The Hockey Show, Canada's only campus-produced radio show that strictly talks hockey, is back in the confines of the UMFM studios for another show this evening, but we won't be joined by Montreal Victoire defender Kati Tabin as she's far too busy to make an appearance. If you're attending her camp, have a great time, but we'll focus on some bigger stories tonight as the world of hockey has some good, some not-so-good, and some absolute treachery happening in it over the last week. There's a pile of stuff to chat about this evening, so settle in for another examination of the game and all its connections on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT!
They won't be looking for a dolphin like the pet detective shown, but Teebz and Jason will look at the newest gambling-trend-turned-investment-tool with which the financial world is hoping to capitalize. Beyond that madness, they'll discuss Rogers canning the HNiC Punjabi broadcasts, the OHL cracking down on fighting again, Jeff Skinner's new home, Fort Wayne's incredible jerseys, a pro ball player, championships in three leagues, there's finally a name and logo for one team, and whatever else comes across the desk at our hosts. There's lots to discuss tonight on the show, so settle in for an hour of hockey opinions and thoughts on The Hockey Show at 5:30pm CT on one of 101.5 FM, Channel 718 on MTS TV, or via UMFM.com!
If you live outside Winnipeg and want to listen, we have options! The UMFM website's streaming player works well if you want to listen online. We also recommend Radio Garden if you need an easy-to-use online stream. If you're more of an app person, we recommend you use the TuneIn app found on the App Store or Google Play Store.
If you have questions, you can email all show queries and comments to hockeyshow@umfm.com! Tweet me anytime with questions you may have by hitting me up at @TeebzHBIC on Twitter! I'm here to listen to you, so make your voice heard! And because both Teebz and Jason are on the butterfly app where things are less noisy, you can find Teebz here and Jason here on Bluesky!
Tonight, Teebz and Jason chat high-stakes gambling, stupid decisions, expensive fights, Swiss chalets, historical accuracy, pro hits, winning teams, new names, and much more exclusively on 101.5 UMFM and on the UMFM.com web stream!
For the last couple of weeks, I've been spending a lot of time reading about, researching, and narrowing down my options for a new HBIC mobile, and my choice of the vehicle you see to the left is a good one! Jokes aside, I didn't buy that car, but I did take possession of a new vehicle today so anyone who knew my old vehicle will likely need to get used to this new one parked in my driveway. Being that I like to know everything about expensive purchases I make, I'm going to spend the evening reading the manuals that came with the vehicle.
No, I'm not listing what I purchased here, but I assure you that this blog contributed nothing to the purchase. What I can tell you, though, is that there is more technology in this car than I've ever had in a vehicle, so I need to figure out what everything does, how it all connects through my phone, and whether or not satellite radio is necessary in this new vehicle. I'm leaning towards no, but we'll see.
I've listened to the NHL Network radio channel they have on SiriusXM and I'm often wondering why I'm listening. There isn't a show on there that is "must-hear radio", so that's one reason I may scrap the subscription. Add in the fact that Howard Stern is dropping to one show per week according to a Page Six report, the playlists for the music stations rarely change, and I have no need for Pitbull's channel, Kelly Clarkson's channel, The Beatles' channel, Alex Cooper's music, Bruce Springsteen's channel, Pearl Jam's channel, the Grateful Dead channel, and so on. No, I'm not staying for Andy Cohen either.
I might show my age here, but I would load up my iPod Nano with all my favorite music and listen to it for hours on road trips. Unless there was something specific on satellite radio that I wanted to hear, there really wasn't a need to have it. I'll admit that I've enjoyed the Howard Stern Show over the years and used it to the listen to the Blue Jays' run to the World Series last season when I was travelling for work, but more commercials on channels and less and less variation is making it hard to justify the cost of satellite radio at this point.
I'll evaluate thst decision moving forward, but, being that the hockey stories are few and far between right now, I'm going to spend this evening getting smarter about all this connected technology so I can have the full experience with my vehicle. According to the first few pages that I've read, Apple's Siri might be useful if it's integrated with the car's technology! See? I learned something already!
Imagine it's 1952 and you're heading to the local arena to catch the new professional team in action. If you're a man, you're wearing your best fedora, a snazzy suit and overcoat, and you're looking forward to the spectacle of hockey as you find your seats behind the chicken wire protecting the fans. Women would have been dressed in long dresses with perhaps a fur coat and a scarf to stay warm as the action unfolded on the ice in front of them. Hockey looked different back in 1950 when the ECHL's Fort Wayne Komets got their start in the International Hockey League, and it will look different on opening night as the team honours its storied history once again!
