"3 periods with 2 pads? Hockey can suck my left one."

Like a lot of kids growing up in Toronto, Abigail Hoffman took to the ice at age three and enjoyed the same game her older brothers played by taking up a hockey stick at age five.

An avid athlete, Abby would find a love in track, swimming, basketball, and also hockey. Four years later at age nine, Abby would ask her parents to play for the Little Toronto Hockey League, a junior A league. There was only one problem…

…this was the 1950′s.

Since her hair was cut short for swimming and all the boys showed up in hockey equipment at the rink, Abigail just took to the name of, “Ab” and handed in her birth certificate. It’s been rumored that Abby’s coach, Bob Bowden, was fully aware of her gender sometimes skating up to her parents saying with a wink, “My that’s some boy you’ve got out there on the ice.”

"With those long strides and a great first pass, I double dare yah to tell me she doesn't look comfortable on the ice with those boys."

what a shirt.

When Abigail joined the team, the Little Saint Catherine’s Tee-Pees went straight to the finals and Abby was named to the all star team. While she never tried to exorcise or levitate the Pentagon, Abby’s gender quickly raised some eyebrows when her birth certificate had to be resubmitted for the all-star tournament.

"Spike don't play with girls!"

When her gender was figured out, the story of the little girl wearing number six spread like wild fire throughout Canada and America capturing the imaginations of Time Magazine and Newsweek.

The league, however, was infuriated.

the identities of the league officials has yet to be revealed.

And while Abby was allowed to play in the tournament, her team lost and she gave up Junior A hockey. That’s not to say she went domestic at all.

“Right now she has a cupboard full of dresses that are never worn.” Mrs. Hoffman said “The tears flow when we do convince her, once in a long while, to wear a dress on Sunday. She wears jeans all the time. But last year she wanted to join the Brownies so badly that, to the surprise of us all, she agreed to wear their uniform.”

A true Rebel Grrrl.

Abigail would be a voice for young girls all over Canada that girls could bring a great progression to the game.

She would later help set up a girl’s hockey team, win silver in the Olympics, and then assisted the CAHA in hosting a women’s national championship.

The Abby Hoffman Trophy is awarded to the winner of the women's Senior A hockey championship.

Sadly there’s no video footage but I did manage to find a radio interview about her experience when she was 15 years old.
You can listen to it here.

This week’s article about Gordie Howe is brought to you by Iggy Pop.

Not as popular as the Gordie Howe hat trick, Iggy's combination of LSD, speed, and elbowing the police is a hat trick still untouched in modern punk.

While the songs written about Gordie Howe are something to be forgotten (two links), his play became so legendary that he not only earned the nickname Mr. Hockey (a title actually previously held by Eddie Shore for you hockey nerds. Apparently, Shore called Howe up and said, “I’ve had my time with it and now it’s your turn.” Which is a very high honor coming from someone as eccentric as Shore.) that he also coined the stats of a Gordie Howe hat trick.

A goal, an assist, and kicking someone’s ass is considered a complete game. That translates exactly how Mr. Hockey will always be remembered, the most complete player ever to put on a pair of skates.

While Howe actually didn't accumulate many of his own hat tricks during his career, it is widely considered it's because other players were unwilling to fight him. Judging by this photo, I can see why.

Now, before you start cracking jokes about this locker room photo. Never forget the infamous Mark Messier photo.

what's creepier? being in a towel and touching gary coleman's butt... or THAT WEIRD DUDE SMILING IN THE BACKGROUND?

Howe was given a pair of skates during the depression when a neighbor sold a bag of second hand items to his mother. A larger kid with slight dyslexia, skating on the frozen creeks and streams in Canada was an escape from the teasing he would get from the other kids. When he grew out of his skates, Howe would resort to strapping blades to his shoes which was equally embarrassing.

He lived for hockey and while he would do chin ups to build his body (recommended by a doctor since he was malnutritioned), he would grow strong by helping his father with construction work in the summertime. His love for hockey didn’t stop even while on the job, though, as he would strip shingles off of roofs and shoot them like pucks.

You could also probably build a house with the amount of lumber he put into his opponents over his career.

While he didn’t impress the New York Rangers at age 15, the next year he was promised a tryout with the Red Wings as long as some of his friends could attend also. As you can assume, the rest is history.

At age 18, he found himself on the Red Wings’ roster and was fighting so much that he earned the nickname, “Mr. Elbows” before he earned the name Mr. Hockey. After three seasons, though, the ambidextrous Howe developed his scoring touch (which allowed him to shoot left and right handed) and finished in the top 5 in scoring for 20 years. I’m assuming the age group that reads this site hasn’t even been pooping in the proper place for that long.

