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Rich Coppola and Kevin Morrison joins the show! · Day Drinking With Dog

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  Viva Tequila Seltzer, the number one Heart Seltzer in the world and an official
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  Heart Seltzer Day Drinking the Dog ditched them all at Tequila Welcome Back Day Drinking
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  with Dog on this beautiful May First. The calendar just keeps turning and turning
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  so fast. I have a great show today. I just got back from
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  vacation. I have some stories from it, but I'm not gonna waste those
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  on today's show because I have two awesome guests today, one in studio,
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  Rich Capola, Thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you
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  for having me to listen. When I found out who your guest was,
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  I had to. I wouldn't, Yeah, you would just do this on
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  your own with me. I know, No, No, I'm getting.
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  I'm getting and all the way from Nova Scotia, right, Kevin Morrison the
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  Well. I don't want to just call you the New Haven Nighthawks legend or
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  Blades's legend, but that's where Rich who you're from? Right? Yep?
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  How you doing today? I'm doing great? I gotta but oh yeah,
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  Jody said you were sick last week too. Out I'm having had two knees
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  replaced and them in the process and getting the hip done now. So it's
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  they're going to rebuild me so I can make a comeback the under sixty league,
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  right, Ye, Are you going to be a fighter this time or
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  now? Oh Jesus, I've always been a fighter, so I don't think
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  I can give that up now. He played a little goal back when you
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  were a kid, right. I played three years in net and then because
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  I couldn't skate, that's where they put me back here. You made the
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  team, you go to school, You make the team to give you a
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  sweater, and then you go on the ice and then they'll tell you what
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  you're playing. And I couldn't skate, so they put me in nets.
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  That was my pond hockey career. I couldn't skate, so I wore work
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  boots and played goalie and fell through the ice once. That's a true story.
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  He said to Microach too. I said to I said, what do
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  I do? He should just lay down. None of these kids can lift
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  the buck. Yeah, like the like the Bruins because they couldn't lift the
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  puck. Did you watch that Toronto Ruins game last night? Uh? Bits
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  of it were our junior A team. Sure in the playoffs. Was their
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  game was on last night? Oh? Nice? Yeah, the guy and
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  the Bruins couldn't lift the puck last night. That's why they lost. Yeah,
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  fundamental up here. Oh I'm sure. I'm sure they're cleaning. I
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  mean, I don't even want to talk about it. Bruins were up three
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  to one last year lost, They're probably gonna do the same this year.
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  So all right, so Kat, let's we'll start with you. I watched
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  your YouTube. I thought it was fantastic. You're a great storyteller. I
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  want to focus on a couple of things, but give a brief history of
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  how you got into hockey and uh, you know, you don't have to
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  elaborate too much, but you know how you ended up in New Haven because
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  uh, you know, most of my listeners in the New Haven area.
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  Obviously you played a little before our time, but we always went the games
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  in the you know, late eighties, early nineties. Well back uh uh
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  when I was like fifteen, I was in this Uh wasn't junior, but
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  it was a juvenile league. It was called here in Canada, and they
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  the six NHL teams scouted the league because it's, uh, it's a competitive
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  league in in different provinces, and the UH Ontario Hockey League was the strongest
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  junior A league in Canada at the time, and they had sent to scout
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  down. They had heard about this big, uh rugged left winger that could
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  score and they'd like to hit, so they sent somebody down to uh analyze
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  me and have a look at me, and he uh they liked what they
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  saw, so they said that they wanted me to go the following year to
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  the Kitchener of the Ontario Hockey League. And uh, back then there they
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  used to be allowed ten called ranch to branch transfers, so they could bring
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  ten other people from outside of Ontario into Kitchener. So I happened to be
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  number nine, and this other guy from Toronto was number ten, and they
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  may him down to meet my mother and my father and meet me and talk
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  about me going to kitchen her and uh they said, we'll take care of
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  him, Mary. Uh, he'll uh he'll have to go to school.
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  He doesn't go to school, he doesn't play hockey, and we send them
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  home. My mother's exactly, and the only words were take them. I
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  wasn't I didn't attend a lot of school here in Sydney, I would Uh,
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  I would skip more than I studied. So Mom said that said them
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  a lot of the thing in motion, and that she started, uh,
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  you know, buying me some clothes and buying you know, so I had
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  type of shirts and ties and and stuff like that. And then they changed
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  the branch to branches from ten to eight. So I'm John Ross and myself
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  they made an affiliation and with Drummondville. So they sent me to Drummondville.
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  And uh, I played in the Quebec Junior A League for three years,
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  got throwed, got drafted by the New York Rangers. Nice and I went
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  to New York Ranger camp and I, uh didn't I wasn't well. They
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  they said, you were thirty pounds overweight. There was me and Moose dupounds
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  and they used to put us in these little iron lungs back in the day,
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  like the sweatboxes. Yeah, we practiced twice in the once in the
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  morning, once in the afternoon, and then we'd go in the sweat box
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  and then we'd skape for an hour. Just came a night down the back.
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  They're trying to knock the thirty pounds out. That's how you did about
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  that, Yeah, oh it was crazy. And then you're play an exhibition
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  game with all the stuff they were doing. They had us eating uh uh
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  uh but salads for breakfast and uh, you know anything that was you know,
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  nothing to it, like no burgers, no steak, no no beer
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  Friday, none of that stuff. And then so we'd get in an exhibition
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  game and somebody would skate by me and the wind would knock me down.
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  It was the same way. And so on Friday they had ah, it
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  was called the to get the Queen of Golf game, So they said the
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  moose and I walked the course. No beer, no food. We don't
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  want to you know, ruin your your you know, your guys are getting
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  to We last about fifteen pounds each. So the first time they see us,
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  we're coming across number four. We had two cases of beer on the
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  chart and we had two pizzas and we're just chugging and drinking. And so
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  the next day they sent me down to New Haven. Well that's where you
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  get the real pizza, right, yeah, oh yeah, that was well
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  they were affiliated with the Rangers at the times. Yeah, and during what
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  you have to know is in the in the arena, and I told you
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  this off off air in the arena, the locker room. You know,
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  the players came out of the locker room across the hallway, not to the
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  ice, So we as fans would stand outside the Blades locker room, and
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  I can't tell you how many times, you know, we'd slap a guy
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  on the shoulder pads. You know, it's usually Kevin, go go fight
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  so and so. And if they played Clinton, you'd have to say at
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  least one period to go on the other side where the Clinton players, and
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  we gave them. Hell, we hated Clinton, right keV, they but
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  they son of a gun. The guys were good. They had really good
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  teams, as did the Blades. But so many times it's standing. You'd
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  take a peek in the locker room and the door opened and it was it
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  was so much fun. The arena was a great place. Yeah, was
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  New Haven your favorite place to play because I know, like you know,
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  during your career, you ended up kind of wanting to come back there.
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  Yeah. I enjoyed it, Like I had the two years in Easter and
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  then I had a one year in the American League, and then I was
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  on I became I left the Rangers and shign with Detroit and that didn't work
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  out, and they were gonna they were gonna send me to another Central Hockey
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  League team that got they own, and I said, we're sending me anywhere
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  or send me back in New Haven, you know. So then in the
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  meantime, the w h A popped up and I had a couple of teams
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  there were really interested in me. So when they came along after their first
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  year, you know, I signed with New York and I went there instead
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  of going anywhere else, and it worked out good for me. I had
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  had some pretty good years there and made some half decent money. And yes,
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  speak speaking of the money. This surprised me from your video. H
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  So, one of the stories I wanted you to tell was the Harry Senden
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  story when they offered you to play alongside Bobby Orr and I thought the deal
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  breaker was you wouldn't give up number four, but apparently it was monetary.
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  Huh oh yeah, So no, I would have went to three fours.
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  But Don Cherry's my coach, and that was in Colorado, and he said,
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  give Harry a call, you know, he wants to talk to you.
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  And I said, I already put some word in for you and so
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  hey, color, Hey call me, and he asked me what I was
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  making. I told him. He said, yeah, I'm not going to
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  make that here. And I said, well, there's no sense us talking.
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  Then he said, well, I'll make you an offer and then then
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  you can decide. So I was making at the time. I think it
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  was a five or ninety thousand. He offered me forty five and I said
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  well, I said I'm not happy with that, and he said, well,
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  take it or leave it, and I said, well I'll leave it.
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  I said, I'm a stupid Kate Bretner, but I'm not that stupid.
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  Give up forty five thousand dollars. So he said okay, and he
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  hung up by me. So then Cherry from the bombing at me and practice
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  the next day, and he would you hung up on Chint you hung up
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  on Harry? I said no, no, he hung up on me.
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  He said, he made you an offer and you were you didn't take it.
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  So when I told him what he offered me, he said, oh
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  fuck. He said I'll call him right back. Called him back and I
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  said, is it still the same offer? And he got he upped at
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  the fifty and I said is any way that you can give me some bonuses
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  because I said, I have bonuses in my contract here that you know,
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  aggressive play. Uh some points you'll go says so many hits, you know,
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  and make it up that way, but you know with all that.
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  And he said, no, but don't do that. Boons, don't do
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  that. And I said, okay, well let's talk about it. I
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  said, now hung up, Wow, carry carry mad at me again.
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  Talk to him, tell him to bring up someone you want me to go
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  and you want me to play left wing but baby or you know, so
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  he's not fighting. I said, I'm perfect for you, you know.
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  But that was the end of it. He didn't never call back, and
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  that was we we're done. Then. Oh man, I would have loved
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  this. I mean, I'm a Bruins guy, so that would have been.
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  Uh but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do. You can't
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  take a half pay cut. That's a little yeah. The you know,
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  the Eastern League, you had to it was like survival, right. So
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  what someone your age Kevin Jeremy witn't understand is that, you know, back
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  then, you're talking sixteen NHL and in that era of big bat Bruins and
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  broadstreet bullies as we got for the seventies. I mean, the fighters was
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  all the time, so it filtered through the minor leagues and the But the
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  one thing that I disagree, Kevin, that you said in that video when
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  you talked about the league and how how rough and tumble it was, and
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  you said, you said, and I was the biggest goon, And I
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  disagree with the term. To me, back then, for goon was someone
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  who would fight but couldn't play. You could fight and you could play.
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  And a few years ago, for instance, talking about WHA, what are
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  your former teammates in San Diego Andre Lacroix, who is is the all time
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  leading scorer in the WHA And I said to him, and I forgot,
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  you know the time frame, Now I forget who played where when? But
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  I said, you remember Kevin Morris. He goes, yeah, I played
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  with him in San Diego. Great outlet pass And you think about for someone
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  who plays defense and those quick passes as you transition and try to get out
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  of your zone, and how important I was. It was evident even back
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  then that Kevin could play, could really fight, but he could play as
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  well, and that's why he became played in the NHL and the WHA played
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  in the WHA All Star Game in Hartford. So you don't give yourself enough
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  credit. Sometime you could play, you really could pay. I know,
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  like they're coming up through. Like when they said you got to play inn
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  in the Eastern I did a little research on the Eastern League, and I
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  said, well, I'm going into that league. I'm going to be I'm
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  going to be the toughest thing I've ever came through there. You know,
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  I'm not gonna, like I said to Brophy one night, I said,
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  you're you're You're not gonna like you know, you too hand everybody with the
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  stick in the face and stuff like that, even in practice. You know,
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  you gotta watch him near me with that stick. And I said,
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  I'll show it up your arms and pull it out your face. And I
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  got a lot pretty good. So oh yeah, nice, Yeah, And
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  I just missed Perry as a player. You know, he was coaching you
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  guys when I started to go. But you know, he and I saw
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  a ball play and you know, a ball was pretty tough. But the
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  other guy, and I don't think you're I think he was retired. When
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  you played with the blades and then when you went up, he came back
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  and that was Ian Anderson. Did you play against Anderson at all? I
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  had one game against Hi because the first year I came in, Uh,
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  he had a broken leg or something, okay, and he had came back
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  late in the year and it was I guess he just tried it because we
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  just had a little wrestling mats and he just didn't do anything. He just
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  kind of must get it off the ice and left. He didn't. I
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  don't think the league was that good. But I never played never really,
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  I never got into it with him because we never played that, right,
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  you know, a regular game where we had we faced off, you know,
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  so and Schultz wouldn't fight you, right, Schultz, not in any
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  league. He was brought in when I was in the Quebec League and I
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  was in Drummondville and sent your home and he was brought in from Saskatchewan to
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  fight me. And I got in a fight in the corner with Pela points
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  younger brother, Uh, I think of his first name, but he was
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  six for three, big kid, and I annihilated him as we had mesh
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  back then, and I hit him and I kind of knocked them out of
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  stunned him, and I had my fingers in the mess and I just kept
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  pounding because he kind of jumped me in. I was pissed off at him,
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  and Schultz was standing in the background there, and so when they brought
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  for something and everything, I skated around and I won't started after him.
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  I said, come on, you're brought here to fight me. Let's see
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  what you got any backrad and back right to the bench, went in,
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  sat down. The coach came over, grabbed him by the You know,
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  this is why we paid you, this is why we flew you in.
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  You're here to fight, he says. I'm not fucking fighting him. He's
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  crazy? Is that? Is that what they were doing? The guys that
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  didn't want to fight you would just be quiet. But they just like skate
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  by and not try to instigate you. Oh yeah, they you know,
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  like they wouldn't like somebody wouldn't look at me, Like if I looked over
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  at them, they look away like on the school, like on the schoolyard
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  bully, almost like I'm staying away from the Cavs, which brings me to
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  the next story. And I did my I did my history too, like
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  I knew which guy on which teams would fight, and I knew if they
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  were left handed or right handed, you know. So yeah, just a
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  matter of you know, because I could I could hit with either hand.
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  I was the biggest thing. And I think I got that from There was
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  a little shop right behind the older rinks, the older arena rink. There's
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  a little exercise placing back there. I don't remember it, rich I vaguely.
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  Yeah, and you'd go work out there. Yeah. Well, he
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  was at the practice one day and he said to me, he said,
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  I can help you with your stamina. And I said, yeah, well
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  we're getting my stamina now we're doing laps. Oh no, no, he
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  says. You know. He said, come around the back after and I'll
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  have something set up for you. And I said, don't cost you anything.
