Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Down Goes Brown: Toronto Mike'd #71

Episode Date: March 13, 2014

Mike talks to Sean McIndoe b.k.a. Down Goes Brown about his blog, his Brian Burke parody Twitter account, the Wendel Clark All Heart video, Bob Cole, Strombo, David Clarkson and how the Leafs will do in the playoffs this season.

Welcome to the 71st episode of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything, often with a distinctly Toronto flavour. I'm Mike from torontomic.com, and joining me this week is Sean McIndoo, better known as Down Goes Brown, and hosting this audio file are the good people at Core Fusion. Welcome to the Toronto Mic'd virtual studio. Sean, how you doing? Just bear with me. I'm going to bring you up.

It figured as I turned down the song, I was turning down you. That tells you how often I do these remote ones. Just one second here. All right, talk to me, Sean. Make sure we can hear you. Yeah, can you hear me now? Beautiful. So do you mind if I called you down goes brown for this chat,

or is that kind of weird? It's a little weird, but whatever works for you, I will adjust. That's awesome. So thanks for doing this. Right on the outset, could we discuss the origin of that handle, down goes brown? Yeah, absolutely. This goes back about 20 years to a Joe Bowen call of a Toronto Maple Leafs fight between Rob Brown and Sylvain Lefebvre. This was a game that I was actually at back when I was a teenager, back at the Gardens, and it was Leafs and Blackhawks. It wasn't a particularly big game. It was mid-December, you know, just kind of your typical Norris game. And at one point, a scrum breaks out. The usual suspects are kind of in the middle of it. And then suddenly, off to the side, Sylvain Lefebvre and Rob Brown, two guys who

almost never fought, pair off and they start throwing. And I mean, they were right at center ice. There's no one around, no linesmen, no officials uh and it was you know all eyes in the gardens were right on them and uh and they were going back and forth for a little bit but then lafayette got an upper hand got him spinning a bit uh and and got a few good shots in and just dropped them and the gardens went nuts it was a great moment i mean this is this is early 90s Maple Leafs. We didn't really have a lot to get excited about, so we kind of took our moments where we could find them. And then in the car on the way home, we heard that they replayed the Joe Bowen call, and he had done what ended up being this very memorable call where he started yelling,

down goes Brown, down goes Brown, kind of a riff on the old down goes Frazier. And it ended up being something that was, they played it a few more times on the radio. They had it on TV a couple of times. And it was just something where years and years later when I went to start a blog and I was trying to figure out what I'm going to call this thing.

It was, you know, it's that old thing. If you're naming a blog or a band or whatever, you want something that's easy to remember, easy to spell, and easy to abbreviate. And that was just something that popped into my mind. And I thought, yeah, good enough, and I typed it in there, and it was available. And so off I went. As it turned out, you know, I kind of thought it was a semi-obscure little reference that maybe not too many people would get, but there was a surprising number of people who ended up remembering it. It ended up being almost the perfect name for what I was doing early on,

because I had all these people saying, hey, wait a second, I remember that. That's from 20 years ago. Well, Sean, I remember that. I remember that. Yeah. You want to hear it? Exactly. And people are sitting there going, hey, man, if this guy is going to name his blog after some fight that happened in a December regular season game, then this guy, you know, maybe he's right up my alley as far as being, you know, an old school Leafs fan. So, yeah, definitely, if you got it, throw it up there. Okay, let's listen to Joe Bowen and Gord Stelic and the famous down-goes-brown call that inspired your handle.

Here it is. Hits with one, throwing right hands at Lefebvre. Another right hand by Brown. Lefebvre gets an uppercut. Down-goes-brown! Down-goes-brown! And Lefebvre leaves him there. TKO.

Robbie Brown down like he was shot. There you go. And that's from, of course, the Sportsline clip that's on YouTube. So it's a little fuzzy. Yeah, Mark Hepshire put it up there. And the great thing, one of the great things about that clip is you hear, after the first down goes brown, he launches into the second one, and the audio kind of cuts out.

Yeah, it cuts out, yeah. And that's not a problem on your side. That's not a problem on the YouTube side. Apparently, what actually happened is Joe Bone got so excited that he knocked his own headset off wow and so that's why there's like one or two second gap in there uh you know while he gets himself readjusted and then gordon stellick chimes in as well so that's a great story because um it reminds me of like the gimme shelter recordings when like there's a break in mary clayton's delivery of like rape murder and it's like that's just

raw like what happened and that gap is when Joe Bowen knocks off his headphones. That's probably the only time Joe Bowen's ever been compared to that, but yeah, that works, and yeah, I mean, it's kind of one of those fun things. He actually

dropped another one just this week in the, I guess it was the San Jose game, when there was the fight between Troy Bode and Mike Brown. And Bode kind of wrestled him down, and then Bowen dropped another down goes Brown. Oh, he was waiting for that one, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I immediately had 100 people on Twitter all shooting me a message telling me that, you know,

actually it was funny because some of them are telling me like, hey, Joe Bowen just stole your name. He just ripped you off on the air. And I'm like, you've got the directions going wrong there because if anybody ripped anyone off, it wasn't him ripping me off. Well, you remember that Cleveland show clip like a couple of years ago when they went down goes Brown. I guess Cleveland's last name is Brown. But, I mean, they're riffing on the same thing you were riffing on. cleveland show clip like a couple of years ago when uh they went down goes brown i guess cleveland's

last name is brown but i mean they're riffing on the same thing you were riffing on sorry that joey bowen was riffing on which was uh down goes frazier so it's like yeah exactly i mean it it comes up a lot you see it shows up in a lot of headlines where you know anytime brown's pretty common yeah and it rhymes so nicely sent down or whatever yeah it shows up and uh and you know the other fun thing is uh like i said a lot of a lot of leaf fans get the reference but a lot of fans of other teams don't don't necessarily pick up on it not not that they ever would and so there's you know i get a lot of people who think it's about dustin brown uh i've had people think it's uh i think it's a reference to dave brown which you know i i don don't think Dave Brown ever got knocked down.

I don't know where that would come from. And I also had a surprising number of people, and I didn't realize this phenomenon was happening until relatively recently. But for some reason, there seemed to be a lot of people who thought that I was actually Mike Brown, like when he played with the Leafs. Oh, yeah, the mustache. Because I've got a picture of a Leaf fighting, and they thought it was... And I never picked up on that until he got traded, and suddenly I'm getting all these messages like,

dude, good luck in Edmonton. We're going to miss you. Funny. And I'm going, what? Where am I going? Because your pick has the Wendell Clark mustache that Mike Brown had. It's got to be the mustache. Yeah, maybe that. I because your clip, your pick has the Wendell Clark mustache that Mike Brown had. It's got to be the mustache.

Yeah, maybe that. I don't know what it is. But yeah, there seemed to be, even now that he hasn't been in Toronto in a while, I still get people will say like, wait a second, I thought this was Mike Brown, the NHL player. That's funny. Like, I'm sorry to disappoint you, but no. So, Sean, do you know that for like a period of years, I think, I don't know when it ended, but it did end at some point, I ranked like top five in Google for the term Down Goes Brown? I think so. I think I remember,

I think I remember you mentioning that because you had, was it, you had the fight clip, wasn't it? Well, I think, yeah, I think I shared the clip the clip. And I was an early adopter to the Down Goes Brown blog and Twitter. I think my earliest memories of sort of Down Goes Brown-ness would be the Brian Burke Twitter account. So tell me a little bit. So you ran a Brian Burke parody Twitter account that I thought was hilarious. I thought it was the funniest thing on Twitter for, I don't know, the short life of that account. So tell me, basically, what gave you that idea? How much fun was it running that?

