Book giveaway - Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems
by Bruce McCurdy on Mar 20, 2010 4:20 PM PDT
in Miscellaneous
1 comment
As promised during our recent review of Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems and our subsequent interview with the poet, Randall Maggs, we at the Copper & Blue continue our fight against illiteracy by sponsoring a book giveaway contest. A lucky reader will receive a signed copy of Night Work, accompanied by related swag including a book mark, post card, and hockey card. It's a real cool package, courtesy our friends at Brick Books.
To enter the contest simply send me an email with your name (and screen name, if different) and an answer to this skill-testing question: What is the name of "the man who scored on Terry Sawchuk" during his tour of Newfoundland with the Boston Bruins in 1956?
Sounds obscure, I know, but the answer (first name only) is contained in the above book short, a brilliant short film adapatation of a Sawchuk Poem. Well worth your five minutes to watch, whether you enter the contest or not. That poem, "String and Bones", can be read after the jump (including the name of the gent in question). Randall Maggs also referred to this fellow in the interview the other day; it's clear from the number of eye-witness interviews cited in the first part of the poem and the one with the man himself in the second part, that the author went to considerable trouble - not to mention all the way to Lewisporte! - to track down this story. It's a beauty.
Here is my email address Send Mail If you have trouble with the link, please leave a note in the comments. Entries close at 23:59 MDT Monday March 22; if I have my act together, I'll get the winner's book personalized by the author when I meet him at the reading at Audrey's Books on Tuesday.
Good luck!
1 comment | 0 recs |
The Falcons' Eagle: Jordan Eberle's Ten AHL Games
by Benjamin Massey on Mar 20, 2010 10:30 AM PDT
in Prospects
16 comments
To the lay Oilers fan, Jordan Eberle is the great hope. Renowned for his clutch goals in the World Junior Championships and his exceptional senior season in the Western Hockey League, Eberle is probably Edmonton's greatest "love him or hate him" prospect since Rob Schremp. His detractors have plenty to point at: his mediocre speed, his uninspiring WHL totals before this year, and of course the condemnation of the World Junior Championships as a small sample size and the concept of "clutchness" as a chimera with no place in the modern game.
Evaluating junior prospects can always be difficult. While Eberle's numbers are far short of those of a Sam Gagner, his Regina Pats were also far worse than the teams most blue chip prospects enjoy. Context is everything, and with no known quantities to compare him to we are left to history on one hand and the orgasmic moments he gifts us with during his rare televised appearances on the other. It's sometimes not until a prospect turns professional and plays with and against men of certain ability that we can start to properly evaluate a prospect.
Jordan Eberle may just be one of these. Last season, after the Regina Pats were eliminated from the playoffs, an 18-year-old Eberle played his first games in the American Hockey League with the dreary Springfield Falcons, appearing in a total of nine contests. This year, the Pats have once again fallen out of the playoff picture and Eberle has gotten into one game so far. It is a small sample size, but it is also a teenager leaping straight from junior into second-tier professional hockey without so much as a training camp to find his sea legs.
An examination of each of those ten games follows after the jump.
16 comments | 1 recs |
An interview with Randall Maggs, the Sawchuk Poet
by Bruce McCurdy on Mar 20, 2010 8:13 AM PDT
in Miscellaneous
5 comments
The unincorporated village of Floral, Saskatchewan, has a fame in the hockey world wholly incommensurate with its tiny size. It is of course the birthplace of Gordie Howe, greatest player of his day - "day" being loosely defined as a third of a century! - and honoured member of the Extremely Short List of Greatest Hockeyists of All Time.
Floral now has a second claim to fame. Simply by being in its place at the right time, it inspired one of the greatest hockey books it has been my pleasure to read. In the mid-90s Newfoundland-based poet Randall Maggs was conducting a book tour through western Canada which took him on the road to Floral. (Or should I say, the road through Floral.) Just seeing the name "Floral, Saskatchewan" on its best-known building, a grain elevator older than Gordie Howe himself, transported Randy to a different time and place, a time when hockey was central to his life. The seed that was planted that day took some time to sprout, but eventually flowered into a magnificent book, Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems.