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  You can work out there as many times as you want if you're in
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  town. So I went over and I had my sweats on, and he
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  said, okay, come over here, and he had this heavy bag set
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  up by the wall, and then he had those the pulley weights. He
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  used to pull them and up and down the side of the wall and he
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  had them had my boxing gloves placed into that. So I would just stand
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  there and punched this heavy bag with the wall weights coming up and down the
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  wall. So I I'd do maybe thirty or forty punches, and he said,
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  all right, take a breether, have some water. Come back,
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  and we do it that three or four times. And I start doing that.
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  So when I got in a fight, I think I'm hitting with those
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  pulleys with the weights on them, you know. So so a lot of
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  people got hit and they don't remember. It's thanks swinging up, you know,
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  a bad after you take the donuts off, it swings a little harder.
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  One of the brawls I remember vividly was against Clinton. And tell me
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  if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure you fought Bordon Smith and broke his
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  nose. Now Bordon Smith was a hell of a scorer. Now it wasn't
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  a big fighter though, but you fought him, you broke his nose,
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  and you got thrown out. And while you were in the locker room,
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  another fight broke out and gunner Garrett went in the locker room to get you.
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  You went into detail. Perry knew that might happen and told you keep
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  your skin on right, yeah, And don't have more than two way by,
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  he said, he said, this thing isn't over. So you see,
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  you win't have a beer. Don't have any murder too, because you're
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  going to be coming back out here. So I came back out and then
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  I pulled somebody off, one of the rare guys, and I separated his
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  shoulder, I think, and then his nose were broken the first fot and
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  then I thought they circled, uh Pat Kelly there at one point, but
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  he got inside the circle with me, but I never got my hands on.
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  Oh. We hated Kelly. We hated Kelly. Jeremy, We couldn't
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  stand Kelly. He was a player, coach. The comments, yeah was
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  was that? The who was? Was? That was Kelly? The guy
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  that you got into the three round? That's battleship. Kelly different, Kelly
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  different Kelly. Yeah, this is a and And I think Pete Provost was
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  the player. And I thought he was on top of Hainsworth and then you
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  threw him into the boards and separated his shoulder. And I say the story
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  I did where I did the zoom with you on the arena when I went
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  to Dave and Nancy's in Brantford, Kevin's I thought. Dave said, no,
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  it wasn't on top of him, but I could swear it was a
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  Clinton player who I thought was provost got on top of of Hainsey and you
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  took care of him too. Yeah, I remember dragging him off. I
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  just forget who I've seen. I swear around the bottom and I flipped him
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  over. And so how'd that three round fight go with the other Kelly?
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  The other Kelly? I don't know, I got I got recollections of it,
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  I said, because we used to talk in the dressing room, me
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  and Bobby Knis, Germ and Gary howet you know all the guys that didn't
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  scrapping, And what would you do with Kelly? I said, well,
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  geez, look at the arms on him. I said, you have I
• 19:45
  have got to get inside, so we square it up. I didn't get
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  inside, so he was fucking banging me pretty good. So finally I grabbed
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  him, tied him, and then they broke us up. So I wasn't
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  happy with the result of the round one, so I said, come on,
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  let's go. We're going again. So it went a second In the
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  second round. I thought I did a lot better than I did the first
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  round because I got him tight, and then they broke us up again,
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  and I think I had got in the fight the first for a second they
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  left us alone, so we went back at it, and then knights and
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  got in a fight, so we had a third round. I mean,
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  I thought i'd you know, he was cut and he's lift the swollen,
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  his eye was swollen, and I tore his sweater off them and you know,
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  I don't ended up to mark on me, but everybody said I lost
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  a fight. What always amazed me is is somewhere down the road you might
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  find Kevin and Kelly in the same bar having a beer together talking. Because,
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  first off, the guys that played that role ninety nine percent of the
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  time in my experience, and I covered hockey for a long time, the
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  greatest guy's ever, right, And you know, I'm getting to know Kevin
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  better obviously in recent years, but I you know, I covered a lot
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  of the other guys that, uh greatest guy, Mick the Coda, Kenny
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  Baumgartner, different guys that they were such great. It was it was the
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  role that they had to play. But in a lot of times it wasn't
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  personal. Now, Kevin, when you played it may have been a little
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  bit more personal. Did you ever did you ever speak to Kelly or any
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  of those guys years after the fact. Did you ever see him at like
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  a golf tournament or anything like that. Well, we've seen after the Kelly
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  fight there, because we were in Rochester like two weeks later, and he
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  came around our side of the of the ice because you know, back then
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  there was you know, not the smart hockey players. You know, you
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  go in and look at the ice and make sure it's frozen before you go
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  on it. So we were standing there and he comes over and he said,
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  oh, I'm on a chat. I said, no, we're not
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  chatting. I said, you didn't win that goddamn play that two or three.
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  I said, we're going first shift. He said, no, just
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  want to talk to you about He said, I'll hear you got a loss
• 22:03
  and the ship's dog and I got a loop, so the ship someone to
• 22:06
  talking with your fucking dog. I'll see your first shift. So I'm out
• 22:12
  don warm up and skating around. I look and I said, okay,
• 22:15
  that guy snow. I used to call them lumberjacks. Say, look,
• 22:18
  that's a new lumberjack about six foot four and then you know, couldn't skate
• 22:22
  very well, and another guy and they're then they're glaring at me and pointing
• 22:26
  at me, and I said, okay, I know what. I know
• 22:27
  what Cherry did here. He brought the boys in to fight me and get
• 22:30
  me out the game. That's what happened. I got into two fights.
• 22:36
  I'm skating by the bench and I'm just glaring at the fucking Cherry and glaring
• 22:40
  at Battleship and I'm you know, saying, who fucking so, and that
• 22:45
  the last time we ever fight against each other. So, now, did
• 22:48
  they change the rules because of you or not? You like you used to
• 22:52
  be have a fight all game long? Right? Oh no, they changed
• 22:57
  you can get two majors. And then wasn't there a point where like,
• 23:03
  all right, you're out of this game for good because you're just fighting too
• 23:04
  much kind of thing? Oh yeah, I mean if it was up to
• 23:08
  their discretion, the like I could cast you after one or fight. You
• 23:12
  know, it was you know, like with the big brawls and like we
• 23:18
  had and espression in World hockey. Then we had the Minnesota fight and say
• 23:22
  the bulls, I mean there were gang fighting everybody, it was, and
• 23:29
  they were just what they did at the end of it. They were just
• 23:30
  as soon as you got in one gang, like they tossed you, they
• 23:33
  tossing everybody. Then, now this is this is going to be a completely
• 23:37
  stupid question coming from me. Were you ever anxious nervous going in? I
• 23:41
  mean, I am not a fighter, So like whenever I would like was
• 23:47
  your age back then I would like try to diffuse the situation. Obviously you
• 23:51
  were an alpha male type, But was there ever a time where you were
• 23:53
  like, kind of want to sit this one out or just maybe not today,
• 24:00
  or you were just like let's go all the time? Pretty well,
• 24:04
  I had a fight in Halifax one with a guy named Tony Featherstone. At
• 24:11
  the end of it, my face was sore and my hands were sore,
• 24:14
  and he's face and hands were sore. We kind of we kind of walked
• 24:17
  each other to the penalty box and we're getting in the penalty box and we
• 24:21
  said, yeah, never again. I got that right, I'm gonna and
• 24:26
  I didn't. I I never ever played against him again. And then they
• 24:30
  but Kelly, same thing, you know, like it was, you know,
• 24:33
  I had my hands were sore for two weeks and then the only other
• 24:38
  guy that I never got that I was was was fucking Schultz there, Like
• 24:45
  I said, they brought him into that, into that junior league, and
• 24:48
  they didn't fight, and then he ended up planning to come back. And
• 24:52
  then I went down to Haven and he went to Salem. So I around
• 24:56
  Christmas time and Don Perry comes on the ice and skating around. He said,
• 25:00
  you know this guy Shultz And I said, not really. He said,
• 25:03
  uh, it's got a hot he got two hundred and seventy eight menison
• 25:07
  penalties already. And I said, uh, see if he played for Cerell
• 25:12
  in Combectlee and he came back. Yeah, one game, I said,
• 25:15
  yeah, we brought in the fighting. He wouldn't fight me. They sent
• 25:18
  him home. I said, don't worry about him. He won't fucking fight.
• 25:22
  And then I think the first game in the Aven, I was,
• 25:25
  I got in the fight with somebody and he fucking tried something from the side
• 25:27
  and Soucker me and I knew he was on the ice and I knew he
• 25:30
  was going to do that, and then he got himself cost We went in,
• 25:38
  Yeah, we're down sailing me. I here to play hockey. Do
• 25:42
  you know I can fight? I don't have to fight, you know,
• 25:45
  I said, get grow some bows by come on. And then he went
• 25:48
  to the American League and I was in the American League and I said,
• 25:51
  and then the Cherry's my my coach in Rochester And I said, uh,
• 25:55
  I said, what Short's playing tonight? He said, playing left wing.
• 25:56
  I said, put me on the right wing. He said, what are
• 26:00
  you gonna do? I said, buck drops, I'm gonna drop my gloves
• 26:03
  and stick and I'm gonna bend over and picked him up and go play the
• 26:06
  game. Because he wouldn't fight, I dropped their gloves and stick and he
• 26:08
  skated away and it was in his rink. Did you have in your career
• 26:15
  more hockey fights or bar fights? Oh? Good questions? No, I
• 26:25
  didn't say, more more hockey flights? Yeah, well I had a lot
• 26:27
  of fights in that one in Princellward Island where the RCMP put me on the
• 26:32
  bus and sent me across the water. Now, who is the reporter?
• 26:37
  This is what? This is the other story I want to hear about.
• 26:41
  I actually I actually had to rewind it and listen to it again. And
• 26:44
  that's how intriguing and funny it was. It was named Paul Paul Marcel Marcellano.
• 26:51
  So what did this guy do to deserve what you guys did to him.
• 26:57
  Well, Monday at the rink at Na Ring, the old Arena burd
• 27:00
  and that was our day off, and we had just played two tough games
• 27:06
  and we I think we lost both of them. We won five four and
• 27:08
  four three. And we didn't think we played that bad. We didn't sink
• 27:12
  to play, so we did a couple of bad dances and we lost them.
• 27:17
  So we read the paper Monday morning and he's roasting us, you know,
• 27:22
  and the boys like you were sitting there now, we even drinking,
• 27:25
  says nine o'clock. We got there when he comes by around one o'clock and
• 27:27
  we said, no, you shouldn't be in here bye. You know,
• 27:30
  you gotta take the critics symbo this mountain. I said, well you gotta
• 27:33
  go, you gotta go. You know something, the boys are upset and
• 27:37
  you're fucking that's our day off. Leave us alone, you know, right,
• 27:40
  And he was adamant that he wasn't gonna go, and I said,
• 27:42
  well, you got fifteen minutes to get out, and if you're drinking gold,
• 27:47
  and he didn't finish it, so we got up to stripped them.
• 27:51
  You can't leave duck taped them and we stood him in the window and he
• 27:57
  had we had we had a cursing us and he was fucking Christenas and then
• 28:03
  we had I know, for some remembers there was they had like this a
• 28:06
  little bowing machine like yeah you put yeah, we yeah, yeah, we'd
• 28:12
  slide him down under did pop up on the roof and pull him back and
• 28:18
  slide him down back and forth. They can turn into that woman put back
• 28:22
  in the window. You know. The irony is never gave us a bad
• 28:27
  write up. I told him one time, I said, Paul, you've
• 28:32
  got to write a book about the Blades, and he said, Perry.
• 28:36
  Perry has to be dead first. And actually he passed away before before Perry
• 28:42
  maybe he knew too many things and then wanted to put him in the book.
• 28:45
  But yeah, that on I looked forward to. There were two papers
• 28:49
  Jeremy at the time, the New Aven Register and the Journal Courier, so
• 28:55
  they both you know, there were stories all the time, right and you
• 28:59
  know I read the religiously. And what happened for me that was great is
• 29:03
  the arena was a stone's throw from the main headquarters new Haven Fire and my
• 29:10
  dad was a New Haven firefighter, and across the street years later is where
• 29:17
  Channel eight moved to, but Channel eight wasn't there at the time when the
• 29:22
  Blades were here. Anyway, he was an inspector for the Fire Marshal's office
• 29:26
  the last several years of his life, and he would inspect the arena for
• 29:30
  faulty wiring and stuff. They would give him Blades tickets for doing that.
• 29:33
  So he'd get home, he'd stick him to my napkin. And that's sometimes
• 29:37
  how I'd find out on a Wednesday night or a Sunday night that I was
• 29:41
  going to the Blades game. I'd pick up my napkin. Tickets would follow.
• 29:42
  Oh nice, it was great. Nice. Yeah, you also are
• 29:48
  keV have a little claimed the fame with Wayne Gretzky as well, right,
• 29:52
  a little bit? Yeah, Okay, So I have a question because I
• 29:56
  watched the video. You told the story and then there was a female chuckling
• 30:02
  in the background that made you change your story slightly. Tell us what story
• 30:11
  you're going to do so the assist the assist you got On's first goal.
• 30:15
  But I told the TV station up here, and I did a thing on
• 30:21
  on the on the anniversary of it, and he said, do you remember
• 30:26
  the goal? And I said, which one do you want to hear?
• 30:30
  He said, well, tell me the story. So I said, well,
• 30:30
  I had the puck behind the net and I said, I carried the
• 30:34
  pluck up through past you know, five people, and guess he was cruising
• 30:41
  by the front of the net and I slid the puck to him and he
• 30:44
  scored. So then he turned around and he said, what's the real story
• 30:47
  And I said, I was behind the net. He was crossing the red
• 30:48
  line. I hit him with the pass and the store. I like my
• 30:53
  version that is, yeah, well you did that a lot anyway, didn't
• 30:56
  you. You scared the puck up a lot. Okay, yeah, so
• 31:03
  I didn't hear you. You skated a puck up a lot in general,
• 31:06
  though, didn't you From the defense position? Oh yeah, I always had.
