“A rose by any of name would smell as sweet.” Even if he is Charlie Hustle. What is the construction of a great nickname? What is at the heart of a truly “Great One”? No I don’t mean Wayne Gretzky, although if we are starting with “Legends”, how about Larry Bird? I mean the “Hick from French Lick” was so good that he has two? In both those cases the players were great but the nick names were just very good. I’d like to develop a list of my top five nicknames of all time. Before I do, I would like to give an acknowledgement to the group that started this discussion for me. Lindros, Leclair, Renburg, were truly as their name suggested,
Philadelphia’s Legion of Doom. Hockey has had a it’s share of creative line nicknames, Colourful names like The Rocket, Mr. Hockey, The Flower, Little Beaver, The Chief, The Screamin’ Scotsman, The Big Train, Grapes, The Road Runner, The Tazmanian Devil , The Grim Reaper, Killer, The Rat, The Magnificent, The Moose, Mr. Zero, Stevie Wonder, Boom Boom, Tiger, The Hammer and if you didn’t have a nickname it seems like we called you Red, there are about 10 guys named after that colour. We even nicknamed you if you sucked ala Andre “Red Light” Racicot. Units were nicknamed, The Kid Line, The Brat Line, The Century Line, The Hound Line, The BBC, The Russian Five, The West Coat Express, The Punch line, The Production Line were some of the tag given to dominate or feisty units over the years. Now we’ve got a league full of Y’s, S’s and ER’s. Healtey becomes Heats, instead of a creative play on the name like, The Fireman, or The Inferno, although he does play on the CASH line with two other brutal tags, Alfy, and Spezs. Instead of being the
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