Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores Read online

  SMILE!

  With all the high sticks, punches thrown, and flying pucks, having teeth knocked out is a constant occupational hazard for NHLers, and no one knows this better than New Jersey Devils defenceman Ken Daneyko. During his career (1983–2003), he lost a record total of twelve teeth (seven lower and five upper). Say cheese, Ken!

  A NOSE FOR THE GAME

  Washington Capitals great Rod Langway was the classic blueliner: big, strong, and hard-hitting. He absorbed a lot of hits too. So much so that during his 15-year career, he suffered at least 10 broken noses—an unofficial NHL record. One of the early breaks was doled out by the elbow of none other than Mr. Hockey himself, Gordie Howe.

  A STITCH IN TIME

  • Goaltending great Terry Sawchuk first wore a facemask in 1962 and continued to do so for his final eight years in the NHL. But during his first 12 years, he played with no facial protection at all…and racked up an NHL record of 400 stitches on his face. This included three directly on his right eyeball.

  • And what about the most stitches in one sitting? The NHL record of 300 was set by Buffalo Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk in 1989, when the skate of Steve Tuttle (of the St. Louis Blues) slashed his jugular vein during a collision at the net. The gash was so severe that Malarchuk wasn’t sure he was going to make it: “I did think I was done,” he said years later. “Somewhere I’d heard that if you cut your jugular vein you’ve got a matter of minutes, like three minutes. I was going through the minutes preparing to die.” Fortunately, he didn’t, thanks to the quick thinking of the team’s trainer who reached into Malarchuk’s neck and pinched the jugular to stop the bleeding. After this accident, goalies started to wear neck protectors.

  HEAL THYSELF

  Montreal Canadiens captain Doug Harvey holds the record for the only NHL player to remove a cast from a teammate’s limb. In 1961 Harvey and fellow Canadien Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion—whose leg was in a cast to heal torn knee ligaments—were on a train bound for Chicago for Game 6 of the Stanley Cup semi-final. The Canadiens were facing elimination and the pair was feeling desperate. Boom Boom wanted to play. So he and Harvey decided it was time for the cast to come off. “Doug got a knife from the train kitchen and the two of us sneaked into the ladies’ room,” Geoffrion recalls. “I watched my captain saw away at the heavy plaster of paris cast. The way the train was bouncing around it was a miracle I wasn’t cut.” Geoffrion played in Game 6, but to no avail. Chicago went on to win the series, and later, the Cup.

  * * * * *

  UNDERWATER HOCKEY

  It’s not what it sounds like—oh wait, yes it is. It’s hockey played underwater. Two teams of 10 players each don snorkels, masks, and fins, and use small—about one foot long—slightly curved sticks of wood or plastic to push a heavy puck (made of metal) around the bottom of a pool. To score, they need to get the puck into their opponent’s 10-foot-wide goal. Other than that it’s just like hockey.

  The game was invented in 1954 by Alan Blake of Portsmouth, England, and today it’s played all over the world. There’s even a “World AquaChallenge Association” that is recognized as the “governing body for Underwater Hockey.” (We’re guessing the game doesn’t translate very well to TV.)

  A NUMBERS GAME

  Hockey players often choose their jersey numbers for a reason.

  #99: JOE LAMB

  In the years before NHL expansion, the most exalted jersey number was probably #9 since three of the era’s greatest scorers wore the digit: “Rocket” Richard, Gordie Howe, and Bobby Hull. Called up in 1977, by the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds of the Ontario Hockey League, 16-year-old Wayne Gretzky wanted to wear the number 9 in honor of his childhood hero, Howe, but the number was taken. So young Gretzky settled on 99 instead, a choice that gave birth to what is now the most famous and revered number in the game.

  But Gretzky was not the first NHLer to wear this unusual jersey number. The original #99 belonged to Joe Lamb, an unspectacular but respectable forward who played for seven teams over 11 seasons. He wore a variety of jersey numbers during his career, but was assigned #99 for his 1934–35 tour with the Montreal Canadiens. Hockey historians have suggested that the Canadiens may have used #99 as a practice jersey that eventually made a few appearances in games on the backs of journeymen players, starting with Lamb. After he left the team, two other Habs, Desse Roche and Leo Bourgault, also wore the number. In all, only five NHL players other than Gretzky have worn #99, but no one else ever will. The number was retired leaguewide after Gretzky retired from playing in…1999.