• 31:10
  I got I got Harry Howe was my first defense partner. And you'd
• 31:15
  say, you know, you make the swing in the corner, you know,
• 31:18
  you get the puck, you go and uh, you know, I
• 31:23
  saw like once I got used to it, and I could I had a
• 31:26
  lane once I got some speed up, you know, I could I could
• 31:30
  lug it pretty far. So I became part of my game. So I
• 31:33
  got I did a lot of streeting and I didn't mind it. So what
• 31:37
  was were you? More? You were like a twenty gore? Scoller a
• 31:41
  few times, right, three times? The uha? I believe right,
• 31:47
  keV? You scored over twenty cave you there? You lose him, Kevin?
• 32:01
  Can you hear us? It must have awesome. We'll try to reconnect
• 32:07
  with him. All right, we'll get into you right now. Will we
• 32:09
  do a little technical nova Scotia difficulties. I'm gonna hang up on them and
• 32:15
  wait him the call back. But all right, so let's get into you
• 32:22
  a little bit then at the meantime, So your career obviously started following hockey,
• 32:27
  and he went to University New Haven. Yeah. I was really lucky
• 32:30
  that one of my professors at You and H Paul Douglas, was the corporate
• 32:36
  news director for Fox Mont and Communications Case one on one and WAVZ and so
• 32:43
  I had to do an internship for school, and I asked him if I
• 32:45
  could do it at the radio station, and he knew I was a hockey
• 32:49
  guy, said sure, why don't you cover the Nighthawks? For us.
• 32:52
  So that's really how I began my career, and that was late seventies,
• 32:59
  maybe seventies, eight seventy nine as I graduated from you in aighteent eighty,
• 33:04
  so I covered the Nighthawks and then I did it again for the next year
• 33:07
  or two beyond my internship, just for the experience, you know, and
• 33:12
  the exposure and uh, you know, it was a great time. So
• 33:15
  a lot of great people. But I'm still friends with a lot of the
• 33:17
  guys from from k C one oh one. Jerry Christopher was the morning guy.
• 33:22
  He's still at it over fifty years. In radio. Daniel Lyons,
• 33:27
  who's at Web one oh eight. He went from Case one oh one to
• 33:30
  TIC Radio in Hartford, and just a lot of fun. But hockey was
• 33:36
  was the beginning. And you know once once we began in Hartford in eighty
• 33:39
  nine and had the Whalers until obviously they departed in ninety six ninety seven season.
• 33:45
  For the years there you are, we lost you. Yeah. I
• 33:49
  think they had a little problem with that old the old handheld phone. I
• 33:54
  have here. I can get a new one so we can do this again.
• 33:59
  Absolutely, Uh, rich you can continue story. Richard was just talking
• 34:01
  about I mean, nobody cares about me. That's about Kevin. But there
• 34:07
  was another. Oh you know what, so so Kevin when you were when
• 34:10
  you were a nighthawk, you played the Russians that year, right, yeah?
• 34:15
  And how did you fight? Yes? I fought uh the number fifteen
• 34:20
  there left one year was a Karlamov. Yeah, he kicked the shit out
• 34:23
  of him. He never threw a punch. They pitched you, right,
• 34:27
  did one of the guys bite you? Me? And he funked my eyes
• 34:30
  out and then he uh how two big clumps of my brillow hair out and
• 34:35
  then he uh well else he did something else to me. I couldn't see
• 34:38
  you and had hair pulled out of me and hit my fingers. And what
• 34:44
  he said to me? How'd you do? I said, I got the
• 34:45
  ship takers and I never threw a punch. How it fought somebody too?
• 34:51
  I think? Yeah? Yeah. Gary was tough for a little guy.
• 34:54
  He was pretty tough, right, Oh, jeesez Cuz he had one of
• 34:57
  those faces that uh we had. We had a guy on our team,
• 35:01
  Craig rightman, he had another one of those faces, and Gary Howard had
• 35:06
  one of those faces. And there was another guy that played in uh uh,
• 35:10
  he played in the NHL to the he hit them off fucking night and
• 35:14
  they just look at you, you know, I said, Well, what
• 35:19
  I was trying to say is you you were a twenty course twenty goal scorer
• 35:22
  quite a few times, right, Yeah. I was the only guy,
• 35:25
  the only need defenseman in w A A to do it. And I did
• 35:29
  it three times, three times four? Where was uh? Where was your
• 35:35
  shot? Were you kind of from the point? Were you? And did
• 35:37
  you have a special special spot you'd like to shoot from or just kind of
• 35:42
  whatever whatever the play was, I used to shoot. I used to have
• 35:45
  the two three hundred shots, so I got a lot of ice time.
• 35:47
  I got some power play time, and like most of it would be like
• 35:52
  say, circles like DeAndre Lecuid was really good at. He said he had
• 35:55
  set spots. If I'm here, I want you over there. If I'm
• 35:59
  there, I want you over here. And I was putting the stick right
• 36:01
  on the puck, right on your stick, and all he had to do
• 36:05
  was release it. And did you ever wear a helmet? No? Never,
• 36:10
  Right, that's just for my listeners. I know the answer to that
• 36:15
  one. Yeah, I had Junior, I had to wear it, and
• 36:20
  then I'll get out of junior and then I'm on Easter League. I didn't
• 36:22
  I didn't want to wear it, and then it wasn't until I went back
• 36:25
  and played senior hockey in Newfoundland and I had to wear a helmet again.
• 36:30
  Now, Kevin, you played wing when you first got to the Blades and
• 36:32
  then later switched to defense. Yeah, I was. I played left wing
• 36:38
  my first year in Quebec and then I played defense the next two years and
• 36:43
  I won. I was first All Star in the Quebec League, and I
• 36:45
  was m VP of my team and for and uh. So I was drafted
• 36:52
  by the Rangers as a defenseman. But when they sent me down to New
• 36:54
  Haven, Perry already had his four guys from last from the year before.
• 37:00
  They had Norm Smith, and he had Gordy Smith, he had Smith,
• 37:04
  Bobby Peters, Yeah, Brophy, So he says, can you play that
• 37:07
  winger? So I started out on that wing. I was like, can
• 37:09
  play I'm going it. You know, they sent me here. I gotta
• 37:13
  play somewhere. So now you had a problem skating backwards in the early years,
• 37:17
  right, Oh, yeah, I couldn't played for three years, so
• 37:23
  I didn't skate there. And then I played that wing and then somebody said
• 37:25
  to me, you must know how to skate backwards. I said no,
• 37:29
  I said, I go in the corner. The guy's in the corner with
• 37:30
  the puck. I hit him, knock him down, turn around, and
• 37:35
  skate the other way with the puck. So I didn't have to learn how
• 37:37
  to skate backwards. And I was in Drummerville and I was They were doing
• 37:43
  this skate backwards drill and like, I just kept backing into the line in
• 37:46
  the corner. I said, I got it. So I backed out through
• 37:50
  the first set of backwards skating and then he says, okay, get to
• 37:53
  the other corner and we're gonna do it again. So I got to the
• 37:55
  other corner and I backed down about three feet once and I bunked into this
• 38:00
  thing. And I turned around and coached and I said, hi, coach.
• 38:05
  He said Monster Morrison. And then I said, yeah, you got
• 38:07
  a problem with the backward skating drill. I said yeah, and what is
• 38:13
  it? I said, I can't skate backwards. Oh, he said,
• 38:16
  you can't skate backwards. I said no. I left my ear. I
• 38:20
  said, you see me, play left wing. I went, I hit
• 38:22
  the button, stand up and if I fall down, I stand up and
• 38:24
  I go the other way. So he had the boys come out after practice
• 38:29
  and then on to the defenseman. And over the next couple of months they
• 38:31
  taught me how to skate backwards and turn and you know, played the game.
• 38:37
  And I went on from there played defensive the rest of my left pretty
• 38:40
  well. That's amazing. Yeah. So Jeremy Kevin was fifteen and this number
• 38:45
  was fifteen when he played wing and then so you got moved back when both
• 38:50
  he got traded, right, Yeah, and that's when you ended up with
• 38:55
  number two me. I got a constant yeah. And and that that jersey,
• 39:05
  by the way, So I used to play uh pickup hockey against a
• 39:08
  guy named Jimmy Lowry. Jimmy was a blade stick boy. Ended up with
• 39:14
  Kevin's jersey. Uhh yeah. He unfortunately he died uh way too young,
• 39:20
  Jimmy, but I remember him wearing that jersey and I could you couldn't stop
• 39:23
  looking at it. Yeah, I'm sorry. Sounds like you need a la
• 39:30
  bats or something. Yeah. And and Hainsworth had I had a chess go
• 39:38
  for about a month now and I got the Anios and went throughout limb,
• 39:43
  but I got the cough. I can't get rid of the freaking cough.
• 39:45
  Yeah, that's always lingers, especially in that cold weather up there. We
• 39:51
  had the Christmas time, we had one of our biggest storms in like eighty
• 39:54
  years, and I saw her for two weeks. It was probably, oh
• 39:58
  my god. Yeah, it was brutal, you know. But other than
• 40:05
  that, a nice place to live, a nice place to visit. Other
• 40:08
  than that, Yeah, So what else going on down around there here?
• 40:16
  Lorb who's got all the trees taken down up at the golf court? Yeah,
• 40:20
  they put a lot of money into it. A friend of mine is
• 40:22
  the pro there. So I'm looking forward to to sing it going this year.
• 40:25
  I had hernia's surgery a little bit over a month ago, so I'm
• 40:30
  on the disabled list until for another while, longer than I can play,
• 40:35
  So looking forward to going back there. How long is that for? They
• 40:39
  said about three months? I had three two groin and one belly button.
• 40:44
  Really, yeah, I had a growin when I was like three months old,
• 40:46
  but I don't remember. Yeah, but that was it. Yeah,
• 40:50
  So I haven't played yet this year, so I had it early in the
• 40:53
  year. So I could still get out there. Yeah, yeah, But
• 40:58
  you know, other than that, the when I was working at at Channel
• 41:01
  eight, I would sometimes purposely drive by, so I go past what's now
• 41:07
  the the FBI building, which is the old site of the arena. When
• 41:15
  you got to play for the Nighthawks, Kevin, the arena was still up.
• 41:19
  Was that like, would you drive by there just to kind of reminisce
• 41:22
  a little bit? Oh yeah, I would like about my first wife,
• 41:27
  Jodie's mother was from the Heaving, so she lived in Woodbridge. So and
• 41:31
  then uh, you know, we got I was in Texas when I come
• 41:35
  up with Christmas time when we got married, and I'm back to Texas and
• 41:38
  then we moved on to Rochester that year and then we ended up with behaving
• 41:44
  with the Nighthawks and then from there I signed with W A. H and
• 41:49
  went on from there. What a homeice advantage, Not so much with the
• 41:54
  Nighthawks at the Coliseum, but the but the arena. And I keep going
• 41:58
  back to that because it's to you know, for someone like Jeremy's age who
• 42:02
  didn't experience it, it was it was an unbelievable place and the you know,
• 42:07
  they spit on the fans would spit on the opposing players for the chicken
• 42:10
  wire and uh are afraid to go along the boards, right, And it
• 42:15
  was it was a huge homeice advantage. It was a it was a cultural
• 42:20
  shock. And then like the one I remember was I forget who it was,
• 42:23
  but they had the chicken hanging down from the ceiling stop for a face
• 42:29
  off and then the chicken had dropped down hit the guy and then he pulled
• 42:30
  him back up before he get hit it. Well, that was so that
• 42:34
  was that was for when I remember that was for Blake Ball when he would
• 42:38
  come in with the Ducks. So my my section, I sat in Section
• 42:42
  six, which was kind of opposite the blades bench, like the blue line
• 42:46
  on the other side, and Andy Paris was the was the usher. And
• 42:52
  Andy went on he would become an usher at the coliseum as well. And
• 42:58
  so a guy in our section would be in this fishing rod with a rubber
• 43:01
  chicken on the and cast it over the girders and then you know, just
• 43:05
  kind of lower it right, and I remember one time Balls swinging his stick
• 43:08
  at it and then he would just kind of reel it back back up there.
• 43:12
  I mean, anything goes, yeah, right. Well, they say
• 43:15
  Slapshot was more of a documentary than a than a movie. Right. Yeah.
• 43:22
  I remember another time there that there was along the side and fans kind
• 43:25
  of lifted the mesh up and they just dropped it on somebody and then they
• 43:30
  picked it back up and put it in the spot. But thank god to
• 43:36
  run by side. What was the craziest like away game whatever league you were
• 43:40
  in that you ever, like the fans were just like you, like,
• 43:44
  I know you would never fear for yourself, but some people are like,
• 43:47
  man, these guys are ravage. Uh well, the worst situation we had
• 43:53
  was Clinton. They locked us on the ice overtime and we had to go
• 43:59
  off for this bony come on and like you know, you couldn't get up.
• 44:02
  You're goulda climb up over the Jesus mess out the screen to get out.
• 44:07
  So we're all down the end there and Don Don Perry and uh gunner
• 44:10
  around shoes and he said, okay, we got a plan. I said,
• 44:15
  what's that. He said, We're gonna pass you over the fucking screen.
• 44:19
  You get down the other side and open the door and we'll come in.
• 44:21
  I said, that's a nice fucking plan. Anyway, he said,
• 44:27
  uh oh yeah, I was just you know, you got your skats on.
• 44:29
  You know, they don't kick your feet going down. You got your
• 44:31
  stick and then you'll use your other hand open. Oh yeah, great plan.
• 44:37
  But it worked and we got in there and then it didn't take long
• 44:39
  for them to scatter once we came in with the thirteen sticks and they were
• 44:45
  gone. So Kevin, you were were you as as a a spectator because
• 44:52
  you weren't playing there at the time, but you were Were you at the
• 44:55
  last game in Syracuse when the linesman was hitting the blade and Jim Armstrong had
• 45:01
  a jump on top and all that. Were you there that night? No?