Iggy says, "don't worry kids, I still haven't quite figured that one out."

It wouldn’t be old time hockey without an almost life ending injury and Howe was no exception. After colliding with Ted Kennedy of the Toronto Maple Leafs, Howe went into the boards and crushed his head on the ice… literally. A concussion, fractured skull, a broken cheekbone, and a broken nose were the result, and doctors had to drill a hole in his head to relieve the pressure built up on his brain.

Although he came back the next season, Howe now had a facial tick but still won the league’s scoring title.

Blerg!

Around this time, Howe was out bowling one night when he met the love of his life in a girl named Colleen. While Howe was shy and moved back and forth from Canada, they wrote letters and courted when he was in town. It’s one of those relationships to be jealous of because they did it right. I won’t get too much into it but read the book, “And Howe! an authorized autobiography of Gordie Howe” to read some of the letters they wrote to each other and see them tell it. Colleen Howe is just as much of a story as Gordie. She was the drive and brains behind Number 9.

About two years later, they decided to finally get married.

"So uh, this means I get to touch your boobs under your shirt now, right?"

While Howe was never one to step down from a fight, he cemented his reputation as someone not to be messed with in 1959 when tough guy, Lou Fontinato, decided he was going to bring his goon parade into Detroit.

"Awww, geesh Mishter Howe, shanks fer the new noshe! Sush a schwell guy."

Let’s just say, Howe didn’t take kindly to people trying to push their weight around on other people.

While still remaining a dominant force in the NHL, arthritis caught up in Howe’s left wrist and he decided it was time to retire.

"Say it ain't so, Gordie."

After two of his sons made it to the WHA for the Houston Aeros, Colleen urged Gordie to make a comeback and play with his sons. If you know anything about Gordie and his family, you know that this was too good to pass up.

Gordie Howe was back in professional hockey.

When he wasn’t scoring goals and elbowing refs, Howe once had to save a son from a fight. While tangled up, Howe skated over to the player and told him that it had been enough. The opposing player didn’t take kindly to that so Howe just calmly stuck two of his fingers in the guy’s nose and pulled him away. The player had then had enough.

At age 50, Howe was playing for the Hartford Whalers when Scotty Bowman had him play on that year’s all star team. Howe received such a long standing ovation that he had to skate to the bench to get the crowd quiet. He recorded an assist in his team’s 6-3 victory. Simply amazing.

He would lace them up one more time in 1997 for a game at the age of fucking 60 to complete six decades of playing professional hockey. I don’t care if you’re playing in midnight beer leagues, that is an incredible achievement.

4 time Stanley Cup champion.

6 time Art Ross winner.

6 decades of professional hockey.

12 time NHL all star.

finished in the top 5 scoring for 20 straight years.

and inducted to 11 hall of fames.

despite all of this, he is known for not only hockey but having the time for everyone he meets, being incredibly respectful and kind hearted, and humble.

His wife Colleen was sadly diagnosed with Picks disease and passed away recently. It’s really sad to see such a great strong figure lose his corner stone. Read up on the Howes, they are a truly inspiring story.

Click here to watch a video on Gordie Howe.

This week’s hockey history (at least, as I see it) lesson is brought to you by Eugene Hütz.

“many girls want to be carnal with Lanny… because, like me, he is such a premium dancer!”

Very few hockey fans know that before Lanny McDonald ever picked up a hockey stick, he was one of the great opening and closing pitchers in the history of the MLB.

What a combination of hair. Wow.

but after giving up a home run to some crippled guy, Lanny decided to move on.

Don't worry. Lanny didn't think it was funny either.

So, now at nine years of age, Lanny decided to follow in his father and brother’s footsteps and play hockey.

Despite being a grown man with a mustache, the other kids all the way up through junior just couldn’t seem to match Lanny’s scoring touch. Being one of the most respectable, honorable, and honest players of the game, the highly touted right winger was rewarded in being drafted by his childhood favorites, Toronto Maple Leafs (yuck.), fourth overall.

"I've come to kick ass and chew bubble gum... and I don't chew fuckin' bubble gum."

Since Lanny never tried to fracture someone’s skull or reinvent the game (that’s why you like him), to explain the path Lanny took in the NHL is to explain the situations around him and how he handled them.

After developing into the scoring machine he naturally was, Lanny became very good friends with the team’s captain Darryl Sittler. The promising team progressed year after year but kept falling short to the eventual Stanley Cup Champions, the Montreal Canadiens.

Part rumor and fact (I'll let you decide which parts), Lanny was once mistaken as a walrus in a hunting program. Escaping with a broken nose and wrist, Lanny went on to score his most famous goal as a Maple Leaf when he put away the Islanders in the 1978 playoffs.