  #57: STEVE HEINZE

  Steve Heinze deserves his place in the annals of hockey as the man behind what is perhaps the most clever jersey number selection in NHL history. He originally wore #45 as a rookie for the Boston Bruins and then #23 in his next eight seasons. But when he became a member of the Columbus Blue Jackets in 2000, he just couldn’t resist having a little fun and chose a number that made him the only NHL player to have the name of a condiment emblazoned on his back…Heinze 57.

  #68: JAROMIR JAGR

  A native of what is now the Czech Republic, Pittsburgh Penguin Jaromir Jagr chose his jersey number in honor of the Prague Spring rebellion of 1968, which led to significant political reform and liberalization in his home country (then called Czechoslovakia). Appropriately, when Jagr was drafted in 1990, it marked the first time a Czech player attended the NHL Entry Draft without having to defect.

  #66: MARIO LEMIEUX

  Mario Lemieux’s agent Bob Berno suggested #66 as a playful inversion of the famous 99. Lemieux first wore 66 in the Quebec Junior League as a member of the Laval Voisins and kept it for the rest of his illustrious career. The Penguins retired the number, and out of respect, it hasn’t been worn by a NHL player since Lemieux retired in 2006.

  #11: GILBERT PERREAULT

  In 1970 the Buffalo Sabres and Vancouver Canucks joined the NHL as expansion clubs. To help them get off to a good start, the league granted them the first two spots in the draft. Which team selected first was determined by the spin of a roulette wheel. If the ball landed on a number between 1 and 8, the Canucks would get first pick; if it landed on a number between 9 and 16, the Sabres would select first. The ball landed on 11, and the Sabre’s chose Gilbert Perreault, the cream of the junior hockey crop that year. In celebration of this lucky spin, Buffalo GM Punch Imlach gave Perreault jersey #11.

  #49: JOE JUNEAU

  All through his junior days, Joe Juneau wore #9, but the Boston Bruins drafted him in 1988 and they’d already retired the number—it was worn by Bruin great Johnny Bucyk. Undeterred, Juneau had the chutzpah to ask Bucyk if he could bring #9 out of retirement. Bucyk agreed…if Juneau was willing to hand over his six-figure signing bonus. Juneau opted for a less-expensive solution. He chose 49 instead, a tribute to two Bruin legends: Bobby Orr (#4) and Johnny Bucyk and his coveted #9.

  WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

  Hockey’s longest running and often most-heated argument concerns the site of the game’s origins.

  One of the liveliest hockey battles—as energetic as the scrappiest of scraps for the puck in any NHL rink corner—is waged by the game’s historians. The contentious subject of debate is where and when the primitive forms of this wonderful game actually originated.

  LET THERE BE ICE

  Combine ice—a frozen pond or river—and narrow, steel blades attached to one’s feet, and you will find that quick movement over the slippery surface becomes possible. Throw in sticks and something to hit while moving on the ice—a ball, a wooden disc, frozen horse manure—and a game is born. While there are reports of stones being kicked or hit back and forth with sticks after the Norman invasion of Britain in the 11th century, and while Chinese and Russian folklore document stick-and-ball games on ice 500 years ago, the earliest form of what really became ice hockey was most likely played in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. And probably in the town of Windsor…

  EARLY HURLEY BURLY

  That Windsor would be among
hockey’s earliest sites shouldn’t come as much surprise. It can get very cold there! But also, Windsor was one of Canada’s first towns, settled in 1684, and the location of the country’s first college. Anglican Church members working in the New World as executives of steamship, lumber, and fur trading companies did not want to send their children all the way back to England for a decent education, so instead they imported British professors to form King’s College School. And the professors brought their games with them: Cricket, rounders (the forerunner of baseball), and Irish hurley (a form of field hockey) were field games that were modified for the snow and ice of the Canadian winter. Mention of “ice hurley” around 1800 is the first written reference to a stick-and-ball game on a frozen surface.

  COLONEL HOCKEY

  One story claims that a Colonel Hockey (a common English name at the time) had British troops based at Windsor play the game for winter exercise and Hockey’s game became, simply, hockey. A ball struck in hurley was said to be “pucked,” and the first wooden disc used in the game became known as, simply, the “puck.”