• 45:07
  No, why there was a rumor that you were there who you were
• 45:08
  playing for, but that you were there. How intense were the games with
• 45:14
  the Comets and Clinton? They well, you know they had a good team
• 45:17
  and you know they were I mean, they were the team to beat in
• 45:22
  the North most of the time, and I think we were competitive with them,
• 45:25
  but uh there they they were so fast, you know, for us
• 45:30
  little slower guys like it was, they were like little water skeeters and they
• 45:35
  were all over the place like ice. And you know, they had a
• 45:37
  good system and they had good goal to ending and they had some toughness,
• 45:40
  and so I can mean the other teams. I'm not sure they didn't have
• 45:46
  anything. I think I told he won the championship a couple of years after
• 45:51
  I left. But they took a lot of I think Billy or and some
• 45:55
  of the guys. Yeah, Billy Adnnoy had they had two brothers. Oh
• 46:02
  yeah, they were good. Ferguson's Do you remember Tom Mitchell from Clinton?
• 46:07
  I played with them and I went to Fort Worth and they were owned by
• 46:10
  Detroit at the time, and I got to play with them down there.
• 46:15
  We had a problem with our coach down there too, so so so Tom
• 46:20
  Mitchell. Tom Mitchell ended up being a business like in Binghamton, New York
• 46:24
  with the Binghamton Rangers and Binghamton. Eventually, when the Whalers left Hartford,
• 46:30
  the Rangers moved Binghamton to Hartford. So I find out about that that it
• 46:36
  is the same Tom Mitchell who played for Clinton. So I'm ready for him.
• 46:39
  So I got a call from the PR guy in Hartford. He says,
• 46:44
  I want to come by with Tom Mitchell, he's our business guy and
• 46:46
  talk to you about you know, coverage of the team. I said,
• 46:50
  okay. So they come by the TV studio and the first guy introduces himself
• 46:55
  and he introduces me to Tom as I'm shaking hands with Tom Mitchell. I
• 47:00
  said, hated you, bleeping guys. He said, what excuse me?
• 47:02
  I said, Clinton hated you. He goes, You're too young to remember.
• 47:07
  I said, no, I'm not number one. Tucker goal number two
• 47:09
  Onney Speck. I got to number five. Was Pat Kelly, the player
• 47:13
  coach, and he said, all right, all right, I believe you.
• 47:15
  I said, you ever fight Morrison? Yeah, I kicked my ass
• 47:17
  in the arena one night. What what's what's your uh? What's your record?
• 47:25
  Like you got to have like a boxers record now, like seventy nine
• 47:30
  and oh, as far as I'm concerned, I never last any There we
• 47:32
  go. That's that's what I figured. But you had that three rounder,
• 47:37
  but you won that. I had a lot of fights in that in New
• 47:39
  Haven, yeah, and in the American League and then with Rochester. I
• 47:45
  only had a couple of Rochester because I was only there in the last fifteen
• 47:49
  or twenty games in the schedule. And then the next year I was in
• 47:52
  tide Water with the Red Wings. And my defense partner was a guy named
• 47:55
  Joey Johnson or something, and he was a career American leaguer and he was
• 48:01
  he jumped into everything, you know. So I'm playing first eighteen games.
• 48:05
  I never had a fight. So Harkness comes in from Detroit and he said,
• 48:08
  uh, we're gonna send you over to Fort Worth and centrally. I
• 48:12
  said, what for it? He said, you're not fighting. I said,
• 48:15
  I'm not fighting. I said, you got me with Johnson here?
• 48:16
  I said, every time something happens he jumps in, you know, put
• 48:20
  me with another defenseman. Yeah, no, I'm gonna send you down there
• 48:22
  is. So they packed up and I drove down there, went to Fort
• 48:25
  Worth and I got I think it was played thirty games and I had twenty
• 48:30
  some fights. And Hartner comes down. He says, I we'll send you
• 48:32
  back to Tidewater. I said what He said, No, you're fighting too
• 48:37
  much. I said, what do you want? I don't know what you
• 48:38
  want? You know. Then they had us at training camp. There was
• 48:42
  me and I forget the guy's name. He was a big Frenchford defenseman,
• 48:45
  the toughest nails and played with the Rangers. It'll company, but uh,
• 48:52
  we're a training camp and we said, okay, we want you two guys
• 48:54
  to beat up everybody in training camp. I said, are you what are
• 48:58
  your mind and he said, yeah, we want to see who's tough,
• 49:01
  but who wants to stay, who wants to be a red wing? And
• 49:04
  I said, yeah, the broad bays so and I'm on the bottom.
• 49:07
  Nobody's gonna be coming to my ouse. R R. You know, you
• 49:09
  beat up your teammates. I said, you can't do that. I said,
• 49:12
  just weed them out. I can tell you which guys aren't going right.
• 49:15
  You could scout that from from just watching them. Yeah, you guys,
• 49:20
  said, you know they make that little circle before they're going for the
• 49:22
  park. That's because they don't want to go in the corner. That's the
• 49:24
  first trade, you know. So anyway, now they they're at of it.
• 49:30
  So they uh put uh they put us against. There was the American
• 49:37
  league team that they had in uh where I had around that or someplace at
• 49:42
  the time, and we were uh the Central Hockey League. So we played
• 49:49
  against the American host league team and we ran them right out of the ring.
• 49:52
  And they didn't have a fucking cancer. And like I skated by him
• 49:55
  after I'm going off the ice, and I said, I said, well,
• 49:59
  I said, there's twenty five guys. You don't have to count on
• 50:01
  you. They don't want to go in the corners. They wouldn't go in.
• 50:04
  They were giving the fuck away all night. So now, when you
• 50:08
  were with Colorado Rockies in the NHL, you played the full season there,
• 50:13
  right, No, didn't get the whole year now down to get in shape?
• 50:15
  Were us and they brought me back up? Were you fighting a lot
• 50:21
  in the NHL too? Or No? I didn't fight. I had a
• 50:22
  fight. I fought uh O'Reilly one night and then we had a we had
• 50:28
  a big brawl with Terry Vancouver and training camp and uh, well, we
• 50:32
  had a bunch of guys that would fight that. Barry Beck was there and
• 50:36
  myself and Rondie delarm and uh uh Nick Nick was Nick's last night. He
• 50:43
  was a good He fought a lot and we had what seven eight guys trap
• 50:46
  that we just couldn't play hockey, couldn't get a goalie we had. Hardy
• 50:52
  asked him from Sweden played played for the Nighthawks as well. Yeah, did
• 50:57
  he was he down there? Yeah? Yep, Hardy was here. Well,
• 51:00
  you almost played for for Kelly in Colorado. Right, he was there,
• 51:06
  Oh he was there. Oh yeah, he was the director of player
• 51:08
  personnel. He's the guy sent me down. I couldn't remember if it was
• 51:12
  the same time. So how did that go over? Well, they said
• 51:15
  that we're at training camp, and uh, I was two twelve and I
• 51:21
  was too twelve, probably like if you look at my stats all the way
• 51:23
  through, I was to two two to two twelve. Yeah, And he
• 51:28
  said to Cherry, he said, he's we got to send them down.
• 51:30
  Get him in shape, Cherry, so I can get him in shape here,
• 51:34
  not send them down. No, he was trying to break me.
• 51:38
  But anyway, he sent me down. He was supposed to be for two
• 51:40
  weeks and then ended up being six weeks. And Cherry would call down and
• 51:45
  doctor the coach and he said, who's the best player on the ice.
• 51:47
  He says, Morrison, you know, he's doing it all. And then
• 51:52
  he'd he'd tell, uh, Kelly, you know we got to bring him
• 51:55
  back up. We need that kind of guy. He's hitting his fight and
• 51:59
  doing it all. Well, well, it took him six or seven weeks
• 52:01
  to get me back and uh, you know, like he never if he
• 52:06
  came in the room. He wouldn't he walk around me. He wouldn't stop
• 52:08
  and say high or nothing, and like, you know, there was the
• 52:13
  feelings. Now your career kind of took a turn, I wouldn't say ironically,
• 52:20
  but like it was like a charity game you were in. Was it
• 52:23
  somewhere you where you got your ankle broken? Yeah? It was a hospital.
• 52:28
  Uh, the children's were at the hot local hospital here in Sydney.
• 52:31
  They had a no hit, no slap shot game, like a scrub game.
• 52:36
  Yeah, to raise money for the hospital. So I was out and
• 52:39
  I was you know, it's no fooling around and doing different things and the
• 52:44
  trying different moves and and showing off ship. And so this guy comes up
• 52:47
  and he gets three feet from me and he teed one up and he ripped
• 52:51
  it and he snapped my ankle. M I was done for pretty well of
• 52:58
  the year that year. Yeah, and I was in a car accident and
• 53:01
  I snapped the same ankle, saying spot. I was gone almost like a
• 53:05
  year and a half. I didn't wasn't on the skates and then I'm thirty
• 53:10
  four years old and right, uh, nothing looking you know, not looking
• 53:15
  good after not skating for a year and a half. So a guy from
• 53:17
  New Foaland cal me and said, you know, if you can get on
• 53:21
  the ice, and you know, we can have a look at you see
• 53:23
  if your leg's all right to skate, we would like to come over and
• 53:28
  play in the Newfouland Senior Hockey League, you know. So, so I
• 53:34
  had a couple of I got back on the ice, and then I had
• 53:36
  a we had a sort of a senior team here in Sydney. So I
• 53:39
  played a game with them when they were there and they they said, yeah,
• 53:43
  I keep skating, and uh, we don't play for two more weeks.
• 53:45
  He said, uh, And then uh they started flying me over.
• 53:50
  Just fly over for the weekend, play two games and they'd play me home.
• 53:54
  So did that for that year and then the following year, and they
• 53:58
  asked me just stay over. And they had the big paper middle air and
• 54:01
  they said, we can get your job in the middle. I said,
• 54:04
  nope, I'm kind of happy right here where I'm at. You know,
• 54:07
  I don't need to just pay me my money for playing each game, and
• 54:10
  right I'll hang around here with the boys. What was your what was your
• 54:15
  final year? Uh? Jeez? Eight eight I think eighty eight. I
• 54:22
  finished over there. Wow, that's a long career. Now you're on two
• 54:27
  new knees and a hip coming up. Huh. I got the two knees
• 54:30
  done. Yeah, I'm just waiting on the hip. Yeah, we're having
• 54:35
  a The one that did my knees, she did a fantastic job. We
• 54:38
  had this big lawsuit that was out in UH that they were letting the records
• 54:46
  that can go back in the records for people that had the brain damage and
• 54:51
  shting like that, like in the the CT the NHL and and then the
• 54:55
  football and baseball and big lawsuit and we got involved in that, so we
• 55:00
  had to go out there and be tested. So we're going up and did
• 55:04
  it on them. So we got it, like my buddy Norman Ferguson's from
• 55:07
  here and uh chicker Andre and we all went out and we all got to
• 55:12
  check, you know, depending on how you know sabled you were, and
• 55:15
  they probably should have checked more of the guys you fought than yourself. But
• 55:22
  the so you're good, No, you're clean. No Cte here she said
• 55:27
  that she did my hip something, she said, my niece, and she
• 55:30
  said she did a great job. But the hip for some reason, she
• 55:34
  gotta cut me from the back and she said, you'll have to learn how
• 55:37
  to walk again. You're able to do six month rehab And I said,
• 55:40
  listen, seventy three, I'm not I'm not rehabbing for six months. I
• 55:45
  said. Now, this was a year and a half ago. I said,
• 55:46
  I'll suffer, but it's at the point now where you know, I
• 55:50
  can't right as up as I am, I can't suffer it anymore. I
• 55:52
  gotta get it done. Yeah. So, and I might be, uh
• 55:58
  might be coming down there to get it done. That'd be awesome. Yeah,
• 56:00
  that'd be awesome. Do you do you get Do you still have people
• 56:07
  like I'll send you one of your cards to sign or stuff like that.
• 56:12
  Oh? Yeah, It's amazing, isn't it. And it has to be
• 56:16
  a good feeling after the fact. And what I talked to before was before
• 56:23
  we started, where I said, meeting you at Laurelview in Hamden was such
• 56:30
  a cool moment for me because when you get older, I mean, you
• 56:32
  can look at, you know, people differently than you did as a ten
• 56:37
  year old or whatever. But it really took me back to that time,
• 56:42
  which was such a special time in my life. And I couldn't wait to
• 56:47
  call my brother. My older brother let me tag along and go to blades
• 56:52
  games with him, you know, And I was, you know, I
• 56:54
  was only thirteen. I mentioned my dad being a firefighter in New Haven.
• 56:59
  I was thirteen and he passed away. So it was, you know,
• 57:04
  going to those games and the Nighthawks games where and having an older brother will
• 57:07
  let me tag along, and I knew he couldn't he couldn't wait. And
• 57:10
  to this day, he'll come over for say, Christmas time, right,
• 57:15
  and I'll take out I've got a couple of blades programs still, and we'll
• 57:19
  laugh because we'll look at the concession stand prices, you know, fifteen cents
• 57:23
  for potato chips, or you know, a beer is like seventy five cents
• 57:29
  or a dollar, you know. And I wasn't old enough to go into
• 57:31
  the to the grill next door the arena grill, but I did go once
• 57:37
  when I went to the Ice Capades, and I have a little bit of
• 57:40
  a memory of that. But Kevin tell me, so, you guys would
• 57:45
  often go there, but you'd also go to another place in New Haven after
• 57:50
  games, correct, Malone Malons. Yeah, See, I would go to
• 57:53
  Malones a little bit after the fact, you know, once I've gotten once
• 57:57
  I was sixteen or whatever, out of the grill, and then like when
• 58:01
  it pretty well didn't shut down, but there was nobody there. We'd go
• 58:05
  down to Malones and they'd be We'd be down there two or three in the
• 58:07
  morning. And then I'm the ace at nine a stay for home. And
• 58:14
  then I think they moved that Malones moved over to so they moved somewhere else
• 58:20
  in town. Where were they back then? They were right down from you
• 58:24
  lead. I rinked like a blockdown. Then I was downstairs. You had
• 58:28
  a walk downstairs. Oh it was right there, Yeah, okay, yeah,
• 58:30
  yeah, I mean but the other one was over I don't know where
• 58:34
  it was, and I was that up somewhere. It was pretty far.
• 58:39
  I went down the last few times I was down. When I was,
• 58:43
  I went over there to see if the old refuse still alive. I had
• 58:47
  I know, you guys remember Billy Cow I love Billy Call. Yeah.
• 58:52
  Yeah. He I drove like you know. He said where are you at?
