Welcome to the August mailbag, hockey fans! Is it going to get weird? (Scans actual headlines.) It had better. Let’s do this.
Note: Submitted questions have been edited for clarity and style.
Who wins a seven-game series: The team that just won the Stanley Cup, or the best team that didn’t make the playoffs IF the series starts the day after the Cup is won, the challenger is fully healthy, rested and prepared, and the champs don’t know the series is happening until that morning? — Ben D.
First of all: This is one of the best questions this mailbag has ever had. But to really make it work, we need to establish the stakes. Otherwise, the easy answer is “The champs just won the Cup so they don’t care if they lose every game 10-0 and wouldn’t bother trying.”
At first, no. I think we can all agree that the champs absolutely get their doors kicked in for Game 1. Playing with a severe hangover was a skill in the 1980s, but today’s coddled youth aren’t used to it. In fact, I’m willing to say the challengers sweep the first two games with relative ease.
After that? Well, it’s still hockey, so it probably just comes down to whichever goalie plays better. I’m guessing that’s the champs, because if the challengers had goaltending, they’d have been in the playoffs. But it would be a hell of a fight, and I’m all in favor of making this happen.
My question is, do you know the context and circumstances of when Gretzky made the somewhat famous quote “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take?”
I see that quote written out, but have never seen a video clip or any record of when Gretzky actually said it. — Adam W.
I’ll admit I did not, so I went digging and learned two things about arguably the most famous hockey quote turned aspirational advice turned joke from The Office.
First, as with most cool things from that era, we can apparently thank Bob McKenzie. Most sources that reference the initial quote say it came from a 1983 story Bob wrote for “The Hockey News.”
Taking the goalies out of the equation removes all of the players who’ve worn No. 1, which means our answer here is easy: The biggest differential would be 97, coming from a combination of someone wearing 99 and someone wearing 2.
And in fact, that’s happened a few times in the NHL, and not just with Gretzky. Two other players, Toronto’s Wilf Paiement and Winnipeg’s Rick Dudley, briefly wore 99 during their careers. Paiement actually debuted the number the same year as Gretzky’s NHL arrival, which had me wondering if he could beat Gretzky to the punch on the first 97-gap goal in NHL history. Sadly, no — Paiement was wearing 99 when he scored a goal that was assisted by Ian Turnbull, who was wearing 2, on January 5, 1980. But that was a few weeks late, as Gretzky had scored a goal on an assist from Edmonton’s No. 2, Lee Fogolin, on November 13, 1979.
Stay tuned for more exciting hockey news and analysis in the next mailbag!