Contents Foreword.....................................................................ix Anaheim Ducks........................................................... 2 Boston Bruins.............................................................. 6 Buffalo Sabres........................................................... 12 Calgary Flames.......................................................... 18 Carolina Hurricanes................................................... 30 Chicago Blackhawks................................................. 36 Colorado Avalanche.................................................. 42 Columbus Blue Jackets............................................ 46 Dallas Stars............................................................... 50 Detroit Red Wings..................................................... 54 Edmonton Oilers........................................................ 64 Florida Panthers........................................................ 70 Los Angeles Kings..................................................... 72 Minnesota Wild.......................................................... 76 Montreal Canadiens.................................................. 80 Nashville Predators................................................... 86 New Jersey Devils..................................................... 92 New York Islanders.................................................... 96 New York Rangers................................................... 102 Ottawa Senators...................................................... 108 Philadelphia Flyers.................................................. 114
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Phoenix Coyotes..................................................... 120 Pittsburgh Penguins................................................ 126 St. Louis Blues........................................................ 130 San Jose Sharks..................................................... 134 Tampa Bay Lightning............................................... 138 Toronto Maple Leafs................................................ 142 Vancouver Canucks................................................. 154 Washington Capitals............................................... 160 Winnipeg - Atlanta................................................... 166 Acknowledgements................................................. 173 Sources................................................................... 173 Photograph Credits................................................. 177
Foreword Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland. Welcome to Double Overtime. Make yourself a sandwich, get something to drink. The book is going to start in … oh, about six pages. Before then a story: My first publishing job was at McClelland & Stewart. I was a copywriter, back in the mid-‘80s. M&S operated in those days out of a red-brick building on Hollinger Road in the eastern suburbs of Toronto; a winding, 15-minute bus ride from the Woodbine subway station. The building amounted to a dozen cramped offices surrounding a gloomy warehouse filled with books. “Filled” wasn’t necessarily a good thing, mind you. You wanted books moving out of a warehouse, after all. Landmark piles drew the name of luckless sponsors: the reckless sales managers who called for pyramids, five thousand high, of unwanted books. Slipping past the Himalayas–Mount Neale and Mount Asboth collecting wool-thick dust at its peak–you came to back shelves devoted to agency stock and old hardcover favorites. Copies of once-popular titles ready for order and shipping. Orders that never came, it seemed. Books sat there like forgotten playthings in the Toy Story attic. Everything was in alphabetical order, except, curiously, one shelf, hidden in a bottom row at the far end, devoted to hockey. There was a welcoming chair there, like on the set of the old CBC kids’ show "The Friendly Giant". And if you got down on hands and knees and looked, lots of hockey books: Trent Frayne’s Mad Men of Hockey and Famous Hockey Players from Dodd, Mead; Scott Young’s A Boy at the Leafs’ Camp (Little Brown). Plus all of M&S’s hockey backlist: The Game of Our Lives by Peter Gzowski; as well as Scott Young’s books with Punch Imlach and Conn Smythe, volumes with great, grabby titles: Heaven and Hell in the NHL and If You Can’t Beat Em in the Alley. And what was this? Editions of Hockey Heroes, by Ron McAllister, from 1949, with stories on (speaking of great titles) Dit Clapper and Hap Day,
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ix
BOSTON BRUINS
THE AGONY
THE ECSTASY
ALTERNATE NICKNAMES: Broons, B’s. FRANCHISE STARTED: 1924 UNIFORMLY SPEAKING: Owner Charles Adams owned a grocery chain with a brownand-yellow motif. The Bruins nickname was the result of a rigged contest: fans were asked to provide the name of an animal, and it had to have “size, strength, agility, ferocity and cunning… in the color brown.” Couldn’t be anything but a bear, right? Doesn’t matter, all Bruins uniforms are great.
FANATIC: Excess, thy name is Boston Bruin, Zdeno Chara, one of the tallest (6'7"), fittest, fasting-shooting players in NHL history. Zdeno’s father was a Greco-Roman wrestler on Czechoslovakia’s 1976 Olympic team. Dad made an obstacle course in the backyard to encourage his son’s development. Trees were outfitted with pull-up bars and punching bags. Every time he passed a tree, Little Zee had to do a series of pull-ups or work the bag. The Charas also encouraged language skills. Zdeno speaks seven: Slovak, Czech, Polish, Swedish, Russian, German, and English. As a result of spending seven hours a day in off-season training, Chara is a four-time winner of the NHL AllStar game hardest-shot competition. In the 2011 contest, he shot a puck 105.9 miles per hour. What did you do with your 2008 summer holiday? Zdeno climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.
How Cool?: Black home jersey: 10.0. Throwback yellow: 10.0. White away: 9.0. Bruin cubs
Average ticket + parking + hot dog + beer: The Big Z, Zdeno Chara, number 33.
