Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores (31 page)

On being a team enforcer:
“Does anybody want that job? Anybody who says yes, you know the guy's an idiot.”

On the Todd Bertuzzi-Steve Moore incident
: “What I find interesting is that 200 people died in (terrorist) bombings in Spain and the biggest news story across Canada was Todd Bertuzzi. I think we need to get our priorities set straight as to what's really important in life.”

On the way hockey players can get pigeonholed:
“With a lot of great players, you'll always hear the knock: ‘Well, defensively, he's not any good.' Do you know why? Because he doesn't want it to be known that he's any good at it. It's by design. But for other guys, that's not the way they are. If they're asked to do something, they just do it. But unfortunately, they get pigeonholed and they stay there forever.”

On the penalty box at old Maple Leaf Gardens:
“The box was kind of a gross place to go. The guys in there are bleeding and have bloody noses. They have greenies and yellows and drip all over the boards, and no one's cleaned the place since 1938.”

On leading a personal charge against bylaws banning road hockey games in some Canadian cities:
“We have to put a stop to this. We have to find out who these aliens are who dropped in on us with these bylaws and step on them. Squash them like a bug.”

One road trip to Montreal was a nightmare for Boston's great Eddie Shore.

C
OULD I BORROW YOUR LIMOUSINE?

Tales of defenceman Eddie Shore's toughness and persistence fill hockey history books but topping the list is the yarn of one extraordinary trip from Beantown to Montreal. On January 2, 1929, a severe snowstorm had blanketed the eastern part of the continent and traffic problems in Boston caused Shore to miss the train taking the Bruins to Montreal for a game against the Maroons the next night. But Shore would not be stymied by the weather. At the railway station, he met a wealthy Bruins fan, who loaned his limousine and chauffeur to Shore for the trip.

THROUGH SLEET AND SNOW

The storm worsened with every mile when they managed to reach Vermont. But the driver abandoned the wheel when Shore refused to stop and hockey's big star drove himself with the chauffeur as passenger. When the wipers stopped, Shore drove with his hand on the outside of the windshield, melting a spot to allow at least a small view of the road. The duo was forced to push the car back on the road several times when it skidded off. Just across the border in Quebec, when the limo went deep into a ditch in the dark night, Shore walked through waist-deep snow to a farmhouse and convinced the farmer to bring his team of horses to haul it out.

BUT HOW'D THE CAR LOOK?

At 6 p.m. on January 3, the car reached the hotel where the Bruins were just leaving for the arena to play the game. Shore's hands were frost-bitten hooks from driving with the window open and his eyes were bloodshot because he had not slept. Bruins boss Art Ross told Shore to go to bed and show up the next morning for the train home but Shore insisted on playing. He ate a snack and caught a catnap in the trainers' room, then played his usual 40 minutes against the tough, physical Maroons. The Bruins won the game, 1–0. Of course, Shore scored the only goal.

A geography test almost cost a university student his 15 minutes of NHL fame.

W
hile Chris Levesque, a third-year student and third-string goaltender at the University of British Columbia, was studying in the library for his exam the following morning, the Vancouver Canucks were searching frantically for him to be an emergency fill-in between the pipes.

With the Pittsburgh Penguins in town to play on December 9, 2003, the Canucks were caught with their pants down after their number one goaltender Dan Cloutier injured his groin during the morning skate. Their minor league goaltenders were all traveling with their respective teams back east and couldn't make it to Vancouver in time for the 7:08
P.M.
start, leaving the Canucks with egg on their faces and no one to back up second stringer Johan Hedberg that night.

TO THE LIBRARY!

The Canucks first call was to the nearby UBC campus, but the team's top two goalies were both ineligible under the NHL's amateur emergency call-up rules, one because he was an undrafted European and the other, ironically, because he once played pro as a prospect in the Vancouver organization before giving up on his career and returning to school. That left the unlikely Levesque. The only problem was no one could find him.

Levesque had been given the day off from practice to cram for the geography exam at 8 a.m. the next morning and his roommates hadn't seen or heard from him since he announced he was heading to the library to study. The UBC campus has more than a half-dozen libraries. “We had guys all over campus trying to find him,” UBC coach Milan Drajicevic said.

THIS IS A JOKE, RIGHT?

When teammates finally tracked down Levesque at 4:30 p.m., they had a hard time convincing the 23-year-old they weren't playing a prank. Considering he hadn't even started a university
game—about five levels below the NHL—in almost three months and was sporting an unimpressive 0-4-1 record, 4.77 goals-against average and .855 save percentage with the Thunderbirds, it was hard to blame Levesque for his skepticism. “Actually, I thought the guy that found me was yanking my leg because we were talking about playing a prank like this on another guy about a week ago,” Levesque said.

After finally convincing him the surreal NHL call-up was for real, Levesque rushed to GM Place and, after getting the university sport governing body to sign off on a one-time release, signed a one-day amateur agreement with the Canucks. A couple of hours later he was on the ice wearing a No. 40 Vancouver jersey, taking warm-up shots from superstars Markus Naslund and Todd Bertuzzi, then settling into a spot at the end of the bench for what he assumed would be nothing more than a chance to get closer to the action than any of the other 18,622 spectators at GM Place that night. Instead, he almost got into the action.

PHEW! THAT WAS CLOSE

A violent collision with Penguins' forward Konstantin Koltsov sent Hedberg's mask flying down the ice and left the Canucks goaltender lying motionless while team medical staff rushed to his side. Cameras quickly zoomed in on a horrified Levesque on the bench, chewing his gum so hard it looked like he too might soon need medical attention. To ease the tension, veteran Mike Keane yelled down the bench: “Don't worry! He'll get up.”

