Sunday night was spent in Sudbury, where I worked 41 years ago as a young bartender, fresh out of a two-week bartender’s course in Toronto where I learned to mix more than a hundred different cocktails, about ten of which I would actually have to know and make on the job. The school placed me [...]

Very soon it’ll be throw everything into storage, close up shop, hop into the car with Luci, Gaston, and maybe Teesha the cat, and drive 2300 miles to Montreal, where I’ll be working at Classic Auctions, which many of you know is the biggest and best historical hockey auction house on the planet. This gig [...]

The 1972 Soviet squad surprised the heck out of us when they showed up in Montreal in 1972 to begin the Summit Series, and nobody surprised us more than the great number 17, Valeri Kharlamov, who was poetry in motion, and who gave the Canadians fits with his beautiful skating and puck handling. What a [...]

(Originally posted August 19, 2008) I should’ve been a Forum maintenance man. I remember going to the Forum years ago and noticing a small apartment building a block away. I’ve thought about this apartment building, because it would’ve been the key. I should’ve saved enough for a year’s rent, went to Montreal as a teenager, and rented an apartment [...]

Today, Feb. 11, marks the 75th birthday of the Mayorov boys, Boris and Evgeny. Geez, the things you learn on this blog. Boris and Evgeny were a little too old to play in the 1972 Summit Series, with both calling it quits in 1969 after long and fruitful careers with Moscow Spartak. Boris was the [...]

There goes 2012. Maybe it’s a good thing. The Habs were disturbingly mediocre in 2012, finishing 15/15 in the Eastern Division, one point behind 14th place Islanders and two behind the Leafs. I still feel nauseous. Along the way, Hal Gill and Andrei Kostitysn were shipped to Nashville and I miss Hal. The other guy – not so [...]

A few more days and the December 1st deadline for hockey to start will come and go, and will join the beginning-of-the season deadline, the November full-season deadline, the seventy-game season deadline, and the Winter Classic deadline. Soon it will become the fifty-game deadline, then half-a-season deadline. Who knows? Maybe in several months we’ll have [...]

Ilya Kovalchuk, Alex Ovechkin, Sergei Kostitsyn, Pavel Datsyuk and a few other Russians are now saying they might just stay in Russia. Are you feeling bad about this? Nobody forced these guys to come to North America, and when they did come, the vaults were opened and they dove in head first, drooling and panting. [...]

Should Paul Henderson be in the Hall of Fame? Damn right he should, although Henderson didn’t exactly have what one would call a Hall of Fame career, racking up 236 goals and 241 assists for 477 points in 707 regular season games divided between the Leafs and Detroit Red Wings. These are decent numbers, not [...]

There was a strong contingent of Montreal Canadiens on Team Canada ’72 - Ken Dryden, Serge Savard, Guy Lapointe, Frank and Pete Mahovlich, and Yvan Cournoyer, and all, in their own way, contributed mightily to the cause, including Dryden who struggled at times but showed enough to coaches Harry Sinden and John Ferguson to be called [...]