  OTHER CLAIMS TO THE GAME

  For many decades the original site for hockey was thought to be Kingston, Ontario, because the first written report of the game was published there in 1855. Soldiers at the British Garrison, wearing primitive skates clamped to their shoes and used field hockey sticks and a lacrosse ball to play on a large area of Kingston harbor cleared of snow. In 1903, a Kingston newspaper brashly declared the town “the birthplace of hockey.”

  In 1941, an elderly Montreal resident recounted stories from his father about a primitive game of hockey in that city in 1837. In the 1870s, a group of students at McGill University in Montreal invented a game played on ice using a combination of rules from field hockey, lacrosse, and rugby. A definitive seven paragraphs in the 1877 Montreal Gazette recorded the first set of printed rules for hockey as devised by these clever students.

  WHOOPIN’ IT UP IN WINDSOR

  Although extensive research has provided evidence of the game in Nova Scotia from 1800 on, historians have been unable to agree on a precise locale and date. The area had long winters, abundant ice, many students and soldiers with plenty of time on their hands, and keen sporting spirits in quest of diversion from the cold, cold season.

  The much-quoted author Thomas Chandler Haliburton was born in Windsor and attended King’s College. He had arts and law degrees and became a distinguished judge and writer, often called “the father of American humor.” A paragraph in an article Haliburton wrote for a British magazine in 1844 about his days as a student at King’s College has caught the eye of many a hockey historian: “The boys let out racin’, yellin’, hollerin’, and whoopin’ like mad with pleasure, and the playground, and the game at bass in the fields, or hurley on the long pond on the ice, or campin’ out at night at Chester Lakes to fish….” Haliburton had graduated from King’s in 1810 and his mention of “hurley,” the early name for hockey, indicates the game was played before that year. Newspaper stories were discovered that discussed hurley on Long Pond at Windsor before 1816.

  FROM IRONWOOD TO SHERWOOD

  Windsor was enjoyed as a resort by wealthy residents of Halifax, some of whom owned luxurious estates in the town. They would come to fish, hunt, and race horses (on the track and on ice), and to attend cultural events at the college. Thus, word of the most exciting game on ice was spread across the province and soldiers based in the Halifax-Dartmouth area also started to play. As the game grew, a loose set of rules was established—a sort of “sporting code” rather than a written rule book—to govern how the game was conducted.

  The Mi’kmaq natives of Nova Scotia, who had a field and ice game of their own, supplied the first “pucks”: slices of black cherrywood with tight, dark bark, making it easier to find in the snow. They also carved strong one-piece hockey sticks from ironwood trees with roots still attached: the root used for the blade, the stem carved into the handle.

  THE FIRST ROAD TRIP

  When the army moved west to Montreal and Kingston, the game went with them. An 1846 entry in a diary belonging to the father of a Kingston historian reads, “Most of the boys were quite at home on skates. They could cut the figure-eight but ‘shinny’ was their delight.” The word “shinny” had come from the Scotch stick-and-ball field game of shinty, and is used today to describe a loosely structured game of pickup hockey. A British army officer wrote in his diary in 1843, “Began to skate this year, improved quickly and had great fun at hockey on ice.” Supporters of Kingston as the game’s birthplace used these lines to back their contentions.

  BULLIES PROVIDE ORDER

  One major development in hockey’s growth from a “mad-scramble” sport, with as many players as the size of the available ice surface would hold, to a more organized game was the publication of the famous “Gazette rules.” Those seven paragraphs, printed in the Montreal newspaper on February 27, 1877, supplied a basis for the game that exists to this day, defining offsides, fouls against opponents, and how plays were to resume after the ball or puck went off the ice. A faceoff in those rules was called a “bully.” The rules slowly expanded over the years, the number of players on the ice for one team being reduced from 15 to seven.

  SHALL WE TAKE THIS INSIDE?

  By 1880, several cities in Canada had indoor arenas, built first for pleasure skating with no hockey allowed. Gradually the game moved indoors, the lacrosse ball bouncing out of play so often that some enterprising soul sliced it to produce a flat piece of rubber that would slide on the ice. As shooting skills improved, various pieces of primitive equipment were introduced to protect shins. Goalies wore padding, and skates evolved from the blades that were strapped to the boots to “skate boots” with blades permanently attached. But going all the way back to the chilly outdoor days, there is no doubt hockey is a very competitive sport—both on the ice and in the minds of many professional and amateur historians.

