JEFF PETRY BONA FIDE #2
Jeff Petry is changing his number, from the “training camp” 58 to the “bona fide” #2. It’s a big deal, especially considering the Edmonton Oilers make these kinds of changes about as often as Rome rolls out a new Pope.
Oilers who have worn #2:
-
Lee Fogolin 1980-1987 Chris Joseph 1988-1994 Jim Ennis 1988-1988 Bob Beers 1994-1994 Boris Mironov 1995-1999 Brett Hauer 2000-2000 Igor Ulanov 2000-2000 Eric Brewer 2001-2004 Matt Greene 2006-2008 Aaron Johnson 2010-2010 Jim Vandermeer 2011-2011
What a relief. We can finally retire Johan Motin’s number to the rafters.
Why do I have no recollection of Brett Hauer?
I mean, I don’t remember Jim Ennis, either, but I was six years old at the time. What’s my excuse for Hauer?
Fun piece of trivia, for certain plainly incorrect values of “fun”: Hauer and fellow Oilers’ #2 Igor Ulanov were apparently Yaroslavl Lokomotiv teammates during the 2006-07 season. No word on who, if anybody, got #2.
Hopefully his number switch works out better than Teddy Peckman’s
There’s no sheepishness quite so intense as one’s first Limerick in the Homeric mode, except for all the rest … so it boggles my mind to find an entire book in my local library of Limerick penned by a solitary scribler, a Canadian journalist and media magnate, Patrick Watson, Companion of the Order of Canada, and founding member of the Prim Publishers Plural:
Working Houdini-like against the stout shackles of cleanliness, he does nevertheless manage to score a point or three, if not clean at least saucy:
The Invention of God
Oi Veh
Pictures
The first is nicely turned, but the second and third I find stronger in concept than panache, or perhaps my taste in wit tends to the cryptic. This one begins with a great first two lines. Here’s my attempt to punch up the two lines on the short bus:
Oi Veh
For the third, I’ll subvert the title, remove a word that doesn’t scan to my Ring Around the Rosie metrical sense, and finish with a twist of cryptic lemon:
Atonement
Patrick Watson is an interesting fellow with a dynamite career and a wry smile. From Nantucket, if I recall.
We knew about many of your literary gifts, DMW, but I don’t think you’d heretofore demonstrated your outstanding gift of understatement.
Changing #’s has a kind of Hockey God Dice Roll to it.
Didn’t like the switch from 49 to 24.
Hopefully 58 to 2 goes better.
Yakupov gets 12 or 13. Not 96 for god sakes.
Gret99zky,
Well now, that didn’t even rhyme!
It’s a tell as to how fucking old I am that when I think of Oilers wearing #2, the second guy who comes to mind (after Lee Fogolin) is Barry Long.
I think almost exclusively of BoBo. Guess that tells my age too, but not quite in a “how fucking old I am” way.
Lee Fogolin is #2 forever.
In my grade 6 class we each got an Oiler to follow for the year.
Mr. Hetherington (a huge Oiler fan) gave us each a cut out of a player.
I got Charlie Huddy.
I immediately traded with my neighbour for the Captain Lee.
Mr. H kept arranging the the cut outs on the wall via the points the player got that year.
It was 82/83. Fogolin got 0g 18a 18pts. Huddy got 20g 37a 57pts.
I was always a little miffed I traded Huddy for Fogolin, but I became the biggest Fogolin fan ever.
Years later I had the pleasure of doing business with Lee, and still do occasionally. (He doesn’t build as much as he used to).
Although shorter and smaller than me his hands dwarfed mine and crushed them in a normal handshake, and I don’t have small hands.
I told him he was my favorite player in grade 6.
He bitched that the statement made him feel old.
Good guy.
#2 forever.
These would be some cool pre-season jerseys to bring back…. http://www.classicauctions.net/Default.aspx?tabid=263&auctionid=23&lotid=393
Dirt still thinks you’re new.
The Fogolin “tooth removal” story in Gzowski’s wonderful book puts the question away. Fogolin it is for #2 and it’s in stone.
And by the way, you jack-o-lantern-heads have anticipated my posts tomorrow. Rat bastards! when you see both of them you’ll know, but I’m astounded that this is the subject matter on the blog after writing them.
Fogey is “the” #2. No question. A hard, honest competitor who was slow to anger but heaven help the guy who pissed him off . I’ll never forget the night he started up the lawnmower on Paul Baxter, a guy who really had it coming for a long time.
LT rightly remembers the time Fogolin treated his own toothache with a coat hanger in Hartford, then played & contributed to a huge Oilers win in the late season playoff drive. Gzowski also detailed hIs fierce determination to battle through a severe charley horse in the playoffs that year, especially a memorable puck battle with Larry Robinson that helped set the tone for that whole series.
For those of you too young to remember him (or Barry Long) best modern comp was Jason Smith. Hard as nails, both of them, give no quarter and expect none in return., but man did they relish the battle.
I remember him from my first pro game. WHA. Long had a wicked slap shot that would wind up in the crowd behind the net about 50% of the time. He was the original Happy Gilmore, although I don’t remember him fighting or getting beat up by Bob Barker. Back then men were men and there was none of this protective netting.
I was always amazed they were not carrying people out after Barry wound up and pumped one into the crowd.
Limericks it is then.
I’m curious to know why you are posting about limericks and Patrick Watson.
Bar_Qu,
Oh, and here I thought he was going to post about “The Invention of God”, and “How Fucking Old Bruce Is”.
Now I’m gonna stay up all night wondering.
I’ll say Long had a wicked slap shot. Took him a while to get it off, but in the ’70s big bombs from outside were all the rage. No composite sticks, but “banana blades” were in vogue, and goalies were small.