After losing to the Canadiens for the second year in a row, the Maple Leafs organization decided it was time to shake things up and brought in harsh task master Punch Imlach who had coached the Maple Leafs to win the Cup in the 60′s.

As soon as he joined the Maple Leafs, he said there were only five or six good players on the team and immediately butted heads with Sittler (being that Sittler was a well respected member in the player’s union). While Sittler had a no trade clause (the Maple Leafs couldn’t trade Sittler unless Sittler approved the trade), Imlach went around that by irritating the team with stupid rules like wearing suits at all times and no beer on road trips which, considering that the whole goal of the game is to drink alcohol from the Cup, really put a damper on the team.

everything in this picture screams, "fuck face."

Since he couldn’t trade Sittler, Imlach decided to be a total fucker and trade Sittler’s friends. Yeah, welcome to high school. He really did this.

"No beer on road trips? I'd want to punch Imlach, too! Wakka Wakka Wakka!"

As if Imlach didn’t suck enough, Lanny was a target for being the Maple Leafs’ union representative and friend of Sittler. Lanny was traded to what was considered the worst team in the league, the Colorado Rockies.

Eventually rejected by management, Imlach also tried to sell the team name as the Toronto American Wal*Marts.

That site is just unreal.

It’s no surprise that a team coached by Don Cherry would suck, but Lanny made the best of it even if his numbers declined.

You at least have to give him credit, he practices what he preaches... Too bad he keeps his head up when dressing himself in the morning.

Lanny would only last three seasons in Colorado before being traded back to his home province with the Calgary Flames.

I would've traded three Gretzkys and a Sittler for this gem.

With the Flames, his numbers picked back up and he even challenged Wayne Gretzky for part of a memorable season in the scoring race.

Eventually, the Flames would reach the Stanley Cup Finals in 1989.

Magical Mustache Tour '89.

Lanny would end his career the same way he began, by scoring a goal on Montreal ice. This time it was for his home province and the Stanley Cup.

Let’s just say…

Fuck Imlach, Lanny got that beer.

He retired on top. You can’t blame him.

Lanny is just an all around good guy and deserved to have the fairy tale career he did. His story can make this atheist almost believe in karma at times. That mustache is what dreams are made of.

Click here to watch a video of Lanny McDonald.

When Jake the Snake was a kid, he soon realized that playing defense would be difficult with asthma. So, like any kid of the 1930s would do, he had his dad carve him a goalie stick out of a tree root and let people shoot pucks at his face.

as if acne and covering your boner with your science book were bad enough, try stopping pucks with your face for five different teams before the age of 16.

Coming from a poor family, Jacques’ father made his first pads with stuffed potato sacks and reinforced them with wooden planks. While it has been debated whether it was to relax or family need, his mother also taught him how to knit everything from underwear to tuques. That would be something he’d continue to do his whole life.

While playing goal for a factory team at 15, his father mentioned that the other players were earning a salary. Jacques talked to the coach and started earning 50 cents a game as long as he didn’t tell the other players.

young jacques tuque a lot of crap from other players for his love of reading and knitting.

Filled with intelligence and innovation, it was no surprise that the courted Plante would only work a couple of weeks in a factory before being groomed for the Canadiens big club.

His innovations include communicating with his teammates (and also raising the glove hand for icing calls), leaving the net to play dumped pucks, stressing positional play (pioneering the ever popular butterfly style of goal-tending), and possibly his biggest innovation, when natural disaster Andy Bathgate took a wild backhander and split Jacques’ nose open in a game needing seven stitches, regular use of the goalie mask.

Most people my age are only familiar with one other incident involving a natural disaster and Jake the Snake.

that little kid sitting in the front row and the looks on Gene’s face are priceless.

"eff this ess." coming out after having his face "rooned," the other team was the first in history to also experience what it's like to be haunted by a bloody serial killer mask.

While he had used the mask in practices before, traditionalist Toe Blake was furious when he came out wearing it. Not one to take shit from a guy named Toe, Jacques continued to win.

Despite winning five consecutive Cups and six overall with the Canadiens, Jacques was traded to New York for Gump “I don’t need a nickname because my name is f-ing Gump” Worsley. Jacques being traded to New York from Montreal at the time could only be compared to taking your significant other to that new hip sushi place everyone is talking about and they just poop on a plate and hand it to you.

honey, im homely.

It’s no surprise that Jacques decided to retire early shortly after.

during his retirement, plante took up a job with molson.

After being retired briefly, fellow bad ass Scotty Bowman asked him to park himself between the pipes as the Montreal Jr. Canadiens were set to match up against the powerhouse Soviet National Team.

Stressful?

