Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Shoots and Scores (47 page)

WE HAVE A WINNER!!! (ALMOST)

And what of the players since 1985–86? Well, Gretzky has always had a great admiration for Mario Lemieux, and for a man whose career has so often been hampered by injuries, our handy points-per-game calculations prove to be useful in showing that Super
Mario gave the Great One a serious run for his millions. In 1988–89, Lemieux managed to log in one of his healthier seasons, with 76 games out of a possible 80 (Mario never did manage to play a full schedule). He fell just short of the 200-point mark with a spectacular 85 goals and 114 assists for 199 points. But give him another four games at his 2.61 average, and he'd have reached 209—third-best total of all-time! In 1992–93, coming off a run of two Stanley Cups, he scored 69 goals and 160 points in only 60 games for an average of 2.67, only microscopically below Gretzky's 2.69. And to think that if Mario had been healthy, he had 40 games to bump that average up a few tenths of a percentage!

SO WHAT? TRY 4 POINTS A GAME!

Stepping one year out of the NHL, Mario's scoring record in his final junior season seems even more insurmountable than Gretzky's NHL mark—playing for the Laval Voisons of the Quebec Major Junior League, Lemieux recorded 133 goals, 149 assists and 282 points. Over his 70 games, this makes for a 4.02 average. Imagine being the opposing goaltenders that year! Before you write it off as a junior stat, consider that to be hailed as the greatest scoring prospect in recent memory, Sidney Crosby managed a comparably measly 2.7 points a game playing in the same league that his Penguins teammate Lemieux did.

In the new-look, post-lockout NHL of 2005–06, players once again began racking up points like it was 1989! However, with the top scorers averaging just a little over 1.5 points a game, the NHL may need to eliminate offsides and goaltender pads completely before anyone takes on the ranks of Super Mario and the Great One.

* * * * *

Howie Morenz was a center
who played much of his hockey career with the Montreal Canadiens, amassing 270 goals and 467 points during the 1920s and 1930s. However, did you know that his grandson Shea Morenz was a collegiate quarterback who played at the University of Texas

In 1974 the Buffalo Sabres drafted a Japanese hockey player…

B
ACKGROUND

The 1974 NHL draft was notable for a couple of reasons: For starters, it brought to the league future Hall of Famers Clark Gillies, Mark Howe, and Brian Trottier, as well as standouts like Danny Gare and Tiger Williams. But it was another player, one you may not have heard of, who made it a draft unlike any ever seen before—in any sport.

The event was held on June 12 and based at NHL headquarters in Montreal. (League headquarters has since been moved to New York City.). The league used a phone conferencing system that year, with team general managers and staff at their own locations communicating with the league officials in Montreal. Everyone hated it: Having to coordinate all the calls, while relaying information about picks to all the teams, made an already slow process even slower. On the third day, after 10 rounds (of a total of 25), one general manager, the Buffalo Sabres' Punch Imlach, couldn't take it anymore. From Imlach's 1986 autobiography:
Heaven and Hell in the NHL
:

Waiting for our next call with not much to do I said, “Let's have a little fun.” The others looked at me. The players we were drafting from then on weren't likely to make our team, at least, we didn't think so. “Lets draft a Japanese hockey player,” I said.

A LEGEND IS BORN

When it came time for Buffalo's 11th round pick, the 183rd overall, Imlach informed NHL president Clarence Campbell that the Sabres were taking Taro Tsujimoto, from the Japanese Hockey League's Tokyo Katanas. This was big news: The Japanese
did
have hockey leagues, but a Japanese player had never been drafted into the NHL. The story made headlines, and Imlach was peppered with questions about his new player. Imlach shrugged the questions off as the weeks went by…and no matter how much the
journalists looked, there was no sign of Tsujimoto. “Wait'll you see this guy in training camp,” Imlach would say. “He'll really surprise you with his skills.”

Just days before training camp began in the fall of 1974—and still with no Tsujimoto sightings—Imlach finally came clean: He had made the whole thing up. While waiting for his turn in the 11th round, Imlach had an aide call a Japanese florist and ask for a common Japanese name. What did he get? “Taro Tsujimoto.” And the team Tsujimoto supposedly played for? It also didn't exist. Imlach found a Japanese word for “sword”—
katana
—which he liked because it was close to the name of his own team, the Sabres.

TARO SAYS…

League president Campbell was not amused, and he declared Buffalo's 11th round selection null and void. (Campbell was angry, for starters, at the fact that “Taro Tsujimoto” had made it into official NHL publications.) But Sabres fans thought it was hilarious. Buffalo's home opener started with chants of “We want Taro! We want Taro!” And the chanting continued to be heard in Buffalo for years (and sometimes even still today). Someone also started a tradition of hanging banners from the balcony of the Sabres arena stating, “Taro Says…” followed by a witty remark, usually about an opponent.

The story of Taro Tsujimoto is now the stuff of NHL legend—and it refuses to die: today there's a Tsujimoto Facebook page (you can leave your own “Taro Says…” comment there), and in 2011, the NHL-approved trading card company Panini America issued a Taro Tsujimoto “Hot Rookies” card, showing a vaguely Japanese-looking player in a #3 Buffalo Sabres jersey on a hockey rink. (Panini refuses to reveal the identity of the player in the photo.)

* * * * *

FIRST, FOR REAL

On January 13, 2007, Yutaka Fukufuji of Kushiro, Hokkaido, Japan, a goalie for the Los Angles Kings, played his first minutes. He is the first Japanese-born player ever to play in the NHL.

On politically divided Cyprus, hockey is becoming a unifying force.