• 58:54
  And I said, I'm in Nova Scotia. This is how far is
• 58:57
  that? I said, one thousand miles? He said, when are you
• 59:00
  going home. I said, I'm leaving tonight. I went home by eight
• 59:01
  o'clock tomorrow morning. Oh my god. So he thought he could get there
• 59:05
  and one day took him three days hotels, him and his wife and had
• 59:09
  a kid with him. And I said, you got to get here before
• 59:13
  Thursday because I got to go to a hockey school. And I said,
• 59:15
  And he got there Thursday at dinner time, just when I was leaving.
• 59:19
  So I said, okay, here's my brother Donnie. He's going to take
• 59:22
  you are on the trail. He's going to take you out to Louisbourg and
• 59:24
  show you the old fort and whatever you want to do, you're in his
• 59:29
  hands. He'll take would carry you. So so Billy, when I was
• 59:34
  going to Nighthawks and covering the Nighthawks, Billy was then in the arena of
• 59:37
  the Coliseum lounge running that. But he was before that, he was at
• 59:43
  the arena grill and another great, great guy. When when people like me
• 59:49
  Kevin tell you that to this day, like I told Kevin when I met
• 59:52
  him at Laurel View, I said, you don't understand. We still talk
• 59:55
  about you guys to this day. And when I did the story on the
• 1:00:00
  the tablets that were part of the arena. And I did the interview with
• 1:00:04
  with Hainsworth and Branford and and Kevin came on. You know, the reaction
• 1:00:09
  I got to that to people, you know, my age and older,
• 1:00:13
  was that they couldn't they couldn't believe the things still existed, but then talked
• 1:00:15
  about how great it was to see Kevin and and and Hainsworth. And I
• 1:00:20
  had a friend of mine had two scrap books with blade stuff and he let
• 1:00:23
  me take them home and I was reading them almost like it was in real
• 1:00:29
  time. It took me back to that. But yeah, to to this
• 1:00:32
  day, and I'll say it to you again, Kevin, and we still
• 1:00:37
  still talk about you guys with it was such a We were very impressionable and
• 1:00:43
  the guys were good. The guys were approachable, so Kevin. There's a
• 1:00:49
  picture that's been on Facebook with Kevin with a friend of mine and his brother,
• 1:00:53
  last name is Rascati, and you could see the like orangish ricks that
• 1:01:00
  were the arena halls. I'm still trying to find pictures. You can find
• 1:01:06
  online pictures of the outside of the arena. There's very few inside. There's
• 1:01:09
  some of the of the rink and stuff, but very few outside the rink
• 1:01:14
  when you'd enter the arena. Two things that struck me above the doors were
• 1:01:19
  the Eastern League standings handwritten. Yeah, And there was a table across from
• 1:01:23
  that they sold the hockey news and the programs, and it was something called
• 1:01:29
  the Hockey Pictorial. And I still have some of that stuff. I wish
• 1:01:32
  I had saved it all though, but it was such a it was such
• 1:01:36
  a great time. All right, keV. If you want to hang on
• 1:01:40
  with a little bit, I want to get into some modern day hockey,
• 1:01:45
  maybe a little bit of sports, You're more than welcome to hang on.
• 1:01:46
  But before we get to that, I do want to talk about your Hall
• 1:01:50
  of Fame collection just keeps growing. And I see you're in five Hall of
• 1:01:55
  Fames and counting. I think, right, you're going to be hopefully and
• 1:02:00
  some more. Well, I'm if they if they do the w h A
• 1:02:06
  one, I should be in that, yeah, because I had to do
• 1:02:09
  the most schools and most hat tricks and stuff like that. And but the
• 1:02:14
  guy that was in charge of that that they did the first one and then
• 1:02:16
  he died of a heart attack, and then nobody took it over. So
• 1:02:20
  I don't know what what they're gonna do with that, but that's gotta be
• 1:02:24
  awesome honors just to uh, you know, you think you told a story.
• 1:02:30
  One of them was you couldn't get there or something right like they're doing
• 1:02:34
  yeah, yeah, and you know, and then there was some of the
• 1:02:38
  guys that were going into it I didn't get along with. So I did
• 1:02:42
  really wanted to be in the middle of Newfoundland, you know, with three
• 1:02:47
  or four people that I didn't want to be around. So uh, and
• 1:02:52
  then I was there taking care of I get the grandkids and stuff like that.
• 1:02:57
  Now so like I'm on call if they have or sick they can't go
• 1:03:01
  to school. The kids, they didn't have a program here where they could,
• 1:03:05
  uh, you know, put them somewhere right right. Like my grandson
• 1:03:09
  there, he's seven now, he's just getting into the hockey the last two
• 1:03:13
  years now, so and he says, he calls me Zidney, which is
• 1:03:16
  Lebanese for grandfather, and like showing them how to shoot and how to skate
• 1:03:24
  and get them gone. And he's getting the hook. He's hooked on it.
• 1:03:28
  Now he's a Florida Panther fan. And now do you have a team
• 1:03:34
  I got an ABM team anybody in Montreal. I like the Islanders, that's
• 1:03:40
  the old school state. I like Tampa Bay. I like the way they
• 1:03:45
  were going there three or three or four years ago, won the three or
• 1:03:47
  four Cups. I like the way they played. They all played the same
• 1:03:51
  and they were finishing their checks and they were like in everybody's face, and
• 1:03:55
  they had the goaltending and but uh yeah, I got like, there's got
• 1:04:00
  a couple of guys from Nova Scotia and the mckinning guys's Colorado. Yeah,
• 1:04:06
  I don't know. I have to catch him at the bus. But the
• 1:04:11
  way he flies around the ice. Yeah, but they're like some of them
• 1:04:16
  skating is just a hell of a lot different than what I played, you
• 1:04:19
  know. But they got so many, you know, different techniques now for
• 1:04:27
  you know, they can work on your speed and they can work on your
• 1:04:30
  Yeah, it's so much different now. They can work on your spinning and
• 1:04:33
  all this stuff and where you don't lose you know, some of us cross
• 1:04:36
  over and we lose a step. Yeah, you can cross over now and
• 1:04:40
  you can pick up a step, you know. And that's that's what I'm
• 1:04:45
  trying to get. The young fellow he doesn't like to lift that second foot?
• 1:04:49
  Was there when you when you first got to the Rockies. Was it
• 1:04:56
  like I can't wait to play in the forum or Maple Leaf gardens or was
• 1:05:00
  there a place that you above the rest you couldn't wait to play it?
• 1:05:06
  Well, yeah, I played just outside Montreal, but I went to a
• 1:05:12
  few games there, but I was never on the ice, so there and
• 1:05:15
  then like maybe leaf gardens, and then well we had played in Winnipeg,
• 1:05:17
  so I didn't have to worry about that one. And Calgary and but no,
• 1:05:24
  there wasn't uh and you had played in the in the Madison Square Garden
• 1:05:27
  with the Golden Blades, right, yeah, how was that experience? I
• 1:05:32
  think we lasted I don't know, fourteen games or fifteen games. And then
• 1:05:35
  they moved to Cherry Hill, New Jersey, which you thought you were done
• 1:05:40
  with right after played against Jersey there, right, Oh, but something else
• 1:05:45
  just no, master mess was only on the ends. And then there was
• 1:05:49
  a big swoop on one of the blue lines. The park him on the
• 1:05:53
  corner. By the time it got to me, it was just high.
• 1:05:58
  The ice was that bad? Oh God, he couldn't get dressed in the
• 1:06:01
  dressing who's the visiting team had to dress at the hotel, walk in with
• 1:06:06
  the skates over the shoulders, and then put the skates on him and go
• 1:06:10
  on the ice. Zamboni would Well, it wasn't Zamboni was a tractor.
• 1:06:16
  Nine times out of ten it would break down and we'd have to work the
• 1:06:18
  players and push it off. Oh Jesus, yeah, thank god. At
• 1:06:24
  the end of the year when the guy who bought us from Baltimore and he
• 1:06:27
  moved to to San Diego. What a treat that. Wow? And Willie
• 1:06:31
  O Ree you played with the New Haven. He was a great guy,
• 1:06:34
  right. Oh, yeah, he was with us in San Diego too,
• 1:06:38
  that's right. So he came a few years ago. I got to sit
• 1:06:42
  down at dinner with him. He was at Quinnipiac at one of the games
• 1:06:45
  there that I was calling, and he was the first black, first black
• 1:06:48
  to play in the NFL with the bro against Montreal. Yeah. In fact,
• 1:06:55
  a really nice man. He's still traveling around and doing some stuff for
• 1:06:59
  the league. Yeah, he's got the black awareness thing going. He's promoting
• 1:07:02
  it everywhere they take him everywhere. He still lives in San Diego. The
• 1:07:08
  last I know him, well, he took me hunting in San Diego and
• 1:07:11
  I said, We're not we gonna hunt here, you know, you're in
• 1:07:15
  the desert. He said, no, We're gonna go get some doves and
• 1:07:17
  we're gonna get some hair rabbits. And he said some rattles lakes. You
• 1:07:23
  know, there's there's lots of things to shoot, he said. I said,
• 1:07:27
  what do you want me to ring? He said, well, I'll
• 1:07:29
  bring Uh. You gotta have at least ten gallons of water for the for
• 1:07:31
  the weekend and and I said yeah, And he said, uh, you
• 1:07:35
  can bring a few beer. Oh. I didn't bring any water. I
• 1:07:38
  brought all beer. So he said, you gotta have water, you're gonna
• 1:07:43
  get hydrated. Said no, I said, my good sweater, I said
• 1:07:45
  the beer. So we shot rattle snakes and we skinned them and we ate
• 1:07:50
  them, and shot the doves and skinned and ate them and and the hares.
• 1:07:55
  We did that. So did that for three days and I think we
• 1:07:58
  did it like three or four times. Really, what do you do on
• 1:08:00
  the weekend? I said, I'm home, let's go. How do you
• 1:08:04
  I mean a rattlesnake? Huh? What do they taste like? Just like
• 1:08:10
  eels? Yeah? I don't think no, No, like chicken, everybody's
• 1:08:18
  like to make sure there's no fangs in it. Then there's there's not moving.
• 1:08:23
  Yeah right, we just we nailed. We nailed it to the fence
• 1:08:28
  and then we skinned the skin. Then you get nailed the meat into the
• 1:08:33
  fence and then you pull the skin off it and then you chop it up
• 1:08:36
  and you fry it and eat it. Wow hmm, and you drink a
• 1:08:42
  lot of beers. Oh yeah, got to wash it down. You know.
• 1:08:46
  I did a search the other day trying to find some of your fights
• 1:08:49
  and it mentioned O'Reilly, but there was no video of it. What do
• 1:08:55
  you remember about the fight with Terry O'Reilly? That wasn't much of a fight
• 1:08:59
  because I didn't he does not have a he's got terrible balance, and uh
• 1:09:03
  we kindly we wrestled and I threw him down, and then he get up
• 1:09:06
  and we wrestled. I threw him down again, and then by then the
• 1:09:11
  blindsman jumped in and that was the extend of it. Well, I don't
• 1:09:13
  think there was any punches thrown. Oh really? Yeah, you mentioned somewhere
• 1:09:18
  along the line, not only DuPont, but Steve Turbano Turbano was pretty crazy,
• 1:09:25
  wasn't he. Oh? He was nuts? And he was drafted the
• 1:09:29
  same year as me, Me and DuPont and him. We all drafted that
• 1:09:31
  year with the Rangers, right. So they went to uh Omaha. I
• 1:09:36
  went to New Haven and the way it worked back then was if like we
• 1:09:42
  lost out in New Haven. So there was me and Gordy Smith and it
• 1:09:46
  was the other There was another guy that was owned by the Rangers. No,
• 1:09:51
  he was there after me. Uh Brenda mar No, it wasn't Brandamor
• 1:09:59
  I'm I wasn't French. He wasn't Frenchy owned by then Pail of the block
• 1:10:05
  Pay. I don't know, I forget. But so we went to Omaha.
• 1:10:10
  So we get to Omaha Hotel and the Central Hockey League, and you
• 1:10:15
  know DuPont I played against the other so I knew him a little bit.
• 1:10:18
  I didn't know the Bano and then uh I move with the Bano. So
• 1:10:24
  rout by the pool having a beer after the game, and he watched by
• 1:10:28
  me and he said, hitch your stuff under the room. He said,
• 1:10:30
  what do you mean, you stitch your stuff under the room? Fuck off?
• 1:10:34
  And I said the DuPont was over. He said, go move your
• 1:10:36
  stuff. He said, he's in the mood. I said the mood for
• 1:10:40
  what were are my clothes? He said he was going in the start the
• 1:10:44
  fucking fire. So I went in and got the suitcase, got on my
• 1:10:47
  stock and hollowed put the DuPont room. And he looked the fucking from the
• 1:10:51
  hotel on fire. Wow. And then he tried to claw me in the
• 1:10:59
  Penley box. And there I had to I had to fix them. That
• 1:11:04
  fight. You've seen that one on the YouTube? Yeah, yeah, that
• 1:11:08
  was that was the big one, right, yeah, is that the one
• 1:11:11
  punch the one ye took him right down? And then even that, like
• 1:11:16
  you know, we're two weeks later, we're in Birmingham and we're in the
• 1:11:21
  bar. And the rule and the rules there were if the visiting teams wouldn't
• 1:11:26
  go to their home like they had their home home bar, right, they
• 1:11:30
  wouldn't weren't there to drink. But if we're in the bar and then somebody
• 1:11:33
  comes in and they see that the Mariners and there, they're not supposed to
• 1:11:35
  stay. Well. He went up and sat down and the counter and his
• 1:11:41
  wife sat down beside him, and they're ordering drinks and they're ordering wings,
• 1:11:45
  and the boys are all saying, go tell them to get out. You
• 1:11:47
  go tell them to get out. Well, you fucking knocked him out,
• 1:11:49
  you go tell him? And I said, so anyway, I get up
• 1:11:53
  and I started walking over there, and then and the wife getting the fight
• 1:11:55
  and she hauled off and she dropped them down to the fucking stool down on
• 1:12:00
  the floor. He goes, and I walked over and I said, I'm
• 1:12:02
  fighting around fucking uh the rana. And he got up and he was big
• 1:12:06
  bread. He was so embarrassed, and he didn't say where. He just
• 1:12:10
  went out the door and she was out the door laughing behind him. You
• 1:12:15
  need to do a book, hevin, You ever do a book? I
• 1:12:19
  thought we did that one story there and then, like my daughter said,
• 1:12:24
  after us, she said, what else is there? I said, wanted
• 1:12:26
  some stories in there that you know, you might have to uh change the
• 1:12:30
  names to protect the inn some of that stuff there. You know, you
• 1:12:34
  know that did that stuff really happen? You know? You remember when Clinton
• 1:12:41
  my night, we're staying over and I don't know why because usually we can
• 1:12:45
  right back after him. I get this phone call and Pierre LeBlanc is my
• 1:12:48
  roommate, and I picked, he said for you. So I get on
• 1:12:53
  the I say hello. Uh. Then this voice was said, oh man,
• 1:12:58
  how are you? I mean she could do a phone sex. So
• 1:13:02
  she's talking and she said, yeah, why can I come up and visit
• 1:13:06
  your I said, well, you know what the coach looks like. Yeah,
• 1:13:10
  I know. Don I said, well you can't. You can't come
• 1:13:12
  buy my room, you know with him? Okay, you'll kill me,
• 1:13:15
  so I said. So, she said, I know what room you're in.
