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Ontario’s Glenn Howard watches intently as a rock enters the house in morning action at the Brier in Halifax on Wednesday. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)

Ontario’s Glenn Howard has punched his ticket to the 1-2 game of the page playoffs at the Brier by downing Manitoba’s Jeff Stoughton 8-4 in Halifax on Wednesday.

The late draw win moves Howard to a perfect 9-0 after a 9-5 win over Newfoundland and Labrador earlier in the day.

He still has to face the Northwest Territories/Yukon and Alberta in the final day of round-robin play on Thursday.

Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador and Northern Ontario all sit second at 7-2.

In the Page playoff system, the top two rinks square off Friday in the 1-2 game for a spot in the final.

The loser of that game plays the winner of the other playoff between the third- and fourth-place teams in Saturday’s semifinal.

Passengers on a Vancouver-to-Montreal flight refused to board their aircraft when instructed to by Air Canada staff until Sidney Crosby finished the gold medal Olympic hockey game Feb. 28. (Chris O’Meara/Associated Press)

Travellers the world over know the pains of flight delays due to fog, weather, late pilots or just plain busy airports. But how about a delay due to a hockey game?

An Air Canada scheduled flight sat on the tarmac in Vancouver as passengers finished watching the men’s gold medal match between Canada and the United States on the final day of the Olympic Games, the airline’s president, Calin Rovinescu, told a Vancouver business gathering Tuesday.

Travellers on the Montreal-bound flight could not be persuaded to board the plane while play continued. Instead, they watched the dramatic hockey game being broadcast on screens in the airport departure lounge, ignoring the airline staff’s boarding instructions, Rovinescu said.

He did not say how long the flight was delayed.

Passengers on board Air Canada flights around the world during the Canada-U.S. showdown were kept apprised of the score by the flight crew, who were receiving real-time updates from operations control, Rovinescu said.

Don Cherry believes the proposed rule to penalize blindside hits to the head can succeed if infractions are punished with a major penalty.

Speaking after a Paralympic luncheon in Vancouver on Wednesday, the Hockey Night in Canada personality and former Bruins coach feels the threat of leaving a team shorthanded for five minutes is the best way to change player behaviour.

“A major will [work],” Cherry said. “When you get a five-minute major, you’re going to reckon. You can fine them all you want. So what, the guys peel off money.

“The major, that’s one thing you don’t want to get because you’re going to be five minutes small. I know if I was a coach I would be really ticked. … The two-minute minor, that’s nothing.”

The proposed penalty, still subject to approval from the NHL’s competition committee, was agreed on by the league’s general managers in Boca Raton, Fla., during their annual meetings.

The new rule, which could take effect next season, follows an hideous incident Sunday in which Pittsburgh’s Matt Cooke caught Boston’s Marc Savard with a shoulder to the head.

Savard is out indefinitely.

The incident was similar to several others earlier this season, including one in which Flyers captain Mike Richards levelled Florida’s David Booth.

Cherry said the Cooke and Richards hits are “what they have to get out … blindsiding. We call that in hockey, ‘Cheap shots.’”

Cherry, repeating an oft-stated viewpoint, said a new rule wouldn’t be necessary if the rule giving an instigator a two-minute minor didn’t exist.

“Back in the 1970s, if a guy did that, he wouldn’t end in the game,” Cherry said. “Can you imagine in your wildest dreams somebody doing that to [Wayne] Gretzky when [Marty] McSorley and [Dave] Semenko was on the club? It would never happen because we didn’t have the instigator rule like they have now.

“It’s not lack of respect, it’s lack of dread. If you ever did it with my team, you wouldn’t end the game.”