OSTRAVA, CZE — Canada’s Akil Thomas deked Russian Goaltender Amir Miftakhov with 3 minutes remaining, giving Canada a 4-3 lead and helping them capture Gold at the 2020 U-20 World Junior Hockey Championships. But the bigger prize for Thomas and many other members of Team Canada, all between 17 and 19 years of age, was that they would not be incessantly tormented on social media for the next few...
Sportsnet’s decision to fire Don Cherry was long overdue I remember the first time I ever watched Coach’s Corner with Don Cherry. I was about four or five years old. I didn’t really understand why my family was crowding around the TV, and I had no idea what was actually coming out of the mouths of those two guys in front of me, but I could tell that the older guy with the colourful jacket was...
The North showed up in Southern California, Raptors go 1-1 in LA It is only the second month of the NBA season and the league has already been plagued with injuries and drama. We have seen stars like Steph Curry and Gordon Hayward sustain serious injuries that will prevent them from being on the court for, likely, the rest of the season. The anticipated debut and dominance from Zion Williamson is...
What a difference a few years makes in the art of the jersey burn. It was 2010: Our Prime Minister was a robot, Tech Billionaires were media darlings, and the Leafs were still disappointing. LeBron James, one of the greatest basketball players of all time, but someone who I believe will never surpass Michael Jordan, “took his talents to South Beach”. The aftermath was a night of despair in...
NCAA amateur student-athletes can now make money alongside professional athletes in paid promotional materials. The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a billion dollar business, yet 98% of student-athletes will never earn a penny for their athletic endeavors. With only 1.7% of college athletes going on to become professional athletes, the NCAA has opened a door for the rest of the...
A 30,000-Foot View of the Raptors 25th Season “What it do baby?!” The NBA season is back in full swing and our beloved Toronto Raptors celebrated opening night by raising their 2019 championship banner to the rafters while collecting their custom-made rings fitted with 600+ diamonds. It was quite a start to the season, but now the Raps need to put the celebrations behind them, and focus on the...
Have you ever wanted to actually know how your friends are doing when they waste their time playing sports instead of studying? No? Well, you get to anyway! Whew, what a month it has been for Osgoode Intramurals. These law students continue to show that they know how to do more than just read cases. About a month ago we saw Osgoode unite in the annual slo-pitch tournament that happens right near...
Osgoode’s Vaughan Rawes reflects on his decision to return to the diamond, this time as a York Lion. I remember the feeling as if it was yesterday. Losing (what I thought was) my last career OUA baseball game by giving up a 10-5 lead in the last inning and missing out on the first playoff berth in Queen’s baseball history as a result was an incredibly difficult day. After four years growing the...
How the Florida State Tax Rate Helped turn the Tampa Bay Lightning into a Juggernaut Earlier this month, the Tampa Bay Lightning, a team who had decimated the rest of the NHL in 2018-19 with the best regular season in over 20 years, managed to re-sign their young centreman Brayden Point to a three-year contract worth $6.75 million per season. As soon as the deal was signed, there were cries of...
Assessing how each NHL team did in their big offseason test Well, the free agency dominoes in the NHL have fallen. But who overpaid, and who came away with a total bargain? Let’s look at the contracts of the four restricted free agents who were expected to take home the biggest pay-day at the start of the summer. Sebastian Aho (CAR – C) Contract Projection: 6 years/$60M – $10M average...
Is it finally the year Canada brings home the Cup? October is, without a doubt, the best month to be a sports fan. The MLB playoffs are starting soon, NFL season is ramping up, the NBA is about to get underway, and, come October 2, the NHL season will finally begin. For the purpose of this article, let’s look to the NHL and see if this could feasibly be Canada’s year to bring home the...
How this year’s group of NHL RFAs are trying to reset the market As has been detailed by nearly every media outlet, this year’s crop of restricted free agents (RFA) is likely the best we will see for many years to come. The king of the castle is surely Mitch Marner of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who has just accepted a 6-year deal with an average annual value of $10.893 million. The remaining...
New Zealand goes for three in a row while Canada looks to take down a giant Though it might not be as big in Canada, the Rugby World Cup, which consistently generates over a billion viewers globally over the course of the tournament, begins on Friday. So what should our hopes be for Canada this time around? And does anyone have a shot at dethroning New Zealand? Let’s take a look. Pool A —...
