Adult-Onset Recreational Hockey

I never played organized hockey as a kid. Oddly, swimming was my winter sport from grade 6 through high school and in university, I mostly played squash in the winter. I cannot remember where or how I learned to skate but I do remember my mother taking my sister and me to Bob Patrick’s Sports in St. Catharines, Ontario to get “new” skates every couple of years at something called the “skate exchange”. I had hockey sticks for road hockey and somehow came to own a very stiff pair of 60’s style hockey gloves at some point in my childhood but I had never owned any real hockey equipment until the fall of 1991 when a friend named Wilson finally convinced me to try playing outdoor hockey - once. I agreed to come out only once, partly because I didn’t think I would enjoy it and mostly because I wanted him off my back about it. He had started organizing weekly shinny games at various City of Toronto outdoor rinks which required an extensive and persistent working of phone lines every week to pester those of us in his rolodex.

I think we played at Jimmie Simpson rink on Queen Street East that first time. I was awful and I struggled mightily but it was an epic workout and I survived. I had no helmet, no shin pads and no jock. My feet were cold and uncomfortable in my ancient skates. I lurched around the ice trying not to get in the way. But somehow it was ok and Wilson praised my courage in coming out and I think it was then that I realized that he was never going to let me slip out of his circle of weekly hockey phone calls. I was either going to have to avoid him completely or accept the fact that I had unwittingly become a hockey player of sorts. I got some used shin pads, an old helmet and a jock at Play it Again Sports in December of 1991 and played with Wilson and the others each week through the rest of the winter without any serious injury. My skating improved a bit too.  

A few weeks into the 1992-1993 season, I decided that a skate upgrade would probably make a big difference so I purchased the first pair of new skates I had ever owned at National Sports just after Christmas. After a painful period of working them in, my skating and my confidence improved. Wilson was able to book ice consistently on Thursday nights but at a different rink and at a different time each week. He dutifully called each of us every Thursday with the where and when. We carried on that same way through the 1995-1996 season. By the fall of 1996, Wilson had married, had a baby on the way and had moved to Oakville. He made it known that he would be stepping back from his hockey organizing duties but was still happy to play if someone else made the bookings and the phone calls (which soon transitioned to emails).

In the fall of 1996, I decided to step up and contact the City of Toronto permit office to ask when the rinks were opening and to inquire about possibly making the first booking. The permit officer asked me offhandedly if I had considered a seasonal weekly permit instead of a series of one-time reservations. There is an outdoor rink called Otter Creek about 800 metres from where I live but it had never been one of the 15 or so rinks Wilson had booked over the years. I said “how about Otter Creek on Thursday nights?” He said “Would 7.15 to 8.30pm work? That slot is available.” So I booked it, contingent on filing a permit application with all of our names, addresses and ages along with a certification of sorts that 80% of our group lived in the north Toronto area. The application asked for the name of the league or organization so I wrote “The Wilson Hockey League”. The permit was issued a week later. As of this writing (February, 2025), the Wilson Hockey League is now nearing the end of its 29th season at Otter Creek. The permit cost has increased from zero in the first couple of seasons to almost $2,700 this year. We play with goalies (usually) and full equipment. People watch us play every week. For many of us, Thursday night outdoor hockey is the highlight of every Toronto winter.

I would characterize the hockey played in the Wilson Hockey League as Serious Shinny. It is, above all else, friendly and we don’t keep score (the goalies say that they do) but our games are fast and competitive. Every year, as some in the group retire or move away, we add new players who are usually younger, faster and more fit that those they replace. Those of us who are the league’s founding members are now in our early sixties and most of us have learned to play smarter than we did twenty years ago as the youngsters whirl and stick-handle around us. But we run the league so they show the requisite respect and deference to us. Such is the culture of hockey.

What I really wanted to write about - and I’m just getting to it now - is the degree of pleasure that our outdoor hockey brings us. The group, even as it changes from year to year, offers a wonderful camaraderie - but not in the macho male “locker room” sense; we share a good-spirited bonding which occasionally leads to what our parents may have called “horsing-around”. But some of us now bring our progeny who are impressionable adolescents or teenagers and we don’t have to adjust our conduct for them. We’re mature and self-censored. That’s what happens when you’re sixty.

