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minus four

December 2, 2017December 2, 2017 / puckstruck

Le Gros et Mme. Bill: Sadly marked today, the third anniversary of Jean Béliveau’s death in 2014. Here he is in 1956 with his wife Élise.

 

(Image: Gaby [Gabriel Desmarais], Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec)

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all-time greats, on this day
Elise Béliveau, Jean Béliveau

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← own no: orr has some explaining to do
my first hockey game: dave stubbs →

From Greystone Books. Available in bookstores in Canada and the United States. 2014 Hockey Book of the Year, as per www.hockeybookreviews.com. "Funny, smart, unlike any hockey book I've read," Dave Bidini has said; "Joycean," Charles Foran called it. "It’s rare to find a book that makes me proud to be Canadian," is what Michael Winter wrote: "A funny, myth-busting, life-loving read."

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poem

Thankful that I never
played against
Wayne Gretzky
in an NHL playoff series;
I probably would have had to break his hand.

I would not have wanted to injure Gretzky, mind you;
I loved the guy.
I never touched him on the ice
in a regular season game.
I had too much respect
for how he played
and how he carried himself.

But I can say without question
I would have tried to hurt him
if we had been matched up
in the playoffs.
In my mind,
there are no friends
in a playoff series

I’m not talking about
elbowing someone in the head
or going after someone’s knees.
I’m talking about a strategic slash.
To me, slashing someone’s hand or breaking someone’s fingers was nothing.
It was part of the game.

Broken hands heal.
Fingers heal.
The pain that comes from losing does not.

• from Overtime (2014) by Chris Chelios with Kevin Allen; excerpted, edited, and poemized.

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“The first thing the student of Darwin learns is that what evolves does not necessarily improve — a truth that might just as well be sensed by considering the modern history of jazz or ice hockey.”

• Adam Gopnik

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