And then why did you eventually end it? Well, the idea of it actually came, I saw a, somebody had done a like a Photoshop image of, and I can still remember it was the the Twitter account of the captain of the Titanic and he was making some reference though you know hey we just ran into an iceberg. Twitter was a relatively new thing at this point and you know I remember thinking that that was kind of funny. This was back before every second Twitter account was like some sort of parody. Yeah, like 2009 or something, right?

Like, am I right? Yeah, this is 2009. This is back when, you know, every time something happened on television, there weren't immediately like 20 horrible parody accounts popping up. Yeah, like Pharrell's hat or whatever. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

So, yeah, I saw this thing and I thought, boy, that's, you knowarrell's hat or whatever. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So yeah, I saw this thing and I thought, boy, that's, you know, that was kind of funny. And I thought, boy, you know, I wonder if you could do a leaf version of that. And immediately I thought, oh, Brian Burke, Brian Burke's Twitter would be great. And the idea was, I just wanted to do kind of the same thing. I just wanted to have five lines and make an image of it. And I wasn't even, I didn't even do it for my own set. I think at that point, I went to post it up on pension plan puppets. But I don't know how to use Photoshop. I don't know how to do this image editing stuff. But the only way I knew how to do it was to actually go in and make the account, put a couple of jokes in, take the screenshot,

and then I went and posted it up there. And, you know, that was it. It was meant to be a one-off, you know, a couple of dozen people would see it and maybe get a laugh out of it. But what happened is in setting it up, once I posted it up there, I suddenly started seeing people start to follow the account because people were looking and going and saying, like, is this actually on there? And at that point, I didn't even have a Twitter account myself. I didn't have one for the site. So this was kind of my first foray into it. But I thought, yeah, okay, I'll play with it. I'll have some fun with it. And it just grew really quickly over the next month or two to the point where it started getting media attention.

And it started getting picked up on a lot of the blogs and that sort of thing. And, you know, by the end of it, it had several thousand followers, which, you know, again, back in 2009, that was a pretty decent amount. And it was fun for a while, but it did reach a point where, you know, A, I think I was starting to run out of material a little bit. The trade deadline had just passed, and it was kind of like, well, there's not going to be that much to work with. And plus, just with all the attention and getting it, it even got onto Brian Burke's radar and he had made some comments in the paper about not being all that happy about it. And it just felt like it was a good time to sort of step away from it. And, you know, it's not like it was going to be something that I was going to keep running for years and years. So I think, like I said at the time,

sometimes part of being a good comedian is knowing when to get off the stage. Yeah, leave the morning more. That's always a good idea. That was the first time I think I wrote about you, I think, was when I wanted to share this with everybody. I found it hilarious. One of them I remember in the early days

was something like Brian Burke saying, ordering NONIS to trade for Luongo, problem solved, or something like that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was fun because, you know, obviously the Twitter account didn't last that long, but I've always... Brian Burke's a great guy to write about any anytime you're trying to do any kind of humor,

because he's the perfect kind of crusty personality, and especially for something like that. He was the kind of guy where, even though the things I had him saying were outrageous and nobody would ever actually think that they were saying the actual right it was clearly parody yeah clearly parody and yet you know it was just close enough that people are kind of listening going yeah you know what I could see him saying something like that and uh and it was fun because one of the things about that is I remember when it started showing up in newspapers and that, and a lot of people didn't really get it at the time.

Again, Twitter was kind of new. A lot of these people writing about it weren't on Twitter. They didn't understand. And they would say, you know, there's this account out there that's making fun of Brian Burke. And I remember at the time thinking, like, no, I'm actually not making fun of Brian Burke. And I remember at the time thinking like, no, I'm actually not making fun of Brian Burke. If you go back and look, very few of the jokes were actual lines that were at the expense of Brian Burke. They're all at the expense of other people. It was just the case of using this kind of crusty Brian Burke type voice to deliver them that was what made it work so well. You know, I have a proudly framed above my, on my office wall here,

my cease and desist from Brian Berg's lawyers. Because I was lucky enough to get one of these cease and desist because a commenter on my blog posted that rumor that he did not like floating around the internet. And I got basically this, like, remove it and give up the identity of the person who wrote it or blah blah blah and i never did give up the identity but i did delete the comment and i never got a lawsuit out of it so uh that's my brian burke story yeah there you go

i'm gonna play a little when when sorry go ahead yeah sorry i'll just say when i was on the uh with the twitter thing it was just kind of funny because he did, there was that one story in the newspaper, I think it was The Star, and Brian Bird basically said, look, if somebody's on there impersonating me on Twitter, I'll find them and I'll sue them. And he does sue. And he never did. And even at the time, I wasn't that worried about it because I'm like, ah, this guy, he's a GM of an NHL team. What's he going to do, go and sue some random loser on the internet? guy, he's a GM of an NHL team. What's he going to do? Go and sue some random loser on the internet? And so I didn't worry too much about it. I never did hear from him or

anybody telling me to shut it down. But yeah, then years later, you're kind of sitting there going, oh, okay, maybe he would do that. All right, maybe I did pick the right time to get out of there. Like, I had the same reaction because I decided, of course, I'll delete the comment because it was unfounded and unfair.

I deleted it as soon as I was asked to. I would have done that if anyone asked me to do that. But I was never going to give up this IP address of the person who left the comment. It didn't seem like you need a court order before I'm giving up an IP address of a commenter. But the fact is, I didn't think he'd ever actually sue commenters. I was just surprised that he actually went ahead and sued anonymous commenters on forums and blogs. That's a pretty interesting move. But that's Brian Burke for you. I mean, I'm no lawyer, but Brian Burke is definitely a guy who has strong opinions.

And then he has a strong code of ethics that he certainly wants to make sure we're all aware of. And, you know, obviously he felt like he needed to make a point, and I'm interested to see where it goes, if anywhere. I mean, obviously he's not going to make any major money out of it, but if he felt like he had to clear his name, and it was, frankly, a pretty silly and ridiculous rumor. And, you know, I guess you do what you got to do. He is a lawyer, and I'm sure he knew what he was up against.

So more power to him, I guess. Okay, Sean, bear with me about 20 seconds. I got to play a little tune, and then I think when you hear the opening chords, you'll know where I'm going with this. But here's a little music break on Toronto Mic'd episode 71. Good morning, John. All right, I'll bring you back in. I just wanted to get to that first hero of the day. When I hear the opening chords of that song, my heart rate accelerates. I just get so pumped up. Heart rate accelerates.

