Uncle John's Bathroom Reader: Shoots and Scores

By Bathroom Readers' Institute

Updated & expanded—this entry in the bestselling bathroom reader series is full of hockey trivia on the sport’s colorful history, legendary players, and more.

The Bathroom Readers’ Institute has added seventy all-new pages to this collection of tales and trivia about the Greatest Game on Ice. You’ll find loads of new articles, plus updated facts throughout. So tighten your laces and grab your stick—it’s Hockey Time! Read about . . .

·      Octopuses, rubber rats, and other animal ice-capades

·      What’s up with those hockey haircuts?

·      The science behind the slap shot

·      Why are hockey goalies so weird?

·      And of course—how did Gretzky get so good?

Get ready for some end-to-end action!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781607106524

Bathroom Readers' Institute

The Bathroom Readers' Institute is a tight-knit group of loyal and skilled writers, researchers, and editors who have been working as a team for years. The BRI understands the habits of a very special market—Throne Sitters—and devotes itself to providing amazing facts and conversation pieces.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW EDITION

WELCOME, HOCKEY FANS!

What do a bunch of West Coast pop culture geeks know about hockey? That’s the challenge our friends in Canada gave us back in 2005 when we published the first Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores. They even bet us four loonies and a case of Molson that we couldn’t do it, but we surprised them with a colossal compendium chock full of facts, figures, and trivia tidbits. Hockey has changed since then, though, and Uncle John wondered recently if it would be a good idea to update our book for all our new fans.

THEY SHOOT! THEY SCORE!

So last winter, when most of us at the BRI were spending too many chilly weekends glued to our sofas watching Hockey Night in Canada on satellite, Uncle John called us a bunch of slovenly Americans and encouraged us to get out there and actually play some hockey instead…for inspiration.

We still didn’t have any ice, so once again, it was shinny—road hockey—for us. We headed out to the frozen concrete in front of the BRI with our taped-up sticks, a couple of old tennis balls, and two plungers for goal posts. After some annoying vehicular interruptions (CAR!), we got right to it, impersonating our favorite hockey heroes on our ultimate dream teams: "Gretzky passes to Lemieux, Lemieux streaks past Hull, Messier races in and steals the puck, he passes to Jagr who hammers it at the net, Crosby reaches for it…he SCOOOORES! And they win the Stanley Cup!"

After the game, the BRI AllStar Shinny Team got to talking about the updated edition: playing hockey was pretty fun, and reading more about it was bound to be a blast! So we decided to dust off our old copies of Shoots and Scores and plunge into all the new hockey trivia out there to see if there was enough to update and expand the book. After a bucket of fries with vinegar and three cups of cocoa each (well, Amy had tea), eureka! We discovered that there was!

UJ DRAFT DAY

So we enlisted the help of all the hockey fans we know (hockey experts, they call themselves), and they came up with more than 70 new pages of interesting stories, hilarious history, fascinating quotes, and at least four entirely useless facts.

So get ready for the puck to drop. There are no refs in this game (though we do mention a few in the book…), but please try to stay out of the penalty box. Enjoy! Game on!

And as always…

Go with the flow, eh?

—Uncle John and the BRI Staff

THE NAME GAME

Want to know why you call your favorite hockey team the Stars, the Flames, or the Devils? Read on.

• The Calgary Flames inherited their name from the Atlanta Flames when that franchise was sold and relocated to Alberta in 1980. The original team was named after the fire that General William T. Sherman’s Union troops set in Atlanta as they blazed their way across the South at the end of the U.S. Civil War.

• The name of the Columbus Blue Jackets was also inspired by Civil War history. It’s a reference to the blue uniforms worn by Union soldiers and celebrates the fact that Ohio contributed more soldiers per capita to the war than any other state in the Union. (Ohio is also the home state of pyromaniacal General Sherman—see above.)

• The Dallas Stars were not so-named because Texas is the Lone Star State. The franchise was originally the Minnesota North Stars, named for Minnesota’s state motto: L’Etoile du Nord (French for star of the North). The team moved to Dallas in 1993, but left the North part behind.