• 1:13:19
  So they knocked on the door and I opened the door and there was
• 1:13:23
  a motel of light like right outside the door. I could not see the
• 1:13:27
  light that she blocked the whole light out and she said to me Kevin and
• 1:13:31
  I said no, he's right there in the bed, and she ran in
• 1:13:36
  and she jumped on me, and I went down to slept in Bobby Peters's
• 1:13:48
  room that night. He definitely got to write a book. He probably got
• 1:13:57
  a thousand stories like that. We had. Pierre was he had a few
• 1:14:02
  tendency not say bad guy. I love the guy. And I come home
• 1:14:09
  one night and between us and the Warverhel says this, I think he's back
• 1:14:13
  in Comacas. Me Pierre, he didn't stay down and nerayvend? Did he?
• 1:14:17
  No? No. I came back in the room and I opened the
• 1:14:20
  door and TV shot lights are all laughing. I see these blue lights on
• 1:14:25
  the bed and I look as what are you doing? It's all I have
• 1:14:30
  to get rid of my gas. He's lighting his first I said, what
• 1:14:33
  are you doing? I said, what happens? And what gools the other
• 1:14:36
  way? Oh it hurts, he said. And I said, all right,
• 1:14:40
  I gotta get out of here. I have to back down the broom
• 1:14:44
  again. I'll sleeping on the sofa up. Now. What the bus the
• 1:14:51
  Green Monster? Right, Tony was the was the Blades pussy right? I
• 1:14:59
  didn't hear you what you say the bus that was known as the Green Monster.
• 1:15:02
  I think the Blades bus. Tony was the bus driver, right,
• 1:15:06
  yeah, And that bus used to have to go up hills backwards. It
• 1:15:12
  was one story. I don't know. I don't remember that, not when
• 1:15:15
  I was there. I remember like if if John was mad at us,
• 1:15:21
  he uh no mirror and also we holed out went up to get them cans
• 1:15:28
  and take one out of it and then tie them out on the the driver's
• 1:15:30
  side of the bus. Because he'd walk up and down the aisles. But
• 1:15:34
  I mean he knew as soon as we pulled away, because you could hear
• 1:15:36
  all the cans rattling. But he never said anything. But another time there
• 1:15:50
  we were playing cards down the back and he was mad at me for something,
• 1:15:53
  and I don't know what it was, but and I could see up
• 1:15:57
  I could see Don up at the front, and every once somebody he turned
• 1:16:00
  around and he had to bear in his hand, and he was getting madder
• 1:16:02
  and madder and madder. And halfway down we had this bunk that was hung
• 1:16:08
  inside the luggy tracks. He had to climb underneath it to get to the
• 1:16:12
  back. So he's coming down, marsh and we gotta out a chat.
• 1:16:15
  I'm pissed off, and even he's hollered at me and everything. So I
• 1:16:17
  waited for him to get underneath the mattress and I jumped at him, drove
• 1:16:24
  his head right up through the pine wood through the mattress and pinned the thing
• 1:16:28
  to the to the roof of the bus, and I just sat back down
• 1:16:31
  and everybody had a good laugh, and I said, you are right now,
• 1:16:33
  buddy. You didn't gay guys love playing for him? Right? Yeah?
• 1:16:43
  I was just you. He didn't, you know. He wouldn't go
• 1:16:47
  out and say this is what you gotta do. He'd say, why didn't
• 1:16:49
  you try this? You know? And then if you tried it and it
• 1:16:51
  worked and you liked it, you kept doing it, you know, And
• 1:16:56
  he, uh, I know, I'd not tell you. I was there,
• 1:16:59
  like you said, for only a few years with him, And then
• 1:17:01
  I'd come back in the summertime with the wife, and then we'd sit and
• 1:17:04
  go to Billy Cows when he had to place over in West Haven and Don
• 1:17:08
  and AB's being there at America and we'd sit down and chat. And then
• 1:17:12
  no matter who he had on his team, he was toughered me. I
• 1:17:15
  got this determined guy, he's tough. I got this Uh what was this
• 1:17:18
  other guy's name he had, you know, he named the guy. Yeah,
• 1:17:21
  they could take you, I said, Fred, have a beer,
• 1:17:25
  you know, Fred. Was there a lot of gambling going on back then,
• 1:17:34
  whether it was on the bus, at the hotel, on games.
• 1:17:39
  No, it was just dollar stuff like you play a little yuker and something,
• 1:17:43
  you know, a little poker, but nothing there was. We didn't
• 1:17:45
  make a lot of money back then. Yeah, you only got meal money,
• 1:17:48
  four dollars a day. You couldn't you couldn't gamble your meal money away,
• 1:17:54
  cave me buy a big mac with that? Now was Castle Castle?
• 1:17:58
  Okay, Well we couldn't need a big we couldn't need a McDonalds. But
• 1:18:03
  like when we take the five game tour down to the sofa, I mean,
• 1:18:09
  when you come back up on that bus, you need a gas mask.
• 1:18:13
  You five days like breakfast, dinner, and supper. I mean there
• 1:18:18
  were sometimes there, like to have to pull the bus over, open all
• 1:18:21
  the windows, everybody get out. I was at a uh Bridgeport Sound Tigers
• 1:18:31
  game a couple of years ago, and we had really good seats where right
• 1:18:35
  where all the players get off the ice, and you know, we're going
• 1:18:39
  underneath in between periods and they're all coming off or we're just about we could
• 1:18:44
  high five of them, but I'm you know, I'm past that age,
• 1:18:45
  so I just we're walking all they're cheering them on, and it's like three
• 1:18:50
  minutes later and there's like four of us there and we're all like, the
• 1:18:56
  fuck is that smell? Like like we couldn't figure it out, and I'm
• 1:19:00
  just like this. It's like it's like the point where I almost I had
• 1:19:02
  to get up and like move. Well. When I got up, I
• 1:19:05
  looked down and it was the bin where all the guys threw their gloves in
• 1:19:10
  and whatever, and it was just like the sweat of twenty minutes of play,
• 1:19:14
  like right under my chair. And I was like, all right,
• 1:19:16
  we yeah, yeah, we got man. I'm just like they couldn't wheel
• 1:19:21
  that down a little farther towards the towards the locker room. I think they've
• 1:19:25
  made a lot of strides because hockey equipment used to kevin. You know,
• 1:19:28
  it used to be the worst smell. Ever. Yeah, I don't,
• 1:19:30
  I don't. I think they rectified that. Oh I did. Well,
• 1:19:32
  this is only a few years ago. Some guys would get Joe Shilbert used
• 1:19:36
  to get a reaction, like a scar reaction to like the underwear, like
• 1:19:44
  the job do the underwear and the jocks and and stuff like that. I
• 1:19:47
  don't know if the sweater's got washed all that much, and socks and like
• 1:19:53
  I said, you know, you castle, white Castle few days and that's
• 1:20:00
  gotta come on you something like sweat and oh my god, it's plus the
• 1:20:03
  beers. Oh yeah, it was nothing like sweating the beer sweats the next
• 1:20:08
  day, did you ever play like really really hungover. Uh no, not
• 1:20:16
  really because usually, like in New Haven, we usually had a Sunday home
• 1:20:20
  game and then we had Monday off, then we had Tuesday practice. So
• 1:20:27
  by Tuesday we'd be you know, ready to get back on the ice and
• 1:20:30
  get some sweat and get a you know, get it going again. And
• 1:20:34
  so Sunday night was the big drinking night after the game until eleven yeah,
• 1:20:41
  oh curfews and then they went. We would come back to wherever we were
• 1:20:45
  if we had we had a cabin, not a cabin, but it was
• 1:20:49
  a summer home up there on. Yeah, but I know how to get
• 1:20:55
  to it, but I don't want road around. But the five of us
• 1:20:59
  stayed in there, met dock Walker by the water, Peters and Pierre LeBlanc
• 1:21:04
  doc Quacker. Yeah well I think, yeah. Yeah, my my mother
• 1:21:14
  when she dated the track coach, he lived down that area. Yeah,
• 1:21:17
  yeah, I was. I mean, it was, it was. It
• 1:21:19
  was a nice fla was a three story and had five beds in its bedroom
• 1:21:25
  and it was all like everything was inside. There was no jip. It
• 1:21:30
  was all and stuff like that. You want you want to I gotta I
• 1:21:34
  got a good minor league I'm really a good minor league story. But so
• 1:21:38
  I used to live on East Broadway in Milford, which is down by the
• 1:21:43
  beach past the hospital, and uh, you know it was it was a
• 1:21:46
  seasonal rental for me and a buddy and we actually were on the beach,
• 1:21:50
  but we had a house in front of us on the beach as well,
• 1:21:53
  and it was five Bridgeport Sound Tigers at the time that lived there, and
• 1:22:00
  we really didn't like get to know these guys right off the rip, but
• 1:22:05
  there was a package like we used to get their mail all the time and
• 1:22:10
  we'd just walk it back to them. And there was a kid named Sean
• 1:22:13
  Bergenheim. He actually played for the Tampa Bay Lightning I believe for a little
• 1:22:17
  while, and he was obviously in the Islanders organization. I think he got
• 1:22:23
  a pretty big signing contract, maybe million dollars, but this whatever year,
• 1:22:27
  it was probably fifteen years ago. Anyway, me and my buddy that I
• 1:22:30
  lived with got home pretty gooned up one night and there's a box on our
• 1:22:34
  front door and it's addressed to Seawan Bergenheim and we were just like drunk,
• 1:22:40
  and we're like, you know what, I don't know what these fucking kids
• 1:22:43
  are getting back here. Let's just open it up, we'll reseal it.
• 1:22:45
  I just want to see. He gets boxes every day. So this is
• 1:22:48
  something in this box that I know for a fact, Kevin, you would
• 1:22:51
  never have ordered in your life. And we opened it up and it was
• 1:22:57
  like twenty four bars of soap with his ni aim inscribed in it, personalized
• 1:23:02
  bar soap that he like, times have changed. I think in some of
• 1:23:06
  these minor league hockey guys, you would have cases the beer delivered. Yeah,
• 1:23:15
  I was. We were just like drunk and looking at like, what
• 1:23:17
  the hell is this? I always sealed it back up and gave it to
• 1:23:20
  him. Then we had a meeting the guys they were all from uh well,
• 1:23:25
  Bergenheim was from overseas, but a lot of other guys were in the
• 1:23:28
  Toronto, Toronto area. Good young kids, eighteen seventeen. They'd always try
• 1:23:34
  to get into my bar. And you know, we're twenty one over So
• 1:23:39
  what was the trenking these back that? Eighteen? I think? So,
• 1:23:42
  yeah, I was old enough, That's how old, I said, how
• 1:23:45
  old does have to be? Plus I was big, you know, I
• 1:23:49
  was big sized too, so that made a difference. I didn't look I
• 1:23:53
  didn't look sixteen, right, man, I thank god Jesus gonna go through
• 1:23:59
  all that. That uh five that Southern tourtose five games and seven nights and
• 1:24:05
  those are murder right. Well, how about the weekend down the Jacksonville play
• 1:24:10
  hockey game and then bus all the way back and play the other four on
• 1:24:13
  the way up Nashville and Salem and uh where was the other one? Nashville,
• 1:24:23
  Dixie Flyers, Charlotte Greensboro. Yeah, anyway, fucking what about the
• 1:24:33
  weeks where you had a Wednesday home game and then you were away, say
• 1:24:38
  Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday. You know, after what time would
• 1:24:44
  you get like after a game in Clinton on a Saturday night, say,
• 1:24:47
  or Johnstown? What time would you guys roll into New Haven? Uh,
• 1:24:54
  it's a few hours ride, so you know, you don't. We did
• 1:24:59
  the last tho teen of us to take a quick shower. So we'll be
• 1:25:01
  on the bus and gone, and then we'd stop and grab it like some
• 1:25:04
  a couple of beers in the sandwich, and then we'd drive home and then
• 1:25:09
  jump in the cars. And depending on what time it was, if there
• 1:25:13
  was ending open, but usually wasn't we'd if anybody wanted the beer that we
• 1:25:17
  they went to our place. Where are uh? When we had to when
• 1:25:23
  we had the cabin out there in east Haven, or when we had the
• 1:25:26
  host just right there in east Haven, right by the fire station. So
• 1:25:31
  it was like, you know, it's an average sh that's the problem Connecticut.
• 1:25:36
  But Bob, well, I don't care now I'm too old to give
• 1:25:40
  a ship. I'm home by ten. But the bars always closed early Sunday
• 1:25:45
  night would be bad. You know, the game's over, and time we
• 1:25:48
  get under the dressing room and everything. You get to like there's a restaurant
• 1:25:54
  that was there in east Haven on the corner, Like we'd go in and
• 1:25:57
  we'd take him out. We just want to have some beer and we don't
• 1:25:59
  care about the food. Will pay for the food, right, you know,
• 1:26:01
  Greny cancer can stay a little longer. And then finally we got there.
• 1:26:04
  We want them over after two or three you know, times being there
• 1:26:08
  and being nice, and we got him some kitchens and got into the game.
