Beijing Boyce

Remember last fall when Cafe St. Laurent (now Boheme) announced it would screen NHL hockey on Sundays, then pulled the ultimate “delay of game” and never showed a single match? And then how Paddy O’Shea’s picked up some (slightly blurry) games off the Internet about six months later during the playoffs (thanks Glenn!)?

Well, there is additional hope this year for puck fans as the Goose and Duck is planning to show hockey (also known as The Best Game You Can Name). Things are still in the works as the G n’ D is fine-tuning the feed before dropping the puck (fair enough). I’ll have more details soon and, in the meantime, I’m preparing my stash of Tim Horton’s coffee for action.

By the way, “the best name you can name” is from the lyrics of The Hockey Song by Stompin’ Tom Connors:

Hello out there! We’re on the air,
It’s Hockey Night tonight;
Tension grows, the whistle blows,
And the puck goes down the ice.
The goalie jumps, and the players bump,
And the fans all go insane;
Someone roars, “Bobby scores!”
At the good old hockey game.

There is also a book of the same name, by Dave Bidini, who spoke at The Bookworm some time ago. The book is an entertaining mix of his ongoing love of hockey (he plays in a recreational league) and a series of interviews with ex-NHL players who played pro hockey a decade or more ago, and it touches on the lighter side of the game as well as sports violence, the hardships of being in the minor leagues, and the intense pre-1989 Russian-North American rivalry, which often had political overtones. For instance, these comments by coach Gary Green:

Canada-Russia was always intense, but Russia-America had its own dynamic. We were supposed to play the Russians when I was coaching the Capitals, but with the escalation of the war in Afghanistan, and the Americans’ reaction to it, they wanted to back out. They were holed up in their hotel rooms; people had called in bomb threats. There was major security around them. They had a phone installed on my bench, and told me that if that phone range during the game, I was to get my team off the ice right away. During the national anthem, I looked up and there were SWAT teams with snipers positioned in the upper rafters. The Capitals fans booed the Russian anthem all the way through. If we hadn’t tied the game — using a system that Scotty Bowman helped me develop — there would have been hell to pay. Who knows what would have happened.

Of course, much of the book is much lighter, as these comments by player Steve Ludzik reveal:

My first game in the NHL was with the ‘Hawks in Quebec City. During the game, I couldn’t understand why the whole bench was standing up every time the Nordiques took a slapshot from the blue line. I finally asked Tom Lysiak why this was happening, and he said, “Because our goalie, Tony O [Esposito], can’t see the puck that far away.”

See also:
Get your NHL and NBA on: Part II
Hoop, hockey dreams: NBA all-star game Monday morning, HNIC update
Hockey morning in Beijing: ANOTHER delay of game
Hockey morning in Beijing: Another delay of game
Delay of Game: CSL Hockey Morning in Beijing postponed one week
Ice Time: Hockey Morning in Beijing
Ice Time: Hockey Night in Beijing!