  * * * * *

  DOUBLE VISION!

  During a 1978 playoff game, New York Rangers goalie John Davidson was hit in the mask with a slap shot. Announcers Jim Gordon and Bill Chadwick noted that Davidson must have “double vision” after such a blow. Members of the American rock band Foreigner happened to be watching the game and thought “double vision” would be a good name for a song. The subsequent song became the title track of their next album. The hockey-game-inspired Double Vision went on to sell 14 million copies.

  HOCKEY? GOOD GRIEF!

  Who knew that a game as Canadian as hockey would play such a big role in the life of an iconic American cartoonist.

  YOU’RE A GOOD HOCKEY PLAYER, CHARLIE SCHULZ

  Peanuts creator Charles M. Schulz always had a special place in his heart for ice hockey. Growing up in St. Paul, Minnesota, in the 1930s, Schulz enjoyed ice-skating and playing hockey on a backyard rink his father made in winters by flooding their property with a garden hose. Schulz, who hosted pickup games with the neighborhood kids, developed a reputation as a scrappy and aggressive player, despite his slight build. He was creative too; with the help of his mom, he devised a set of goalie pads using gunnysacks and rolled-up old newspapers.

  HOCKEY NIGHT IN CALIFORNIA

  Even after Schulz moved to northern California in 1958—an area not usually associated with ice hockey—he remained involved in his favorite boyhood sport, playing in pickup leagues and incorporating the game into some of his cartoons. Then in 1969 he opened the Redwood Empire Ice Arena, dubbed “the coolest place” in his new hometown of Santa Rosa, California. Six years later, the arena became the home of Snoopy’s Senior Hockey Tournament, a weeklong competition hosting amateur teams from around the world. Schulz himself played—or was a ref in—the tournament nearly every year until his death in 2000.

  In 1981, to honor his efforts organizing the senior tournaments, Schulz was awarded the Lester Patrick Trophy, given by the NHL and USA Hockey for outstanding service to the sport of hockey in the United States. (Other winners include suc
h luminaries as Gordie Howe, Mark Messier, and the entire 1980 U.S. Olympic Team.)

  Bonus: In the early 1970s, Schulz also became involved with a professional team: he designed “Sparky the Seal,” a promotional logo used by the now-defunct NHL team, the California Golden Seals.

  GOAL(S) HEARD ’ROUND THE WORLD

  Paul Henderson scored the goal “heard around the world.” Mike Eruzione’s and Sidney Crosby’s rate up there, too.

  To Canadian hockey fans, even the generations born since it happened, Paul Henderson’s 1972 goal remains among the greatest ever scored. It came 34 seconds from the end of game eight in the fabled Summit Series and gave Team Canada the slimmest possible edge over the national team of the old Soviet Union at the first meeting between the Soviets and top professional players from the National Hockey League.

  Many U.S. fans, however, would rate Henderson’s shot second best. To them, the greatest goal ever was scored by Mike Eruzione to give the young, underdog U.S. Olympic team a 4–3 victory over the Soviets in the key game of the Americans’ gold medal win in the 1980 Games at Lake Placid, New York.

  But when it comes to great shots, few would disagree that the overtime goal by Sidney Crosby to win Canada the gold medal (over Team USA) in the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver is the most spectacular in recent memory.

  YEAH, ACCORDING TO WHOM?

  Of course, many hockey fans have their own favorite tallies of great goals that locked up a playoff spot, won a Stanley Cup, set a record, or ended a long overtime. But the Henderson, Eruzione, and Crosby markers are in a class by themselves, stamping the scorers as heroes for life. In the cases of Henderson and Eruzione, the fact that they were not superstars added to their luster. They were from the ranks, but they produced when the ultimate crunch was on, a huge prize at stake. Crosby, on the other hand, was already a star, but he had been mostly quiet during the tournament. So when “Sid the Kid” swept forward and pitched the puck into the net past American goaltender Ryan Miller, he cemented his place in history…and gave Canada its 14th gold medal of the 2010 Games, a record for a host nation.