That’s Wayne Gretzky, back row, sixth from the left, posing with his grade two classmates in Brantford. At this time in his life he was scoring about 400 goals a year and was already a better player than Milan Lucic is now.

Phoenix sports fans differ on Coyotes’ future
Phoenix-area sports fans have mixed views on whether the Coyotes can flourish in their state
Monday, May 18, 2009
By Simon Dingley CBC
It’s a blistering 107 degrees outside (for us Canadians, that’s nearly 42 C). Phoenix sports fans seek shelter from the heat in a downtown sports bar called Cooperstown.
There is [...]

Because so many of you clicked on the ads on the side of this site, plus me getting in quite a bit of overtime lately at work, I now have enough money, 400 million, to buy the Montreal Canadiens from George Gillett. This of course will include the Bell Centre, where I will be living, [...]

It’s something I’ve always wondered. Why do some people end up being so talented they can make it to the NHL, or NBA, or write the great novel, or win gold in the Olympics, while most of don’t come within a country mile. Did they work harder than the rest of us? We’re they born with the [...]

Walter Gretzky wasn’t the only one to make a backyard rink for his kid. Ernie Kane did too, and that’s me, practising like crazy to be a Hab, in our less-than-tony neighbourhood in Orillia. A few years later, when I was playing in an atom/tyke league, I smothered a puck with my knees just like I’d seen Doug [...]

From Canadian Magazine, Sept. 11, 1971. Guy Lafleur talks about how he doesn’t have time for a relationship because of hockey, and how he idolizes Jean Beliveau. Lafleur had been an unequalled star since a young boy and the hockey world was eagerly awaiting his NHL debut. He was Wayne Gretzky before Wayne Gretzky.
                                                                                                       

Yes, it’s true. Number 99 was a Hab. Actually, there were three number 99’s  in Montreal - Joe Lamb, Desse Roche, and Leo Bourgault, who all played in the same season, 1934-35.
So when you hear that nobody did it like number 99, maybe they meant Joe Lamb, not Wayne Gretzky!

In the early years of Wayne Gretzky’s career in Edmonton, he was a single guy who happened to have a relationship with lounge singer Vicky Moss. It lasted for a couple of years and later on, as we all know, Wayne met Janet Jones, married and lived happily ever after. But for a while, we thought we [...]

Georges Laraque says things haven’t worked out the way he expected they would in Montreal, and maybe it’s time to move on. After all, what good is he on a team where he’s either a healthy scratch or a player of very few minutes in a game? “I could shut up, sit down, and take [...]

In no particular order:
Jean Beliveau, Trevor Linden, Eric Duhatschek, Habs fans, Habs fans who don’t torch cars, Chris Cuthbert, readers of this blog, hard workers like Tom Kostopoulos and Maxim Lapierre,  Canada-Russia games, Henri Richard, Jim Hughson, Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, players who visit sick kids, Josh Gorges, Dick Irvin, Ken Dryden’s books, Dickie Moore, Ralph [...]