Dave Bidini - The Best Game You Can Name

ALSO BY DAVE BIDINI

On a Cold Road
Tropic of Hockey
Baseballissimo

FOR YOUNG ADULTS
For Those About to Rock

Copyright 2005 by Dave Bidini

Hardcover edition published 2005
Trade paperback edition published 2006

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Bidini, Dave
The best game you can name / Dave Bidini.

eISBN: 978-1-55199-228-0

1. HockeyCanada. 2. Hockey playersCanada.
3. National Hockey League. I. Title.

GV848.5.A1B52 2005 796.9620971 C2005-903151-4

The lines on from Hockey Players by Al Purdy from Beyond Remembering:
The Collected Works of Al Purdy, 2000, appear courtesy of Harbour Publishing.

The lines on are from Nothing Else Matters by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. Copyright 1991. Reprinted by permission of Creeping Death Music. All Rights Reserved.

The lines on from The Shooting of Dan McGrew appear by courtesy of the Estate of Robert Service. Copyright 1910

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporations Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75 Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M 5 A 2 P 9

www.mcclelland.com

v3.1

FOR LO

And how do the players feel about it
this combination of ballet and murder?

Al Purdy, Hockey Players

Craig Barnes
Cheech
The Chizzler
Dutch
Andy Ford
Tom Goodwin
Brad Howie Hardman
Tom Paterson
Alun Piggins
Mark Robinson (The Winterbird)
Schmiddy
Johnny Sinclair
Steve Stanley
T
Chris Topping
and
me

1 | A FROZEN RIVER OF STOUT

I f its true that the best time for sports is when youre eleven, Ive discovered that its also pretty good when youre forty. My athletic renaissance came on the heels of turning thirty-four, which is how old I was when I lit out to discover world hockey. Later, and older, I spent an entire summer dogging an Italian baseball team up and down the Boot. One evening while I was in Nettuno my Italian baseballing town I paced with some agitation behind the towns seawall, holding my cellphone and listening to my friend Ozzie from his couch in Etobicoke, Ontario. He was shouting the names of undrafted NHLers: Thomas Vokoun? Available, I think. Comrie? Gone. Brisebois? You really wanna pick Brisebois?

Purple waves licked the beach not twenty feet from where I was standing under the bright Roman moon, pondering the kind of quibbler that must have perplexed Marcus Aurelius or Cicero or any number of Latin thinkers whod paced this same long stretch of sand: