Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores

by Bathroom Readers' Institute

  “No” says the neighbor. “The seat is empty.”

  “This is incredible,” says Sam. “Who in their right mind would have a seat like this for the Stanley Cup and not use it?”

  The neighbor says, “Well, actually, the seat belongs to me. I was supposed to come with my wife, but she passed away. This is the first Stanley Cup we haven’t been to together since we got married.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. That’s terrible…But couldn't you find someone else, a friend or relative, or even a neighbor to take the seat?”

  The man shakes his head “No. They’re all at the funeral.”

  OTHER NHLS

  Make sure you know which league you’re signing up for.

  We’ve all been there: After a 50-goal season with the Brandon Wheat Kings, you arrive at the big-city convention center for the NHL draft, Mom and Dad on either arm, visions of Bruins jerseys and million-dollar contracts dancing in your head. But things do not seem right. Where are the fluttering team banners and ESPN cameras? Why is everybody playing the harmonica or discussing gnostic codices? Mom and Dad start to panic. There can’t possibly be more than one NHL, can there?

  National Historic Landmarks: A subsidiary of the U.S. National Park Service, the NHL preserves, protects and promotes over 2,000 buildings and locales of historical significance. Landmarks of baseball, cricket, football, basketball, tennis, track, and rowing appear on their register, but no sites relevant to hockey.

  Nag Hammadi Library: In 1945, an Egyptian farmer outside the town of Nag Hammadi found 13 papyrus volumes sealed in an earthenware jar. Published in English in 1970 as The Nag Hammadi Library, the long-lost “Gnostic Gospels” of the NHL, hidden by heterodox Christian monks around 390 AD, have prompted a major re-evaluation of Christianity and its teachings.

  Noordelijke Hogeschool Leeuwarden: A university with 9,000 students and 850 staff members, located in the capital of Friesland province in the Netherlands, NHL offers undergraduate and graduate courses for both full- and part-time students, as well as opportunities to participate in sports such as “Mixed Hockeyclub” and “Tafeltennis.”

  Norske Homeopaters Landsforbund: Founded in Oslo in 1930, the NHL is one of five different organizations representing Norwegian homeopaths. Its 400 members must fulfil the standards of medical and homeopathic education while practicing their profession according to the organization’s exacting ethical standards.

  Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma: Like Hodgkin’s Disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma originates in the lymph nodes—oval, pea-sized organs that filter the blood of infection and disease—but, unlike Hodgkin’s Disease, NHL often spreads to areas beyond the lymph. While the five-year survival rate for NHL is a less-than-reassuring 56%, 81% of patients survive HD, including Mario Lemieux, who received treatment for the disease in the winter of 1993.

  National Harmonica League: Britain’s national harmonica club is more globally minded than their name would indicate, as they send their quarterly publication, Harmonica World, to membership in more than 20 countries. According to their mission statement, “The NHL…caters for all people with an interest in the harmonica, ranging from non-players to virtuoso professionals, regardless of race, creed, or color, and regardless of tastes in music.”

  NCL-1, HT2A and LIN-41: NHL is a protein domain 30 to 40 amino acids long, and often repeated several times in a single protein. An ancient motif, it occurs in humans as well as in a wide range of other organisms, including the arabidopsis plant and the microscopic C. elegans worm, both widely used in genetic research. Very likely it predates the better-known NHL which was created in Montreal in 1917.

  * * * * *

  OUCH!

  “I just tape four Tylenols to it.”

  —Rangers defenceman Boris Mironov, on playing with a sore ankle

  “Getting cut in the face is a pain in the butt.”

  —former Calgary Flames forward Theoren Fleury

  THE FLYING FEM FINN

  Perhaps the world’s best female player, Hayley Wickenheiser made hockey history by playing for a Finnish men’s team.

  Hayley Wickenheiser was not the first female to play for a men’s professional hockey team. But she was the first to play as a regular for at least part of a season. Granted, the team for which Wickenheiser played 23 games in the 2002–03 season, Kirkkonummi Salamat, was in the Third Division of the Finnish Hockey League, hardly an indicator that an NHL career was a step away. But the longtime star of the Canadian national women’s team, the most valuable player on the gold medal team in the 2002 Olympics and the woman often mentioned as the best female hockey player in the world proved that she could hold her own in the men’s league—and on a team that played well enough to move up to the Second Division.