I just get so pumped up. That song just means so much to me because of a great montage of like Wendell Clark, greatest hits you might call it, called All Heart that's on YouTube. And I know you're a big... It's the absolute best thing on YouTube. It's the absolute best thing on YouTube. It's the absolute greatest thing on YouTube. It is just the absolute perfect fan-made tribute video. I mean, these days, I think every athlete, even the benchwarmers who play two minutes a night,

have got a dozen tribute videos that somebody's made. And, you know, a lot of them are really good and some of them aren't. But they're all just trying to be all heart. It's never been done so perfectly as that. And if you're a Leaf fan, and certainly if you were a fan in the Wendell Clark era, it's the absolute perfect video. And even if you're not, I've mentioned it enough times that every time I do, I'll get somebody who will shoot me an email or on Twitter and say, you know, I'm a Red Wings fan or I'm a Blackhawks fan. But I just watched that video and man,

do I miss that guy. That guy was just awesome to watch. And it really does capture just everything that was so much fun about the early Wendell Clark era. I agree 100%. I mean, we're about the same age. We were both from Toronto. And that was my, I mean, in 86, when Wendell Clark helped lead us to that first round sweep of the Blackhawks, which was a three-game sweep back then. And I mean, that was a memory I'll never forget. And Wendell Clark, that video,

me and my regular co-host Elvis agree on this, that we can play that every day and feel the same feeling. And that song now, when I hear the song outside of the video, I'm in the video when I hear that song now. And I've introduced my son, years

ago I introduced my son to this video. He's never seen Wendell Clark play, except on YouTube. But he loves Wendell. He loves that video, and it just pumps him up, and he'll listen to it. He'll watch it before a game,

and it just psychs him up so big time. What an amazing video. Yeah, it's great. I mentioned it a couple of times on my blog early on, and I think I referred to it like I just did as pretty much the greatest thing on the internet. I'm the guy who made the video. And he ended up telling me the story of it. And it was interesting because that had been a bit of a mystery. It had been, the video was on YouTube.

And in fact, it was on, at the time, I think three or four different people had posted it. But everybody who posted it said, you know, hey, I didn't make this. I found this floating around on the internet somewhere. And so nobody really knew where it came from. And this guy reached out and he told the whole story. And it was actually a real interesting story. I had him write it up and I posted it on my site. But he was basically this diehard Leaf fan who had just given up on the team.

And, you know, especially after they had traded Wendell Clark away and then he had kind of thrown in the towel on it. And then he made the video as sort of his re-entry into being a fan to kind of remind himself what it was that he had loved about that era. And at the time, you know, I'm sure making these sorts of videos even today isn't easy, but back in the time, I mean, it was a huge job. He was talking about how he had to hunt down all these old VHS tapes, how he had to find all this stuff in the time, I mean, it was a huge job. He was talking about how he had to hunt down all these old VHS tapes, how he had to find all this stuff in various archives and splice it all together in his spare time and to put it all together. And the end result is this masterpiece.

And then I actually got him to help me go through and do a scene by scene breakdown of like every single clip in the whole video he was able to tell me where it came from uh you know what game it was and uh and you know I wrote that up and that's still to this day one of the favorite posts that I've ever done because it's uh it's you know the beauty of having a blog and being on the internet you'd never in a million years get to write something like that for any kind of real-life publication. But when you're doing your own thing, you can waste a week of your time putting together an almost frame-by-frame breakdown of your favorite YouTube video. Yeah, I urge everyone listening to just go to Down Goes Brown or just Google the definitive guide to the Wendell Clark All Heart video. And this, Sean, this piece you wrote in which you broke down each clip,

I think it should have won a Pulitzer Prize. It was awesome. Yeah, it was, I mean, boy, it was fun to put together. I mean, it's not, it sounds like, you know, wow, you've got 100 clips spliced together and you've got to write about each one. I tell you, it was not, it wasn like, you know, well, you've got a hundred clips spliced together and you've got to write about each one. I tell you, it was not, it wasn't hard work by any stretch because, I mean, it was great fun. And of course, you know, in a lot of cases, he was able to point me towards the longer clip. And so you're able to either relive or in some cases watch for the first time this clip of Wendell Clark destroying some poor guy.

Did we ever establish whether it was Bloge Salming or Bloggs Salming? How do we pronounce the blogger? I believe it was Blogey. Blogey. I always told him it should be like Bloious. He's got to rhyme it with uh with the actual song but no i i i want to say that i heard him say it the man himself and i think it was blogey okay because um you guys used to collaborate so you would write um raps essentially uh some some

some some videos and he would uh i guess he did the animation and the voice is that what his role in that well he would do basically just about everything, especially when it came to the song parodies, because we did a few that were music, and we did a few that were more kind of straight script and dialogue. But yeah, with the music, the way that that would usually go is, I might come up with an idea. He had this whole library of of like backing tracks for

various songs so i would shoot him an email and say like hey do you have this one and he'd check and say yeah i do you know why what have you got in mind and i'd pitch him the idea and in a lot of cases i'd i'd write um a lot of it um not necessarily all of it though i mean in a lot of cases i'd give him something that was mostly finished or that I thought was finished, and, you know, I'd just hand off this text file, and then he'd go to work on it. And in a lot of cases, he'd add his own stuff in or suggest improvements. And then, yeah, he would record it. He would do the animations.

He would put everything together, and, you know, he did it all in his spare time. You know, a lot of times late at night after he put the kid to bed, he'd be down in this little makeshift studio recording the lyrics to all this stuff. It was a ton of fun for me because, as a writer, what's more fun than being able to actually put something down on paper, throw it over a wall. And then a few days later, you've got this, this video masterpiece that's been, that's been put

together. And yeah, it was always a lot of fun. And then, you know, the only, the only part that I regret is that so, so often we would put that stuff out there and, you know, we put it on my site or on his site and up on YouTube and we have all these people going, hey, Down Goes Brown just made a video. And I'm like, no I didn't. I wrote a couple of jokes for a video and this guy did all the work for it but I still get people who shoot me a message because they've either found the stuff for the first time or in some cases they've gone back to it.

It was definitely a lot of fun. I love those videos. Loved them. I used to share them every time they came out, basically. And the two that I want to just point out that were just super special, the 2010 Olympic wrap, okay? My son happens, he's into eminem now and

he likes rap battles and he saw his eight mile or whatever and he loved he loves that 2010 olympic rap battle but i think i love it more i was firstly i was disappointed there was no uh 2014 uh follow-up i know you guys are busy with real real jobs everything. But I really love the 2010 rap battle. People got to check that out. It was just hilarious. And the Rhymer, the parody of Friday, Friday, whatever that Friday song was, but got to be starting Rhymer.

I love that one too. Those two were probably my two favorites. Yeah, I mean, the Olympic one is definitely a favorite of mine. And I remember just kind of starting with that concept of all these nice, kind Canadian hockey players suddenly going all Tupac on all the other nations. And yeah, Jeff and I, Jeff being a real name, he and I had a ton of fun writing that one. The Friday one, on the other hand, that was, I mean, I remember that the summer that that song came out, and I'm not very plugged into pop culture,

so something has to be really, really popular for it to jump the track and actually make it into my head, but I saw all these people talking about this, this horrible pop song, and I finally checked it out. And I remember having the idea for the Leafs version popping into my head of Ron Wilson singing about his goaltenders.

And the way that these things always started was I would send an email to Jeff and just say, hey, what about this song? Before I would even tell him the concept, I would say, hey, do you have Hit Em Up by Tupac? Can you do something with that? And he'd say, yeah. And usually, I'd shoot him an email, and it would be three or four hours later when he got around to replying, and he'd say, yeah, I've got it, or no, I don't.

And I remember this one. I remember shooting him an email saying, is there anything we could do with Friday by Rebecca Black? And literally, like, five seconds later, I just get this reply going like, oh, screw you. What are you going to make me do? And at that point, I'm like, okay, well, it's on. Now we got to do it. And I'm happy with the finished product. The video itself that Bologie put together was brilliant. I mean, he did some amazing stuff with it.

But I didn't really think it through, because when you're sitting down to write a parody of a song, you've got to really listen to that song, because you've got to really figure out how those work and how everything flows together, and make sure that, especially when you're writing it for somebody else to perform, you've got to make sure everything is just right. So, I mean, I know people who are like, oh, I hate that song.