As for what happens on the ice, at various times throughout each season we battle wind, bitter cold, snow squalls and sometimes even rain but we still enjoy our share of perfect winter evenings with no wind and temperatures somewhere between minus 5 and plus 5 (the rink is artificially cooled). We have 20 non-goalie paying members signed up for the 16-week season but never do they all show up. Goalies, who must develop an intuitive sense of their position in the net as the creases are not marked, are the most difficult to recruit. In accordance with long-standing hockey tradition, our goalies do not pay fees. Rather, we go out of our way to accommodate them by picking them up, dropping them off and generally treating them like royalty. Ideally, we will have eight skaters on each side – five on the ice and three on the bench - but there are times when vacations, challenging weather conditions or the demands of a busy city life reduce our numbers to five or six or seven. These are the times when we invite anyone else around the rink to join in, be they fast-skating teenagers, girls, boys, children or parents. The game adjusts itself to the varying skill levels of the participants, allowing even the slowest and least skilled players (like I was in 1991) to be part of the game.

The joy that our outdoor hockey brings us feels difficult to describe. When most of the city’s population is engaged in sedentary indoor activity, there we are on a cold winter night playing a game for fun, getting great exercise and enjoying a collective sense of friendship and solidarity. As long as the City of Toronto continues to offer me a permit each year, the Wilson Hockey League will endure.   

 

 

Chiefs 32, Bills 29

In the Superbowl era (post 1967), the Buffalo Bills have played in the AFC Championship Game seven times and, thanks to four consecutive wins from 1991 through 1994, they still maintain a winning record of four wins and three losses. The first of those three losses came in January, 1989 in Cincinnati after posting a 12-4 1988 break-out season which began their great run under Marv Levy and Jim Kelly. The Bills were clearly punching above their weight that year after beating the Houston Oilers at home in the Divisional round. The Bengals won the game 21-10 and went on to lose the Superbowl to the 49ers. After the four consecutive wins, the next AFC title game for Buffalo was four years ago – in the COVID season of 2020. After narrowly beating the Colts in the Wildcard round, then the Ravens in the Divisional round, the Bills, again probably punching well above their weight, took a 9-0 lead against the Chiefs in Kansas City before falling 38-24. That loss set their record in conference title games back to 4-2.

Entering last night’s contest at Arrowhead Stadium, the Bills were two-point underdogs but a plurality of pundits whose prognostications I came across thought that their time had finally come and that the Chiefs drive for an unprecedented third straight Superbowl title would fall short and the Bills would go to their first Superbowl in 31 years. It was not to be as we know on this sobering Monday morning. A 32-29 loss has broken the hearts of Bills Mafia and will cause me to perform my annual ritual of putting away my Bills hats, shirts, jackets and pins until late July when training camp begins. The difference this time, compared to the two other title game losses, is that I really did feel that they would win the game last night. I was feeling pretty good all day long – a magnificent cross-country ski in powdery fluffy snow under blue Muskoka skies followed by a relaxing and rejuvenating sauna, a few dunks in the lake, a couple of beers, lasagna, coleslaw and a cheery pie for dinner. But they lost.

Over the past week, after the Bills beat the Ravens, my thoughts naturally turned to the possibility of the Bills making it to the Superbowl in New Orleans. Had they been successful last night, as a season ticket holder, I presumably would have been offered the option to enter a lottery of sorts for a shot at a pair of the block of tickets which the NFL allocates to each participating team. How many tickets would Bills fans be allocated? How would the lottery work? Would it be based on subscription seniority or on the quality of currently held season tickets or would it just simply be a “luck-of-the-draw” lottery? What would our chances be? When would we learn any of these details? These questions swirled in my mind over the past week as I looked with mild amusement and some trepidation at the possibility of camping on Lake Pontchartrain. Thankfully, there’s no reason now to fret about accommodations in Louisiana or the answers to any of these other questions. I still know none of them except that my friend Steve whose seats are next to mine in section 111 managed to get to three of the four Superbowls 30 years ago by way of the lottery. He only missed the first one against the Giants. His dad has been a season ticket holder since the 1960s and he was pretty sure that their very high level of seniority helped them in the lotteries. As for finding accommodations in Minneapolis, Pasadena and Atlanta 30 years ago, they booked hotels in places which were a couple of hours drive from the Superbowl venues, rented vehicles and drove in the to host cities for the games. I do obviously hope to learn the answers to the lottery questions one day. Maybe I’ll know a year from now.