“I was a little frightened at first,” Levesque admitted after the game. “I tried to play it cool on the bench, just kept chewing my gum and looking up at the scoreboard with a camera right in my face. But luckily Hedberg wasn't hurt seriously and he shook it off.”

REMEMBER, IT'S A SCHOOL NIGHT

Hedberg continued despite suffering a wrist injury in the collision and a relieved Levesque watched his new team come from behind to win the game 4–3 in overtime. Before he could escape back to campus to resume studying, Levesque had to face a media scrum bigger than the one in front of Naslund, the Canucks captain who scored all four of his team's goals. “It's a little different than after a UBC game where we just have one guy from the paper,” said
Levesque, who grew up playing minor hockey in the nearby suburb of Port Coquitlam and spent some time in Manitoba's junior-A league. “There's like 40 people here.”

Levesque kept his No. 40 jersey and later received a “highlight film” of his gum-chewing exploits on the bench and massive post-game media scrum. As for the geography exam, Levesque, still wired from his six-hour study break in the NHL, hit the books into the wee hours of the morning and scored 88 percent.

* * * * *

“We start out with goalies wearing masks. Every club has a defenceman or two who goes down to smother shots. Soon, they'll want masks. All forwards will wear helmets. The teams will become faceless, headless robots all of whom look alike to the spectators. We can't afford to take that fan appeal away from hockey.”

—Muzz Patrick, former New York Rangers defenceman

“I've always felt we weren't physical enough on the back line. Now there's a no-parking sign in front of our net.”

—San Jose Sharks GM Dean Lombardi on the addition of Marty McSorley

“Sometimes you think they must have come out of the chimp cages at the Bronx zoo.”

—former Boston Bruins goaltender Gerry Cheevers on New York hockey fans

“He had better get married soon, because he's getting uglier every day!”

—Mark Recchi on Flyers teammate Stewart Malgunas

“They were checking us so closely, I could tell what brand of deodorant they were using.”

—Flyer Gary Dornhoefer, after playing Montreal

“The only difference between the Coyotes and
Days of Our Lives
is that nobody has been shot on our team yet.”

—Jeremy Roenick on the trade rumors around Phoenix captain Keith Tkachuk

Who says you need ice to get in some hockey stick action?

O
UR FANS LOVE US
!

After a game in November 2009, Anaheim Ducks defenseman Scott Niedermayer, who had just scored the game-winning overtime goal, was called back onto the ice to take a bow. In a fan-friendly gesture, Niedermayer skated to the edge of the rink and tossed his stick over the glass to a little girl in the front row. But someone else grabbed it. Then someone else grabbed the guy who grabbed it. Then someone else jumped in. As Niedermayer watched helplessly from the ice, the tussle for the stick turned into an all-out brawl, with fans wrestling, punching, and kicking each other over the stick. Security finally broke up the fight; one man was arrested. Asked about the incident later, Niedermayer said the stick was for the little girl. Asked about throwing it over the glass, he said, “I probably could've done a better job with that.” (No word if the little girl ever got her stick.)

YOU WANT PUCKS WITH THAT?

In March 2001, a “hockey stick” went up for sale on ebay. Price: $8,888. Except it wasn't really a hockey stick—it was a french fry. The seller, identified only as “koskre8r,” said he thought the french fry looked like a hockey stick: “Behold, it is my Burger King French Fry Hockey Stick,” his ad said, “which was in a medium french fry container bought at the drive-thru along with 2 whopper juniors here in Arlington Virginia.” Not surprisingly, the french fry/hockey stick did not sell. (Although it did make international news.) And why $8,888? Koskre8r said eight was his favorite number.

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERISTIC: CREEPY

In May 2011, police were called to Washington Elementary School in Mount Vernon, Iowa, after a parent complained that one of his children had been inappropriately spanked by the school's principal. An investigation revealed that the principal, Terry Eisenbarth,
had been taking part in an odd ritual: On students' birthdays he would call them to his office, sing them “Happy Birthday”…and spank them on their bottoms with a padded hockey stick. (Once spank for each year they had lived.) Eisenbarth tried to explain that he did it only to “cultivate special relationships with the students and highlight their special day.” Parents just thought it was weird. Eisenbarth apologized, promised to stop spanking the children with his padded hockey stick, and then resigned.

MAN-HITTIN'

In May 2010 comic actor Mike Myers was walking down a street in Manhattan, New York, with singer-songwriter Mark McAdam. They were both carrying hockey sticks. (Why? We don't know—but we do know that Myers is Canadian, so that might be explanation enough.) At some point, a paparazzo spotted Myers and started hassling the duo. The photographer tried to take pictures of Myers and may have grabbed for McAdam's hockey stick, but by the time it was done, the photographer had been whacked in the forehead with the stick and was bleeding. When the cops arrived, McAdam told them that the strike was accidental—but he was arrested on felony assault charges anyway. Myers, for his part, has never spoken about the incident in public. (With or without a hockey stick.)

HOCKEY STICK HEROES

Connie Simonds, 53, was walking her three dogs in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, in February 2004, when two pit bulls appeared—and immediately attacked both the woman and her dogs. “They were taking turns with the dogs and me,” Simonds said later. A group of kids nearby ran to the rescue…armed with hockey sticks. They started hitting the dogs with their sticks, barely holding them off until police arrived. The dogs then attacked the police, and were shot dead. The woman—and her dogs—were treated for minor injuries. All three boys were given awards for bravery after the incident. Commenting about smacking the vicious dogs with his hockey stick, one of the boys said, “It kinda felt good.”

The 1980 U.S. Olympic team: Legends of American hockey history.

I
n the long history of ice hockey in the United States, one team stands out as the high point in American hockey—the 1980 U.S. Olympic hockey squad, winners of the gold medal on its home turf (or ice) in Lake Placid, New York.