Posted on 11/05/2019 9:53:23 AM PST by Daffynition
WHEN THE PUCK finally came to rest, it was almost entirely inside Craig MacDonald's mouth. It was Dec. 21, 2007, and with 1:51 left to play, the Tampa Bay Lightning winger, working in his own zone, stepped in front of an errant, elevated slap shot that instantly cleaved a grisly, bloody and impossibly wide swath of carnage through MacDonald's lips, gums and tongue before reducing nine of his teeth to dust. [snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at espn.com ...
A hockey fight seems to let the team blow off steam through osmosis.
All others are boring by comparison. Even look at football. The clock still goes down when there’s nothing going on, and they’re picking at wedgies.
My dentist is also an NHL hockey team dentist. He said Eastern European players were scared to death to make an initial visit to him because over there the dentists don’t use anesthetics.
Hahahahaha what an awesome picture!
Bobby Hull and Stan Mikita, if I am not mistaken!!!!
Sigh. I stopped watching some years ago, the game became too boring to watch, people tell me I should watch again as some of the rules changes got rid of all the clutch and grab play which slowed it down.
Heh, I came to hockey late when I was 17 years old, didn’t skate, but they needed a goalie and I used to catch in baseball, so I thought I could do it.
My friends were playing street hockey, so they gave me a first base mitt, a regular hockey glove for the other hand with two squares of paneling with styrofoam between them held onto the glove with telephone wire as a blocker, and put a rolled up carpet sample up each leg of my dungarees as leg pads. A real goalie stick completed the ensemble.
I stood in front of a metal shed, and they were at the end of the driveway, taking slapshots at me with a hard, razor edged plastic street hockey puck which they placed on top of a small piece of paneling so as to give it a bit more...speed.
I stood there ready, no facemask, no cup, no chest or arm protection, and one of my buddies wound up and fired a steaming slapshot my way. It sailed at me with such speed I didn’t have time to react, and it hit my thigh just above my knee where there was no padding. Boy, did that sting, and I hobbled around in little circles groaning and grimacing for about 30 seconds, then decided to try again.
Another friend slapped a second sizzling shot, and it came up the driveway and hit me...in exactly the same spot above the same knee. The pain was exquisite, in much the way striking a thumb with a hammer on two consecutive blows is exquisite. I repeated the little dance of pain, with louder groaning and voluptuous cussing, creasing my face into an even more contorted grimace if that is possible. But after walking it off, I stepped back in front of the shed, and set myself.
The third shot came in with a little less velocity, not a slapshot, but a wrist shot, and I was able to get my makeshift blocker on it. The puck deflected off, came up and hit me in the cheek just below my glasses and sent them flying into the air.
I threw the gloves and stick down on the ground, yanked the rolled up carpet samples out of my jeans, and yelled out “F*** THIS!” at the top of my lungs. That was it for my first day as a hockey player.
But...when winter rolled around and the pond froze over, they needed a goalie for pond hockey. The memory of that first day had faded, and instead of just sitting watching, I figured I could at least play, and did better. I joined the Navy, and there wasn’t much hockey to be had, but when I came home on leave for Christmas, there was always a game and I joined in as the sacrificial goalie.
As any hockey player knows, the only thing worse than a sacrificial goalie is no goalie, so...I played. When I got out of the Navy and began going to college and working evenings at a nursing home across the street from a hockey rink, one of my former band chaperones (who played goalie in men’s leagues and pickup leagues until he was in his mid-sixties) called me one night to ask if I wanted to borrow his equipment and fill in on his team, since he couldn’t play that night.
I began to borrow his equipment more often, I ended up buying his old beat up stuff, and played in more and more pickup games and ended up playing goalie for about 15 more years until I ripped my knee up playing volleyball and couldn’t play anymore.
Now everyone wears cages, but back then, people had only been wearing helmets for a few years, nobody wore cages except for us goalies, and I saw my share of stitches on other faces and chicklets on the ice.
Sigh. I don’t miss getting home at 2:00 AM and getting up at 5:00 AM to go to work, doing that sometimes two or three nights a week, but...I sure did enjoy playing hockey. As a goalie, I was not allowed to skip out on a game without a stand in. You do that, people don’t forgive you. So many nights, after a long day at work, I would be exhausted, laying on the couch, trying to close my eyes until 11:00 PM to drive to the rink. And the nights I wasn’t playing...the phone would ring, and a desperate guy would try to convince you to stand in for their goalie who couldn’t make it, and with a groan, I would agree, because...if you love hockey, you feel bad for guys who have to play with a net turned around. So you go. I sure don’t miss that.
But I miss that sport.
And I love that picture. Something about hockey players...those missing teeth always made grown men look like mischievous little boys...:)
And sometimes, those grown men were just that...mischievous little boys!
Hahahahahaha...for years I had no idea it even had a name, but...boy, do I remember that song!
Old New York Joke:I went to "The Garden" to see a fight and a hockey game broke out. First NHL game I went to was at the Garden and sat behind two Orthodox Jews who vociferously maintained throughout the game that the refs parents were not married at the time of his birth. The Rangers lost.
I saw the infamous North Stars-Boston Bruins game back in 1981 where they set an NHL record 391 minutes of penalties! Heh there were about five of us who watched it in the cellar of my friend’s house!
LOL, Terry O’Reilly, Stan Jonathan...the peerless Stan Jonathan...ahh, those were the days!
Of course, I love the movie Slap Shot, so that kind of explains it...:)
What the heck is he waving? A dead rabbit?
That also featured the Vernon v. Roy goalie fight. Later that season, Roy fought the other Wings goalie, Chris Osgood. Lemieux redeemed himself in the rematch, battling McCarty to a draw.
Too bad they're in different conferences now.
An octopus. Must be a Red Wings game.
My daughter was at a game last season behind the glass about the blue line, a puck went 1’ feet or so in the air, crossed the glass and hit her forehead on the way down. 5 stitches and just the speed of gravity from 10’. The game pucks are frozen before play. Hard as rocks and sharp edged.
LOL, I don’t think I ever saw Claude Lemeiux do more than turtle after a sneaky underhanded unprovoked attack on someone’s knees.
I remember Cam Neely (after being high-sticked in the face by Lemeix twice within a few seconds) holding the neck of Claude Lemeiux’s jersey in one hand, his other hand a wavering clenched fist as he tried with clenched teeth to line up a shot on the turtling Lemeiux...in vain.
Nobody did that better than Lemeiux. What a scum.
LOL, after all these years, the pent up hate comes out!
I think one of the absolute worst things the NHL ever did was to dissolve the old divisions. Adams, Norris, Patrick...Smythe.
Good gosh, they could screw up a wet dream, doing what they did.
My dentist is a former hockey teammate of mine. How cool is that? LOL.
During a game, an NHL team dentist's main priorities are triage, improvisation and speed: Stop the bleeding, yank or file down any dangerous edges and numb the pain so the player can return to the ice as quickly as possible.
Where Did Red Wings' Octopus Tradition Come From?
It’s like going to a prize/boxing match. The gladiators look pretty much the same after the contest. :p
That’s it, in a nutshell.
I think I remember those. Like a cage match!
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