The countdown to the opening of the new Highmark Stadium is now well underway. Only one season remains to be played at what I will now call by its original name, Rich Stadium, the brutalist concrete slab built in 1973 about 20 miles south of Buffalo in the sleepy town of Orchard Park. Its staggering 80,000 seats almost doubled the capacity of the Bills previous home, War Memorial Stadium which opened in 1937. Its nickname was “the Rockpile” so perhaps we should use “the Slab” to describe Rich Stadium as it now enters its final year as an NFL venue. I didn’t attend my first game there until 1988 – a 9-6 Bills win over the Jets which featured a blocked field goal attempt by Fred Smerlas and fans running onto the field and tearing down the goalposts to celebrate a division win. I have many other fond memories of great games and great wins there and some not-so-fond memories of ridiculously boorish fan behaviour and epic traffic jams. The boorish fan behaviour has moderated considerably as the league’s efforts to make the stadium experience more family-friendly have paid off and the “Lord of the Flies” atmosphere thankfully is no more. As for the traffic exiting the parking lots, it’s as bad as ever and I really do hope that it is improved at the new stadium. I also really wish that Dalton Kincaid had caught that fourth down pass. If he had, I’d probably be packing up my tent for some Louisiana camping.         

Bills 27, Ravens 25

Event tickets now exist only electronically in our Apple Wallets, Google Wallets or any other phone-based wallet apps which may exist. It’s quite straightforward really – you just open the ticket on your phone and scan it on the reader at the gate. It’s much more secure than any form of paper tickets they tell us and I am sure they’re right about that. During the tailgate festivities outside Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park yesterday afternoon, I was catastrophizing about the chaos which would ensue should the wallet / scanner system go down for any length of time before the game. Tens of thousands of fans would either be late or might decide to crash the gates. What a nightmare something like that would be, I mused. Then shortly after 5.30pm, once through security, I scanned my phone several times and received not the reassuring beep of a successful scan but a series of incomprehensible error messages - not what you want to see on your phone with 70,000 well-lubricated Bills fans lined up behind you. This attracted the attention of a stadium staff member with a tablet in hand who pulled me aside and offered to help. There was a major issue today she explained with a Google Wallet update which had not reached many Samsung phones, obviously including mine. She could not have been more helpful and said several times that this was not my fault and that we would sort it all out. After verifying my identity (she had my season ticket account details on her tablet) she sent me a text message with a security code for me to re-type into an email and send somewhere. Helpless without reading glasses as I was, I handed her my phone and asked her to drive. She obliged and a couple of minutes later I was able to “scan in” on her tablet and I was finally on my way. I was worried enough about containing Derrick Henry and didn’t need that kind of stress as game-time approached. These electronic app-based systems work just fine – until they don’t.

I started on my journey as a fan of the Buffalo Bills in 1978 and 1979 and by 1980 I was fully committed. In January 1981, still on Christmas break from university, I was picking up some hours as a dishwasher at the Crock and Block restaurant in St. Catharines, Ont. In the bowels of the kitchen there, on Saturday January 3^rd I was able to catch the great Van Miller’s radio play-by-play call of the Bills first playoff game since 1974 as they fell in the Wildcard Round to the Chargers in San Diego. A year later they won a Wildcard game at Shea Stadium against the Jets then lost a heart-breaker at Cincinnati in the Divisional Round where on the potential game-tying touchdown drive, Joe Ferguson’s fourth down pass to Lou Piccone for a first down deep in Bengals territory was called back on a delay of game penalty. The Bengals then faced the Chargers a week later in the AFC Championship Game in what became known as the Freezer Bowl. The game-time temperature was minus 23C with sustained winds of 40kmh making for a windchill of minus 50C. I watched the game in London, Ont and I can clearly recall wondering why Americans choose to make football a winter sport. I’ve been wondering the same thing on-and-off ever since.