Yeah, you hate the song because you heard it once or twice on YouTube. Sure. And it got stuck in your head. Imagine having to sit there and watch it over and over and rewind parts and really think, okay, what did she just do lyrically? Okay, I've got to make sure I get the, you know, it was, it took me a year to get that stupid song out of my head. And that's it.

Now, whenever some, you know, cheesy, stupid song comes out, I've, you know, got people, you know, you guys should do a Call Me Maybe. No, no, we're not going to do that. I'm never doing that again. From now on, it's only, if we ever do one of these again, it's only songs that I like and that I won't mind having stuck in my mind for a month. Oh, that's funny.

Now that we brought up Bloogie, real name Jeff, and we've been talking, of course, too, here, Sean McIndoe, McIndoo, sorry, I knew I was going to screw that up, McIndoe. McIndoo, also known as Down Goes Brown. It's time that I share a quick story about the fact that we actually met once. So you're in Ottawa. That's where we're calling you, right? MLSE, the real MLSE, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment or whatever they're called these days. Jonathan is the social media guy over there and me and him

were chatting it up and we became kind of friendly through some TFC games and stuff. And then he asked me to broker what I referred to at the time as the Barilco Sphere Summit. So I actually had a list of people that I wanted to at the time as the Barilco Sphere Summit. So I actually had a list of people that I wanted to target, my favorite Maple Leaf social media people, if you will, that were not

official. And you were at the top of that list. And the pension plan puppets guys who you mentioned, and Blogie Salming. Those were sort of the three guys i thought should be at the table if jonathan wanted to buy us uh dinner and talk about it and so we all met uh one day this this is kind of a crazy story when you look back but down goes brown was in town uh and i i showed up and we went to wendell clark's at like uh highway 7 and 400 there and blogey solman was there and i think it was who was there somebody from pension plan puppets uh yeah julian from from pension plan but we should say we went to wendell clark's restaurant yes oh yeah you know what we just dropped by his house uh no good job that would have been more fun but no not quite yeah that was a i was being intentionally vague

it just sounds kind of cool if we show up at Wendell Clarke's. But yeah, right. We went to the restaurant. And I remember the time. So Jonathan, he wanted to try something. And I figured, get us all together for a dinner. In hindsight, nothing came of it. I think the MLSE structure is too old school and rigid that I think some of the stuff Jonathan wanted to do wasn't going to happen.

But it was kind of interesting to get us all in a room chatting, and it was nice to meet you that day. So I'm glad you made some time to have dinner with the Berylchosphere Summit. Yeah, that was a neat day because it was definitely the first time I met you. I can't remember, was that the first or second time that I'd met the pension plan puppets guys? And even Jeff and I hadn't met too often. So it was kind of a neat thing. Like you said, nothing ever came of it. And I think it was probably doomed from the start,

any sort of idea that there could be any sort of working relationship. But, you know, I mean, at the time, I was working in my real life day job, pretty much the same sort of role that Jonathan was in at MLSC. So I knew going in that what he was up against and that the odds of anything ever getting a green light to go forward were pretty much zero. But, you know, credit to him for trying. And at least we, you know, the rest of us got some free chicken wings out of it. And I think maybe Blogey did do some videos for the official Leaf Nation web experience or something. I think maybe he got he did some stuff

out of that meeting, possibly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I know that I think maybe he got, he did some stuff out of that meeting possibly. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, yeah. Now that I think about it, you might be right. So there you go. But you said it best at the table. Um, so yeah, we had some chicken wings and, uh, got to see Wendell Clark's restaurant. And, uh, I think you said it best that, you know, there was no incentive for you to be sort of aligned with the, uh, team that you write about. Like it was important that you remain sort of independent, so to speak, and that you needed to kind of own your own thing and be independent. On that note, so you mentioned, you know, when it was just your blog, Down Goes Brown, you could kind of do these fun 80s and some retro leaf stuff, which is my favorite stuff.

But lately, you've been sort of covering less sort of, so now you've been sort of covering hockey, like you've become sort of a hockey analyst. Can you tell me about like the transition, like Sean from Down Goes Brown, writing about Wendell Clark and kind of progressing to the guy who basically covers hockey. I see your stuff on Grantland and all over the place.

So can you tell me a bit about how you made that transition? Yeah, well, I mean, it was a couple of years probably into the life of the blog where it was starting to grow a little bit. I mean, early on, all I ever wrote about was the Leafs because A, that's my team and it was the team I was most interested in. And B, that was the only people who were ever coming to the site. I mean, there was no point to trying to talk about any of the other teams because there were probably only a few dozen people who were reading the site and they were all Leaf fans who had found me through various other Leaf sites. But over the years it started to grow a little bit and I could tell that

it was spreading beyond that. At the time I thought, let's see if we can expand it a little bit. I certainly never had any kind of big plans for the site or any real deep thoughts on where it could lead. But I thought, you know, it'd be fun to grow the audience a little bit. And the best way that I could think to do that was to expand the scope a little bit. And over time, I did that. scope a little bit and over time I did that and it certainly even today I write about the Leafs far more often than any other team but I cover pretty much everything now and certainly first when the National Post came along and I was able to make a deal with them to have my content in the actual newspaper a couple of times a week.

From their perspective, they certainly weren't interested in anything that was going to be super focused on one particular team week after week. So that was a push in that direction. And then certainly now that I'm essentially working full-time for Grantland. As their hockey writer, I've got to cover everything. So at this point, in theory at least, I've got to be looking at all 30 teams equally. In reality, you'll notice that there's still one team that seems to find its way into just about everything that I write.

I mean, even this week I did a post where it was, we came up with the idea of after Roberto Luongo got traded back to Florida, we said, okay, let's do a post on some of the famous players over, you know, in history who have been traded back to teams where they had made their names originally. Right, the Trevor Lindons and stuff. We ended up doing eight players. And just coincidentally, I think two of the players were Toronto Maple Leafs.

And two of the other guys, we had Denny Savard, so I got to work in the Savard-Gary Lehman fight. Nice. And then we had Ron Hextall, so of course I had to work in the Felix Pothin, Ron Hextall bloodbath from 96. So I felt like that was pretty good on a pretty good percentage to be writing something, a general NHL piece, and to have fully half the content referenced back to the Leafs in some way.

It's the best of both worlds. You're never going to be able to suppress. Like, we have such similar memories. Let's just, I guess that's the nature of, we're probably, I don't know. Have you hit 40 yet? Are you approaching 40? I can see it on the horizon. Yeah, me too. I can see it coming.

So we're in about the same place. And I mean, you're going to have the same memories. We're so void of real memories. You don't have the Joe Carter walk-off. You don't have the Joe Carter World Series winning homer, touch-em-all Joe. So you kind of have these things we reference like the down goes brown and and uh whatever you have your uh these kind of we kind of have to invent these you have gilmore's

wraparound and like the second round of like a scheme one was it i think or game two i can't remember now against st louis yeah that was game one game one So it's like that becomes like the Bill Borilko goal. It just becomes your big thing. But, okay, so I want to just say that when I first saw you on TV not being funny, I found it kind of strange and weird because everything I had read from you was actually just hilarious. I don't even think you realize how funny you are, but you're right up there in terms of humor.

It's amazing. But when I saw you on CTV News Network or something, and you were doing some analysis of hockey, and you were playing it straight, like you were Sean and you were playing it straight, it just seemed strange to me. Yeah, it's a little strange to me, too. When it comes to the humor and the comedy stuff, I consider myself like I'm a humor writer. I'm a comedy writer. I can sit down and I can take a concept and I can sit down in front of a blank document on my laptop and turn it into something funny.