S
MALL TEAMS, BIG DIVISION

On Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean Sea, the sport of hockey is still in its infancy, but there are two rinks where players practice: the Ice Bowling Leisure Center in Famagusta and the My Mall Ice Rink in Limassol. That's a problem for hockey lovers who want to catch a game, however, because Famagusta and Limassol lie on opposite sides of the island's “green line,” a ceasefire buffer zone patrolled by United Nations troops.

Greece and Turkey have been fighting over Cyprus for much of the 20th century, and in 1974, after a short-lived Greek takeover of the island, Turkish soldiers invaded. The United Nations stepped in and declared a ceasefire, dividing the island in half: Turks in the north and Greeks in the south. That division has stood for more than 35 years, but tensions remain. The Greek side is an internationally recognized nation, but the only country to acknowledge the independence of the Turkish north is Turkey itself. Over the years, there have been border skirmishes, moving freely between the two sides was mostly unheard of, and sports teams from the two sides never played each other…until the Cypriots discovered hockey.

CROWS VS. BEARS

In 2003 restrictions between the northern and southern halves of the island loosened somewhat when Greek-controlled Cyprus applied for entry to the European Union (it joined the next year). In 2009 Erhan Tuncer (a Turkish teacher who had once played hockey for his home country) formed an amateur hockey team in northern Cyprus. Soon after, he met Nigel Smeaton, an Irish expatriate (and former hockey player) living in southern Cyprus, and the two decided to start a hockey league. Each secured a rink—Smeaton in Limassol and Tuncer in Famagusta—and started training players. Many of the recruits were young—some were
even kids—but they all shared a love for the game. Finally, on April 25, 2010, Smeaton's Limassol team, called the Solar Bears, traveled across the green line and into the Turkish-controlled north to battle Tuncer's Ice Crows in the first hockey match ever played on Cyprus.

The players came from various countries: Turkey, England, Finland, Ireland, Russia, Slovakia, and Cyprus. The teams didn't publish the results, since the game was just for fun and was intended to promote sport and unity, but it was so successful that the Ice Crows and Solar Bears met twice more in 2010.

Yet with that success came controversy: some Greek Cypriots were angry that all the games were played at the Famagusta rink. Smeaton and Tuncer insisted that was primarily because, of the two arenas, it was the only one large enough to host a match and spectators.

CROSSING THE LINE

Still, there was no denying that politics remained an obstacle. Even if the Solar Bears' rink had been adequate for a match, they probably couldn't have hosted anyway. It would have been difficult for the Ice Crows to enter southern Cyprus because the Greek Cypriot government does not recognize passports issued by the Turkish north; travelers must have a valid Turkish passport and a visa. Turkish-controlled Cyprus does allow travelers to cross the green line with just a Greek Cypriot passport, however.

Even as the games went on, critics argued that the two sides should remain separated, that the northern Turks had no right to the country at all, and that the situation was akin to Palestinians and Israelis coming together for sport. But Smeaton and Tuncer refused to give up. Smeaton said, “The Limassol players have no problems crossing the border, and they do not see it as any sort of barrier. If you want to play hockey, then you will do your best to do so…It's a shame that the Famagusta players can't cross the border to come and train at our mall rink, but we hope that the situation will change in the future.”

Smeaton claimed that he and his players encountered very little resistance during their travels and had to explain themselves only to the border guards: “It's kind of funny…on the way over we
were asked what our business was in Famagusta, and I said we are an ice hockey team on our way over to play a game. The border guard just looked at me as if I had two heads. On the way back, we got asked if we had anything to declare, and I said a pile of smelly hockey jerseys and a hockey bag that needs to be opened using face masks.”

PUCKS FOR PEACE

It was a good start, but captains Tuncer and Smeaton have even bigger hopes for the future of hockey on Cyprus. They've talked about combining forces to create a team with players from both sides of the green line, a team that would represent all of Cyprus, perhaps in a Turkish league or even on the international stage. They also hope to build more rinks and attract young players, who will be the future of the game. For now, though, Smeaton and Tuncer are satisfied with what they've already accomplished: “For the moment both myself and Erhan have agreed that playing these exhibition games, promoting the sport and trying to get people involved, is the best.”

* * * * *

THE (WEIRDLY) INJURED LIST

Edmonton Oilers goalie
Andy Moog was visiting sick children in an Edmonton hospital in December 1983 when he accidently entered a quarantined area. He developed a viral infection and missed several games.

Glenn Healy, goaltender
for the Toronto Maple Leafs, needed 10 stitches to close a deep cut to his hand in 2000. He got the cut while changing the bag on his bagpipes.

Canadiens legend Larry Robinson
missed the first third of the 1987–88 season because he broke his leg during a game…a game of polo. (Robinson, who calls polo “hockey on horses,” still plays the game today.)

On page 175, we told you the story of the history of women's hockey. Here's a teeny bit more.

F
IRST LADY

Isobel Stanley was born in England in 1875. In 1888 her family moved to Ottawa, Ontario, after her father, Frederick Arthur Stanley, was appointed Governor General of Canada. The entire family became avid fans of the burgeoning sport of hockey. A few years later, Isobel's father commissioned a trophy for her brothers' hockey league—which became the Stanley Cup. But Isobel had her own moments, too. In March 1889, at the age of just 13, Isobel played in a game at Ottawa's Rideau Skating Rink: it's the earliest recorded women's organized hockey game in history. More than that: she appears in the earliest known photograph of women playing hockey in existence. Dated to sometime around 1891, she even stands out: Isobel is the only one dressed in white (a long white skirt!)—and she even appears to be the one with the puck. (The photo is administered today by the Library and Archives Canada.)