Weather forecasts in the days before last night’s NFL Divisional Round playoff game in Orchard Park portended the coldest weather to be experienced in this part of the world since the retreat of the glaciers some 10,000 years ago. No amount of insulated clothing or charcoal or electrified heated socks could keep us warm for six hours in conditions this harsh, we were warned. Turns out that the actual extreme cold weather is set to begin today and had not arrived by game-time yesterday or even by the time the game ended. Was it cold? Sure. Minus 8 or so which was fine with proper clothing which we certainly had. The game-changer was the battery-powered heated socks which performed and lasted as advertised. They seemed like a bit of a frivolous investment at $250 but the thought of them keeping my feet warm through many more January Bills home playoff games in the years to come actually makes my feet feel warmer even sitting here at my desk in north Toronto on this Buffalo Football Victory Monday.

What a game it was to be at: an electric crowd (maybe partly from the socks), a high stakes playoff game with light snow falling throughout and, in the end, a Bills win. The breaks certainly went their way as the Ravens turned the ball over three times to the Bills none and their long-tenured and reliable tight end Mark Andrews could not close the deal on a two-point conversion with a minute and thirty seconds remaining as the Bills hung on for a two-point win. Overtime seemed likely as I watched Lamar Jackson’s pass appear to land in his breadbasket but when the Bills fans in the section behind him erupted in joy, I knew he had dropped it. An easy recovery of an onside kick then one first down and it was time for victory formation. Now another January trip to Kansas City – this time for a berth in the Superbowl – is next week’s assignment for the Bills.

I got to bed just before 3am and I can say that I definitely haven’t been up that late since last year’s Divisional Round game against the Chiefs. Sitting in the parking lot for a solid hour after the game was much more enjoyable this time around as the Bills had won and the callers into WGR were happy. It took so long to finally get moving that as we inched along Southwestern Blvd toward to the 219, a convoy of sheriff’s vehicles escorted a group of buses around us and the traffic jam. We assumed that it was the Ravens players and staff enroute to the Buffalo airport for their miserable flight back to BWI. 30 minutes at the Peace Bridge then a series of lake-effect snow squalls were the last hurdles of the long but ultimately successful and enjoyable day and night.

“The right to play another week; another chance to go 1-0” is how Josh Allen described what his team accomplished last night. The Chiefs, with an extra day to prepare and playing at home will be ready. Can the Bills finally reverse the trend of playoff losses to the Chiefs? That’s why they play the games.  

Bills 31, Broncos 7

I found myself worrying more about the Ravens than the Broncos as the morning unfolded yesterday and I was hoping that wouldn’t jinx the Bills with the matter at hand – the matter of the Denver Broncos and their fearsome pass-rush, poised rookie quarterback and highly respected head coach. When the Broncos went up early with a long touchdown it seemed like my ill-advised foresight might cost us but it didn’t of course as the Bills cruised to a comfortable 31-7 win for the home fans in weather quite decent for mid-January in Orchard Park. But this morning I am more and more worried about these Ravens who come to town on Sunday night as the third seed in the AFC – the same as the Kansas City Chiefs were a year ago. Same time slot, same broadcast crew and the same seeding match-up with the third seed at the second seed. The main difference is that Taylor Swift will not be in the house.

Marv Levy, who turns 100 in August, famously said a few decades ago that to win in the NFL you must do two things: run the ball and stop the run. The game has evolved and that mantra doesn’t often apply in these times of high-flying passing offences and 41-38 games but sometimes it holds just as true as it did in the 1950s when Marv started coaching football. Yesterday was one of those times. The Bills dominated the Broncos in time of possession by more than a two-to-one margin mostly by running the ball very effectively. James Cook carried 23 times for 120 yards – an average of 5.2 yards per carry. In contrast, the Broncos featured back, Javonte Williams carried seven times for a paltry 29 yards. Marv would probably say that those two statistical measures – time of possession and rushing yards for and against – told the story of the game just like they would have in any decade in the history of the NFL.