As the title implies, the subject of Night Work is not Gordie Howe himself but his Detroit Red Wings teammate, Terry Sawchuk, the talented, troubled 'tender who is still ranked by many as the greatest goalie of all time. Undeniably he was at the forefront of his own time, the so-called Golden Era of Goatending (roughly, 1950-67), emerging from that era with NHL records for games played, wins, and shutouts that each stood for decades. Renowned for both his brilliance and his darkness, "Ukey" would become the perfect subject for an in-depth character study that was as long in the making as his records were in the breaking.
While Terry Sawchuk dominated the NHL in the early 1950s, Randy Maggs and his brother Darryl were growing up with their own dreams of hockey fame in Sawchuk's home city of Winnipeg, skating on the same rinks that "Ukey" had skated (scraped?) on. Darryl would go on to play in the NHL, while Randy wound up in the Hockey Hall of Fame! That was the setting when Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems was launched two years ago, there with the plaques of Sawchuk, Howe, and countless other greats of the age whom the Sawchuk poems recognize and remember with honesty and dignity. There with the greatest prize they had all dreamed of and battled for, the Stanley Cup.
I have personally installed Night Work on my nightside table on the "to-be-reread" pile with Peter Gzowski's The Game of Our Lives, Scott Young's The Leafs I Knew, Ken Dryden's The Game, and Andrew Podnieks' Portraits Of The Game: Classic Photographs From The Turofsky Collection At The Hockey Hall Of Fame. Each is an enduring classic.
Having serendipitously initiated contact with the publisher, we at the Copper & Blue pressed our luck and requested an interview with the author. We wound up with an interview and a half! Randy responded to our questions graciously and loquaciously, his remarks as insightful as they were delightful. (Now you know why I am not a poet.) Read on following the jump for hockey-soaked reflections of the past and of today, of the game's place in society and its role in ending the Cold War, of the motivations of men who play hockey and those who write poetry.
Two of the poems mentioned in the interview, "Guys like Pete Goegan" and "Different Ways of Telling Time", can be found in this post; I couldn't resist adding a third at the very bottom, "One of You", Ken Dryden's favourite which speaks eloquently to the singular craft of goaltending.
Randall Maggs tours western Canada next week, giving readings from his award-winning book, Night Work: The Sawchuk Poems in Edmonton, Yellowknife, Whitehorse and Vancouver (details here). Stay tuned to the Copper & Blue for a chance to win a signed copy of the book.
5 comments | 0 recs |
Edmonton - Detroit Post-Game: Moreau-nic
by Benjamin Massey on Mar 19, 2010 10:00 PM PDT
in Game-Day Threads
4 comments
So, Devan Dubnyk has a win and a deserved one at that. Congratulations to Devan and his family. Even Patrick Roy had just one win at some point in his career, although admittedly he didn't play ten games before getting it, and if this had been Patrick Roy's era it would have been a tie.
It's a proud moment for a good guy and a decent prospect and will receive some well-deserved attention from the media. A shame, for it will overshadow perhaps the more important sub-plot of tonight's melée against the Red Wings: the immense, almost shameful capitulation of the Oilers in the third period, the reaming they endured which was worse than you expect even from a thirtieth-place team against a determined opponent. It beggared belief. The shots in the third period were 17-3 Detroit, and that significantly flatters Edmonton, who spent 19:30 of those twenty minutes pinned back in their own end without respite. Save Dubnyk, every Oiler was at least bad. Only Marc Pouliot and Tom Gilbert could even aspire to be mediocre.
It is a sure contender for the worst period the Oilers have played all season, and if not for Dubnyk proving once again that he is at his best when his team is at its worst it would have brought shades of Jeff Deslauriers's fateful first in Vancouver, seemingly so long ago, when he allowed something like eleven goals on four shots or whatever the hell it was. The team was so dreadful in every category it seems almost cruel to pick out one particularly fetid turd from the sewage system of the Edmonton Oilers.
Cruel and yet deserved. For Ethan Moreau, a man who has done so little for us in the last three years, turned in the worst period I have seen any Edmonton non-goaltender play since...
...ever?
It was not merely that he couldn't complete a six-foot pass, though he couldn't. He didn't muster so much as a shot on goal, although hell, that's not news. He even managed to stay out of the penalty box primarily because Greg Kimmerly and Dan Marouelli shoved their whistles into their jocks (a total of six penalty minutes were dished out all game). But for the first time, an NHL millionaire played the game worse than I would have.
