The Fifth Liners

Hockey season has been and gone, so making the most of Alex Watson: Toronto Correspondent, here's a question about the Blue Jays, Canada's only representatives in the MLB: "The Blue Jays haven't seen World Series success since the heady days of the early 90s, does the team have the potential to challenge again? Or is it destined to wallow in mediocrity, surviving on being the only MLB franchise in the county?" Alex's Answer The city of Toronto still casts its mind back to the night of October 23, 1993 when Joe Carter 's three run homer at the bottom of the ninth inning sealed back to back world series titles for the Blue Jays! As the fireworks exploded over the Toronto SkyDome, the city could finally consider itself among the elite of baseball. But since then the Jays have suffered a 20 year playoff drought and have not placed higher than second in the American League East Division since then. Despite some fine individual players such as multiple ...

Mike's question this week focuses on a team who bore the brunt of our mocking humour last season, the Buffalo Sabres . "The Buffalo Sabres are pretty much a whole new team, do they have what it takes to make the playoffs next season?"  So far in the post season, Buffalo have been planning ahead for the future and their picks appear to have been wise ones. They smartly selected hot prospect Sam Reinhart 2nd overall at the NHL Draft in Philadelphia. This young centre has put up impressive numbers for Kootenay Ice in the WHL and he gives the Buffalo franchise new talent to be excited about! In the last few years, they have been without a stand out player, but in Reinhart they have a potential superstar in waiting and they have constructed a great sounding board in which to build the team around him. Brendan Lemieux , son of former Montreal and Colorado winder Claude was also selected 31st overall which gives them another future star to work around because on his heri...

The season is over, the playoffs are over, the draft is over, it's a sad day when there's no more Hockey. Life goes on, jobs, kids, and long suffering spouses all take center stage again. Alex is still rocking around Toronto and has, for inexplicable reasons, embraced baseball. We still have two months to wait until the return of the football season. The hockey season is even further away, over three months. Damn, July 1st brought not only Canada Day for our friends up north, but also Free Agency Day; the NHL equivalent of Black Friday. It's usually a belter. It's the day when GMs tasked with rebuilding their teams are able to snap up all of the superstars whose contracts came to an end at midday. Here's some of the most notable moves: Ryan Miller - Vancouver Canucks I'd imagine it's tough being a Canucks fan, the pressure to bag that elusive first Stanley Cup has seen lots of changes in BC recently. Starting at the back is never a bad idea and b...

The 2013/14 playoffs have been and gone. The LA Kings are still celebrating and the other 15 teams begin the post mortem into what went wrong, and what needs to be worked on for next season. The playoffs gave some amazing individual performances which gives armchair analysts like ourselves to pick our dream 20 man team from the 16 teams that took part in the playoffs. Forwards Mats Zucharello - Jeff Carter - Marian Gakorik Brandon Saad - Anze Kopitar - Justin Williams Tanner Pearson - Jonathan Toews - Dustin Brown Carl Hagelin - Evgeni Malkin - Marian Hossa- Martin St Louis Defence PK Subban - Ryan McDonagh Drew Doughty - Brent Seabrook Kris Letang - Marc Staal Goaltenders Jonathan Quick Hénrik Lundqvist