafs are defensively: Sergei Bobrovsky has started five games in goal, played rather well in four of them, but he’s won just once and has a career-high goals against average of 3.34 heading into Saturday night … Jack Quinn put up four points against the Leafs on Thursday night and also had a fight, which, after the game, prompted the question to coach Lindy Ruff, who had 89 NHL fights in his day: “Did you ever score four points in a game?” Without missing a beat, Ruff proudly said: “I once scored four goals in a game.” He did, you can look it up, playing for Buffalo, against Quebec, in 1985. He finished that season with 24 points … On any list of the top centres to ever play in the NHL, one statistic stands out: Almost all centres finish with fewer goals than they do assists in their careers. Which tells you how unusual the career of Auston Matthews has been to date. Of centres in the Hockey Hall of Fame, only Joe Nieuwendyk in the modern era scored more goals, 564, than assists, 562. Mostly it goes the other way. The great Phil Esposito, who finished his career with 1,590 points, had 717 goals but still managed 873 assists. Matthews, to date, has 434 goals and just 359 assists. Sidney Crosby, for example, has 453 more assists than he has goals and Connor McDavid, with one more year than Matthews has played, has 412 more assists than goals. In 11 NHL seasons, Matthews has had more assists than goals in just one of them.

HEAR AND THERE

When the McKenna benching hit the news, I thought of the late Leo Cahill, the long-time coach and GM of the Argos, back when the Boatmen truly mattered. He would walk into the Argos office in the morning and his assistant, Blackie Johnston, would turn to him and say: “Coach, do we have a crisis today?” And Leo would answer: “No, but we’re going to create one.” Those were the days of fighting for space in newspapers’ sports sections. Those fabulous days long gone … Rick Bowness has some Cahill in him. Unfortunately, it’s not helping him or the Columbus Blue Jackets. Bowness’ verbal explosions have become more distraction than improvement with the struggling Jackets. It’s best he calm it down — or perhaps return to retirement in Florida … Both Boston and Montreal made pitches for Kirill Marchenko before the Leafs acquired him from Columbus. His hat trick on Thursday showed what Marchenko can do at his best. While immensely talented, some other nights he has lived up to the William Nylander-lite tag some scouts have put on him … The Bruins are off to an amazing 6-2 start, which is even more impressive when you consider they played their first six games without stud blue-liner Charlie McAvoy … The more comfortable Darren Raddysh has gotten on the Leafs blueline, the better he has played. I do wish he had a little more selfish in him. He has that giant slap shot. He needs to use it more often . If ranking the best centres of all time, who comes right after Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux? Is it Crosby, McDavid or Jean Beliveau? After that who’s next, Esposito or Mark Messier? Steve Yzerman, Joe Sakic or Stan Mikita? Where do you put Bobby Clarke and Bryan Trottier or Leon Draisaitl, Marcel Dionne or Evgeni Malkin? You could eat wings and drink Diet Coke — or whatever it is you drink — all day long discussing that one. Looking forward to Dan Robson’s upcoming book on the top 100 players, if only for the arguments.

SCENE AND HEARD

Did you know that Florida Panthers general manager Bill Zito was the bat boy for the Milwaukee Brewers the only time they went to the World Series? Paul Molitor and Robin Yount happened to be on that 1982 team … Crazy baseball numbers: The Brewers were last in the National League in home runs. They hit just two more than the Blue Jays. Heading to the World Series, the Brewers are first in the playoffs with 10 home runs. The Jays hit 28 post-season homers last year and still lost the Series after late-inning blasts were hit by Max Muncy, Miguel Rojas and Will Smith … Pat Murphy is the first baseball manager to take a team to the College World Series and the pro World Series … Imagine having a boss such as Houston Astros owner Jim Crane. You’re the assistant pitching coach. Another major-league team calls and asks for permission to talk to you for another job and the owner says no. That’s what happened to Ethan Katz, the Astros’ assistant pitching coach. Four days later, the owner fired him … A year ago, Trey Yesavage was baseball’s newest phenom. He jumped four levels in one season, pitched his way to two World Series starts and struck out 12 in Game 5. And here we are, one year later, and I wonder, as you probably do: What is Yesavage now? And will he have a great career or just a great beginning? … It has been 11 years since Mark Shapiro and Ross Atkins left Cleveland to become president and general manager, respectively, of the Blue Jays. In those 11 years, the Guardians have been in the playoffs eight times, winning five rounds, and right now playing to go to the World Series. The Jays have been in the post-season five times in the Shapiro-Atkins years, four times as a wild-card entry … In Shapiro’s final 14 years in Cleveland, the team made the playoffs once … I can hear my grandmother explaining Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s eye surgery to me, as only she could. “It couldn’t hurt,” she’d say.

AND ANOTHER THING

Sam McDowell passed away recently. He was a pretty talented major-league pitcher — once traded for Gaylord Perry — who lost his wife, his family and most of his money to booze. He later recovered and became a drug/alcohol/all around counsellor for the Blue Jays. He was a wonderful story-teller and fun to be around. What most people didn’t know: The Sam Malone character of the sitcom Cheers was based on McDowell. Malone, in the series, was a former big-league pitcher and recovered alcoholic. Cheers had a fabulous 11-year run on NBC when network television ruled … When I first started watching the NBA, Paul Silas was one of my favourite players. He was a master rebounder and defender who gave my Buffalo Braves all kinds of trouble. Now his son, Stephen Silas, 53, is part of the Raptors’ coaching staff … Whoever played a part in drawing up the Leafs’ schedule did a masterful job with the spacing out of road games. They have only three back-to-back road games for the entire season … It’s wonderful that NHL’s annual Frozen Frenzy schedules 16 games on the same day. It would be even more wonderful if most of us could see the majority of those games on television … The Argos have lost at least four games in the final seconds this season, including the ridiculous loss to Ottawa on Friday night. With a touch more last-minute precision, their record could be 13-4 instead of 9-8 … The Dallas Cowboys are 2-3 in the early NFL season. Two of those losses came from horribly coached games. The Cowboys should be 4-1 … Happy birthday to Martina Navratilova (70), Thomas Hearns (68), Lindsey Vonn (42), Myles Straw (32), Charlie Montoyo (61), Matthew Knies (24), Alex Cora (51), Ken Morrow (70), Rachel Nichols (53) and Kent Johnson (24) … And, hey, whatever became of Razor Ruddock?
Steve Simmons is Canada’s longest-serving sports columnist

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