And part of that is just, I mean, I grew up, those were my two loves growing up was sports and comedy. And so to be able to blend them together in terms of writing, I love doing that. I'm not a guy who is super funny just in person or, you know, and I always find it strange. I mean, usually on TV, I don't have to do it. But every now and then, I do a lot of radio. And every now and then, I realize that I've been brought on a show, and they're expecting the Captain Wacky comedy hour to break up. They want your tweets, because your tweets are so timely, and they're so spot on. You must be the most retweeted guy in Canada, because your tweets are so hilarious.

But like you said, you kind of compose them and then you send them. And it comes to you quickly, but you don't deliver jokes. You haven't been particularly funny in this podcast. I didn't expect you to be. I didn't want you to be. I want you to be yourself. But you're right. That's not your thing.

You're a writer. I've said this before. I think I'm funny, but lots of people are funny. I've got two or three friends that are funnier than I am, and I've only got five friends. There's lots of funny people out there.

Just being funny is not something that makes you particularly unique these days, where I'm, if I'm unique at all, it's in the sense that of all the funny people out there, not too many of them actually know how to write a joke. And even, you know, you'll even see it on Twitter. I mean, sometimes I'll put something out there and, you know, I'll see, you know, maybe a little later someone else is kind of riffing on the same thought, not that they've, they're not taking it, they've just had it pop into their head too and maybe they even come up with a sort of a funnier way to approach it,

but they don't really know how to tighten that up and turn it into a real joke. And that's, you know, if I've got any particular skill in this, that's where it is. And so that's where I'm comfortable being the funny guy is, you know, either on Twitter or through the blog post where I'm sitting down and I can actually write it, reread it, kind of get the rhythm of what I'm trying to do in my mind, figure out, you know, this word would be better off going here. I've got to take this word out.

This is disrupting, you know, the rhythm of, you know, this word would be better off going here. I've got to take this word out. This, this is disrupting, uh, you know, the rhythm of, of, you know, getting to the punchline. That's the kind of stuff that I can do when I go on the radio or something and people are like, Hey, you know, make us laugh. You know, I'm kind of like, uh, you know, I can, uh, uh, you know, I can give you something or other, but I'm not going to be any funnier than, uh, um, any number of people that you could find. Right. Well, Twitter was, you were made for Twitter, Twitter was made for you. I think that's the perfect vehicle because it's real time and you're still writing and able to kind of structure it. And it's just, like I said, you must be the most retweeted guy in Canada because sometimes it's just what we're all,

it's all in our heads percolating, but it doesn't get succinctly put in that way at that time until we see it from down goes brown on twitter so thank you for being on twitter hey hey uh twitter's a ton of fun i i uh you know i was kind of late getting on there like i said i was doing the brian burke thing before i even thought of uh of getting on there personally but it's it's been a lot of fun and it's um you know it's it's not just a a fun way to put the one-liners out there, but it's kind of become my number one way to interact with people and to get feedback. And, you know, that's, it's fun. I mean, I'm at the point now where even when I'm working,

I've got TweetDeck in the background with a couple of columns going, and it's just become such a part of of what i do and uh you know and most of us in the certainly in the sports world uh it's it's it's kind of one of those things now you look back and you're like what did we do before this yeah true true hey are you gonna tweet uh that you were on this uh podcast and tweet a link to this episode no very you see you are funny you are funny on the phone yeah no. No, I, I will, I will certainly do that. And, uh, you will be overwhelmed by dozens and dozens of people. Can't wait. Clicking on, yeah. Clicking on the link. Good. I want to get to 5,000. I'm stuck

at like 4,000 followers. I don't, I don't have down. That's always fine. Like I, I, I, I love that when I'll, uh, you know, I'll tweet out a, and it's just like, boom, instantly. Like a thousand retweets. Yeah, it's amazing. People just spreading it everywhere. And then I'm like, oh, and also I wrote 5,000 words and spent three days working on this, and it's like three. Yeah, I know that. Look, I've been blogging for 11 years.

I know that feeling. You get the right tweet at the right time, and yeah, it's nothing compared to that. That entry that you thought was going to go viral that you spent hours on it's just amazing and it's like there's no there's like three comments i've long ago given up even with the jokes on twitter i've given up on trying to predict what's going to be popular and what won't i mean i've got a very vague sense of it and other than that um there are times where you put something out there and you see it go crazy and you're like oh really okay go figure Okay. Go figure. All right. Sure. And then there's other stuff where you're like, oh man, this is pure gold. Here you go. And you just hit it and it's like, it goes nowhere. And

you're like, oh, come on. And I mean, the worst for me and I, you know, other people, I don't know if they feel the same way, but I'll actually get frustrated sometimes when I'll put a joke out there that I think is an okay joke. And it just goes crazy. And I'm actually kind of disappointed. I'm like sitting there like, really? Like that's what you want? That's really like, you know, I kind of, I thought y'all had a little bit better taste than that, but all right. And yeah, you just, you just kind of go with it. But it's fun. It's instant feedback. I mean, that's the great thing

about being a comedy writer these days or trying to write humor is that, you know, for the longest time, you know, people have always been writing funny. But, you know, if you're writing a book or a newspaper column or whatever, there wasn't that instant reaction. You never really had

that versus somebody who's going up on stage with a microphone which I feel is the purest form of comedy that you can do and just instantly getting that feedback from the audience but these days you put something out there, whether it's on

Twitter or whether you post a blog post or Facebook whatever and you get the feedback right away and especially on the internet where there's you put something out there, whether it's on Twitter or whether you post a blog post or Facebook, whatever, and you get the feedback right away. Especially on the internet where there's this weird thing now where if you try to be funny, like one of the posts that I used to do where you're just kind of listing off

a bunch of one-liners, a bunch of jokes, people would just recite back to you the thing that they found funny, which I've always found like a really odd phenomenon like you'll get a comment on your blog that is just somebody cutting and pasting the line that they liked back at you right and you're like yeah no i know i i thought i actually wrote it i'm aware of it thank you but you know that's their way of saying like this is the one that I found funny. Even when I was, maybe I might do a blog post with 15 punchlines in it, and I'd know within an hour which ones people had connected with and which ones maybe had kind of missed the mark.

So true. How do you feel about George Strombolopoulos? I'm not super familiar with him, to be honest with you. Like I said, he's a pop culture guy, and I'm sort of barely even on the grid these days in terms of that. But from what I've seen of him, I like him. I think he's going to do a good job. I'm an old-school guy, so Ron McClain is fine by me.

I'm Don Cherry for life. I'm Coach's Corner for life, all of that stuff. So I'm probably somewhat resistant to change, but you know what, if you're going to try something new and try to move it in a bit of a different direction and maybe reach out to a bit of a different audience, I think he's a great choice. In what little I've seen of,

of his work, I've always enjoyed it. And I know that he's, you know, he's certainly a sports fan. He's not, you know, some guy who's going to come in and,

and, and sort of dress up in the clothes and pretend to be one of us. He, you know, he is one of us. So he'll, I think he's going to do great. Yeah, I've kind of followed his career forever

because he started on the Fan 590. So he was on that first, just behind-the-scenes stuff. And then I think he got brought on with some stuff with Jeff Merrick and Jim Richards and stuff. But he was also on Munch Music, and then he was on C also, then he was on Munch Music, and then he was on CBC, and he's been all over the place. But I can tell you, his love of hockey is genuine. And unfortunately, he's a Habs fan,

but we can't all be perfect. But he's the real deal. And I'm of opinion that it doesn't really matter who the hosts are. I personally think the game is king. Coach's Corner we love and it's still going to be Ron and Don, but it's the game. We're there to watch Leafs versus Habs on a Saturday night.

