CanWest reports:

Meanwhile, Mr. Bettman continued to indicate his reluctance to relocate any NHL team to Southwestern Ontario, a market that serves the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Ottawa Senators and the Buffalo Sabres. “There’s some real downside to having multiple teams in one market,” he told reporters.

Uh… huh. In case it wasn’t obvious, CanWest mentions that Mr. Bettman was making his comments “on the eve of the Stanley Cup final between the Ottawa Senators and the Anaheim Ducks” - a fact of which you’d think the Commissioner would be aware.

It is extremely odd that Mr. Bettman would make this particular point as the eyes of the hockey world turned towards Los Angeles - a market that has two NHL hockey teams thanks to the league’s sunbelt expansion policy that Bettman inherited and ran with like Linford Christie from urinalysis.

Next season, New Jersey will play in an arena that’s a 22-minute train ride from lower Manhattan. Unlike the Ducks, the Devils have serious attendance problems. Perhaps that would be somewhere Mr. Bettman could direct his attention.

My boss suggests no one get too hot under the collar about any funds misspent by the No side during the 1995 referendum campaign, on account of the whole place had gone mental. I certainly don’t disagree. But assuming he wasn’t directing his advice towards the sovereigntist benches in Quebec City and Ottawa, where collars are rarely any cooler than warm, I don’t think he needs to worry.

Even in this day and age, when patriotism doesn’t give the average opposition politician a nanosecond’s pause before he labels the Afghanistan mission a wretched failure, I can’t see how anyone on the federalist side could possibly leverage this to his advantage. (Bastards! How dare you bend the rules the tune of a half-million dollars while scrambling desperately to save the country?)

The only people I can even see trying would be the New Demo… oh, hang on, here’s Jack now:

You know I think people ultimately have concluded these are Liberal transgressions that the government of the day, the Liberals, wasn’t respecting the rules whether it was on the sponsorship scandal or now on this instance. And our view is that most Canadians will share that same conclusion.

Having said that, our Prime Minister also seems to have taken a partisan shot. And like so many of his partisan shots, it won’t gain him squat. Naturally it fell to our Transport Minister, Lawrence Cannon, to provide the better federalist soundbyte:

I dare remind our colleagues that on two occasions Quebecers have said No. They remain within Canada and form a nation within Canada. Will the Bloc Quebecois recognize the decision of Quebecers?

He might have added that no inquiry into the ballots “spoiled” on 10/30/95 would be likely to cast a flattering night on the Yes side, but then, that wouldn’t help them get a leg-up on the Liberals at all. What a jolly time it is to be a staunch federalist.

When the second suspect in the shooting death of Jordan Manners was apprehended last night, as I understand it, it became illegal to publish his name. At 3:50pm today, a Google search on that name yielded 241 hits. I support publication bans on the names of accused young offenders - hell, I’m not so sure they shouldn’t do it for adults - but the justice system desperately needs to get a handle on the way information is disseminated in the 21st century.

“The U.S. has to take some real steps, otherwise we’re going to keep seeing tragedies.”

“Canada is not the United States and as far as I’m concerned, collectively, we’re never going to let it become the United States.”

Just who the hell is this mayor of Toronto? A (presumably) Canadian assailant shoots a Canadian high school student and David Miller’s first instinct is to fly off to Washington? I’ve never had any time for Miller, but this is the first time I’ve wondered if he’s actually deranged.

I had to read this sentence from James Travers’ Saturday column a few times before I was sure he was saying what he is, so far as I can see, saying:

It [Canada's no-fly list] turns law enforcement upside down and puts privacy at risk, mostly to cover the posteriors of politicians desperate to escape blame if anything goes wrong. Among its ludicrous assumptions is that extremists smart enough to use aircraft as missiles are so dumb they’ll travel under their own names.

Am I taking crazy pills here? Is it not instead the case that every single extremist who’s ever used a commercial aircraft as a missile has travelled under his own name?

Over at the Battle of Ontario, the Senators fans were meticulously planning their proud city’s crazyoutofcontrolspontaneous celebration of a four-game sweep of the Sabres:

Elgin is a great choice. It’s relatively narrow, loaded with bars and restaurants and is easily accessible from the Metcalfe Street off-ramp and the new University of Ottawa pedestrian bridge.

…and we can all be in bed by 11:30!

Come on now, Toronto Star online staff - surely you have enough responses by now. In light of a single, tragic incident that occurred after a rugby game, the nation simply must know what your readers think.

Do they believe “the risk of injury outweighs the benefits of participating in team contact sports in high school,” or do they not?

Daniel Alfredsson does have to kill someone before he gets called for hitting from behind in a playoff game.

“On the eve of Mother’s Day, a new report from an international charity shows Canada is plunging on a scale assessing the outlook for children in the world’s countries,” the Canadian Press warned.

“Canada’s ranking has dropped from 5th to 25th of the 43 most developed countries,” Save the Children’s Canadian branch told us.

And that’s what can happen when you measure child welfare using completely different criteria in 2007 than you did in 2006. This rather extreme example of statistical tomfoolery is the subject of my latest at Macleans.ca.

Will Canada’s victim’s rights organizations join with the family of Manny Castillo, the 15-year-old Torontonian who died of injuries sustained in a post-rugby match brawl, in asking that the assailant not be charged?