Why Bianca Andreescu Deserves the Lou Marsh Award as Canada’s Top Athlete The Lou Marsh Trophy is an award given annually to Canada’s top athlete, professional or amateur, as voted by journalists across Canada. The award has been handed out 82 times since 1936, including 13 times to hockey players, nine times to a figure skater, and one time to a harness racer. Not once has it been awarded...
New Zealand Goes for Three-in-a-Row While Canada Looks to Take Down a Giant Though it might not be as big in Canada, the Rugby World Cup, which consistently generates over a billion viewers globally over the course of the tournament, begins on Friday. So what should our hopes be for Canada this time around? And does anyone have a shot at dethroning New Zealand? Let’s take a look. Pool A —...
A quick preview of what to expect on Sundays this season With the National Football League season about to kick off, it’s time once again to review the field and make some bold predictions on the studs, duds, and question marks! Contenders Kansas City Chiefs: Led by reigning NFL MVP, Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs are an obvious choice for contender. Defences have adjusted to Mahomes after his...
A re-telling of the Raptors’ incredible run to an NBA title, and the excitement that took over the city of Toronto. I strained to look over the crowd as the buses drew closer, the applause and cheers growing stronger as the bus neared our post next to Osgoode station. The NBA champions, grinning from ear to ear, showered champagne onto fans down below as they brandished the Larry O’Brien trophy;...
Nolan Cattell – Sports Editor Congratulations on making it this far into this year’s first issue of Obiter Dicta! You might be thrilled to know there actually is a place to talk sports at Osgoode Hall, and it’s right here! Welcome to the sports section of Obiter! As the sports editor, I’m hoping to provide broader coverage of the sporting landscape. Sure, we’re going to be involved in...
Or “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Quebecois” There’s this yearly event called “The Law Games”, and while it’s framed as a sports tournament, it’s essentially a week-long drinking contest designed specifically to cull the herd. This year, it was held in Winnipeg, because sociopathic endurance trials aren’t sociopathic enough unless they’re held in a city where the temperature...
And now… The Conclusion: First of all, thank you for your patience in staying for the ride for “Why Auston Matthews is a Better Player than Jack Eichel at This Stage of Their Respective NHL Careers: Parts I and II.” And now… the long-awaited conclusion as I present to you the National Hockey League (NHL) reasons to prove my “generational player/talent” formula...
The Growing Trend of the NBA Community to Vent Publicly In the last week, the NBA has witnessed what appears to be a growing trend among its teams and players. The media has become the forum for players, coaches, teammates, and organizations to call each other out. Whether through real time interviews, tweets, or Instagram posts, venting publicly is the new way for members of the NBA to...
Part II Sorry for the Cliffhanger but… The evidence is impressive. It comes in all forms—both qualitatively (through the eyes of amateur and professional scouts) as well as quantitatively (for those who do analytics and crunch numbers). As the—what is quickly becoming insurmountable—evidence continues to pile up and trend in favour of Auston Matthews, the message is loud and clear:...
A Scarce Resource: The prospect of being able to draft a “generational talent” in an NHL Entry Draft to star for your team in the next decade (if not more) is always enticing to General Managers. Yet, few GMs ever get such an opportunity, because unlike average NHL players, which are a dime a dozen, “generational players” come few and far between. Indeed, I estimated in my last article titled...
Ever since the term “generational talent/player” was coined roughly a decade in the 2005 National Hockey League (NHL) Draft, a highly-anticipated draft that produced the current fact of the NHL in Crosby, NHL General Managers (GMs)—especially those whose teams are at or near the very bottom of the NHL standings from the previous season—have been actively chasing the next such phenom...
What We’ll Need to do Better Next Year Unfortunately, I was right about the Blue Jays losing this year’s ALCS. Even more unfortunately, I was wrong in predicting they’d at least put up a good fight. We certainly went down swinging in the wrong way. Encarnacion’s awkward 9th inning hacks in Game 5 certainly won’t be as fondly remembered as Bautista’s bat flip or either of Joe Carter’s...