Medicine Hat Tigers – nick does hockey

I went a bit nuts a year and a half ago and won an auction on a Canadian hockey collectables site. On Wednesdays, at Icy O’Briens training, you see all kinds of jerseys including a lot of novelty jerseys and I’m as guilty as anybody of liking the chance to wear bizarre and obscure colours on the night. With that in mind, I bid for and won a bunch of NHL Old Timer jerseys, as worn by creaky Hall of Famers and other probably long-forgotten NHL stars in exhibition games. My jerseys were mostly from the fifties, with a few Toronto-based ones from the seventies. I still wear one to training on Wednesday nights at Icy O’Briens and gave some as Christmas presents to the coaches that year, because every year I forgot to get them a present and then felt bad.

Lliam Webster rocks out one of the NHL Old Timer jerseys.

But the best thing about winning this auction was definitely not realising that the exchange rate was steep just then, or that the shipping costs were enormous, or that the other taxes and charges almost doubled the price of what I thought I had agreed to pay. No, none of those joyful discoveries were the awesome bit.

The awesome part was that the auction house people clearly thought, ‘Huzzah, we’ve got a live one in Melbourne, Australia, peoples!’ and have continued to mail me the catalogue for hockey auctions ever since. They arrive three or four times a year.

It’s spectacular bedtime reading. And it totally speaks to the dweeby history-lover in me as I’ve discovered how amazing and varied the names, nicknames and jerseys of hockey teams through the ages have been and continue to be.

The Fishermen. Damn, I wish I had the funds to have bought this jersey, just to wear around.

The 1920’s Fishermen jersey. Damn, I wish I had the funds to have bought this jersey, just to wear around.

Like a lot of people reasonably new to hockey, I only became aware of mysterious, now-gone NHL teams like the Whalers and the Nordiques as I delved deeper into the sport, and I find myself now actively seeking out strange towns, teams, mascots and leagues. Mysterious foreign outposts of the sport I’ve come to love.

This is where the auction catalogues are great. Brilliant team names and jersey designs of decades ago come back to life; some obscure, some just unknown to me. In my most recent catalogue, among endless signed sticks and jerseys by NHL stars, you suddenly turn a page to discover a gorgeous game-worn Selkirk Fishermen jersey from the 1920s (it sold for $C 533 – man, I’d love to wear that around town in winter). Wincingly-designed but funny are the jerseys of the Quebec Aces, an AHL team from the Sixties, or the magnificently terrible Calgary Cowboys jersey from 1975-76.

I even sort of like the world’s worst ever attempt at a shark logo on the WHA Los Angeles Shark jersey from that team’s inaugural season in 1972-73, which sold for more than $C 8,000, incidentally.

French Aces, and Canadian Cowboys and dubious Sharks.

I’d love my jersey collection to include a Moscow Dynamo design from the mid Seventies but can probably live without rocking the colours of the Port Huron Flags. If you’re a Wayne Gretsky fan, you might have been keeping an eye on a lot last year, which featured the actually strangely hipster-cool jersey of a junior team he played for, the Sault Ste Marie Soo Greyhounds.

The mighty (and extinct) Seibu Prince Rabbits.

But beyond the catalogues, the list of intriguing, beautiful and often hilarious team names is long. It was through hockey that I discovered the Canadian town of Medicine Hat (go Tigers!) and through hockey that I found the now-disbanded Seibu Prince Rabbits in Japan. Or another team in the same league: the Nippon Paper Cranes. The Asia League also had a team from China with the unlikely name of ‘The Nordic Vikings’. It lasted one season; not able to match up with the more expected red and yellow power of the China Dragon team.

Australia’s national league doesn’t really light it up in this sphere. We have Mustangs and Thunder and Brave and North Stars and Ice Dogs (kind of funny), and Bears and Adrenalin. Plus, of course, the somewhat strangely-named Melbourne Ice (if it was a footy team, would it be Melbourne Grass?) But nothing to match the Fishermen, above. I’ve never missed Queensland’s Blue Tongues so much.

An unhappy turtle and Macon’s sexy name.

Sports Illustrated once noted the existence of an American team (above) called Macon Whoopee, even featuring a bird and a bee on its jersey, while I am also a fan of the Mississippi RiverKings, starring a very grumpy turtle as their mascot. (I’d back the Red Wings’ resident octopus, Rally Al, to kick the turtle around if they dropped the gloves.)

