I love 99.999% of my patrons, but I am sorry if I don't love the ones who live their lives to be negative and walk around with their beer muscles on spouting off lies about me. Am I supposed to love them as well? There is a respect rule around here and there are also basic societal norms. This is a fantastic thread, and I am getting deluged with emails to ban some of these people for life so that a dozen people don't ruin what thousands are enjoying. Last I will say. I know that you should never feed a troll, but for you to make a statement that I HATE my patrons is the most ludicrous statement imaginable. I should ignore it, but it is just so ridiculous.
- Eklund

Pow 3: The Last Stand

you know what. she broke up with me a few weeks later!
- Eklund

Sorry too laugh but that's gotta sting!

he was no Borje Salming
- Canada Cup

I thought you were making a tiny penis joke.

69 must be involved in some way
- Crimsoninja

I'm thinking his beard should also be involved

I thought you were making a tiny penis joke.
- selvig

Maybe he still is...

I thought you were making a tiny penis joke.
- selvig

not so much tiny as not necessarily worthy of being called the great one

1. My first hockey experiences were listening to Mike Lange broadcast on KDKA 1020 in Pittsburgh sometime around 1980. I had to keep the sound real low, so my Mom wouldn't hear it because she thought hockey was too violent. I was immediately hooked.
2. 1982: I still remember listening when the powerhouse Islanders defeated the Penguins in overtime to win the 5 game series 3-2. The heavily favored Islanders had blown out the Pens in games 1&2, but the Pens clawed back to win games 3 & 4, and actually held a lead in game 5 before the Islanders tied it late and won in OT. I was heartbroken.
3. My first Penguins game was the very the next year and was an 8-1 loss to the hated Islanders at the Civic arena.
4. In grade school, Our coolest babysitter ever was a high school age kid from up the street who was also our paperboy. He helped teach us about the nuances and strategies of hockey. My brother and I promptly started plaing on our screened in front porch. Within a month, we had destroyed all the screens on the porch.
5. My brother and I started playing street hockey with a homemade net made from old boards and chickenwire once our family decided to pave our driveway. He played goalie and I played forward. Eventually in second grade I organized a neighborhood league with 2 seperate teams. We played 1 game to a 3-3 tie before someone shot the only mylec steet hockey ball we had over the fence and into the woods, losing it forever and ending the game.
6. Watching Mario Lemieux play for the Pens inspired us all to play street hockey every day after school. We would take the trolley downtown and figure out a way to get into the arena and then sneak down from the cheap seats.
7. Even though I eventually took up skating and played on the "official" school hockey team in high school, I always wished my school and area had a varisty street hockey league. We settled for driving around Pittsburgh finding games to play...some were pretty rough, but we almost always prevailed.
8. I remember watching the Penguins tie the touring Red Army team sometime in the late 80's. The atmosphere in the arena seemed like we had won the Stanley Cup.
9. Remember watching out of town games on Sportschannel America? Their product makes Versus look Emmy Winning.
10. I remember taking a bus trip to watch the Pens play the Kings in an exhibition
game in Cleveland one September. We were disapointed because neither Lemieux or Gretzky dressed. A young rookie named Mark Recchi stood out though.
11. The Pens won their first cup my senior year as my friends and I watched from home. The 5 of us all broke down in joyful tears.
12. The first time I ever cut school was to attend the celebration the Pens had at the point a week later. Me and every other High school senior in Pittsburgh had the same idea. This was our Woodstock.
13. My favorite hockey stick of all time was a Titan TMP 2020. A great solid wooden stick for launching crushing slappers. I've never played with a composite or aluminum stick.
14. One of my selection criteria for colleges was that the college had to have a hockey team. I made a good choice with Michigan St. 5000 screaming students filling Munn arena makes for a crazy atmosphere, but 20000 crazed MSU and U-M fans taunting each other across the aisles in the "joe" at the Great Lakes Invitational every year was even better.
15. Brush with greatness #1: Chatting with paul Coffey circa 1990 in the local Kaufmans. He was looking for a new tie IIRC
16. Brush with greatness #2, watching Bryan Trottier score the game winner against Montreal at the season opener circa 1993 or so, then running into him and his family at Eat N' Park in Dormont after the game.
17. Gary Roberts was just DOMINANT in EA sports NHL 92. A collection of pixilated power, laying out other player with heavy checks and scoring on impossible slappers with ease.
18. Great hockey moment..watching the Pens live from a luxury box a few years back with the MSU national championship game on the TV. MSU scoring the winner as time ran out right during a break in the action on the ice. Everyone in the whole building must have wondered who the crazy guy screaming "MSU National Champs" was...
19. Best game ever attended in person: Game 1, Pens Rangers playoff last year..what a comeback by the Pens!
20. Finally attended my first Stanley Cup finals game last year, Game 3 as the Pens beat the Wings. Worth every overpriced $$ on Stub Hub.
- Emperor Filonius

