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The Lighter Side of Hockey
The Hockey News has been providing the most comprehensive coverage of the world of hockey since 1947. In each issue, you'll find news, features and opinions about the NHL and leagues across North America and the world.
The king of mouthing off
The Avalanche always has been one of the more buttoned-down, serious organizations in the NHL. Some might call them uptight. That doesn’t mean there haven’t been some funny characters over the years. Alexei Gusarov, the old Russian defenseman, never, ever talked to the press in Denver, but he kept reporters in stitches, either with a daily promise to “talk tomorrow” or feigning a lack of English comprehension – then telling a long, bawdy joke in the language two minutes later. But there was nobody as downright hilarious as Mike Ricci. From 1995-97, Ricci kept the dressing rooms, buses, airplanes and hotel lobbies loose and funny with the Avalanche. Ironically, Ricci usually got all serious and spouted hockey cliches to reporters. But around the boys, he kept everybody laughing. A heartthrob to women in…
Tough guy led Sens in both punchlines and punchouts
Andre Roy never missed a beat or a beating. Roy has one of the toughest jobs in hockey by playing the role of enforcer, but if you met this guy off the ice you’d never know that he was a fighter. If the Pittsburgh Penguins want to know what kind of guy they got when they signed Roy in the off-season, anybody in the Ottawa Senators dressing room would tell you he could double as a stand-up comic. “I’m a lover…not a fighter,” Roy said. OK, stop. Enough already. No day was complete in the Senators dressing room without the lovable tough guy cracking a joke, grabbing a microphone or making a spectacle of himself. Every day as the Senators stepped on the ice for practice, Roy would picture himself being introduced as one…
Tasting beer, sweeping cells paid the bills
APRIL 9, 1965 When NHL players actually had to get summer jobs to make ends meet, two New York Rangers teammates had very unusual summer occupations: Bob Plager was a beer taster and Garry Peters was a janitor at the Regina City Jail. APRIL 11, 1975 Daredevil Evel Knievel pocketed $10,000 at Maple Leaf Gardens for beating Toronto Toros goalie Les Binkley on two of four penalty shots between periods of a World Hockey Association game. NOVEMBER 26, 1976 Detroit goalie Ed Giacomin kept an enlarged copy of the 1976 The Hockey News division forecasts on the wall of his stall. “Almost everybody picked us to finish fourth so every time I look at it, it’s an incentive for me.” Asked where he would have picked the Red Wings, Giacomin answered: “Probably fourth.” NOVEMBER 6, 1998 Five…
Johnny Bower - Caught between Watson & Worsley
Phil Watson spent the late 1950s behind the New York Rangers bench. They were tough years for many of the Blueshirts. Johnny Bower remembers one workout in particular, when he and Gump Worsley were singled out by the kindly old coach. “He had Gump and I pushing the nets up and down the ice one day after a good two-hour practice session. He asked us, ‘Where are you guys going?’ I said ‘We’re going off the ice, practice is over.’ “And he said, ‘Not for you two guys.’ “I had to go back to my net and Gump to his and we started pushing them up and down the ice, passing each other at center ice. We're going back and forth, up and down the ice, pushing the nets. They're getting heavy and…
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