I store my small Weber barbecue and my folding table - yes, the kind that I could jump off a van and land on, probably seriously injuring myself in the process – in an out-building at my cottage. I use it exclusively in Lot 7 at Highmark Stadium. On Friday, I went to get a snow shovel from that building and when I looked at the barbecue and table, I wondered if I would be loading them in my car before I left the cottage this time around. I figured that I would jinx things for sure were I to move them to the car before yesterday’s game was played but I did so within 30 minutes of the end of the game, along with a large bag of charcoal, lighter fluid and my heavy-duty Sorel boots. We are off to Orchard Park on Sunday for another winter evening playoff game and, while I really am worried about the Ravens, I am excited to be going once again to a football game which will be watched on television by tens of millions. Thankfully, I am past the point where I would or could jump on my folding table but I look forward to seeing other foolhardy Bills fans giving it a try. Not with my table of course.

With all but one of the Divisional round teams determined, pending tonight’s game between the Vikings and the Rams, the league announced the time slots for the four games after the Commanders win over the Bucs in Tampa. With then exception of the Bills v. Ravens, the match-ups are not as deliciously interesting as we might have hoped. The Houston Texans at Kansas City Chiefs kicks off the Divisional round at 4.30pm Saturday with the Chiefs listed now as 7.5-point favourites. That line opened at nine points and obviously some significant early money came in on the Texans who with an unlikely win over the Chiefs would give the Bills something more to play for the following evening – a chance to host the AFC Championship Game. It’s very difficult to imagine the Texans pulling off an upset of this magnitude but that’s why they play the games. Then on Saturday night, Washington plays the Lions in Detroit with the home team currently an 8.5-point favourite. Sunday at 3pm sees the winner of the Rams v. Vikings game play at Philadelphia.  

The Bills are favoured by one point against the Ravens. They say that home field is worth three points on the betting line so at a neutral site, the Ravens would be two-point favourites and if the game were to be played in Baltimore, they would be favoured by five. That line seems about right to me as Lamar Jackson, who has been spectacular recently, combined with the powerful running of Derek Henry, will present a huge challenge for the Bills “bend but don’t break” defence. Last time these teams met in the playoffs was four years ago in an empty Highmark Stadium when Taron Johnson intercepted Lamar Jackson in his own endzone and returned it more than 100 yards for a touchdown as the Bills went on to win 17-3. They will probably need a key turnover once again to win on Sunday night.

The game will feature the two top contenders for the NFL’s Most Valuable Player award. The statistical edge does go Lamar Jackson but the intangible edge – maybe within the true meaning of “most valuable to his team” – edge probably goes to Josh Allen. There is no wrong choice here as in my view they are both fully deserving of the award. I would of course love to see Josh play his best game and lead the Bills to the AFC Championship Game and (easy for me to say), I would gladly trade that for Jackson winning the MVP.  

Patriots 23, Bills 16

I don’t think the lack of familiarity with the Buffalo Bills upcoming playoff opponent is any advantage to them but I really was not feeling good about the prospects of facing either the Dolphins or the Bengals in the upcoming Wildcard playoff game. Instead, the Denver Broncos, fresh off their 38-0 drubbing of the Chiefs back-ups yesterday at Mile High, come to Orchard Park on Sunday. I hope my slight sense of optimism doesn’t turn out to prove the “devil you know” proverb but I sense that there’s a certain satisfaction within Bills Mafia in these two particular devils being eliminated from contention for the seventh AFC playoff spot yesterday.

The Bills and Broncos have met only once in the playoffs in a game I remember very well: a tense, low-scoring AFC Championship Game played under sunny, calm and unseasonably mild conditions in Orchard Park 33 years ago. After a scoreless first half, Bills linebacker Carleton Bailey intercepted John Elway deep in Broncos territory and romped easily into the endzone for the Bills only touchdown of the day enroute to a 10-7 win. The Bills would then be crushed by Washington two weeks later in Minneapolis. The Broncos last visit to Buffalo is one that Bills fans would rather forget: a 24-22 loss in November, 2023. Wil Lutz made his second attempt at a game-winning field goal attempt count after he initially missed but was afforded a second chance on account of the Bills having 12 men on the field first time around.