I could be the host. I don't think it actually matters who the talking head is. That's my opinion. It might not matter that much. I still love my Coach's Corner. I love the intermission panels, whether it's a hot stove or when they're just breaking things down.

So, you know, I do enjoy all that, and I hope they get the right mix of people in. I think there's certainly, you know, when you watch the broadcast today, there's probably some adjustments that they could make that, you know, at least would have everything appeal to me a little bit more. I mean, I hope Elliott Friedman is all over the place in the new world because he's just fantastic.

And hopefully they can also keep him busy so that he doesn't have enough time to do his 30 thoughts every week. I'm tired of getting my butt kicked by him. Those are great, right? I love those 30 thoughts. I don't know how long it takes them, but they're fantastic. I love it as a fan. I mean, as a fan, it's my very favorite thing to read every week.

But as a writer, when I'm sitting there on a Monday morning and knowing I've got to pitch to my editors what I'm going to write about this week, and I'm sitting there with, like, two ideas, and then here comes Elliott Friedman, like, here's 30 thoughts, and i'm sitting there like you bastard man because i'm struggling to get to three right and i know your thoughts on this but i just want you to know that every time i find out bob cole is going to call a leaves game a i i anticipate that game more than normal because i absolutely love bob cole's voice

and his delivery of a game but b i'll usually share that information on my blog or via Twitter, and I'll get all this feedback from people who hate Bob Cole, and it always makes me scratch my head. Where does the Bob Cole hate come from? Because he's a little older, and sometimes he misidentifies the player? Is that the root of it all? Why do some people hate Bob Cole, and what is wrong with those people? Well, I mean, what's wrong with them is that they're terrible people.

They really are horrible, awful people and probably irredeemable. And we should just cut off all contact with them. But look, I'm in Ottawa, so I'm surrounded by this stuff. Bob Cole is not popular in Ottawa. And I can tell you, from Ottawa's perspective, the reason they don't like Bob Cole is because they think that Bob Cole is a homer for the Leafs. They think he is a Toronto Maple Leafs fan, which is ridiculous. You're talking about one of the most experienced sports broadcasters, period, in the world. This is not some raving homer that you're going to see on your local broadcast.

No, Nick Donchieri doesn't hide the fact that he's going to root for the Leafs and he might wear a Leafs tie and he'll be pro-Leafs. He doesn't hide that fact. Bob Cole, in my opinion, I've seen him call enough playoff games during our long absence from the playoffs in which he just told... I don't think there's any pro-leaf bias in bob cole's delivery calls every game like it's game seven of the stanley cup like it's just amazing yeah and and i mean the thing in ottawa is that i can tell you in ottawa among senator fans absolutely anything

that can feed the persecution complex as far as it relates to the lease plays really, really well. So if you're a radio guy in Ottawa, or you're a blogger, or you're a newspaper columnist, if you want cheap applause, the absolute best thing to do is to bring up the Maple Leaf and to bring it up in some sort of, oh, woe is us, what a conspiracy, everyone's out to get us type way. And so that's what happened with Bob Cole. Unfortunately, he got sucked into it back, I think it was 2001, where at the time the mayor of Ottawa decided he was going to go on this little rant

about Bob Cole and Harry Neal being pro-Leaf homers, and everybody just ate it up. Because it plays well in Ottawa. It plays really well. And it's, I mean, it's sad. I remember talking to Senator fans and, you know, their evidence for Bob Cole being a homer was that whenever the Leafs and the Senators were playing in the

playoffs, whenever the Toronto Maple Leafs scored, Bob Cole's voice as he was calling the goal was much louder than it was whenever the Senators would score. And I had to explain to them, I said, the reason Bob Cole raises his voice louder when the Leafs score is because the fans are all cheering.

Exactly. It's exactly true. Whether the game's in Toronto or Ottawa, he's got to be heard over the cheers of the fans. If you want him to raise his voice for the Ottawa Senators, maybe you guys could get to the game and make a little bit of noise. But until you do that, he doesn't really need to get all that loud when you guys score.

It's the Leafs who are driving all the cheers. In my mind, that sounds like common sense, but it didn't go over so well with those Sens fans. I hope Bob Cole is part of this Rogers future just until he decides he's going to retire. It could be any time now. I think you know, I could be anytime now. I think he's, he's hit, he might be 80 or 81 or something. He's a, he's a 79.

I don't know. He's up there, but I hope long may he run because, uh, his timber and his delivery and his phrasing, uh, there's no one like him. In my opinion,

there's no one like him alive today. Uh, and he, if you have five, there's a leaf game and I can pick my guy 100% of the time I want Bob Cole. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I mean, the guy's 80.

Does he sometimes miss a play or misidentify a player? Yeah, he does. Who cares? Who cares? Right. There's lots of snappy young broadcasters out there who I'm sure never miss a trick

and I've got very little interest in listening to them. I was lucky enough to get to go down to LA for the outdoor game between the Ducks and the Kings at Dodger Stadium and it was great. But one of the highlights was that Vin Scully was there and I actually got to be standing right next to Vin

Scully at some point. He's the baseball equivalent, yes. He is the baseball equivalent of Bob Cole, and to see him go out and he did some announcing to start the game and get this massive ovation and just this outpouring of love for the guy, and rightly so, well-deserved. I mean, there's basically, if you're our age, there were probably three guys that were those perfect voices that you associated with being a sports fan, and it was Bob Cole, Vince Scully, and Pat Summerall.

And obviously, unfortunately, we don't have Pat with us anymore. Bob Cole probably won't be around from a career standpoint all that much longer. But I'm sure somewhere there's probably some bitter San Francisco Giants fan who hates Vin Scully and thinks he's a raving homer and just thinks that their local guy is so much better, because of course that's part of it in Ottawa. There was this movement where they would actually turn off Bob Cole on the CBC, and they'd listen on the radio.

And they'd listen to the local radio crew doing the Senator Leaf games. And that was their explanation. Well, because we don't want biased announcing. We don't want homers. Oh, boy. And it's like, really? That's your solution to getting rid of homers? Yeah, they just want it to be the right homer for the right team, I think is what they're looking for.

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I don't know. But, yeah, I mean, as far as I'm concerned, the Vince Scullies and Bob Coles of the world are not going to be announcing these games forever. And so whenever they do, you're right. I mean, it's a chance to sit down and just appreciate it because we're going to miss it when it's gone, I promise.

Agreed. And a quick question about your Down Goes Brown franchise here. Have you ever considered having your own podcast? I never really considered it when I was sort of doing my own thing. We have talked about doing a hockey podcast at Grantland. So at some point, fingers crossed, we might get there. Maybe it might be something we look at next season because they're big on podcasts there and they've got some really good ones for the other sports. Like I said,

I always consider myself a writer for second and third so I'm maybe a little bit hesitant to try to branch out into the podcast stuff, but maybe at some point we'll at least give it a try. The fact is you're well-spoken. You speak clearly good English and you have a great knowledge of hockey, so it just makes sense you'd have some kind of a regular show of some kind. So I hope that does come to fruition. And about you being in Ottawa, it's cool.