I had mentioned before on this blog that the Komets were going to wear three jerseys this season from different championship eras, but I never really examined each of those jerseys so I'll do that here today before we get to what the Komets will wear on opening night. After all, if they're going to honour their history in a classy way, they deserve a little credit for making that effort! Let's check them out!
As per the Komets' blurb about these 1962-63 jerseys, "Following setbacks in 1959 and 1960, the Komets secured their first Turner Cup championship in 1963" and "[t]he team defeated Minneapolis in five games to win the cup on April 23, 1963." I removed the dozen players who were named in the blurb, but, frankly, anytime a team can do horizontal stripes is a win for me. Of the names I omitted from the Turner Cup-winning team, Reggie Primeau played eight seasons with the Komets, Winnipegger Len Thornson spent 12 seasons with the Komets including five as team captain, and John Goodwin spent parts of eight seasons in Fort Wayne. The Komets went 35-30-5 in '62-63 to finish atop the six-team IHL standings, one point better than the Minneapolis Millers and two better than the Muskegon Zephyrs!
From the Komets' site, "Under head coach Marc Boileau, and with strong performances from Terry Pembroke, Terry Thomson, Cal Purinton, and goaltenders Robbie Irons and Don Atchison, the Komets allowed the fewest goals in the IHL that season. They defeated Flint in the first playoff round and swept Port Huron in the finals to win the cup on April 15, 1973." I'm not overly convinced that this jersey couldn't use a splash of white, but that orange jersey is beacon on the ice. What should be noted is that the Komets were first-overall in the nine-team IHL that season with a 48-23-3 record, finishing ten points ahead of the Flint Generals en route to a Turner Cup championship! Wayne Ego led the team with 94 points!
Again, from the Komets' site, "Few outside their locker room gave Fort Wayne a chance against San Diego in the 1993 Turner Cup Finals. After a sweep of Cleveland and Atlanta in the first two rounds of the playoffs, the Komets did the unthinkable. They swept the favored Gulls, completing one of the most dominant playoff performances in pro hockey history, going 12-0." This is the jersey I associate with the Komets after seeing them play the Manitoba Moose in the IHL, but it's pretty incredible to think that the 49-27-6 Komets were only the fourth-best team in the IHL that season, and only two points better than the Kansas City Blades in the twelve-team circuit! But, as the legend states, the Komets were perfect in the playoffs as the ousted Cleveland, 52-win Atlanta, and 62-win San Diego in series sweeps!
That leads us to opening night this season where Komets history will shine. The 1952-53 season would be Fort Wayne's first season in the International Hockey League. By all accounts, fans in Fort Wayne took to their new professional team quickly, filling the Fort Wayne Memorial Coliseum for each game. They battled some good teams from Cincinnati, Grand Rapids, and Toledo, but would ultimately finish in fifth-place of the six teams with a 20-38-2 record under head coach Alex Wood. George Drysdale led the way with 59 points while goaltender Jack Siemon appeared in 56 games that year. What's even cooler is that the Komets had five Winnipeg-born players on their roster for their inaugural season as all of defenceman Len Wharton, forwards Bob Daski, George Harrison, and Jack Kernahan, and goaltender Stan Fogg all were born in the Manitoba capital!
What's even cooler is that the Toledo Walleye, who Fort Wayne faces on October 17 in those 1952-53 jerseys, will bring their own heritage and history to the game by donning jerseys representing the '52-53 Toledo Mercurys that night! The Mercurys finished in third-place in the inaugural IHL season with a 32-25-3 record under player-coach/defenceman Doug McCaig. Roger Maisonneuve, who would soon become a Komet Hall-of-Famer, led the Mercurys in scoring with 38 goals and 85 points while six more Mercurys players had 19-or-more goals! Like Fort Wayne, Toledo brought in the Winnipeggers as defenceman Lou Kazowski and forwards Don Hart and Jerry Kruk were in the Mercurys' lineup!
All of these jerseys have some incredible historical significance in the Komets' franchise history, and seeing the Komets go all-out for their 75th anniversary is pretty awesome. If more teams paid attention to their histories with as much class and dignity as the Komets, the game would look a lot better and would allow teams to explore their histories a lot more. There have been a lot of great sweaters and jerseys worn by some incredible teams, and those teams should be known and celebrated in the modern era like the Komets are doing.
Once again, the Fort Wayne Komets are the head of the class in the ECHL when it comes to honouring their history, and this fourth throwback jersey to be worn on opening night along with Toledo's Mercurys throwback jersey should have the hockey gods smiling this season. No matter how things end this season the Fort Wayne Komets are doing hockey right. Two thumbs-up for all these jerseys!