As hockey moved into new American frontiers after the NHL expansion (almost 50 years ago exactly), lower level feeder clubs were created as well, meaning you got bizarre name attempts like the Orlando SolarBears or names mashing local history and hockey, like the Greenville Swamp Rabbits, apparently named after a train but featuring a bunny attempting to frighten grown hockey players. And while we’re there, a special shout out to the Toledo Walleye, a team that deserves a mention just because there’s something endlessly hilarious about the concept of a fish attempting to play ice hockey.

CRAZY TEAMS: Sun-loving hockey-playing polar bears and lump but cranky fish.

The Falcon: if he wasn’t so well loved, he’d be worth serious money in America.

I have been accused of being a hoarder. I prefer the word ‘collector’. I definitely get interested in something and start gathering. It all started when I was very young and somebody gave me a Superman figurine. It turns out you could also get Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Spider-man … I got them all. And Davy Crockett, Dracula, even The Falcon (pictured, who turned out to be the first black super hero and is now highly collectable). I still have them all. In a suitcase, stashed under the stairs at my house, but still there. Bashed to within an inch of their lives, through endless play in my pre-teen years. (The hilarious thing is that the made-up stories, my imagination roaming, with those figurines playing out the storylines? Years later, I’d write The OK Team and OK Team 2, and get that same imaginary roaming published.)

Later came my Mr Potato Head obsession, which started in a church hall in Hawthorn, accompanying my future business partner, Michael, to a

My Sixties Potato Head collection: now showing in my office. How do you like them apples of the earth, MisterSpud?

collectables auction where he was chasing Collingwood memorabilia. I wandered along the stalls and found Oscar the Orange, a Mr Potato Head character who took me straight back to my childhood. Bidding sensibly stopped for Oscar at $100 or so. I realised my hand was in the air. Now I owned Oscar, it seemed crazy not to start hunting all the other 1960s potato people: Katie Carrot, Cookie Cucumber, Pete Pepper … and wow, in America, there were ones I’d never heard of: Willy Burger, Frenchy Fry. And English ones: Mr Egg Bod and Katie Pear. This was when eBay was just finding its feet and suddenly it was possible to bid furiously for a potato-based character in Cincinnati or Seattle. I had some epic duels with my nemesis, a collector called MisterSpud. I finally got the entire set of Sixties spuds and retired from competition.

Then came magic and treasures like first editions of Robert-Houdin‘s landmark ‘autobiography’ (this French magician was a father of the Golden Age of magic and remains, as far as I know, the only magician to single-handedly use magic to stop an African revolution), or Howard Thurston magic coins. That cost me a lot of money.

And then came hockey. And more specifically, hockey jerseys.

My first one was a Zetterberg #40. Detroit Red Wings, of course. When I first started seriously following the Wings. But then I started playing and my jersey fetish blossomed, grew and mutated, to incorporate the Icehouse Rookies, the Wings’ AHL affiliate Grand Rapids Griffins, and even an obscure Canadian team, the Medicine Hat Tigers, where Wings stars like Darren Helm and Chris Osgood had started out (and it turned out, a team that my coach, Lliam Webster, played against. He got a decent shock when Big Cat and I wandered into the Icehouse wearing Medicine Hat jerseys one day). With many training sessions, dev league (before the dedicated jerseys), skating sessions and just walking around, there has been no shortage of opportunity to strut my many jerseys.

Here’s where the collection stands, three years in:

My first hockey jersey: Hank Zetterberg, 2009. When we went to Detroit in 2011, I didn’t take it, because I KNEW I’d be buying another one, and I did: a signed Nick Lidstrom jersey, which I occasionally wear around, like to a Melbourne Ice game, horrifying potential collectors. I’m, like, what? Lidstrom never signed another jersey? I prefer enjoying it, to framing it. I still love my Zetterberg first-ever, and sometimes still wear it on the ice.

The signed Lidstrom No. 5, bought at the Joe Louis Arena. It went ‘straight to the Pool Room.’ But occasionally gets broken out for everyday wear, to the horror of collectors. (And, by the way, it cost me $125 or something … a Kyle Quincey jersey at that USA v Canada extravaganza in Melbourne earlier this year, went for upwards of $400 … sacrilege. )

This is the jersey I was wearing in the first ever wobbly-skating shot on this blog. Medicine hat white: a cool early Richmond Tigers-hockey-obscure Wings crossover. Big Cat shamelessly stole the black version, which is cooler, damn him.