Outstanding List! I truly am almost always blown away by the creativity and the intelligence of the people who frequent my website..and I remember Roberts in EA 92! Dead on dominant. And JR was pretty damn good as well.

Maybe he still is...
- AK3

Maybe but how many people know what Borje Salming's penis is like.

you know what. she broke up with me a few weeks later!
- Eklund

The 5 steps of the grieving process

Sorry too laugh but that's gotta sting!
- AK3

yeh, but thank God for all f us Shania met Mut shortly thereafter and became the star. Imagine had she married me......she should slip me a few mill for turning her down!

Maybe but how many people know what Borje Salming's penis is like.
- selvig

This guy obviously.

Maybe but how many people know what Borje Salming's penis is like.
- selvig

urban myth

This guy obviously.
- AK3

yeh, but thank God for all f us Shania met Mut shortly thereafter and became the star. Imagine had she married me......she should slip me a few mill for turning her down!
- Eklund

That's the spirit!

Bingo.

Ek, this 20 Random Hockey Facts idea was a great one on your part. Brings back some great memories. Nice to read about people's memories too.
- holy mackinaw

thanks my friend. It is alot of fun to read and I decided that I will pick the top Twenty that I like tomorrow from all of you and put them into a blog.

1. I watched my first Flyers game at 5 days old.
2. I have seen NHL games in 6 arenas: The Spectrum, Wachovia Center, Nassau Coliseum, Verizon Center, Continental Airlines Arena, Prudential Center
3. My earliest memory is going with my grandfather to buy my first pair of skates. I was two and a half.
4. Those toddler-sized CCM's now hang on my wall.
5. I wore the #22 for Rick Tocchet. I eventually switched to #4 because it's a "defenseman's number", 2+2=4, and my dad's favorite player of all time is Bobby Orr.
6. I refuse to wear odd numbers except in extreme cases. Besides 4 and 22, I have worn 6, 12, 14, 23, and 32.
7. Eric Desjardins is my favorite player of all time.
8. I have attended close to 300 Flyers games.
9. I estimate that I've played about 600 games.
10. I played defense for about 550 of those games.
11. The best game I've ever attended was Game 6 of the 1987 Stanley Cup Finals. I was 6 years old.
12. My current rotation of Flyers jerseys consists a white Mike Richards jersey, an retro orange Braydon Coburn jersey, and an old white Eric Desjardins jersey.
13. I led my team in penalty minutes for 6 out of 7 consecutive seasons.
14. My dad only missed 2 of the first 100 games that I played. In those 2 games, he happened to miss my first concussion and my first goal.
15. I might be the only person ever to begin dating someone at a Phantoms game, and later break up with them at a Phantoms game.
16. I have been penalized for "Closing the Hand on the Puck".
17. My squirt team was so bad that we lost 16-0 and 17-1 on back to back days.
18. I have never met a goaltender that was completely sane.
19. Given the option to sit in the lower bowl or the upper bowl, I'd choose the upper bowl 100% of the time.
20. Driving the zamboni is on my "things to do before I die" list.

Sorry Ek, this blog makes no sense. You ask people to write 20 hockey memories about themselves. Problem is, I am not a hockey player. Closest thing I have to a hockey memory is me being hit in the can with a slap shot while I was looking the other direction. I suppose I could recall games I saw on tv, but those aren't "my" memories; those belong to the players.

Oh well. I am bored. So here's 20 things I remember involving hockey.

1. I was at an Oilers game in 1985, and people were fighting over a piece of tape the Gretzky threw into the stands.

2. I had a good laugh at an Oiler game once, because a drunk Habs fan got his ass kicked by an RCMP, because he wouldn't stop swearing. Oilers beat the Habs 6 - 0, and Messier had a hat trick. Those were the days.