  STATS AT SALAMAT

  Wickenheiser initially talked with a team in Italy but the Italian Federation said it did not want female players. Salaat offered her a three-game tryout and when she showed well, she received a contract for the remainder of the season. In 23 games, she scored two goals and 13 assists. Wickenheiser, 25 at the time, returned to the team for a second season in 2004–05 but a lack of ice time and the desire to be with her family—her boyfriend and his son by a previous relationship—brought her back to Canada after a few weeks in Finland. “Overall, the experience of playing in Finland was a good one and it served the intended purpose of helping me to improve as a player because it challenged me,” Wickenheiser said. “I was treated very fairly by the team and opponents did not play any different against me than they did against the guys on the team.”

  HOLDING HER OWN

  Four female goalies—Manon Rheaume, Erin Whitten, Danielle Dube, and Kelly Dyer—had played in North American minor-pro hockey. Rheaume had attracted considerable attention when the Tampa Bay Lightning used her for a period in a preseason game against an NHL opponent. But goaltender is not a position where there’s a chance of heavy contact, the big risk for female skaters who are outweighed by at least 50 pounds by many of the opposing players. A gifted athlete, Wickenheiser is among the bigger female players at 170 pounds and, always tremendously conditioned, she held her own in the corners and along the boards in the Finnish league.

  “Hayley certainly had the skill, speed and strength to play in our league,” said Parmalat coach Matti Hagman, who played 237 games in the NHL with the Boston Bruins and Edmonton Oilers. “She was the complete professional about everything and the men on our team liked her very much and trusted her on the ice. After a couple of weeks when the fuss died down, she was viewed as a hockey player, not a woman. She was especially good on faceoffs and passing plus working hard defensively.”

  IN A LEAGUE OF HER OWN

  Wickenheiser does not see herself as a pioneer carrying the women’s hockey torch for participation in men’s leagues. She attended the Philadelphia Flyers’ rookie camp in 1998 and showed well, especially in the game’s basic skills. She was offered tryouts by teams in the East Coast League but felt that the Finnish league on the large European ice surfaces suited her speed and skills. Her determination is legendary in women’s sports. She had played softball as a recreation sport through her teen years before devoting more time to hockey. But she decided to try for the Canadian women’s softball team at the 2000 Olympic Games and long, intense hours of training earned her a spot.

  “The softball training helped my conditioning for hockey,” Wickenheiser said. “I had been playing women’s hockey a long time and felt that if I wanted to make myself a better player, I needed a change for at least part of a season, a step up to a better level.”

  ALWAYS A NAYSAYER

  While there was little criticism of Wickenheiser’s Finnish stint in men’s hockey circles—the prevailing attitude seemed to be that if that’s what she wanted and she earned the spot on merit, fine—one high-ranked official rankled many with his comments. Rene Fasel, president of the International Ice Hockey Federation, the world governing body of the sport, suggested that Wickenheiser should give up
her try at hockey in a men’s league for her own safety. Fasel opined she was at risk in contact hockey after playing in the women’s game where deliberate bodychecking is not allowed. The IIHF president’s outlook was that Wickenheiser and others would better serve hockey as champions and role models within the women’s game.

  “That’s a better choice than as banged-up, and maybe hurt, pioneers in a provincial third-level men’s league,” Fasel said. Wickenheiser allowed such opinions to pass without comment from her. After all, she prefers to do her talking on the ice, helping the Canadian national team to a silver medal in the 2005 Women’s World Championship.

  * * * * *

  KNUCKLES AND BOOM BOOM?

  As in all sports, hockey players have some interesting, descriptive and just plain weird nicknames.

  Aubrey Victor “Dit” Clapper

  Bernie “Boom Boom” Geoffrion

  Chris “Knuckles” Nilan

  Curtis “CuJo” Joseph

  Dave “The Hammer” Schultz

  Dave “Tiger” Williams

  Francis “King” Clancy

  Frank “Mr. Zero” Brimsek

  Fred “Cyclone” Taylor

  Freddie “The Fog” Shero

  George “Punch” Imlach

  Hector “Toe” Blake

  Larry “Big Bird” Robinson

  Lorne “Gump” Worsley

  Louie “The Leaper” Fontinato

  Maurice “The Rocket” Richard

  “Terrible” Ted Lindsay

  Yvon “The Roadrunner” Cournoyer

  EUROPE INVADES

  Despite a short supply of talent in the rapid proliferation of teams during the 1970s, the NHL was slow to add European players.