Barry Long had an absolutely vicious drive which could go anywhere but occasionally found net. He scored 20 goals & 60 points for the Oil in the first year of the Coliseum, with many of the goals coming on the big slapper. I was there one particularly memorable night when Long broke the goal post with a blast, it made this funny sound when the puck hit like no other post I’ve heard before or since, and in games later that season that net at the west (non-Zamboni) end of Northlands had a piece of tape wrapped around the left goal post, about halfway up exactly where Long had dinged it. Darn tape stayed on that post for the whole rest of that season (WHA was a low budget league, eh?). No I’m not making this up, I couldn’t have imagined something as weird as that.
Only Oilers WHA shooters who came close to Barry Long for wicked drives were Claire (The Milkman) Alexander who once bombed a drive that hit the crossbar and ricocheted up and off the catwalk, and Risto Siltanen who put a fan’s eye out down in Section S one night. Glass was low then, no mesh either as Ducey points out, and those shots off of banana blades like Risto’s would sometimes just clear the glass and then dip down hard. It was that “action” on the puck that often made goalies of the era look like fools waving at outside shots.
In retrospect, it’s surprising that no fans got killed way earlier than poor Brittanie Cecil in Columbus.
Dipstick,
Just watch the parade of nations at the Olympics. It will put you right out.
Ribs,
LOL
Mironov played some of the finest games I’ve seen from an Oilers defenceman. Such a talent.
Love The Dish.
Was worried we would lose him. Great re-sign by ST.
OT: Would you give Doan 7.5 million for 4 years LT? I kinda would for a lot of team building reasons(plus he is very good)…but the kids are gonna be pricey..
Rebilled,
Yeah, now is not the time to be taking on more overpaid veterans on long-term deals. I like Doan a lot, but no.
Great story. I remember going to the local outdoor rink when it was nearly -40. Dad told me not to take any slappers (come to think of it, why the hell did dad let me play when it was -40?) because in all likelihood the cold would be too hard on my virtually indestructible Titan. Oddly, I obeyed him. I then proceeded to ring one off the iron and instead of “pinging” in the clear cold air, it more or less went “thwack” as the puck came back at me in small chunks. I’ll never forget that sound either. And it was my only puck. Stupid crappy puck. Probably saved my feet from frostbite.
wuthering,
Did you try trudging through the 5 feet of snow in your skates to find a wayward puck that was shot over the boards? Only in Canada.
Ah the puck search. Deep banks were better motivation for accuracy than scoring could ever be.
Also, Luongo is starting to grow on me:
https://twitter.com/strombone1/status/228608914994905090
Petry is not only an excellent player with a huge untapped upside, but he’s also probably the coolest dude in the NHL.
Incredible sports DNA from having a Detroit Tiger(when they were good) father, something that even the Expos fans here seem to miss. That’s understandable of course, since the Expos were one of the worst teams ever, so, like Canuck fans they know nothing about winning baseball.
He’s so cool, that Canadians who overwhelmingly post here don’t even see it.
That’s cool.
naif question here: what is the impetus for the change?
regardless, Petry’s a killer.
Thomas is a strange bird. I can’t imagine pissing away my pro hockey career for the sake of making random inconsequential political statements.
It always ends the same way. You watch Soylent Green and see one of your Dad’s actors in a different way. Then he’s in one or two more movies you see and so Heston is someone you know.
And then he starts telling you what he thinks, and you have to drop him from all thought and action. Because, Charlton Heston knows just enough about issues to get himself in trouble and has the added benefit of being famous enough to get quoted.
Dangerous. Tim Thomas doesn’t understand these issues, not like he should before spouting off about them. And generally speaking these celebs have done little research and have no idea about the other side and their views.
Public profile doesn’t mean smart. Bush famously saying “Brownie’s doing a good job” would be a recent example. Of couse he was president….
You have hit the nail on the head. I lose a lot of respect for any celebrity that spouts off on any subject not within their immediate area of expertise. Brigitte Bardot was once hot but knows squat about seals. I could go on seemingly forever regarding any number of examples.
Lowetide,
Heston! ha… whenever he comes up I think of him playing a Mexican detective in “Touch of Evil”
Not to dwell on Thomas… but all he needed to say (to stay within his libertarian pov) was that he believes the rhetoric coming out of some politicians about banning that restaurant from certain cities is wrongheaded. He didn’t need to support, or even mention the political views of the restaurant.
On the broader point of celebrities holding and espousing political views and being taken seriously for some reason…
the real problem seems to be two-pronged: 1) the Entertainment Tonight (every movie is perfect) model of reporting that follows these people religiously; and 2) a failure of the general public and main stream reporting communities to demand arguments from people rather than mere assertions of belief.
if people were held to account for the beliefs and made to argue their case (like they are here) you’d see a lot of stupid people slink from the spotlight, re-examine their own views and offer (when they do) more cogent and interesting statements.
final note. this line:
“He isn’t playing next year, which means he’s not my teammate,” a Bruins player who wished to be anonymous told WEEI.com. “Which means I don’t have to react to his Facebook posts.”
is pretty telling.
I imagine it would be pretty irritating to be asked to respond to a bunch of side-show nonsense all the time.
The 1st time Bobby Hull appeared in the old Gardens with the Jets I remember everybody at BOTH ends of the rink ducking when he wound up. I am sure he brought ALL the cobwebs down that night!
# 2 is Fogolin…..always will be to me .Great captain even knew when to turn it over to the true captain of the team when the time came.Is that time now Mr. Horcoff?
Spydyr,
I’ve decided that I’ll like you more if I just pretend that your raison d’etre is satirizing Traktor’s early material.
“Steve Smith”,
Great, because raison d’etre is to please narcissistic people.