3. When the Oilers won their first cup, I was over at my friend Richard's house, and we were playing floor hockey with mini-sticks and a ball of tape. Which would have been fine if we were 5 years old. We were all teens at the time.

4. The day Gretzky got traded to LA, I sat in my basement, in the dark, watching trade coverage and sports commentary for hours. I could not believe my ears.

5. I attended a Montreal Old-Timers game in the 1980's, and Henri Richard was a million years old, but could still skate circles around every other player on the ice.

6. I went to school in Grade 7 on Halloween dressed up like Grant Fuhr, but I didn't own hockey equipment and the stuff I invented looked ridiculous. I looked like a massive dork all day, and I was.

7. My dad grew up on a French Catholic mission, and he told me that when he was a kid, it was so cold that they had to pee on the water hose to warm it up enough to pump water to freeze a rink. He also told me he used horse turds for a puck. It's okay folks; my dad was massively drunk when he told this story.

8. Speaking of massive, I ran into Mike Grier once in West Edmonton Mall when he played in Edmonton. The guy is a house.

9. I went to an Oilers/Stars game once, and the ref for some reason kept stopping play and having faceoffs because the teams were making premature substitutions (players jumping on the ice before the player coming off was on the bench). Everytime the whistle went, the guy behind me would yell, "what's that ref? Another premature ejaculation?"

10. I miss bench clearing brawls. I went to a Calgary-Edmonton game once, and everyone jumped off the benches, beating the crap out of each other for 20 minutes straight. Why doesn't that happen anymore?

11. I was at the game when Matt Greene broke his ankle. I was way up in the nose bleeds, and his scream in pain when the leg snapped was deafening even up where I was sitting.

12. I bought tickets from a scalper to go see Gretzky break the assist record on a night when Mario Lemieux was making one of his first appearances in Edmonton. Gretzky tied the record in the first period, but took a puck in the eye early in the second and left the game. Mario's back was hurting so he left, and Jari Kurri got hurt too. The Oilers still won 7 - 4. On the drive home, the person driving failed to notice glare ice on the road, and me and two buddies hit the ditch and almost got killed.

13. Speaking of getting killed, the Oilers without Gretzky and Kurri lost to Hartford a few days later 11 - 0. Still to this day the worst Oilers loss in history.

14. When I was 13, I made a dummy goalie out of hockey equipment and sleeping bags, and set it up in the basement of my house. Back then most hockey games weren't on tv, so I would listen to Oiler games and take shots against the goalie. Even though he didn't move, he was still better than Greg Millen.

15. I went to an oldtimers game in Edmonton in the 90's. The best part of the game was Michael Burgess singing Bring Him Home from Les Miserables during the second intermission.

16. The best seats I've ever had to a game was row 9 behind the visitor's bench. Oilers vs Nashville. And the best part of the game was the guy behind the bench heckling Barry Trotz. He kept calling him a shovelhead, and was tanting him with a fake rubber arm until security hauled him away.

17. I threw something at the television when the Oilers drafted some guy (I don't even remember his name) ahead of Shane Doan in 1994. They picked Ryan Smyth with their first pick, and the draft was in Edmonton. The crowd kept chanting, "Doan! Doan! Doan!" but alas, they picked the other guy, who never played a game for the Oilers in the NHL.

18. A friend of mine lied to the ice manager of the Oilers, so he, myself, and my brother could take a tour of Rexall Place. The Oilers dressing room smells like a 12 year old sock.

19. I loved the Heritage Classic in Edmonton - Mainly because I was at home, nice and warm, and not at the game. -25c in Edmonton is ridiculous weather for a hockey game. And the oldtimers game between the Oil and the Habs was far more interesting than the "real" hockey game.

20. And my final Oilers memory - riding down the middle of the street wearing my Oilers Run for the Cup hat that could be found in the Edmonton Journal during their attempt to win three-in-a-row. The hat was in retrospect the ugliest hat on the face of the earth - Looked like Mickey Mouse ears with Oiler symbols for the ears. The Oilers lost to the Flames because Steve Smith's bank shot, and Oiler fans cried like babies for a full year, even though Calgary completely outplayed them all series.

yeh, but thank God for all f us Shania met Mut shortly thereafter and became the star. Imagine had she married me......she should slip me a few mill for turning her down!
- Eklund

What is the Shania story?? did EK turn her down???

