Mark Spector

Mark Spector is a columnist for sportsnet.ca

Question: You can start a team today, choosing any player in the National Hockey League. Who would your first pick be?

A — Sidney Crosby

B — Alex Ovechkin

C — Jonathan Toews

D — Drew Doughty

E — Pick your player

In January I would have picked Crosby, hands down. In March, post-Olympics, I’d have likely stayed with Crosby. Today, with Toews’ play these playoffs, it’s a much tougher choice. They are both 22 years old today, though Crosby, who turns 23 in August, is nearly a year older.

But watching Toews during the Olympics, and now this playoff run, the question becomes more and more legitimate.

Who is the better player — today and for years down the road: Toews or Crosby?

…..

Cry-Cry-H-F

The bleating continues from the IIHF about players who choose not to attend their second-rate, Olympic year World Championships.

First the IIHF PR man Szymon Szemberg penned a column trashing the 100-plus players from various countries who turned down invites to represent their national team. Being tired, he opined, is no excuse:

"How can a player who is 22 or 25 or 27, and who was just eliminated from the playoffs be tired?" Szemberg wrote. "Tired is a miner who works in a damp pit in Miktivka, in the Donetsk Plateau in Ukraine, who never sees daylight and who provides living for a family of five in a modest two-room apartment. That is tired.

"Tired is a divorced mother with two young kids who double shifts as a nurse assistant and cleaning lady to make ends meet."

Can’t argue with him there, other than to add this: Tired is the hockey fan who has been subjected to this organization’s moaning and complaining for as long as we can recall.

These guys. Are they ever happy?

The pertinent question is why do they even have the world championship in an Olympic year? You knew this would turn into a ‘B’ level tournament, and that’s exactly what it is.

•••

One more thing, then we’ll leave it alone.

Everyone always says that, even though the world championship isn’t overly important to Canadians, they mean everything to the Europeans.

Then why is it that whenever we tune in, it looks like there are less than 2,000 fans in the building? Maybe the IIHF should spend more time selling tickets, and less time … aw, forget it.

•••

Two Tough Calls

Two Blackhawks players who Vancouver GM Mike Gillis and Oilers GM Steve Tambellini should be fighting over: Andrew Ladd and Ben Eager.

Both are big, skate well and play with attitude. And both are restricted free agents on a team with serious cap issues. Chicago has to get pending RFA’s Antti Niemi and Niklas Hjalmarsson under contract, and Brent Seabrook and Dustin Byfuglien are due after next season.

If I’m Gillis or Tambellini, I’d trade for Ladd in particular and lock him up for three or four years. He’s won a Cup in Carolina, may win another this season, and doesn’t turn 25 until December.

As for Eager, he’s the rare big man who fights in the regular season, but skates well enough to be a valuable contributor in the playoffs. Neither the Canucks nor Oilers have enough of those guys.

•••

Dog Bites Man. Cyclist Admits to Doping.

In other news, a sportswriter scarfed down a free donut at a morning skate.

Floyd Landis, who spent up to $2 million defending himself from doping allegations, has admitted that he was systematically doping all along.

Why? Because virtually everyone else in cycling is doping, and you can’t make the team if you don’t.

"I did what I did because that's what we (cyclists) did, and it was a choice I had to make after 10 years or 12 years of hard work to get there," he said. "My choices were, do it and see if I can win, or don't do it and I tell people I just don't want to do that. I decided to do it."

In another big scoop, Landis said that his U.S. Postal Service teammate, Lance Armstrong, was also doping all along. It is just another puff of smoke added to the ongoing fires that burn around Armstrong.

Our take? We’ve always thought Armstrong had to be dirty.

When the vast majority of the peloton is on drugs, and you win the Tour de France seven times, you HAVE to be doping.

Because if clean guys could beat the dopers, all those other dopers wouldn’t be taking the needle in the first place.