This Broncos team comes to Buffalo with one of the best head coaches in the league in Sean Payton and an outstanding rookie quarterback in Bo Nix who is the first rookie quarterback to earn the Broncos starting job out of training camp since the team’s current General Manager John Elway did the same thing some 41 years earlier. The Broncos defence has been very good all season as it leads the NFL with 63 sacks but the offence under Nix is improving every week. This may be wishful thinking but I got the sense watching them shred the Chiefs back-ups yesterday and clinching the team’s first playoff berth since winning the Superbowl nine years ago that this was the peak of success for them – in the 2024 season anyway. They are clearly in an ascendency but my hunch is that their rookie quarterback might be overwhelmed by the hostile crowd, the weather, the situation and that their climb will end on Sunday with a loss to the Bills.

I won’t be attending the game on Sunday, although the 1pm start time is tempting. I’m using the same methodology as I did last year in terms of which playoff game(s) to attend. Winter football games in Buffalo are a big effort: Practically speaking in terms of potentially stressful and slow winter driving, clothing choices, the need for headlamps and hot food planning; psychologically speaking in terms of approach, attitude and mindset. Being outside for six or seven hours running only whatever heat your body can generate by standing is certainly a challenge and depending on exactly how cold it is, can be uncomfortable no matter how warmly you dress. Could be the year to finally invest in heated socks.

The plan, like last year, is to skip the Wildcard Round game and attend the Divisional Round game in two weeks time. The thinking is as follows: the Divisional Round - call it the conference semi-finals - is more important than the Wildcard Round in terms of being only two games away from the Superbowl. The plan is obviously conditional on the Bills winning this game against the Broncos. If they lose, then there will be no game to attend and the possibly flawed logic I’m using is that if they do lose the Wildcard game, then I wouldn’t have wanted to be there for a playoff loss anyway. I used the same logic last year by passing on the Pittsburgh Wildcard game and attending the Chiefs Divisional game which the Bills lost. It was an entertaining game, watched by some 50 million on television, and I don’t regret having gone. I regret the three-point loss to the eventual Superbowl champions but the pre-game excitement, having Taylor Swift in the house and the gripping one-score game were all well worth it. Being stuck in the parking lot for a solid hour afterward without moving and the late and dark drive home, not so much. If the stars align and the Bills win their Wildcard and Divisional games and the Chiefs somehow manage to lose their Divisional game, then the AFC Championship Game will be played in Orchard Park and I will end up at winter games in two consecutive weeks. Let’s hope that’s how it plays out.

Yesterday’s full slate of games featured more coverage of certain specific player contract incentives than I can remember in the past. James Cook tied the Bills record for rushing touchdowns at 16 which was held by none other than OJ Simpson. Von Miller recorded his sixth sack, Sam Martin and Mack Hollins both reached incentives and earned bonuses accordingly. Bucs receiver Mike Evans caught a pass near the end of their game – when the team would have been in victory formation - to go over 1,000 receiving yards for the 11^th consecutive season, tying a record held by Jerry Rice. At one point, I wondered if some cheap owners may be tempted to order that certain players either not play or be pulled from games before they earn their incentives but someone pointed out that this would severely limit a team’s ability to attract free agents in the future. I wonder if these incentives should be quite so publicly known as they are. Players running around celebrating bonuses earned just doesn’t seem like a good look for the league.

So, an unusual 1pm Sunday game – the third of six games on the slate next weekend, including a Monday night game where the poor Vikings, having lost their chance at the one-seed last night in Detroit, must travel to the west coast to face the Rams. After 272 regular season games, there are 13 NFL playoff games remaining, including the Superbowl.  

Bills 40, Jets 14

Bit of a difficult day yesterday for us but not in any way related to the Bills decisive win over the Jets yesterday in Orchard Park. Awoke just before 4.30am to the sounds of our 14-year-old White Sheppard/Husky having a seizure, foaming at the mouth, legs flailing and barely able to breathe. This lasted about 10 minutes then we carried her to the car and headed south through thick fog to the Huronia Emergency Veterinary Clinic in Barrie where she took her last laboured breath around 9.30am. Amazingly – and thankfully – she settled comfortably for her last few minutes before the sedative and the final syringe took effect. This was an animal with whom I had spent a great deal of time and, although we knew her days were numbered, having received a devastating diagnosis of an aggressive and untreatable cancerous growth on her throat, she had been energetic and content for the last 10 days or so, thanks mostly to the miraculous effect of prednisone, a widely prescribed (to humans and animals alike) cortico-steroid. I thought I was prepared for this – and I mostly was – but it was still heartbreaking and intensely sad. Having been through this four times before, I know that the grief of the loss of a dog is severe but relatively short in duration (for me anyway), at least compared to the loss of someone close. Our Sophie is gone now but our Christmas present was her last week at the cottage running in the snow, eating everything in sight and giving us her unconditional love – as she always did.

