Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Ron MacLean's shill job on Alex Burrows and Joe Mauer's payday.

In 17 months of this column, we had yet to receive the kind of reader response that the Alex Burrows-Stephane Auger incident has garnered. Nothing even close.

Canucks fans are over-the-top passionate and blindly loyal — almost to the fan standing behind Burrows. It’s great to see. You’re fans — you are supposed to be that way.

But we had no problem with Hockey Night in Canada’s highlight package of past indiscretions by Burrows on Saturday. That’s not an actor on tape doing all of those things. It is Burrows.

The dives and goaltender-baiting sessions are part of his resume and impact the Auger incident, to an extent. They should be a matter of record in the debate.

But the line of objectivity is crossed as soon as Ron MacLean starts putting made-up quotes into Burrows’ mouth, as Burrows lies on the ice speaking with Roberto Luongo and the Canucks trainer that December night in Nashville. At that point CBC is inventing quotes and misleading the viewer. From there the piece has no integrity and becomes a shill job for the league and its refs.

As Luongo leans down to speak with Burrows after the Smithson hit, Burrows says something to Luongo. "It looks to us on TV like he’s saying, 'Don't worry, I'm just going to get more bang for the buck here,'" MacLean says. When Burrows talks to the Canucks trainer, MacLean paraphrases Burrows’ end of the conversation as "Don't worry, has he (the referee) signaled five yet?'"

The one reader response that irks us the most is when it is implied that we "hate the Canucks." Or the Flames. Or the Leafs.

It is the easy cop-out for the fan who says the league, the refs, and the journalists are against us. And it cuts sportswriters and officials to our most valuable professional possession: our objectivity.

After watching that HNIC segment though, with the former ref MacLean mocking the player this blatantly, it’s hard to make the point that journalists are by and large objective, and we don’t care who wins.

• Mauer Money Please

Every so often a trend in sport comes to a spike. A place where we know that, one day down the road we’ll look back and say, "That was the day that everything changed for me."

The latest version of this moment arrives in baseball this season as Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer plays out the final year of his deal. If the Twins can’t extend the Minnesota native, despite all the good reasons there are for Mauer to stay put in Minny, then you can put to rest whatever faith you might have had in the slim chances of a small-market club in Major League Baseball.

"He grew up there," Twins slugger Justin Morneau pointed out to the National Post. "He’s a guy that loves being around his family, loves having his parents there, loves having his grandparents there at the game. He’s got strong ties there and people in Minnesota feel close. And people in the front office realize that special bond he has with the fans."

But will Mauer, the American League’s MVP last season, choose all of those intangibles over the millions upon millions of tangibles sure to be offered up by the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees?

That’s the moment we’re waiting for. Or the moment we’re dreading.

• McGwire’s Facade

If you were waiting for Mark McGwire to sit down behind a microphone and truly answer all the objective questions from truly objective reporters, you can give up on that dream.

McGwire opened with a contrived statement delivered to Associated Press, moved on to an in-house interview with Bob Costas on MLB network, and then bathed in the cheers of the Cardinals faithful this weekend at the team’s annual winter fanfest. When the media wanted some time with McGwire, the Cardinals shuffled them all into a crowded hallway, surrounded McGwire with security guards, and limited the interview to six minutes.

There are so many holes in McGwire’s efforts to "come clean" this past week, I think we’re beginning to like him even less as a man than we did before. Did anyone think that was a possibility?

• Namistai

The Florida Panthers will host Panthers Yoga Day prior when the Toronto Maple Leafs visit Saturday night, where fans come to the rink at 4:30 p.m. for a pregame yoga session.

They would have done it earlier, but they had to wait for an opponent who was a true Downward Dog before they could pull off the promotion.