Now You Know Big Book of Sports. Doug Lennox

Dave Hanson made two wretched sequels to Slap Shot and continue to make public appearances as their fictional alter egos.

       When did “Coach’s Corner” first appear on Hockey Night in Canada ?

      The bombastic, flamboyantly dressed Don Cherry made his debut on Hockey Night in Canada in the “Coach’s Corner” segment in 1980 with Dave Hodge as his sidekick. In 1987 Hodge was replaced by Ron MacLean, who has been Cherry’s foil ever since. Always controversial, Cherry toiled in minor-league hockey as a defenceman from the 1950s to the early 1970s, finishing his playing career with the American Hockey League’s Rochester Americans, a team he also coached for three seasons. He parlayed the minor-league coaching stint into a chance in the big time as head coach of the Boston Bruins, a job he held for five seasons (1974–75 to 1978–79). During the seventh game of the Stanley Cup semifinal with the Montreal Canadiens in 1979, Cherry made the mistake of allowing too many Bruins on the ice, earning a penalty for the team. The Canadiens capitalized on the error during the subsequent power play when Guy Lafleur scored the tying goal. The match went into overtime and the Canadiens’ Yvon Lambert scored again, winning the game and eliminating Boston. The Habs went on to play the New York Rangers in the final and ended up winning the Cup. Cherry was fired. He bounced back briefly, though, in 1979–80 as head coach of the wretched Colorado Rockies but was fired after one season.

       Six Top All-Time Hockey Broadcasters

      • Foster Hewitt (1902–1985)

      • Danny Gallivan (1917–1993)

      • René Lecavalier (1918–1999)

      • Howie Meeker (1923– )

      • Bill Hewitt (1928–1996)

      • Dick Irvin, Jr. (1932– )

       When was hockey first broadcast on television?

      Amazingly, the very first television broadcast of hockey occurred on October 29, 1938. The British Broadcasting Corporation aired the second and third periods of a game between the Harringay Racers and Streatham at London’s Harringay Arena. Perhaps equally surprising, the very first telecast of hockey in North America didn’t happen in Canada but in the United States. On an experimental station set up by NBC at Madison Square Garden, the network broadcast a game between the New York Rangers and the Montreal Canadiens on February 15, 1940. Not many people got to see the telecast, since there were fewer than 300 television sets in New York City. The first televised NHL game in Canada finally transpired on October 11, 1952, when Hockey Night in Canada debuted on the tube in French with a game between the Chicago Black Hawks and the Montreal Canadiens called by René Lecavalier at the Montreal Forum. The Habs lost to the Hawks 3–2. Three weeks later, on November 1, Hockey Night in Canada aired its initial English-language broadcast as Foster Hewitt provided the play-by-the-play for a game between the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Boston Bruins at Maple Leaf Gardens. The Leafs beat the Bruins 2–1. Just the last half of the game was broadcast, a policy that continued until 1968 for regular-season matches.

       When did Foster Hewitt first say “he shoots, he scores”?

      On March 22, 1923, Foster Hewitt uttered his signature “he shoots, he scores” in his first radio broadcast, a playoff game between intermediate hockey clubs from Toronto and Kitchener at the former’s Mutual Street Arena. The broadcast was done for CFCA in a glassed-in booth near the penalty box. A month before Hewitt’s CFCA broadcast, on February 18, Norm Albert, an editor at the Toronto Star, made the very first radio broadcast of a hockey game. The senior-league match between clubs from North Toronto and Midland, Ontario, turned out to be a 16–4 blowout in favour of Toronto. On January 7, 1933, Hewitt was heard for the first time coast-to-coast on radio when he welcomed listeners with “Hello Canada and hockey fans in the United States and Newfoundland” for a game between the Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings, which the former won 7–6.

       When were the first hockey cards issued?

      In 1910–11 Imperial Tobacco released the inaugural set of catalogued hockey cards in a 36-card collection. The cards showcased coloured pictures of the superstars of the era such as Georges Vézina, Cyclone Taylor, and Lester Patrick and were placed in packages of cigarettes. A complete mint set of these cards is now worth thousands of dollars.

       What famous explorer played hockey in the Arctic?

      A recent discovery in a letter from British Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin to Roderick Murchison, dated November 6, 1825, records: “Till the snow fell the game of hockey played on the ice was the morning’s sport.” Franklin’s men were wintering during his second Arctic expedition at Fort Franklin (now called Deline) in Canada’s Northwest Territories on the shore of Great Bear Lake in October 1825. However, it isn’t clear if the people participating in this activity were wearing skates. More likely, they were playing field hockey. Still, that doesn’t stop Deline today from laying claim to hosting the very first “hockey” game in North America. As for Franklin, on his final expedition in 1845 to locate the Northwest Passage to Asia, he and his men disappeared in Canada’s Far North. They were last seen by Europeans on July 26, 1845. It appears Franklin perished on June 11, 1847, off King William Island in the Arctic Ocean.

       What teams were involved in the world’s first hockey championship?

      In 1883 at Montreal’s inaugural Winter Carnival, the world’s first hockey championship was held, pitting three teams against one another: the Montreal Victorias, the McGill University Hockey Club, and a team from Quebec City. The three teams vied for the sterling silver Carnival Cup. McGill University won the series. The championship was restaged at the carnival in 1884 and 1885.

       What was the first NHL team to relocate?

      Today it is all too common for sports franchises to pull up stakes and move to seemingly greener pastures. Hockey is no stranger to the pain of fans losing their beloved club. Think Quebec Nordiques (now Colorado Avalanche), Winnipeg Jets (now Phoenix Coyotes), the old Ottawa Senators (briefly St. Louis Eagles, then defunct, then revived as the new Senators in 1992–93), Minnesota North Stars (now Dallas Stars), and Hartford Whalers (now Carolina Hurricanes). The first team to leave its original city in the NHL was the Quebec Bulldogs, which headed for Hamilton, Ontario, with its superstar Joe Malone, to become the Tigers in 1920–21 after only one season in the big league. The Tigers didn’t last long in Hamilton, either. Despite having a pretty good team, the club’s players ended up in New York City to become the Americans in 1925–26. The Amerks, as they were nicknamed, finally gave up the ghost in 1941–42, leaving Madison Square Garden to the New York Rangers. Hamilton is still waiting for another NHL team; so is Quebec City.

       Short Shelf of Fine Hockey Fiction

      Boxing has Fat City (Leonard Gardner) and The Harder They Fall (Budd Schulberg), football has North Dallas Forty (Peter Gent), and baseball has The Natural (Bernard Malamud) and Shoeless Joe (W.P. Kinsella), but hockey is still waiting for its truly great lyric writer. There have been a few pretty good novels and one play, though.

      • Les Canadiens by Rick Salutin and Ken Dryden (1977).

      • The Last Season by Roy MacGregor (1983).

      • Hockey Night in the Dominion of Canada by Eric Zweig (1992).

      • King Leary by Paul Quarrington (1994).

      • Salvage King, Ya! A Herky-Jerky Picaresque by Mark Anthony Jarman (1997).

      • Understanding Ken by Pete McCormack (1998).

      • Finnie Walsh by Steven Galloway (2000).

       What is the best children’s story ever written about hockey?

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