But we were back at the cottage in time for the week 17 slate of NFL games and the Bills did not disappoint as they built a 40-0 lead with four second-half touchdowns, and cruised to a 40-14 win, sealing up the second seed in the AFC playoff bracket. Aaron Rodgers was understandably frustrated and although I usually pride myself on never rooting against specific teams or players, his failure yesterday - and all season long – did please me. This may have been his last trip to Buffalo in an NFL uniform. Time to kick him to the curb. The Jets will have a huge salary cap hit for the next two seasons if they release him but what choice do they really have? Will another owner choose to sign Rodgers to make some headlines and sell some tickets? Maybe but if I were a fan or a season ticket holder of the team that does that, I’d be pissed.

Week 18 in the NFL is always fascinating and fraught with challenges for book-makers and punters alike. Some teams are out of playoff contention and are playing for pride and draft positioning; some teams need to win to clinch division titles or playoff berths; some teams need to win and hope for others to lose; some teams (like the Bills and Chiefs) are locked in to their playoff seeds and can rest starters, call up deserving players from their practice squads and save their real game-plans for the playoffs. Setting gambling lines amidst all of this is a huge challenge and gamblers who invest time to do their research thoroughly can, in theory, profit more than they do in earlier weeks. Bills coach Sean McDermott mentioned yesterday after the game that there are back-up players who will earn starts next week and practice squad players who will get a chance to earn a real NFL game-cheque. Imagine how hard these men will play when they’re given this rare opportunity then imagine how hard their opponent - the Patriots at 3-13 – will play. The Patriots are in the interesting position of controlling their own destiny in terms of picking first overall in the 2025 NFL draft. All they need to do is lose to the Bills back-ups and subs and it is theirs. The league doesn’t like the idea of teams “tanking” for this purpose but Patriots management and coaches may design a game-plan and deploy personnel for this purpose while creating the appearance of trying to win.

By locking up the second seed, the Bills have effectively earned themselves a bye week and will probably turn their attention to their potential opponent in the Wildcard round. The most likely team to come to Orchard Park in two weeks is the Denver Broncos who need to beat the Chiefs back-ups to the clinch the seventh and last AFC playoff spot. If they lose, then the Miami Dolphins are the Bills next most likely opponent as they need a Broncos loss and a win over the Jets in the Meadowlands to get in. Still alive are the Cincinnati Bengals who need to win in Pittsburgh on Saturday night and hope for losses by the Broncos and the Dolphins. Who of these three would the Bills prefer to play?  They will of course never say but honestly, I’ll take the Broncos. If the Dolphins make it, the Bills would need to beat them for a third time this season and it just seems like they don’t match up well against the Bengals. The Broncos have a rookie quarterback while the Dolphins and Bengals both have seasoned veterans who have played in Buffalo in January before. But the Broncos have to hand the Chiefs what would be only their second loss of the season. And the Chiefs will be resting their starters. But the Chiefs second-stringers and practice squad crew are probably good players looking to make their mark. So, who knows what will happen in week 18. Denver is favoured by 9.5 points and they’re at home. I’ll take Denver then I’ll take the Bills to beat them the following week. That’s what Sophie would have wanted.

    

 

Bills 24, Patriots 21

Like local television stations track Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, yesterday I was tracking the movements of a friend of mine – let’s call him Paul F. – on his journey from Riverdale to Orchard Park in a large passenger van with his two sons and a group of 11 friends of theirs – 14 of them in total. Not much information on their travels was available in real time but as the day progressed, I was imagining where they might be along their way: stopping in St. Catharines to buy warm winter boots, in a line-up at the Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, dealing with US border authorities, trying to find a suitable place to park near the stadium so as to not be too far away but far enough away to avoid being trapped in the insanity which is post-game traffic trying to exit the stadium lots and then Orchard Park. Would they be prepared for the cold, I wondered as yesterday’s game was one of the coldest home games in Buffalo Bills history – certainly the coldest one in recent years. And even colder with kick-off changed from 1pm to 4.25pm. Was their recently purchased small charcoal barbecue enough to feed 14 chilly Bills fans? They were certainly hoping for - even expecting – a comfortable Bills lead in the second half to permit a stress-free early exit, easy egress from wherever they managed to park and a manageable arrival time at home. I will request a full report in a few hours but for now the only thing I know for sure is that if they did leave the game early, they missed what was a closer finish than Bills fans – and sports books - were predicting.