  ORIGINS OF THE BROAD STREET BULLIES

  The climb from “chicken Swede” and “fearful Finn” to NHL team captaincies was a long ascent over three decades. Major league hockey expanded rapidly in the 1970s, the NHL growing from six teams in the 1966–67 season to 18 for 1976–77; and the World Hockey Association starting as a rival for 1972–73 with a dozen teams. The major source of talent, the Canadian junior hockey leagues, simply could not produce players fast enough to stock the NHL and WHA with front-line players. And even while growing rapidly, U.S. hockey supplied a few but not a big group of players. A large pool of players existed in Europe but the good ones in the Iron Curtain countries were not available. NHL thinking was that players in Sweden and Finland had the necessary skill, but would not function effectively in the physical pro style.

  RUMBA ON THE TUMBA

  European players had been tried by NHL teams. In the early 1960s, the Boston Bruins had invited forward Sven “Tumba” Johansson, high scorer for the Swedish national team, to training camp. The easygoing Johansson—he later changed his name to Sven Tumba—was a target for the Bruin players, some of whom were outspoken in their criticism of this “foreigner” trying to take a job. “In training camp, the Bruins did not attack each other the way they attacked me,” Johansson said years later.

  ULF THE FIRST

  Swedish star Ulf Sterner spent the 1963–64 season in pro hockey, including four games with the New York Rangers. Although he scored 30 goals in the minor leagues, Sterner did not return for a second North American season but had a long career as a star in his home country. The first player from a Communist country to try the pros was forward Jaroslav Jirik, a strong player in the top Czechoslovakian league and the national team. Jirik managed to escape from his country and join the St. Louis Blues organization for the 1969–70 season. He played three NHL games, spent the remainder of the season in the minors, but did not return for camp the next season.

  JUST IGNORE INSULTS FROM OWNER’S BOX

  Swedish defenceman Thommie Bergman was the first European to play a full season in the NHL with the Detroit Red Wings in 1972–73. He performed solidly, a plus player on a weak team. Their roster stripped bare by WHA raids, the Toronto Maple Leafs signed winger Inge Hammarstrom and defenceman Borje Salming from the Brynas team in the top Swedish league. While Hammarstrom played solidly, Salming quickly became a front-line star in a 17-season career. A marvelous athlete who absorbed much punishment and “chicken Swede” slurs, Salming was the first European to be an NHL all-star.

  SCANDINAVIANS RUN RAMPANT IN WHA

  Despite the strong play by the Leafs’ Swedes, the NHL was still slow to recruit more Swedish players. The WHA was not. The Winnipeg Jets gave the WHA a big shot of credibility when they signed NHL star Bobby Hull in 1972 as the new league’s major star. To build a strong supporting cast for the Golden Jet, the Jets signed Swedish forwards Anders Hedberg and Ulf Nilsson who joined Hull on one of hockey’s most exciting and prolific forward lines. When the Jets won their first WHA championship in 1976, their roster contained seven Swedes and two Finns.

  DISPLACED BY WHA DOWNFALL

  Other WHA teams recruited strongly in Scandinavia while the NHL added only a few players from the Sweden and Finland. The Toronto Toros of the new league scored a major coup in 1974 when they convinced center Vaclav Nedomansky, long the top player in Czechoslovakia, and countryman winger Richard Farda to defect from their country. “I had accomplished everything I could in hockey at home,” Big Ned said. “I asked to be allowed to move to North America to play but I was turned down. I wanted to test myself in pro hockey and was able to find a way out of the country.”

  The WHA folded in 1979, four of its teams joining the NHL as expansion clubs. Nedomansky moved to the Red Wings where he had some productive seasons; his success inspired others to seek ways to lure excellent Czechoslovakian players out of their country.