I have spent more than enough time at a ballpark this season to know that baseball can be a funny game. Whether it be hot streaks, cold streaks, wild pitches, or diving catches, baseball, like hockey, is a game of momentum. If one has it, usually good things happen while those that don't are often looking for a momentum change. Lots of hockey players play baseball in the summer as there are several skills that cross-over between the two sports, and we've seen good hockey players like Tom Glavine, Justin Morneau, and Larry Walker opt for the summer sport over the winter one. We can add another name to the former-hockey-player-turned-pro-baseball-player list as former Alberta Pandas forward Madison Willan is a full-time infielder for the New York Heights of the brand-new Women's Pro Baseball League!
Make no mistake that it was a treat to watch Madison torch defenders and victimize goalies on a regualr basis for the Pandas, but her first sports love was clearly baseball. I first caught wind of Madison's talents on the diamond back in 2019 when she helped Team Canada earn a spot at the COPABE Women's Baseball World Cup Qualifier in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Canada earned a bronze medal there, but Madison made a name for herself with her excellent defensive play with the glove while being lethal at the plate for Team Canada!
Of course, hearing about how good she is second-hand doesn't mean anything unless there's some sort of evidence to prove that hearsay, but I got to witness how good Madison is in-person when she made her way to the 2022 Women's Invitational Baseball Tournament in Stonewall, Manitoba with Team Alberta. Unexpectedly, Madison pitched in the game I saw between Alberta and Nova Scotia, and she tossed a two-hit, complete-game 5-0 shutout where she hit a ground rule double for an RBI. It's pretty clear that Willan has the tools.
With Madison being part of Team Canada every year since 2017, it was almost certain that she'd get some looks from the upstart WPBL during their draft that happened on November 20, 2025. New York would make her pro baseball dreams come true when she was selected with the 15th selection of the second round as the 35th-overall selection! Officially, Madison was now a professional baseball player, and she'd be moving to New York to play for the Heights!
The WPBL kicked off its season on August 1, 2026 with a game between the visiting Los Angeles Queens and the host New York Heights. It didn't take long for the scoring to get started as the Queens put up two runs in the top of the first inning. New York would answer in the bottom half of the inning with Willan playing a role!
Willan would hit the 0-2 offering to left field for the sacrifice fly, allowing Kylee Lahners to tag up from third base for Madison Willan's first professional RBI! That run would push New York ahead by a 3-2 score, but they would eventually fall to Los Angeles by a 10-8 score in the first-evr game for the WPBL, but Willan 0-for-1 on the day with a walk and that RBI shown above as she played third base in the game!
We\ll jump ahead to August 8, 2026 when the Boston Hunters were visitng New York. New York came in at 1-1 while Boston was 0-2 early in the season. With fellow Canadian Raine Padgham on the mound for Boston, Willan stepped into the batter's box in the second inning with New York leading 1-0 with baserunners on first and second base.
Willan goes up the middle with a parachute single for her first professional hit in the WPBL! Unfortunately, Boston would rally for a 9-6 win over New York after being down six runs on the day, but Willan went 1-for-4 with one strikeout on the day for the Heights!
Madison would be a pinch-runner on Sunday's game against the Hunters, helping the Heights defeat the Hunters by a 7-6 score. Boston would exact some revenge on Thursday, August 13 with a 6-1 win over New York where Willan went 0-for-3 with a walk while playing second base. They'd drop a second-straight game to San Francisco by an 11-6 score on August 15 that saw Willan go 0-for-0 with a walk after taking over at shortstop when Keira Izumi went into pitch. Boston would record another win over New York on today, but Willan wasn't in the lineup. As it stands, Willan is 1-for-9 on the season with a .111 average, but she has recorded three walks compared to one strikeout to push her on-base percentage to .308!
It's actually pretty awesome to see Willan doing her thing on the diamond, and you can watch her and her teammates over on YouTube as the New York Heights battle the Boston Hunters, the San Francisco Fireballs, and the Los Angeles Queens. It's honstly pretty good ball with lots of balls in play, so it makes for entertaining baseball! I'm hoping Willan catches fire, goes on a tear, and helps the New York Heights reach chanpionship heights in this inaugural season!
I have no idea what she plans to do this winter, but maybe she could be the first two-sport professional woman in the modern era if she tries out for the New York Sirens! Ok, that probably won't happen, but it's super cool to see Madison Willan playing professional baseball after her university hockey career. Keep up the great work, Madison!
With apologies to author Michael Lewis and publisher WW Norton for using this lede photo, I think both Jason and I have been very clear that the NHL is one massive bubble in terms of its economic forecast. I'm not saying they're close to financial disaster, but everything they're doing seems to have them on that track. Of course, there are thousands of people whose lives will be affected if and when that bubble bursts, but that matters not to anyone associated with the NHL because that organization will live to play another day. Here's the next chapter of the NHL's certain doom.