“It’s hard to win in the NFL”, former Bills head coach Dick Jauron famously said 15 or so years ago as he was busy stringing up 7-9 seasons like Christmas lights on his house. Sean McDermott repeated that after yesterday’s game which the Bills won mostly because of an unsuccessful lateral pass attempted by Patriots quarterback Drake Maye under the shadow of his own goalposts. The fumbled lateral landed just inside the goal-line where Taron Johnson pounced on it for an easy touchdown. The Bills added a 50-yard Tyler Bass field goal which ended up being the margin of victory in a tense final few minutes which saw the Patriots score late then try an onside kick which the Bills actually fumbled then recovered.

It definitely is hard to win in the NFL especially late in the season when pitted against a 3-11 team with “nothing to play for” except pride, roster spots for next season, possible free agent dollars in the off-season and the development of a promising young quarterback who could become the foundation of the franchise going forward. Bill Parcells once said of these late-season games with teams who have been eliminated from playoff contention: “Anyone who says these games don’t mean anything doesn’t know what they’re talking about.” If I were a Patriots fan, the play of Drake Maye yesterday in a cold and hostile environment would have given me a strong measure of confidence going into the season’s last two games and hopefully many seasons beyond. His composure and throwing accuracy were impressive given the opponent and playing conditions. Even in a loss, the Patriots probably came away feeling pretty good about their effort and their future prospects. Given the last 20 years of history, maybe success shouldn’t come too quickly for them.

As for the Bills, they continue to give up yardage on the ground but this time, rather than hanging 40 or more points on their opponent as they’ve been doing in recent weeks, their passing offence sputtered as they found themselves down 14-0 in the second quarter. We learned that Josh Allen actually broke his left hand on the game-winning touchdown way back in week one against the Cardinals. Yesterday, he pranged the funny-bone on his right arm on another scramble and temporarily lost feeling in his hand which was evident on his next throw. He told CBS sideline reporter Evan Washburn after the game that everything was fine with his right arm and hand. Of course it was. Hopefully, it doesn’t evolve into another nagging injury for him.

The US college football bowl season and new playoff format are well underway now. The ever-changing names of the lesser bowl games invite ridicule in some circles but I just find them amusing. I may not catch all of the Potato Bowl this afternoon in Boise, ID between Northern Illinois and Fresno State but I’ll definitely be thinking about it when I’m cross-country skiing. As for the new 12-team playoff format, it seems to be off to a good start with the four home teams winning their games comfortably this past weekend, leaving eight teams going forward. The remaining seven games will be played at neutral sites with the National Championship Game set for Monday January 20^th. I have a niece who is currently residing in Athens, GA, home of the Georgia Bulldogs and for that reason (and since the Michigan Wolverines have been relegated to playing in the ReliaQuest Bowl on New Year’s Eve), I’ll be rooting for the Bulldogs when they play Notre Dame on New Year’s Day.

The Bills have another home game coming up next against the farcical New York Jets. It is set for 1pm on Sunday but, who knows, maybe it too will be flexed to the late afternoon slot. The Jets managed another loss yesterday, this time at home to the Rams. The Jets will come to Orchard Park with a 4-11 record and have been a dumpster fire / train wreck all season. They have one more win than the Patriots do but expectations going into the season were high – probably unrealistically high – and they have failed epically to deliver anything promising to their fan base. The meddling owner fired the head coach early on, then the general manager and we heard this past week that he vetoed a trade earlier this season because the player they were trading for had a “Madden Score” which wasn’t high enough for him. For the Bills, this represents another potentially dangerous opponent with “nothing to play for”. Let’s hope they are ready as the top seed in the AFC, although fading away, remains within reach.