  NORDIQUES ENGAGE IN ESPIONAGE

  One of the WHA “refugees,” the Quebec Nordiques turned their team into a contender by aiding in the defection of the three Stastny brothers, Peter and Anton in 1980, Marian in 1981, from Czechoslovakia. Center Peter was the NHL’s second highest scorer in the 1980s behind only Wayne Gretzky and was voted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

  RUSSIANS NYET (NOT YET)

  When the teams from the old USSR dominated world “amateur” hockey through the 1960s into the 1980s, NHL clubs longed for a shot at recruiting “the damned Russians,” as they were called. Rumors surfaced occasionally of NHL teams close to luring Russian stars, especially after the first USSR-Canada hockey confrontation, the fabled 1972 Summit Series. Harold Ballard, the loudmouthed owner of the Maple Leafs, offered the Russians one million dollars for winger Valeri Kharlamov after the first game of the series.

  TRETIAK TRIGGERS NUCLEAR HOLOCAUST

  While Soviet artists such as ballet stars Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Barishnykov had defected to North America, Soviet hockey players were reluctant to bolt, fearing the punishment that could be inflicted on their families. A coveted Soviet was goalie Vladislav Tretiak, an international star for a dozen years and four-time Olympic gold medallist. Years later he admitted wanting to try the NHL, but because he was an army officer in addition to being a star athlete, his defection would have had Cold War ramifications he didn’t want to risk. One comrade did make it: Forward Viktor Nechayev, from Siberia, appeared with the Los Angeles Kings for three games in 1982–83, scoring a goal. Details of his escape were never revealed; regardless, he lacked the ability to stick in the NHL.

  THE REDS ARE COMING

  Through the 1980s, signs that the Iron Curtain was disintegrating grew each year with the labor uprisings in Poland, the fall of the Berlin wall and the ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev to the top of the USSR government. In 1987, Soviet stars were permitted to talk to western journalists for the first time at international events and predicted they would be permitted to join NHL teams in “a short time.” The first Soviet player to be allowed officially to move was winger Sergei Priakin, who played three games with the Calgary Flames in 1988–89. After the 1989 World Championship in Stockholm, brilliant young Soviet forward Alexander Mogilny did not return home with the Soviet team, defecting to the NHL’s Buffalo Sabres.

  THE
GREENS ARE COMING

  Through the 1980s, the Soviet domination of world hockey was led by the brilliant “Green Unit,” forwards Sergei Makarov, Igor Larionov, and Vladimir Krutov, and defencemen Slava Fetisov and Alexei Kasatonov. They were allowed to move to the NHL—Makarov with Calgary, Larionov and Krutov with the Vancouver Canucks, and Kasatonov and Fetisov with the New Jersey Devils. All but Krutov played strongly in the NHL.

  IT’S GLOBALIZATION, BABY

  The Iron Curtain’s fall opened up the world hockey market completely. From the early 1990s on, European players have flocked to North America, at both the pro and Canadian junior level. The NHL entry draft quickly became dotted with European names and, by 2000, 42 percent of 293 players selected were in the “international” category and in 2004, nine of the 30 first-round picks were in that classification.

  * * * * *

  DOGGIE CUP

  “Bow Wow” is the only non-human name written on the Stanley Cup. Hockey historians think that Bow Wow was the mascot of the Quebec Bulldogs, Cup champions in 1912 and 1913.

  JOLLY JACK?

  Jack Adams, who guided the Detroit Red Wings to great success for 35 years, was a tough tyrant both admired and detested.

  To some, most of them away from the rink, he was viewed as “Jolly Jawn,” the pink-cheeked, cherubic, chortling man who enthusiastically promoted hockey nonstop. But many who knew Jack Adams, hockey man, general manager and/or coach of the Detroit Red Wings for 35 years, viewed him as the antithesis of the public figure. Adams was a tough, bad-tempered, referee-baiting martinet who ruled his teams with an iron fist. Players who ventured outside of his strict rules were viewed as “traitors to the family.”

  RAPID RISE UP THE RANKS

  That Adams was in the front ranks both as a player and GM-coach isn’t debated. He played on two teams (the Toronto Arenas and Ottawa Senators) that won the Stanley Cup and was Red Wings coach for three Stanley Cups and GM for four. He took over the reins of the Detroit Cougars in 1927, who were called the Falcons for two seasons before becoming the Red Wings in 1932. By careful constructing a solid farm system and making shrewd deals, he filled houses at the Detroit Olympia and moved the team to the top of the NHL. The team won back-to-back Cups in 1936 and 1937, establishing Adams as strong both in the front office and behind the bench. The owners of the team, the Norris family, were impressed enough to give him full control of team operations.