This guy obviously.
- AK3

I vote... less penis talk and more Shania talk.

What is the Shania story?? did EK turn her down???
- jaybizz

Yes. And the got dumped by the girl he turned her down for.

I vote... less penis talk and more Shania talk.
- leafs_wingp

Potato Patoto.

1. I play Nindendo Ice Hockey with all skinny guys.

2. The first page of my 1992 complete set of upper deck cards was a Tops rookie card for raymond Borque.

3. I refused to put a name on my leaf jerseys for 20 years until, last year. I got an antropov, home and away.

4. Tie Domi knows who I am.

5. My home situation is odd in the last few years in that I almost bought Sundin's house in toronto, I am neighbors eric lindros, and the best is that the house I live in now was Allen Eagleson's. I was hoping to find some money in the foundation or behind the dry wall, obviously I would return it to the player.

6. My dad took me to my first Leafs game ever to see gretzky play for the oilers. We were so high up I watched the game on the portable radio TV of the guy next to me.

7. I flew into ottawa for the final game of the 2002 season to watch us romp the sens only to have boston win and push us into 4th. Could have been the most important game in franchise history as if we had come first in the east we would have had home ice advantage against the hurricane!

8. I have never played a game of ice hockey because my european mom wouldn't let me play because she thought it was to dangerous. Never learned how to skate, and I am a canadian!

9. I hate that the divisional leaders get top three seeds. See point 7.

10. When living in montreal,I went to a pub, sat down at the bar only to be kicked out because I was wearing a leaf hat.

11. When living in hong kong I watched every leaf game on tape delay at the only hockey bar in the city which in lan kwai fung.

12. The best hockey atmosphere is a toronto buffalo game in buffalo. You will never see anything in hockey that is closer to a premiership derby atmosphere like asenal vs. Chelsea. Exactly why toronto should have a second team.

13. My wife is a hockey fan. Thank god!

14. I miss dimitri Yuskavich being a leaf.

15. Wayne Gretzky and my mother are 2 of only 6 canadian to receive the horatio alger award.

16. I went to the last game played at the gardens and the first game at the ACC.

17. My best hockey moment at the ACC was the 10 minute standing ovation of game 4 when we swept the sens.

18. my top google search is "leafs".

19. the first stanley cup game I will go to will be at the ACC or never, I hope it is not the latter.

20. I met wayne gretzky when I was 11 years at the grey cup final at the sky dome. I walked into the room and wayne was sitting in the corner with a group of people around him. They all parted and it felt like i was meeting jesus, as I got all fluster to shake his hand and he let me watch the rest of the game with him and his team mates. I remember at one point I was sitting there eating chicken fingers, sitting next to paul coffey, luke robatile, and in front of wayne gretzky and 11 years old! Best day of my childhood.
- danielmacd

Fantastic. I love #1

I vote... less penis talk and more Shania talk.
- leafs_wingp

Blame canadacup he brought it up.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.....................
- Gabe Ruth

troll.

1) My first hockey game ever was at the Hartford Civic Center in which the Rangers lost ~93/94 I still have the ticket stub

2) My uncle used to take me, my brother, dad, and grandpa to games every year from ~93/94 - till he got married and had kids

3) Loved playing NHLPA93 as a kid for genesis and joined an NHL94 online league which I played in for about two seasons until I got frustrated with poor internet connection and quit.

4) Messier was my favorite player when I was growing up and when he left for Vancouver and Gretzky retired and the Rangers started sucking I actually got out of hockey and all spots for a bit which my friends got me back into in 06/07 and i've been hook again...

5) I never played hockey in my entire life but consider myself more knowledgeable about the sport than most people in general.

6) I have never been to a playoff game.

7) I went to 5 games last year and the Rangers went 2-2-1 when evitageN was present.

8) This year i've been to four games and the Rangers have gone 3-1 when evitageN was there and i'm going to my fifth game against Philly thsi sunday.

9) Favorite player now is Staal

10) I hate Glen Sather for having no respect for the Ranger Organization and turnign it into a joke....

11) I'd keep wasting your time with more but I gotta go play some Warcraft III