• The Nashville Predators are named in tribute to the saber-toothed cat bones that were found in 1971 in downtown Nashville when workmen were excavating land for the construction of a new bank.

• When the NHL’s Colorado Rockies relocated to New Jersey in 1982, they renamed themselves the New Jersey Devils for a mysterious, evil, winged creature called the Jersey Devil that, legend says, roamed the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey in the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries.

• The inspiration for the name Tampa Bay Lightning actually comes from the weather. According to the St. Petersburg Times, Tampa is the lightning capital of the nation. In June 1993, at the conclusion of the franchise’s first NHL season, more than 21,000 cloud-to-ground lightning flashes occurred within a 50-mile radius of Tampa Bay.

DONORS V. RECIPIENTS

Are you ready for some…er…interesting hockey?

PRIEST v. SEMINARIANS

Every February, priests from across the U.S. and Canada congregate at the St. Thomas Aquinas Seminary (a Roman Catholic high school in Winona, Minnesota) for meetings on religious topics. They also have a hockey game. Every year since 1988, the visiting priests form a team and face off at a local ice arena against a team of kids from the school. When they all meet at center ice and do their Latin prayer, says rink manager Jim Martin, it really is surreal. Best part: many of the priests choose to play in their robes. (The priests have beaten the kids just twice in the game’s history.)

SEEING V. NON-SEEING

If you ever get a chance to see the Toronto-based Ice Owls play hockey, the first thing you’ll notice is that the game sounds different. That’s because the puck is hollow…and filled with bits of metal that make it rattle as it moves across the ice. That’s so the Ice Owl players, who are either vision-impaired or completely blind, can hear it. The Ice Owls have been around since 1972, and every year they play in benefit games all over Canada. (You can find their schedule on their Web site.)

TISSUE DONORS V. TISSUE RECIPIENTS

In April 2011, two hockey teams faced off in Halifax, Nova Scotia. One team was made up of people who had donated organ tissue to people in need of transplants. The other: people who had received organ transplants. It was the second annual Donor v. Recipient hockey game, brainchild of Halifax-based Life: Pass It On, an organ donation advocacy group. Among the players on the recipient side: goalie Trevor Umlah, whom the organization’s Web site describes as an ice hockey goalie with a slow glove hand, gaping 5-hole, cystic fibrosis, and brand new lungs. Winner of the 2011 game: Everybody. (Although the score was Recipients, 3, Donors 2.)

ENGRAVING ERRORS

As the largest trophy awarded by any major North American professional sports league, the Stanley Cup has a lot of surface area—lots of room for names to be engraved…and lots of room for errors.

• Hockey Hall of Fame goalie Jacques Plante won the Cup six times and his name suffered four different misspellings: Jocko, Jack, Jacq, and Plant.

• A few other Hall of Famers also experienced misspelled names: in 1951, Toronto’s Ted Kennedy became Kennedyy; in 1952, Detroit’s Alex Delvecchio became Belvecchio, and teammate Glenn Hall became Glin. (Hall shouldn’t even have been included that year; he didn’t play for Detroit until the next season.)

• Dickie Moore won six Cups with the Montreal Canadiens, and his name was rendered five different ways: D. Moore, Richard Moore, R. Moore, Dickie Moore, and Rich Moore.

• Pete Palangio appears twice on the Cup, despite winning it only once. His name was accidentally engraved twice as a member of the 1938 Chicago Black Hawks…once correctly and once as Palagio.

• Even the names of the teams themselves weren’t foolproof. According to the inscription, the Cup was won by the Toronto Maple Leaes in 1963, by the Bqstqn Bruins in 1972, and the New York Ilanders in 1981.

• Edmonton Oilers owner Peter Pocklington tried to pull a fast one on the NHL when his team won the Cup in 1984. As a tribute to his dad Basil, a huge hockey fan, he sneaked his father’s name into the list of team names. Alas, the NHL caught up to him and had the name Basil Pocklington deleted by having X’s engraved over each letter.