There are all sorts of financial instruments one can use to make money. Whether it be the age-old guaranteed investment certificate (GIC) or something with more risk associated such as the stock market, the financial world seemingly works to dream up new ways to find money-making ideas. Banks, though, have a fiduciary responsibility to ensure that they inform you of these risks associated with some of the investment products they offer, and this needs to be remembered as you read through the rest of this article.
All of those terms used by CME Group are meant to be somewhat confusing to non-finance people. A "derivative" is a financial product whose value is based on the price of another product. It's basically a bet that one makes on something else with the hopes that the initial product's value goes up. What sets that value can differentiate between products, but the understanding is that the derivative is a bet that the value of something else will improve over time. However, derivatives that bet against the success of an outcome is called "a short", and this where The Big Short joins the story.
If you watched The Big Short with Steve Carell, Christian Bale, and Ryan Gosling, you know that the main characters were shorting financial products called CDOs or collateralized debt obligations which are made up of a diverse set of assets - everything from corporate bonds to mortgage bonds to bank loans to car loans to credit card loans can be in a CDO. The banks in the movie were packaging up subprime and risky mortgages into CDOs and selling them off with false ratings as to their financial risks, and our main characters figured that out and were betting AGAINST the success of these products improving in value. That's how we got "the big short".
What CME Group is creating with these index-based hockey futures is a market where people can invest large sums of money into the a team's index of statistics and overall performance in the hopes that the value of the team will increase based on some combination of values. Rather than betting on single games where winning can net a bettor money, the CME Group is offering a product that will allow one to bet on longer-term successes for each NHL team. If the team is succcessful and its index value goes up, you make money.
This is sports gambling on a whole new level. Creating a derivative based on a professional sports team's performance is not how these financial tools were supposed to be used. Not knowing what criteria is being used to determine the value of the index, and that's a major problem for anyone who believes that this derivative market could be used for positive monetary growth. As the SEC filing states,
"The Bruins Index moves up or down based on officially reported statistics from every game, match, or event throughout the regular season and postseason. Positive statistical actions (e.g., goals scored, points earned) add value to the index, while negative actions (e.g., opponent scoring, penalties or setbacks) subtract value. Poor statistical performance by the Boston Bruins could have a significant negative impact on the level of the Bruins Index and therefore the value of the Fund. In addition, unlike instruments that are based on tradable reference assets, the Bruins Index Futures Contracts and Bruins Index-Linked Instruments are tied to an index that is not directly investable and, thus, have settlement prices based on the calculation of that index, not the price of a tradable asset."
How does one invest in something where there is seemingly no set criteria for how the index value fluctuates? Some would call this investment "gambling", and I'm definitely one of those people.
That catch here is that investment firms won't have to call this new financial option "gambling" in any sense of the word because it's just like any other derivatives market and comes with its own set of risks. As long as they advise John Q. Public sitting across from them in their offices that these risks are possible, they have done their fiduciary duty while you, as a supporter of your favorite team, now have a vested interest in how they perform this season. You're not gambling; you're investing in the team's potential performance this season!
If this initial round of "index-based hockey futures" pays off for CME Group, there will be additional derivatives added that will consider the outcome of the initial derivatives. We'll go back to The Big Short film where Behavioral Economics Pioneer Dr. Richard H. Thaler and Selena Gomez explain how these synthetic derivatives work.
In this reference, Selena Gomez's $10 million bet is the investment into the Bruins Index-Linked Futures makret, and every bet after that is a bet on how well Gomez's investment performs. As Dr. Thaler illustrates, that initial investment is now worth billions of dollars.
Remember my comment about fiduciary responsibility above? Because investment firms only have to warn you of the risks associated with an investment like this, they've fulfilled their required fiduciary responsibility with respect to their client. If you go ahead, you assume the risk. The catch here is that you're basically investing in the outcome of sports games - goals scored and points earned vs. opponent scoring and penalties or setbacks - which is what everyone recognizes as gambling. It's just being called something else.
Let me be clear that the derivative market, when properly managed and scrutinized, can be an effective way to invest. It's certainly not for everyone when it comes to the markets on which these derivatives are based, but, for those who can afford risk in their portfolios, it can work to make one money. As with any investment, there are no guarantees for a return on the initial investment, but one can explore these options with a certified financial planner.
After spending two decades in finance, I would not be recommending this "index-based hockey futures" option to any client because it's simply sports gambling masquerading as an investment option. I see why some sports fans might prefer this option, but, as we all know, only "the house" gets rich when it comes to people gambling.
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