6
$87.15
(7th highest in the NHL)
7
BOSTON BRUINS
THE AGONY
THE ECSTASY
ALTERNATE NICKNAMES: Broons, B’s. FRANCHISE STARTED: 1924 UNIFORMLY SPEAKING: Owner Charles Adams owned a grocery chain with a brownand-yellow motif. The Bruins nickname was the result of a rigged contest: fans were asked to provide the name of an animal, and it had to have “size, strength, agility, ferocity and cunning… in the color brown.” Couldn’t be anything but a bear, right? Doesn’t matter, all Bruins uniforms are great.
FANATIC: Excess, thy name is Boston Bruin, Zdeno Chara, one of the tallest (6'7"), fittest, fasting-shooting players in NHL history. Zdeno’s father was a Greco-Roman wrestler on Czechoslovakia’s 1976 Olympic team. Dad made an obstacle course in the backyard to encourage his son’s development. Trees were outfitted with pull-up bars and punching bags. Every time he passed a tree, Little Zee had to do a series of pull-ups or work the bag. The Charas also encouraged language skills. Zdeno speaks seven: Slovak, Czech, Polish, Swedish, Russian, German, and English. As a result of spending seven hours a day in off-season training, Chara is a four-time winner of the NHL AllStar game hardest-shot competition. In the 2011 contest, he shot a puck 105.9 miles per hour. What did you do with your 2008 summer holiday? Zdeno climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.
How Cool?: Black home jersey: 10.0. Throwback yellow: 10.0. White away: 9.0. Bruin cubs
Average ticket + parking + hot dog + beer: The Big Z, Zdeno Chara, number 33.
6
$87.15
(7th highest in the NHL)
7
Alternate Nicknames: Leafs,
Buds, Leaf Nation, God’s Team.
The Agony: Go figure: the Leafs
haven’t reached the Cup final in 44 years, but ex-Leafs have coached in 12 Stanley Cup finals since then, winning seven. The winners: Al Arbour (1980–83), Pat Burns (2003), Randy Carlyle (2007) and Joel Quenneville (2010). The bridesmaids: Arbour (1984), Barry Melrose (1993), Pat Quinn (1980 and 1994) and Floyd Smith (1975).
Franchise Started: February
1927, when a group led by Conn Smythe purchased the ailing Toronto St. Patricks.
Uniformly Speaking: The road
uniform is snow white with a blue crest and trim. The home jersey is the mirror image.
How Cool?: Still the prettiest blue in sports, but the old jersey, with the veiny crest, darker color and extra bands at the waist, had more character—and Stanley Cups! Current home: 7.5. Away: 7.0. Vintage jersey: 10.0.
The Ecstasy: Darryl Sittler collecting a record six goals and four assists in an 11–4 win over Don Cherry’s Boston Bruins in 1976.1 Fanatic: Mike Myers, whose first book report in a Toronto grade school was on Scott Young’s A Boy at the Leafs’ Camp, spends over $60 million making a movie, The Love Guru, that has the Leafs finally winning the Stanley Cup.
The Big M, Frank Mahovlich.
1 Leafs go to town after Sittler’s record performance, rewarding him with a special night and a silver tea set. Bruin coach Cherry pins newspaper accounts of the party on the bulletin board. Bruins never lose in Maple Leaf Gardens the next three years.
TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS Johnny Bower after letting in a goal. Even his mask looks sad.
Average ticket + parking + hot dog + beer:
$147.23
(Highest in the NHL) 142
143
Alternate Nicknames: Leafs,
Buds, Leaf Nation, God’s Team.
The Agony: Go figure: the Leafs
haven’t reached the Cup final in 44 years, but ex-Leafs have coached in 12 Stanley Cup finals since then, winning seven. The winners: Al Arbour (1980–83), Pat Burns (2003), Randy Carlyle (2007) and Joel Quenneville (2010). The bridesmaids: Arbour (1984), Barry Melrose (1993), Pat Quinn (1980 and 1994) and Floyd Smith (1975).
Franchise Started: February
1927, when a group led by Conn Smythe purchased the ailing Toronto St. Patricks.
Uniformly Speaking: The road
uniform is snow white with a blue crest and trim. The home jersey is the mirror image.
How Cool?: Still the prettiest blue in sports, but the old jersey, with the veiny crest, darker color and extra bands at the waist, had more character—and Stanley Cups! Current home: 7.5. Away: 7.0. Vintage jersey: 10.0.
The Ecstasy: Darryl Sittler collecting a record six goals and four assists in an 11–4 win over Don Cherry’s Boston Bruins in 1976.1 Fanatic: Mike Myers, whose first book report in a Toronto grade school was on Scott Young’s A Boy at the Leafs’ Camp, spends over $60 million making a movie, The Love Guru, that has the Leafs finally winning the Stanley Cup.
The Big M, Frank Mahovlich.
1 Leafs go to town after Sittler’s record performance, rewarding him with a special night and a silver tea set. Bruin coach Cherry pins newspaper accounts of the party on the bulletin board. Bruins never lose in Maple Leaf Gardens the next three years.
TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS Johnny Bower after letting in a goal. Even his mask looks sad.
Average ticket + parking + hot dog + beer:
$147.23
(Highest in the NHL) 142
143