It's like he thought he was Larry Robinson, about to lug the puck out of the zone to start a big rush, except if Larry Robinson was a complete idiot. Mere minutes into the third he got on the short list for most hysterical gaffe of the season when he got the puck behind his own goal line, turned on a time, and putting on what few jets he has left drilled Tom Gilbert from behind into the goalpost while still carrying the puck, turning it over and leading to a superb Red Wings chance. Or trying to dance the puck out of the zone, turning it over at the blue line and leading to an entire shift of Red Wings bombardment. He had skaters to pass to and could have just cleared it out himself with the sort of chip shot that comes so naturally on a hockey rink players don't even have to be taught how to do it. Instead, he went one-on-two with a Detroit forward and the boards, and because he's awful he did not win.
Then there was his singlehanded culpability on the tying goal with a fraction of a second left. Cruising in the slot, idiotically, like he thought the Red Wings would be courteous enough to serve up a soft pass right onto his stick blade so he could be the big damned hero. Covering Henrik Zetterberg, or rather not covering Henrik Zetterberg, since one of the NHL's premier forwards had so much room to maneouvre they could have run a Formula 1 race through the gap. Standing about, letting Zetterberg go cross-ice to Pavol Datsyuk. Not moving to cover the stupidly wide open Brian Rafalski setting up shop on Dubnyk's doorstep and who is, technically, Moreau's man. Then giving Zetterberg a big ol' Ethan Moreau crosscheck to the back of the head. "See, coach? I'm doing something!"
I'm not by nature a cynical man, but that period truly convinced me that Ethan Moreau is deliberately costing us hockey games. Nobody who was ever good enough to play in the NHL could ever do that badly on a hockey rink by accident.
4 comments | 0 recs |
Oilers v. Red Wings - Ezekiel 25:15-17
by Scott Reynolds on Mar 19, 2010 5:20 PM PDT
in Game-Day Threads
63 comments
This is what Yahweh, the sovereign God of Edmonton has to say: "Because the Red Wings play with ennui in the regular season, splattering one team after another like mosquitoes and because they would dare seek revenge against my people by convincing Marian Hossa that Edmonton isn't the place to play I will speak. I have stretched out my hand against the Red Wings and - despite the fact that they were the superior team - I caused them to lose to the Penguins in the Cup final, and I am now considering whether or not to cut them off from the playoffs altogether. I know that I am filled with vengeance and that I deeply desire to let loose my wrath but... perhaps I will let them survive for a while longer to continue to punish the Flames whose evil knows no end. That way both teams will have felt my wrath and know that I am God. And if the Red Wings persist in stealing free agents from my team and should their fans continue to be unappreciative of their success, then I will redouble my efforts to punish them again next season. Then they will know that you must appreciate Yahweh's favour and not treat his most prized possession badly when free agency dawns."
Detroit Red Wings (34-23-12) @ Edmonton Oilers (21-42-7)
Rexall Place, 7:30 P.M. MDT
Television: TSN
More analysis after the jump...
63 comments | 0 recs |
Sledge Hockey Live!
by Scott Reynolds on Mar 19, 2010 8:07 AM PDT
in Game Reports
3 comments
Until yesterday, I knew very little about sledge hockey. When my girlfriend and I picked up tickets for both semi-final games of the Paralympic hockey tournament I knew that it was basically a seated version of hockey. And that's it. And so it was that yesterday she and I ventured off to UBC to put those tickets to use. The game provided good entertainment (except for the paid cheerleaders who tried to start a wave while the game was going on) even though Canada managed to lose 3-1. To Japan. Good God Almighty. More on my day of discovery and the "Greg Norman at the Masters" performance by the Canadians after the jump.
3 comments | 0 recs |
Oklahoma City Tornadoes?
by Derek Zona on Mar 18, 2010 3:00 PM PDT
in News
11 comments
Prodigal Hockey, LLC has left the Oil-related genre and has jumped into two non-sensical nicknames. Pumpjacks still gets no love.
11 comments | 0 recs |
Dustin Penner - 9th Most Valuable Skater In The League
by Derek Zona on Mar 18, 2010 11:15 AM PDT
in Statistical Analysis
10 comments
Dirk Hoag at On The Forecheck has been crunching numbers to figure out who the most valuable players in the NHL are this year. The results are not exactly shocking for this correspondent - Dustin Penner is the 9th-most valuable skater in the league.
10 comments | 0 recs |
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