I understand, you know, maybe there's many good reasons why you're in Ottawa. But do you have any plans ever to return to Toronto? Is that something you ever endeavor to do or does it depend? You know, like it's funny. I still consider myself a Toronto guy guy like when when i meet new people if my wife and i are on vacation somewhere a lot of times they say well where are you from um you know instead of just saying like i'm from ottawa i'll say well you know i'm from toronto but we're in ottawa right now and uh you know my wife will give me a dirty look and she's like you

dude you've been in ottawa for 20 years give up. You live here. Your kids are here. Like, this is, like, it's over. You're from Ottawa. And it's that Toronto piece has never really left me. But realistically, I mean, my kids go to school here. My wife works for the federal government up here. And right now, at least, I'm lucky enough to have a job where I can work from home and it really doesn't matter where I am. So I don't see that happening anytime soon. I mean,

who knows what might come around the corner down the road. You never say never, but for now at least I think I'm pretty firmly stuck here. Okay. and I see now that we've got maybe five minutes left, and I'm hoping I can pepper you with some Leaf questions. So I'm a diehard Leaf fan like yourself. That's my team, and first question is, will the Leafs make the playoffs? And after you tell me yes, will we actually win a round this season? Yes, I think they'll make the playoffs.

I've been kind of down on the Leafs all year and still largely am. I mean, I think there's been a ton of criticism of the sort of stuff that they've done, and most of it's been warranted. But the math is that they've built up enough of a cushion now that it would take a really major collapse for them to drop down.

As far as can they win a round, I don't think they're any better than they were last year at this point. But could they win one? Yeah, I think they could for a couple of reasons. One is the goaltending. They had good goaltending last year, but Jonathan Bernier has been great. I was critical of that move when it got made, and I was wrong. Me too. He's been a fantastic pickup. And we all know in the playoffs a hot goalie can steal a series. And the other thing they've got going for them is if they can avoid dropping into that wild card. I mean, if they drop down to the wild card and they've got to play Boston or Pittsburgh, they're dead.

But if they can stay in that second or third spot and get one of the other Atlantic teams, where you're looking at probably either Montreal or Tampa Bay I think both of those are matchups they can definitely win I mean I I'm not particularly impressed by Montreal they don't scare me all that much and Tampa Bay I've been waiting for them to fall off the map all year I've been wrong so far but uh you know again that Tampa Bay is is not a matchup that scares me all that much so I think they do have a shot to get to that second round and

then probably get destroyed by the Bruins I think we need it, just after the way we lost last season was so scripted and so epically horrific and to consider, A, we were a whisker away from getting out of the first round last season like a scripted and so like epically horrific. And to consider a, we were a whisker away from getting out of the first round last season,

like a whisker. So it, and I was against a very good team, the Boston Bruins. So my, my feeling is we need to win around now to sort of show the progression and to, to kind of build because eventually, and this is my big question for you, will we ever win a cup in our lifetime? I don't know. I know you don't have a crystal ball, but you and I are of an age where we've never been alive for a Maple Leaf.

Forget a win. We've never been to the finals in our lifetime. Will we ever get to enjoy a cup in our lifetime? Yeah, I'm still somewhat optimistic. There's 30 teams in the league, and in theory,

every team should get one, all things being equal, once every 30 years. And that lines up pretty good with how much time I expect to be around watching these guys. And realistically, the Leafs are always going to have a resource advantage over the rest of the league, and I think there's a good reason to think that their odds should be a little bit better than that. So I am still optimistic they'll get there eventually, not necessarily with this current core. Frankly, I'm not convinced that this core of this team

that they've locked up for a lot of money and a lot of years is going to be the one that can do it. But I remember as a kid, even when Cliff Fletcher showed up and hearing about three to five year rebuilds uh and thinking that that just sounded like it was so long i'm old enough now that i can do three years in my sleep and three years is a snap of the fingers for me so uh and and and the fact is we always look at teams and we we think that the team we're looking at is what we're going to have for the next little while and every every team, three years later,

looks completely different. So who knows what the Leafs are going to be like in a little while. I don't see them doing it, certainly not this year. Don't see it next year, the year after, not with the core that they've got. But you never know when that big Gilmore-style trade is coming around the corner that's going to change everything. And at some

point, they will get smart people in who will understand how to use the resource advantage they have, how to use all the money available to them. And, you know, they'll be good again, like they were under Pat Quinn, like they were under Pat Burns. And then who knows? I mean, the fact of the matter is several of those Pat Quinn teams were absolutely good enough to win the Stanley Cup every Every year, there's probably about a half dozen teams that are absolutely good enough to win the Cup, and only one of them does. All you can do is ask for a team to get that good, take a few shots,

and then hope you get a little luck working out for you. The Leafs haven't had that luck part. They haven't had that being very good part for a long time, but I think they'll get back to being good, and then who knows. a long time, but I think they'll get back to being good and then who knows. And are we basically destined to have David Clarkson become sort of the Larry Murphy whipping boy because of that contract? Clarkson's tough for me because I actually like him. I think he's a local guy who just wants to play hard. And I just think he got kind of screwed by getting this top line money when he's sort of more of a garbage guy, checking grinder guy. What do you think of the David Clarkson contract? And are

we screwed? Yeah, I mean, I hate the David Clarkson contract. Yes, we are screwed. You couldn't give him away right now at the cap hit that he's at. I mean, the number that they gave him as far as an average value was ridiculous, but to go seven years was complete madness. And this is not hindsight. This is not second-guessing. I said this. The beauty of Twitter is that I can go back and know that I said this literally seconds after the deal was announced,

and I haven't changed my tune since. It's the worst contract in the entire NHL. It's going to go down as one of the worst contracts in NHL history, given the time that it was signed and how there's just so few loopholes and so few ways to buy your way out of this stuff now. All that said, I like David Clarkson as a player. I really do. And as a guy, I mean, I've never met him, obviously, but he seems like a good guy. And I love the idea of a guy who grew up as a Leaf fan in the Toronto area, just wanting to come home. We hear so often about these players

who don't want to come to Toronto because the media is mean or the fans are going to bug them when they're eating dinner. And here's a guy who embraced it and said, yeah, I've wanted to be a Maple Leaf my whole life. Let's do this. And he did it at 29 when normally they do it on their way to Muskoka. It's like their last stop before they get to Muskoka at like 36 or whatever. Yeah, so I mean, I really hope it doesn't turn into that kind of situation, that Larry Murphy situation where the fans really turn on him. Because, you know, what signal does that send to the rest of the league

and to the other guys? I mean, I know it's the stereotype of Leaf fans that we're always thinking that every big name free agent wants to come to Toronto. Every big name free agent wants to come home to the Leafs. But you know what, frankly, an awful lot of them have. I mean, Curtis Joseph wanted to be a Leaf. Eric Lindros, there's a whole long list of guys, Gary Roberts, who wanted to come specifically to the Toronto Maple Leafs. David Clarkson's the latest. Obviously, it hasn't worked out. And like I said, I mean, even if he can be everything

that the most optimistic projection would have him as, he still can't live up to the contract. It's a terrible, terrible contract. But that's not his fault. That's Dave Nones' fault. The 100% of the blame for that is on Dave Nones and the Maple Leafs. You know, David Clarkson asking for the money and somebody else giving it to him are two very separate issues. And, you know, I hope he turns it around. The one thing that I would say, and maybe a hint of optimism for the David Clarkson era, is that he is still the type of player that Leaf fans have been conditioned to love over the years. And I still feel like, as bad as it's been this year, as big a train wreck as this season's been for him, he's one playoff series away from the redemption story.