• In 1996 Adam Deadmarsh of the Cup-winning Colorado Avalanche became the first player inscribed on the cup in NHL history to be honored with a correction. His name was initially spelled Deadmarch.

MEDICAL RECORDS

Like all professional team sports, hockey keeps track of its players’ distinguished statistical achievements. But what about those not-so-distinguished records? Here are four that show just how dangerous the game is.

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 such 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.

TAKING THE GOLD FOR GRANTED

For nearly 40 years, Canada so dominated international hockey that the country could send senior amateur teams of no great distinction to the World Championship and the Olympics and win with little trouble. But on a Sunday morning in 1954, Canadian fans woke to bad news: The country’s representatives, the East York Lyndhursts from a Toronto senior league, had been whipped 7–2 by a Soviet national team in its first try at the world amateur championships. Even those Canadians who usually paid little attention to the game complained that the country should send a better team overseas. Over the next seven years, the Canadian entry was upgraded to topnotch senior clubs and won four times. But after 1961, the country’s best amateurs could not match the Europeans, especially the Soviets.

Even as Canada lost, though, including a valiant but futile six-year attempt by a national team of young players through the 1960s, Canadians smugly said that the Soviets were only winning because Canada’s best 400 or so players were involved in pro hockey; NHL players would surely defeat the Soviets and other Europeans easily. After several years of negotiations, a series (the Summit Series) of eight games between the Soviets and Team Canada, comprising the best NHL players, was set for 1972.

Only a handful of Canadian observers familiar with international hockey predicted that the Soviets would be able to beat the glittering array of NHL stars. Not even the absence of two great players from the Canadian lineup—defenceman Bobby Orr, who had a knee injury, and Bobby Hull, who had jumped from the NHL to the rival WHA—dampened Canada’s optimism.

TEARS FOR JEERS

The series received a huge buildup when it opened on a Saturday evening in late August at the Montreal Forum, and in one of the biggest shocks in hockey history, the Soviets skated to a 7–3 victory. The mastery of the quick, meticulously conditioned, and highly skilled Russians was dazzling. The Canadians rebounded to win the second game in Toronto, and then the clubs played a tie in Winnipeg. In the fourth game (the last in Canada), fans in Vancouver booed the home side’s 5–3 loss, prompting star center Phil Esposito to plead for support on national television because the players tried, we gave it our best…Some of our guys are really down in the dumps…I mean, we’re doing the best we can.

GREAT WHITE NORTH STRIKES BACK

After a ten-day break, the series resumed in Moscow, and the Soviets won the first game there for a commanding 3–1–1 edge in the series. Even a tie in one of the three remaining games would give them the series. Throughout the series, a strength for the Canadians was the forward line of young center Bobby Clarke, two years into his excellent career with the Philadelphia Flyers, flanked by good but not top-level Toronto Maple Leafs wingers Ron Ellis and Paul Henderson. The line had played solid two-way hockey in every game, the trio’s speed of much value on the larger ice surface in Moscow. With Esposito playing magnificently and emerging as the team leader, the Canadians slowly gained good conditioning and battled back to win the sixth and seventh games, with Henderson scoring the winning goals in both.

In game eight, Canada trailed 5–3 entering the third period but tied the score by the 13th minute on goals by Esposito and Yvan Cournoyer. The game and the series appeared certain to end in a tie as the teams hit the final minute. Responding to Henderson’s urgent cries from the bench, Pete Mahovlich came off to allow Henderson to rush headlong toward the Soviet goal, take a shot at goalie Vladislav Tretiak, and fall into the endboards. Esposito snared the puck when a defenceman mishandled it and shot just as Henderson was scrambling for the front of the net. Tretiak stopped that shot and another one by Henderson on the rebound. But then Henderson snared his own rebound and fired it past the valiant Soviet goalie to win the series.

JUST COLLEGE KIDS

Many of the Soviet players from the 1972 Summit Series also traveled to the Lake Placid Olympics eight years later. The U.S. team of college players, coached by the hard-driving Herb Brooks, fought its way to a shot at a medal. And even though the Soviets were considered a lock for the gold, as the tournament progressed, it became obvious that the swift, skilled American kids had a real chance.