• 1:26:13
  And then he realized what we're going through. We looked the games over
• 1:26:15
  and we're there, so he started letting us buy beer to take like out,
• 1:26:20
  you know, give us a sell us a couple of two for us,
• 1:26:25
  you know, and then go back to our place. And I heard
• 1:26:30
  a way I heard a Wade Bogs story the other day. Actually it was
• 1:26:33
  from his mouth. It was like a real that he had like one hundred
• 1:26:36
  and seven beers and in one day. He was telling the story. Wade
• 1:26:41
  Bogs played third base for the Red Sox in the eighties, and he was
• 1:26:46
  Bert Kreschner, I think he was on his podcast, and he said,
• 1:26:49
  they got on a flight after you know, they're heading to Oakland, I
• 1:26:53
  think from Boston, so it was whatever six hour flight, and he said,
• 1:26:57
  you know, they just he just said, crack another for me to
• 1:26:59
  the flight at the and then you know, and then whoever he was playing,
• 1:27:00
  they were playing poker on the flight and he hasn't even gone to the
• 1:27:04
  bathroom yet. And whoever he was playing with a boxy, how many beers
• 1:27:09
  you've had so far? And he's like, I don't know, Pheel,
• 1:27:13
  he's like sixty seven, and he's it's now precious, like sixty seven,
• 1:27:16
  and he's like, yeah, I had sixty seven, you know, but
• 1:27:19
  I still we were just over Kansas, so I still had a ways to
• 1:27:21
  go. Then they landed in Oakland or San Diego, wherever they're going,
• 1:27:27
  and they got off the plane and they went to a bar. He said,
• 1:27:30
  had thirty more and and I went three for five the next day,
• 1:27:33
  Like I don't believe a hundred beers, but I don't know, that's right.
• 1:27:41
  We had Canadian beer. One like Don Cherry our last game in Colorado,
• 1:27:44
  he said, drinking contest tonight. Everybody from Winnipeg to Luca Mam go
• 1:27:48
  in that room, and everybody from Winnipeg to Vancouver go in that room.
• 1:27:53
  So he ordered up from the bear like it was this this Canadian beer it
• 1:27:56
  was. Anyway, I ended up drinking forty two and he tells me I
• 1:28:00
  lost who had who I had drank for it? Well, we had he
• 1:28:08
  had three mugs and through Stuo beer in each month, and we had,
• 1:28:15
  uh, you know, had He had to beat everybody, just you know,
• 1:28:17
  blaming me. I was against Landy McDonald and he had to he had
• 1:28:21
  to drink eighteen beer to win the West, and I had to drink forty
• 1:28:26
  two beer to win the East because we had more guys on the East.
• 1:28:30
  So anyway, I get up against Landy and I'm I'm turning purple. Now
• 1:28:32
  I'm I got blood poisoning, and Cherry says, I've been a thousand dollars
• 1:28:38
  on the east. I said, we'll go put another thousand on him.
• 1:28:41
  I so I can't. I can't drink another beer. So he they got
• 1:28:44
  me walking up and down the hall. They give me coffee. I'm not
• 1:28:46
  drinking coffee. If I'm thinking anything, I'm drinking No. Six beer and
• 1:28:50
  that's going to be it. So we go ahead and we sit down and
• 1:28:55
  uh lanet, he's got that big mustache. As the mustache. He's only
• 1:29:00
  had eighteen beer and I've had forty two. So we started and I just
• 1:29:04
  I got I got the first class down and I put it down. I
• 1:29:09
  got the second class up. I I'm working on that one, and my
• 1:29:12
  guys are. My guys aren't saying anything, and they're all saying, oh,
• 1:29:15
  you got him, Landing, you got him. And the guys are
• 1:29:17
  supposed topeechure and me on aren't saying a word. So anyway, the rule
• 1:29:21
  is if you throw up, you spin up your beer, you lose,
• 1:29:26
  right, So anyway, I was trying to get the second one into me,
• 1:29:29
  and I spin it up. So I automatically last it. I look
• 1:29:32
  over, it's not even halfway through his first beer. Oh, and I
• 1:29:36
  looked at my I chased out of them the fucking room. I said,
• 1:29:41
  why didn't you say something? Why didn't you say he settled down? Slow
• 1:29:44
  down? You know, you're lots of time, he's not doing anything.
• 1:29:47
  So they went and lay down, and that's when the That was another instrument
• 1:29:53
  to chocolate cake. Yeah. I think we're on chapter three right now.
• 1:30:00
  Yeah, a lot of chapters left. Yeah. So we had the bed
• 1:30:04
  a poker game, and then Landy was in the other bed and he was
• 1:30:06
  sleeping, and I said, I'm going down to grabbing burger. Anybody wanted
• 1:30:11
  anything, and they said, yeah, I give you this, give me
• 1:30:12
  that. So I grabbed a few burgers. I'm standing there and I said,
• 1:30:15
  the big, this big chocolate cake is on the thing. And I
• 1:30:17
  said, I said how much you want for that cake? And she said
• 1:30:20
  you can have it? It's three days old, can't we can't sell it.
• 1:30:25
  I said, I'll give you. I said, I will give you
• 1:30:27
  five dollars for it. Said no, no, you can have it.
• 1:30:29
  It was like talking and walk back and so Joe Glinville and uh, but
• 1:30:35
  I forget his name, the little guy that was his defense assistant coach for
• 1:30:39
  years, Mike uh Johansson, something like that. They came out and there
• 1:30:46
  I got hands full of drinks and I got a handfuls of burgers, and
• 1:30:51
  I got the cake. So they're standing in front of me and they start
• 1:30:55
  smirking. So they start taking the frosting off the cake, and they're started
• 1:30:59
  rapping a lot over my face, in my hair, and then I gotta
• 1:31:01
  put everything down. So we had a big cake fright in the hall,
• 1:31:06
  and whatever was left, I got it in and land he was still asleep,
• 1:31:10
  and I pasted him in the bed, but the rest of the chocolate
• 1:31:15
  cake. So then we were back out. We're looking at everything and it
• 1:31:17
  looks like it's a chocolate cake. So it looks like shit on the walls.
• 1:31:21
  So we took out the fire hose and we tried to wash it.
• 1:31:26
  He ended up flooding two floors. There's one hundred and fifty bucks east for
• 1:31:31
  them to find to get everything cleaned. Oh that's nothing, Yeah, nowadays
• 1:31:39
  that's thousands. Yeah. Oh man, so rich we were talking about his
• 1:31:47
  favorite hockey team, which is anyone, But are you the same way,
• 1:31:50
  or you're the right guy guy. I grew up a Rangers fan, you
• 1:31:56
  know, Jockamin, Rodgelbart. My guys growing up funny too because for some
• 1:32:00
  reason, and I only I played goal one year only because at Blakefield in
• 1:32:06
  New Haven, I was a right wing. In the day of our first
• 1:32:10
  game, our goalies still told the coach he sold his pats, he didn't
• 1:32:14
  want to play goal, so they offered. They looked around, Who's going
• 1:32:17
  to play goal? Right? And I used to love playing in street hockey,
• 1:32:19
  so I raised my hand and I played goal. But so with the
• 1:32:24
  Blades, my favorite players were Kevin and Dave Hangeworth. And with the Rangers
• 1:32:27
  it was at Jockoman goalie and Entrepren What what the thing about goalies in me
• 1:32:31
  was? But I was always had a favorite skater and a favorite goalie,
• 1:32:35
  but Rangers. And then I was there in ninety four the night they win
• 1:32:40
  the cup, and it was pretty neat. It was. It was a
• 1:32:44
  lot of fun to be there. And you know what, even outside the
• 1:32:47
  garden there was celebrating, but there weren't cars flipped over and and you know,
• 1:32:55
  vandalism and stuff. I mean, it was it was. It was
• 1:32:58
  really cool. It was was well behaved, but that was you know,
• 1:33:01
  that was a special time. And then that was cool because when you know
• 1:33:04
  the Blades were there and they're the Rangers, you know, affiliate right and
• 1:33:10
  and you know the shame of it, Kevin, it's it's you should even
• 1:33:13
  be more proud having having made the NHL in an era where you know,
• 1:33:18
  for a large time it was six teams. Could you I mean, look
• 1:33:23
  at the in the Eastern League alone. Would you say if there was expansion
• 1:33:29
  before when it actually came to fruition, I mean, how many guys first
• 1:33:33
  off from the from you know, for goalies, Hainsworth and Tucker I thought
• 1:33:38
  were the best two goalies at least in the North and and Ted played a
• 1:33:42
  handful of games with the Golden Seals. But don't you think Dave would have
• 1:33:45
  played in the NHL? He should have. I mean that that play after
• 1:33:50
  he shot Clinton three games in a row for US the time series. He
• 1:33:56
  was unbelievable, He really was. And he still he tells Rangers here he
• 1:34:00
  was Ranger material and they didn't see something. They didn't see something though plush
• 1:34:05
  they still had Jackerman and I forget the other one. They had and later
• 1:34:10
  shill villemure. Yeah, so, yeah, he was. He was good
• 1:34:15
  and those so games. So the Clinton wins games one and two at on
• 1:34:18
  their home ice. In game three in New Haven, Ted Tucker who was
• 1:34:23
  the Clinton goal, he was very good. He shut out the Blades.
• 1:34:26
  So I go, well. Game four, Ainterrith shuts them out, sends
• 1:34:30
  us series back to Clinton. Game five, Aintreth shuts them out. It's
• 1:34:33
  three games to two. Game six in New Haven and I can't remember,
• 1:34:38
  I know I was at game six. I can't remember if I was at
• 1:34:41
  three or four. But as that game six, shuts them out again to
• 1:34:45
  force the seventh game, Pierre LeBlanc scores two goals. The Blades are up
• 1:34:48
  to nothing. I'm listening on the radio and there was a goal to this
• 1:34:54
  day Haindreth will tell you was that the puck went through a hole on the
• 1:34:59
  side of the and I mentioned it. So I mentioned that guy to Mitchell
• 1:35:02
  before. Yeah, so when when Mitchell was with the wolf Pack, I
• 1:35:05
  said, oh, and by the way, Dave says, the first goal
• 1:35:09
  in that game went through a hole. He goes, he went through a
• 1:35:11
  hole in his you know, between his legs, and I had go back
• 1:35:15
  to Dave and say, Mitchell said it was five holes, So I did
• 1:35:17
  them kind of fighting all although not being together. But you know, there
• 1:35:23
  were so many great players when you only have six teams. I mean,
• 1:35:28
  obviously Kevin would add a long NHL career. Absolutely, there was thirty teams
• 1:35:31
  back then. Yeah, you know they did have a Dave. Erekasi was
• 1:35:36
  was another guy from the Blades that played in the NHL. Gordy Smith played
• 1:35:42
  a long time with the defenseman for the Capitals. So guys would make it.
• 1:35:46
  But there were yeah, I mean, how many guys Kevin on the
• 1:35:49
  Clinton teams. I mean they lost five games one year in a seventy two
• 1:35:55
  game schedule. Wow, and their their top layed Jack Kane was there,
• 1:36:00
  captain, he was there. He was their center bannerman. Who who who
• 1:36:03
  most impressed you, keV on those great Clinton teams, on the Comic teams,
• 1:36:12
  On those Comic teams. Yeah, yeah, uh, well, like
• 1:36:15
  I said, they were, they were. They were like a well leveled
• 1:36:18
  machine. They were uh committed. They went to all the dirty areas and
• 1:36:26
  uh you know, they moved the buck well and uh they they all stood
• 1:36:31
  out because it didn't matter who I was against I was you know, you're
• 1:36:34
  in for a battle, you know. So it's now as part of the
• 1:36:39
  longevity of like a minor league team like that, because you know, these
• 1:36:43
  guys have no room to get up to the NHL and it's kind of the
• 1:36:45
  same team every year. Or they had calmed Ren Blair, right, keV
• 1:36:50
  and Ren Blair A great job was stocking that team. Okay, Yeah,
• 1:36:55
  when I went to Colorado camp, I had my sweater number I had was
• 1:36:59
  number sixty seven. That's where they ranked me on the on the church.
• 1:37:03
  Wow, that's how they did it. Guys that we're there. Interesting So
• 1:37:08
  it's uh, they'd said they had their say thirty that they ranked for the
• 1:37:14
  for the Rockies and I was sixty seven. So I still had thirty seven
• 1:37:18
  more guys to get ahead to make you to get on the roster, right,
• 1:37:23
  So a lot different. Now Kelly was there, so that yeah,
• 1:37:30
  well I hate him even more now. Well, Cherry Cherry had a thing
• 1:37:34
  there he read practice. You know, your first day at the NHL camp,
• 1:37:38
  you you get your new gear and you get your shin pads and show
• 1:37:42
  the pads everything and you take some shots and make sure everything's good. So
• 1:37:46
  Cherry was down, and he said he called the owner down, Hell,
• 1:37:49
  call Kelly down. He called all his coats down, and you want He
• 1:37:54
  always liked having witnesses on stuff, and so he said, you guys just
• 1:37:59
  listen and be my witness. So he turned around and he said, now
• 1:38:02
  the Goldies were the same thing. The Goldies got their gear. They got
• 1:38:05
  the Colorado rocky pads, you know, and the masks and everything and arrow
• 1:38:11
  try and stuff on and guys, you're just like flicking box at them,
• 1:38:14
  not really shooting. But he said, we need a goldie, and they're
• 1:38:17
  all looking, we need a goldie. We got Michelle Pass, we got
• 1:38:21
  heard thee Astrom from Sweden. We got Mackenzie draft pick and this other guy
• 1:38:27
  two draft picks, and we got these two American guys. So he said
• 1:38:30
  three the section would get me a good one and he and he walked away.
• 1:38:33
  So somewhere else standards. Okay, what the fuck do we do now?
• 1:38:35
  So we just scattered it. But from that day on they had the
• 1:38:41
  worst goaltender they ever had in Colorado's that year wow Aster Room. In practice,
• 1:38:47
  Cherry had this do you had your twenty guys in a little semi horse
• 1:38:51
  who went the blue line, wrapped the fire two box like straight, one
• 1:38:56
  after the other, all the way across them, all the way back.