This is what I say, exactly. Yeah, I mean, I'd be willing to bet that half the journalists in Toronto have already got the David Clarkson redemption story half written on their hard drives and ready to go the very first time, you know, that he has a playoff game where he has a couple of big hits and a fight and chips and a goal. playoff game where he has a couple of big hits in a fight and chips in a goal. If he can ever hammer home an overtime winner, it's going to be maybe back to the David Clarkson appreciation hour.

And then the Leafs will still be screwed on the contract years down the road. There's no getting around that. But at least in the short term, I still feel like he can pull this one back out of the fire especially when the playoffs comes around and he did himself no favours though when he chose number 71 because the Toronto Sun you probably saw a screen cap on the internet

but the Toronto Sun ran a headline calling him David, what do they call him? Wendell Clarkson? is that what they call him? Wendell Clark-son right I mean first of all in this city being him? Wendell Clarkson? Is that what they call him? Yeah, Wendell Clark-son. Right. I mean, first of all, in this city, being compared to Wendell Clark,

you're set up for failure. But then he chose number 71, which is the inversion of Wendell 17, which I felt was sort of buying into that. And I just felt like this won't end well, because as we've talked about earlier, no one's as beloved in this city as Wendell Clark. Don't come in with that kind of expectation. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that was probably a mistake.

A lot of that was the Leafs PR spin. Certainly, as soon as the contract got signed and everybody went, whoa, what a terrible deal, you could almost see the wheels start to turn of, okay, PR-wise, how do we sell this guy? And then you see the Toronto Sun do something like that. And guaranteed, you know, at some point in the future, it's going to be the Toronto Sun that is looking down at the nose, sneering at the fans, saying, like, can you believe these fans thought they were getting the new Wendell Clark?

You know, that's always the way it goes. There's always fans that get dumped on. They're not the ones who are putting this stuff on the cover. They're not the ones who are putting a pacifier in Nazem Kadri's mouth. But somehow we all forget the source of all that stuff. Yeah, I mean, he probably should have stayed away from those direct comparisons. They were pretty silly. And not only were they silly, but you're sitting there talking about a guy who's 29 or 30 years old signing a seven-year deal, and the comparison you draw to him is to a guy whose body broke

down and he had to retire when he was 33. Yeah, he was the oldest 30-year-old on the planet, yeah. Exactly. I mean, that doesn't really work well. I don't think it was all that well thought through, and I seriously doubt that David Clarkson showed up in Toronto and said, hey guys, let's market me as the next Wendell Clark. That was obviously coming from a Toronto side of things. And, you know, if it had worked, if he was on his way to a 25-goal season, then maybe he'd be one of the most popular players on the team.

And we'd say it was brilliant marketing, but the trap was always that if he had a rough year, it was just going to make the backlash even worse, and here we are. And last question before we say goodbye. Who is, in your opinion, the greatest Toronto Maple Leaf of all time? Man, I get asked this a lot, and it's always tough. And part of the reason it's tough is that, I get asked this a lot and it's always tough. And part of the reason it's tough is that I go back basically, my memory banks kick in about in the early 80s.

So I miss the Keon era, any number of other guys and even Sittler and Solming are kind of a bit of a blur to me. So, I mean, up my life, the answer I usually give is that in terms of a career, it's Matt Sundin. In terms of peak value, it's Doug Gilmore. You know, I've never seen anybody dominate the way he did in 93, although Phil Kessel was kind of getting into that territory but there's never been anyone that was as much fun for me to watch for one year as Gilmore was in that time

and then clearly my favorite is obviously Wendell Clark that's no surprise I would not claim that Wendell Clark was the best player in Leafs history he's probably not even all that high up the list but just in terms of what it meant to be a fan best player in Leafs history. He's probably not even all that high up the list, but just in terms of what it meant to be a fan and the time coming out of the darkest days of the Harold Ballard era,

and there's never been a player that I enjoyed watching over the course of his career more than him. And next week, I'm actually going to interview Jeff Merrick on episode 72, and he buried Harold Ballard. I love that story. I know he's mentioned that a couple of times, but he's always mentioned it, like, subtly. Like, I mean, if I could make that claim to fame, that would be...

That's all you talk about, right? Every conversation, it would be on my business card. It would be like my blog you talk about right every conversation it would be on my business card it would be like my blog forget down goes brown it would be the guy who buried haroldballard.com and every blog poet you know whatever i wrote would just segue into a story about shoveling dirt onto the corpse of harold ballard it's like the greatest claim to fame that any any hockey media guy could have bar none i agree And it's sort of like that old joke, like how do you know somebody's a vegan? They'll tell you.

So it'd be like every time I met somebody or was introduced or just even at a party and you're mingling, you meet someone new, it'd be like, I buried Harold Ballard. And that would be my opening sentence. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, people would be introducing me to girls and they'd be like, yeah, I work in sales.

And I'd be like, well, speaking of grave digging, and they'd be like, no, we weren't. And I'd be speaking of grave digging and they'd be like no we we weren't and i'd be like yeah we were and then i'd launch into the city probably probably be standing there by myself by the end of it but yeah it wouldn't matter i mean that there's there's uh yeah i mean great i was happy for jeff that he you know he got the this is all the cbc love this uh this week and the higher profile. And he's really taken off career-wise, and I'm happy for him. But he peaked when he buried Harold Ballard. He will never get to that level again. That's great. Great story.

And we'll get that again. Everybody listening will hear that story, because that'll be one of my questions. I want to hear details. So tell me where we can find your work, other than downgoes goes brown.com, which is your blog. And I know that you write at grant land because I read it.

You tweet out the links and I read everything you write because it's always informative and always a little funny. And tell me about anywhere else I missed. And also I just want to tell people that you have a great book. I have this book and it's hilarious. It's the best of Down Goes Brown and let us know where you can buy that because it's amazing.

Yeah, I'll slip into plug mode. You can find my work as you said on downgoesbrown.com and you can follow me on Twitter at downgoesbrown and my home these days is at Grantland. I'm the full-time hockey writer there so usually four or five times a week during the season you can find something there.

And certainly I always tweet out the links and repost them on my site. And as far as the book is called The Best Who Down Goes Brown, it's a mix of greatest hits from my website over the years, as well as a bunch of new stuff that will only ever appear in the book. And I'm told it can be kind of tough to find these days. Your local bookstore may have it. Certainly the bigger ones, the chapters and what have you, sometimes have a couple of copies hanging around still. And as well as Amazon.ca, I believe, has got some copies the last time I checked.

And hopefully, knock on wood, we're going to be reissuing a new edition this year. And at that point, it should get out there and become much easier to find again. So what you're saying is before that happens, I should put my signed copy on eBay and see what I can get for it. You may want to, yeah, because they are a little bit... Let's just say over the last couple of years,

I've learned an awful lot about how the publishing industry works. And these days, whenever I go into a bookstore and I see that they have lots of copies of something, I'm always a little bit impressed because apparently putting copies of a book onto the shelves of a bookstore is a lot tougher than I was. Yeah, unless your name's Stephen King or something, and that's a tough game, I hear.

Yeah, exactly, or Ken Dryden. Ken Dryden, right, that's right. He's always pushing me off the shelf. Well, thanks very much for doing this, Sean. I really appreciate it. And that brings us to the end of our 71st show you can follow me on Twitter at Toronto

Mike and Sean at down goes brown see you all next week Thank you.