The key game was the semi-final round: Team USA versus the Soviets. After the first period, with the score tied, 2–2, Coach Viktor Tikhonov pulled Tretiak, replacing him with Vladimir Myshkin. That seemed to give the Americans a shot of adrenaline, and with U.S. goalie Jim Craig stopping most of the what the Soviets threw at him, the Americans were in a 3–3 tie halfway through the third period. Eruzione, the only non-college player on the U.S. roster (he played minor-pro), snapped home a 25-foot shot that led to broadcaster Al Michael’s famous line: Do you believe in miracles? The U.S. Team clinched the gold medal by defeating Finland 4–2 in final to join the ranks of the most-revered sports heroes in American history.

AND THE CROWD GOES WILD!

By 2010, America’s place as a contender in international hockey was long established, but the country had a new rival: Team Canada. The neighbors met in the men’s hockey final at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver.

That year, Team Canada was favored to win hockey gold, and having the homefield advantage certainly couldn’t hurt. But the Canadians started off slowly, losing a preliminary game to the Americans, and one of their stars Sidney Crosby (nicknamed Sid the Kid and the Next One) was pointless in both the quarter and semifinal rounds. Still, during the final game, with just 24.4 seconds left, the Canadians were up 2–1 and winning seemed assured…until the Americans pulled their goalie and managed to flip a tying goal into the Canadian net. While the Americans celebrated, Team Canada (and their red-and-white-clad fans in the arena and on the streets of Vancouver) was stunned. Were the Canadians—hockey’s elite—really going to lose Olympic gold on their own turf to the U.S.?

The game went into sudden-death overtime, and after just seven-and-a-half minutes came the shot all of Canada was waiting for: Jarome Iginla fed Sidney Crosby the puck, the Kid shot…and scored, sending fans all across Canada to their feet. For Crosby, who grew up shooting goals into a dryer in the basement of his family’s Nova Scotia home, it was a childhood dream come true: Being in Canada, that’s the opportunity of a lifetime. You dream of that a thousand times growing up. For it to come true is amazing.

PARIS HILTON: HOCKEY PLAYER

And a few other celebrity hockey stories you may not have heard.

STEVE CARELL. The star of TV’s The Office and films like The 40-Year-Old Virgin grew up in Massachusetts and started playing hockey as a kid. He’s kept it up, too, telling Playboy magazine in 2005 that he had joined the Burbank Sharks, an amateur hockey team in Southern California. We’re very bad, he said. What I lack in physical ability, I make up for in poor coordination. According to the Sharks’ Web site, Carell is still on the roster in 2011. Favorite team: Boston Bruins.

AVRIL LAVIGNE. The Canadian pop sensation grew up in Napanee, Ontario, and has been playing hockey since she was a kid, even playing on an all-boys-league team. You can even see a video of her playing as a youngster on YouTube. Well, she’s not really playing in the video, she’s actually trying to beat up the opposing goalie, and getting ejected from the game. (She’s only 10 years old in the video.) Favorite team: Toronto Maple Leafs.

CUBA GOODING JR. Gooding didn’t play as a kid, but he’s made up for it: I picked up ice hockey about 10 years ago, he told ESPN in 2003. And, being a celebrity, I’ve had the opportunity to play in celebrity games and in pickup games in L.A. with Mario Lemieux, Luc Robitaille, and a lot of the guys who play on the Kings. Gooding still plays in charity games today, and, if being able to play with Mario and Luc didn’t make you jealous—he also has an ice rink in his back yard. Favorite team: Los Angeles Kings.

PARIS HILTON. No, she did not play air hockey. (Ba dum bum.) Hilton actually played on the ice hockey team of Canterbury School, a prep school for fabulously wealthy kids in Connecticut. It doesn’t seem to have made a big impression on her, though: When asked during a 2007 interview what position she played, she answered, I don’t know. I would always move around, I wasn’t just one position. Favorite team: She can’t remember.

ALAN THICKE. Best known as the father in the series Growing Pains, Thicke (yet another Ontario native)