Our Icehouse class of 2011 became the self-titled Rookies, with Aimee Hough, Theresa Neate, Jay Hellis, Big Cat and a few others as founders. Big Cat designed the first Rookies jersey: a simple, classic design.

About to jump the boards in the Rookies white.

Second generation Rookies jersey: as the Rookies started playing games, against teams like an IBM line-up, we needed different coloured jerseys. This black one was a beauty, and is probably the jersey I have worn the most on-ice. I captained my first ever hockey win – and I think the first official Rookies victory of any description – wearing this jersey; an epic comeback. A meaningless social match on a Friday night but we were floating in victory.

Wearing the Rookies black, in action against IBM at the Icehouse.

The red version of the Rookie jersey. Recently a new group, formed by the following wave of skaters, has formed with a kcikarse jersey. I love how the sport is growing and evolving in Melbourne.

The red version of the Rookie jersey. Recently a new group, formed by the following wave of skaters, has formed with a kickarse jersey. I love how the sport is growing and evolving in Melbourne.

Grand Rapids is Detroit’s feeder team, in the AHL. We follow it closely, watching guys like Nyquist, Tatar, Jurco, and more, get better and closer to Red Wings action. I decided it would be a cool, obscure jersey to wear to training …

... and it was, right up until the Griffins produced this more modern red alternate strip.

… and it was, right up until the Griffins produced this even more awesome red alternate strip.

Maybe my favourite jersey of all time, because it was my first official jersey as a member of an actual team, in IHV competition. As part of the Jets, I played with the Interceptors, as logged in the blog, and even got to put a big white A on my breast, which was one of the best moments of the crazy hockey adventure so far. Loved, and continued, to love the Ceptors.

The back of the Jets jersey, with the crazy numbering font.

Working hard for the ‘Ceptors, in my beloved Jets purple (in an IBM practice match) last summer.

The Interceptors jersey that caused all the trouble … the Jets told us, before last summer’s comp, that the white alternate jersey might not be available in time for a game where we needed it, so could we come up with another white option? I guess they meant whatever white jerseys we could all find … but the Interceptors were motivated and committed. One of our team, Zac, is a graphic designer and drew up this baby, and we loved them, got approval and had them made, fast. We only wore them a couple of times in official comp but a couple of Jets officials went nuts, saying we were disloyal, not part of the club etc, because we weren’t wearing the usual jersey. It was awkward. I scored my only official summer league goal, swinging from a face-off drop, straight into the net, wearing this (I scored three, but the other two weren’t officially tallied). Pre-season I had toyed with being No. 4 instead of No. 17, which is why this pre-order had that number.

This is a recreation jersey of an early Detroit on-ice fashion statement, from when the team was the Cougars in the late 1920s/early 30s. It’s so old skool. I love it.

If you’ve seen ‘Slap Shot’, you know this jersey. If you haven’t, go watch ‘Slap Shot’.

Or Hell, just watch this:

And for the record, of course I'm Hanson brother, no. 17. Big Cat and Macquist have the other two Hanson jerseys, so we can form the entire line if required.

And for the record, of course I’m Hanson brother, no. 17, who was definitely the best, as that clip showed. Big Cat and Macquist have the other two Hanson jerseys, so we can form the entire line if required.

A recent pick-up: a genuine Red Wings practice jersey, as worn by the players at pre-season training camp. Got my name and #17 on the back. I rock this one out for Braves training and it has a lot of movement, lightness, which is good to skate in. I like it a lot.

My new world: I’m playing for the Cherokees, part of the Braves, in Div 3 this summer and I frickin’ love the jersey. Not just because it’s Richmond colours. But that helps. I’m loving life as a Brave.

Whoever made the Braves jerseys didn’t know about punctuation, so I’ve become kind of Czechoslovakian. The N in Place is silent.

Doing my best to look bad-ass in my Braves jersey. Summer 2013-14 season. Go Braves!

Big Cat and I before our first (and only, so far) game together. He then fell over on cowboy boots and broke his anhkle, so who knows if and when we'll get to suit up together once more.

Big Cat and I before our first (and only, so far) game together in the Braves colours. He then fell over on cowboy boots and broke his ankle, so who knows if and when we’ll get to suit up together once more.

Bidding for history

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