“Suppose you were working at your job one day, and you made a little mistake. Then all of a sudden a red light went on over your desk, and fifteen thousand people stood up and booed.” – Jacques Plante

Despite all that mess, he only let in one goal and his team won 2-1. This prompted the Soviet Coach, Anatoli Tarasov, to say, “Jacques Plante is the best goaltender I’ve ever seen.”

hmm, how horrifying do i want to look today?

He won seven Vezinas, six Stanley Cups, and carried a 2.37 goals against average with 82 shutouts in his 18 year career. What’s more important are the advancements he brought to the sport of hockey.

Click here to watch a video on Jacques Plante.

or my favorite nickname of his… Old Blood and Guts!

You don't get that nickname wearing ironic sweaters and drawing a mustache on your finger.

“For 20 years, man and boy, this evil fellow has been punching people, hitting them over the head with his stick, chewing their ears, butting, gouging, shoving, and generally bedeviling his fellow men and always for handsome fees.” – John Lardner

It’s no surprise that one of hockey’s toughest players entered the league how he’d later be remembered: talented, eccentric, mean, and tough. When he was sold to the Boston Bruins for $50,000 and 6 players, Eddie Shore entered the NHL with a reputation following him. Shore had previously played for the Edmonton Eskimos and had been cut by a skate deeply requiring 14 stitches in his leg. Not one to miss a minute of a game (yeah, he played full games), let alone a shift, he went back out, played full on, and popped all of the stitches soaking his pants completely in blood. Later, with the Melville Millionaires, Shore was instructed not to get a single penalty in the championship game. Targeted throughout his career, Shore suffered a broken nose, jaw, lost six teeth, and was knocked out more than once. Despite this, he did not take one penalty. After 50 minutes, he had to be taken off the ice unconscious.

legend says that this is exactly how he came out of his mother's va-jay. he also got a fighting major for sucker punching one of her ovaries.

In Shore’s rookie season, Billy Coutu and Red Cleghorn were traded from the Montreal Canadiens to the Bruins. In their first practice, Shore supposedly strutted in front of them and pissed Coutu off. One story says Coutu body slammed Shore while the other says that Coutu rushed at Shore with the puck and later collided with him. Regardless, what ended up happening left Shore with his ear almost completely severed off.

barf.

While it took Shore a couple of doctors, he eventually found one who would sew it back on. He refused anesthetic, watched the doctor patch him up while holding a mirror, and actually made him redo a stitch. “It would have left a scar!” he would tell a reporter later in life. He said Coutu severed the ear with his stick and Coutu was fined $50.00. Shore later claimed otherwise and Coutu’s $50.00 was returned. I guess no blood, no foul.

more evil than Ivan Drago eating black licorise and shaking hands with Fred Phelps.

Other stories have New York promoter, Tex Rickard, hiring ambulances to circle the block with the sirens on (yes, that’s where Slap Shot got the idea) and even posting wanted posters that read, “Dead or Alive” with Shore’s picture all over the city!

I wonder what he thinks of Animal Collective.

Shore’s most notorious incident came during a game with the Maple Leafs. Shore was rushing up the ice with puck in tow when he was hit by King Clancy (man, I love old time hockey names). When no penalty was called, Shore war irate and went for the closest Maple Leaf. Whether accidental or not, he upended Maple Leafs’ scorer Ace Bailey causing him to go head first on the ice fracturing his skull at both temples.

one five year old was quoted to say, "WHOA! SICK!"

Bailey was in a coma for two weeks and had to have two brain surgeries. To raise money, Shore created the first NHL all star game (for real) to donate money to Bailey. The reaction of public forgiveness from Bailey prompted an enormous cheer from the Toronto fans (the all star game was all stars vs. maple leafs) and this photo op:

"you're still an f-in' d-bag. you know that, right?"

Shore’s list of injuries include:
over 1,000 stitches
14 broken noses
12 broken collarbones
5 broken jaws
a broken back
a broken hip

He also holds the unbreakable record for fighting majors in one game. Since players are now tossed after too many, Shore was once able to accumulate five fighting majors in which he fought Montreal Maroons (yeah, there were two Montreal teams at the time) players, Buck Boucher, Dave Trottier, Seibert. By the end of the game, Shore had a broken nose, lost four teeth, two black eyes, and a concussion. Trottier, Seibert, and Shore ended up in the hospital.

While he later became an owner full of other eccentricities, the stories mainly include just making the players actually work the stadium they played in and a complete hard nosed DIY approach to everything.

He was a hockey player’s hockey player.
I can’t get this to post for the life of me.

Click here to watch a video on Eddie Shore.

He is the only defenceman to win the Hart Trophy four times, an all star eight times, and won the Cup twice.