• 1:38:59
  No goals move in five feet, same drill move in five feet. We're
• 1:39:03
  wrapped around the goal and we've done maybe eighty shots at him and you can't
• 1:39:09
  beat him. Wrap a fire like ten feet around the net. Man couldn't
• 1:39:14
  beat him. But Zamboni can go between his legs during the game. Is
• 1:39:21
  now always how it is? Said, you tell Don? He said,
• 1:39:25
  I called me over and the game him five months ow, we're meeting them.
• 1:39:29
  They're meeting a six to one in our ring. We're out shooting them
• 1:39:31
  thirty nine, sixteen and the sixth one for them. Wow. And he's
• 1:39:35
  got eight minutes ago just by started the third period. He said, what
• 1:39:41
  do you want? He said, tell Don I want out? I said
• 1:39:45
  lack. He said, tell Don I want out. So I go back
• 1:39:47
  and he said, what does that fucking se want? And I said he
• 1:39:51
  wants out. He said, you tell him, You tell him he can
• 1:39:56
  come out. And he said if he goes outside that crease, he said,
• 1:39:58
  I want you to punch him. I can't do that. We're in
• 1:40:01
  a whole game that's my goaldie. So I kind of talked. I kind
• 1:40:09
  of said, no, you can't. You can't go out and you know,
• 1:40:13
  stay there, finish the game. And then he found out after he's
• 1:40:15
  Okayn, thank you for not hitting me. I can't do that, I
• 1:40:21
  said, the great. So getting back to the NHL, You're Rangers.
• 1:40:31
  You got them winning the Cup, you know, not as a fan,
• 1:40:35
  not as a fan. We talked about this earlier. You can you could
• 1:40:38
  separate it pretty well. I think they have a really good team. What
• 1:40:42
  worries me is they don't score a lot five on five. They have they're
• 1:40:45
  special teams, so in their favor, their special teams are dominant and and
• 1:40:50
  their goaltender is really playing well. But I worry if you play a team
• 1:40:55
  that's disciplined and you're not getting power plays, can you generate enough scoring five
• 1:40:59
  on five, because that's been an issue all year long to get into power
• 1:41:02
  play. You know, they've got Adam Fox, I have a great power
• 1:41:05
  you know, a quarterback for their power play. They retrieve pucks. Well,
• 1:41:10
  they've got Chris Krider, a guy who is probably the greatest I've ever
• 1:41:14
  seen best in the league today at tipping pucks. He's unbelievable. But it's
• 1:41:19
  that five on five that concerns me a little bit. But I think they
• 1:41:23
  have as good a chance as anybody. You know, if you, if
• 1:41:27
  you, if you win it, if you you know, if you get
• 1:41:29
  to the finals, and then maybe Colorado's there, and uh, Giorgiyev the
• 1:41:32
  former goalie is pretty good. And you got mccarr and mccar is a tremendous
• 1:41:38
  defenseman. keV. Do you do you marvel at some of these guys when
• 1:41:41
  you see how gifted some of these guys like Leech was when when he was
• 1:41:45
  a ranger, but these guys today like Fox and maccar and how good they
• 1:41:48
  are offensively. Yeah, well, it's you know, it's amazing that,
• 1:41:56
  uh the talent has has grown the way it has. I mean before it
• 1:42:00
  used to be like Bobby Orr, Yeah, and then a bunch of years
• 1:42:04
  after that it was Paul Coffee. You know, like there wasn't a whole
• 1:42:08
  bunch of them like in the like you have now. You got to come
• 1:42:12
  to her and you got the kid in Vancouver there and they got the two
• 1:42:15
  brothers in the the Devils. Yeah. Yeah, Uh, well he's unbelievable
• 1:42:21
  with the tuck and everything. And then there's a guy Hardy with Dallas there.
• 1:42:26
  He's only nineteen years old and he's got some wheels like that too.
• 1:42:30
  Like I mean, they're all like their the training and the practicing and and
• 1:42:36
  everything that they're doing coming through. It's making it so much better for the
• 1:42:42
  NHL. Absolutely. But but yeah, again, you know the fact that
• 1:42:47
  you the fact that you did it and and played in the era that was
• 1:42:53
  so hard to get there, and and I only got there but played well
• 1:42:56
  and then such a great player in uh the wha And you know you mentioned
• 1:43:01
  before the only defenseman to score twenty goals and do it three times and be
• 1:43:05
  an All Star. And I'm so glad it was in Hartford too that you
• 1:43:10
  were. You know, you returned to Connecticut and you're playing in the All
• 1:43:13
  Star Game in Hartford. That would be pretty cool. Oh yeah, you
• 1:43:16
  know a lot of a lot of the old faces from the rink from the
• 1:43:19
  arena in Hartford. That was great. And Billy cow will be there and
• 1:43:24
  he take us over across the street to that bird rinked there and let's go
• 1:43:30
  hand in hand. You gotta have to be Yeah, Well, I'm a
• 1:43:36
  I'm a Bruins fan, so obviously I love that Sindon Harry Sindon story.
• 1:43:43
  I grew up in the you know, the the ray Bor cam Neely kind
• 1:43:45
  of era up to now. Twenty eleven was obviously a great year, but
• 1:43:51
  last year killed me. I just and I came into this year no expectations.
• 1:44:00
  You know, we had our ups and downs. I think switching the
• 1:44:02
  swingmen was the right move, but of course the whole series could be lost
• 1:44:08
  because they tried to dink around and put all Mark in in Game two and
• 1:44:12
  they lose, and I just I told all my friends, you know,
• 1:44:15
  we get out of a round round one, that's when I'm really going to
• 1:44:17
  focus on it. Because I put so much invested into it last year,
• 1:44:21
  and to watch them go out the way they did, I feel it's just
• 1:44:24
  gonna happen this year. Pasternak hasn't really done much. I mean, Marshawan's
• 1:44:30
  Marshaan against the Toronto. He's gonna do what he does, but uh,
• 1:44:33
  I don't know. I I just Toronto always seems to find a way not
• 1:44:38
  to win. Though. I mean, you've got that going for true,
• 1:44:40
  I do have that going but but did they have two shots on goal in
• 1:44:44
  the first period, Yeah, Kevi. But what happens to a team when
• 1:44:47
  it is such a big game and they're at home and can clinch and they
• 1:44:53
  just seem to come out with no jump and not getting pucks to the net.
• 1:44:58
  Just you know, is it just one of those things in sports or
• 1:45:00
  do you think sometimes guys get overconfident? Well, it's just something that you
• 1:45:04
  got to work through. Something like sometimes you get out and there you start
• 1:45:08
  the game and everything flows well for you, and uh, you know,
• 1:45:11
  you had the buck, the puck feels good on your stick, and the
• 1:45:15
  passes are on the sticks and another an ice you can't carry the buck two
• 1:45:18
  feet and it's off your stick and gone the other way. And I mean,
• 1:45:23
  just uh, you got you got five guys on the ice that don't
• 1:45:27
  want you to do well. So he's not gonna hand it to you.
• 1:45:30
  He's got to go and earn it. And that's that was my problem with
• 1:45:34
  last night, Like I just felt, you know, they came out blazing
• 1:45:38
  and overtime four shots in the first minute and had their couple of chances,
• 1:45:43
  and then once they didn't score there it's just I I you know, never
• 1:45:45
  really played anything beyond high school, so like, I more go off of
• 1:45:50
  gut and mental and visually, and I just I knew it. I'm like,
• 1:45:54
  it's going to be some fucking little tip, and sure enough it was.
• 1:45:58
  And one of those you know that I think the hockey puck bounce is
• 1:46:00
  weirder than a fucking football does. Sometimes you know it does, But I
• 1:46:11
  also say too, I blame a lot of you know, so you're obviously
• 1:46:13
  sportscaster. After the Knicks went up three to one, Celtics up three to
• 1:46:18
  one, Bruins up three one, Bruins up three. Oh, at the
• 1:46:21
  time, it was all, oh my god, we're all going to meet
• 1:46:26
  in the Eastern Conference finals. It's going to be Boston, New York and
• 1:46:30
  like that since the dawn of time. This is like I hate when people
• 1:46:34
  wait till it fucking happens. It's it's like even just the series alone,
• 1:46:41
  we won't even face each other for a whole nother series, both teams,
• 1:46:45
  so it's like, and sure enough, the Knicks just lost in heartbreaking faster
• 1:46:50
  Well people always ask me about like in my business and in the effect,
• 1:46:55
  Kevin, You're probably glad there was no social media back then, and and
• 1:47:00
  and now you get these guys that they're in such a hurry to be first
• 1:47:04
  to get something. Listen, if you're first, but and you're accurate and
• 1:47:10
  you're spot on, then then I'll tip my cap to you. But you
• 1:47:14
  know, we all want to be first, but we want to be accurate.
• 1:47:16
  I'd rather be second and accurate than first and inaccurate. And now everybody,
• 1:47:20
  you know, don't hit send before you're certain, you know, And
• 1:47:24
  everybody is in a hurry today. They want to they want to be first
• 1:47:27
  to do it. And you know that's that gets into trouble. And like
• 1:47:30
  all the guys, yea, all the guys on the ESPN, what they're
• 1:47:34
  brought, what they're recording and showing, and there's stuff there that's private stuff.
• 1:47:42
  You know, you don't like that junior team there, what they did
• 1:47:45
  to that girl, you know, I mean, thank god we didn't have
• 1:47:50
  any cameras when we were coming through. Just you know, like it was
• 1:47:55
  it was personal, it was quiet, and it was kept you know in
• 1:48:00
  the dressing room. You know, like there was no sharing and there was
• 1:48:02
  no embarrassing anybody, and you know, like most of the stuff we did
• 1:48:08
  was pranks, you know, like pranks like you you know, you filled
• 1:48:12
  up one of the guy's skates with jelly or something, you know, like
• 1:48:15
  for practice hit like that. You know, like it's not like like some
• 1:48:18
  of the things they're doing today. It's crazy right like rich like you obviously
• 1:48:24
  you were taught journalism, you know, at an early age and in the
• 1:48:29
  seventies, right seventies into the eighties, and is there I feel like there's
• 1:48:33
  no repercussion now for you know, these guys just throwing out these things they're
• 1:48:40
  wrong and they just move on to the next well and everybody has. Everybody
• 1:48:45
  kind of feels like they have they have their own you know, everybody don't
• 1:48:49
  think it's throw away. But everybody's got a podcast. Everybody can do this
• 1:48:53
  or that, so they have you know, their their ability to to say
• 1:48:58
  what they want and do what they want and not have any repercussions. And
• 1:49:00
  you know, I think a lot of it today. I tried to get
• 1:49:09
  I'd show up, try to know something about the subject matter and show them
• 1:49:13
  that you care and be fair with people. There was a coach, Kevin,
• 1:49:17
  did you ever come across It'd be after your playing career, but there
• 1:49:21
  was a guy Marcel Como, and he coached me. He coached the New
• 1:49:27
  Haven and the Kings were the Nighthawks affiliate, and he was a little bit
• 1:49:33
  They were starting to send some of their better prospects to Phoenix, the Central
• 1:49:39
  Hockey League team, because it was much closer to LA and I think Marcel
• 1:49:43
  felt he wasn't getting the top players and it was affecting him adversely because they
• 1:49:47
  weren't winning. So he did an interview with me, and he kind of,
• 1:49:50
  you know, he said a few things that he kind of regretted.
• 1:49:54
  So he called me and he said, listen, I you know, I
• 1:49:59
  might get into some trou because of some of the things I said. I
• 1:50:02
  said, well, let me do this. Let me let me look at
• 1:50:04
  the interview. I'll write everything down. I'll write the story as if you
• 1:50:09
  never called me. And and but I'll I'll tell you word for a word
• 1:50:14
  based on uh and and you tell me if you think it's it's okay.
• 1:50:19
  And if you think you're going to get in trouble, I won't do it.
• 1:50:23
  And now, there there are guys in the business that could have said,
• 1:50:26
  hey, I'm sorry you said it, But my thinking was, listen,
• 1:50:30
  he was a little bit frustrated. Now if I if I run this
• 1:50:34
  story, I've lost him forever. And now if I say, listen,
• 1:50:38
  I won't run this because you're going to get in trouble. He's going to
• 1:50:42
  remember that the next time that I need something and say, you know what,
• 1:50:45
  he's a he's a good guy. Just be fair with people. Be
• 1:50:46
  fair no the subject matter, and that's older as to it. And hockey
• 1:50:51
  guys far and away the best guys to to deal with, not only because
• 1:50:57
  of how cooperative with the media, but much more importantly to be honest with
• 1:51:00
  you because only we cared about that is how good they treated kids, right,
• 1:51:04
  and that's that's pretty special. And the hockey wives and the hockey wives
• 1:51:11
  I've like, I always follow the Bruins hockey wives, like just the charitable
• 1:51:15
  stuff. I mean, I'm sure the other sports do it as well,
• 1:51:17
  but I've always remember as a kid it was always Bruin's Hockey Wives night,
• 1:51:20
  and they were you know, they're all doing charitable work, and some of
• 1:51:26
  them happened to be very good looking. And I was a kid took notice.
• 1:51:31
  What about like back to journalism with credits, like crediting for your story?
• 1:51:38
  Like what I grew up. It was you know, Rich Capola's got
• 1:51:42
  credit for saying the red Sox sign move on. Right Now it's I don't
• 1:51:46
  get a lot off based here, But now it's if you watch something happen
• 1:51:49
  on ESPN and you work there, it's Adam Schefter reports and then it's like
• 1:51:57
  the subdivisions of how we got to that report, right, It's just like
• 1:52:00
  you can't like, is it all about? Is it? It's the clicks?
• 1:52:03
  I get it, and and Adam Scheffer's got to be the man for
• 1:52:06
  the NFL, mol Janowski for the NBA, But like, shouldn't the first
• 1:52:12
  person still get the first line credit? They will. They will often say
• 1:52:15
  as reported by such and such, and I think even those guys will will
• 1:52:18
  do that. But it's it's so big now to have a you know,
• 1:52:21
  an insider right right and check you know Adam is they you know sits on
• 1:52:27
  it with his phone on all on the show. And yeah, and and
• 1:52:30
  some of that is listen. I'm sure he's built up a lot of credibility
• 1:52:34
  and people that help him. Woj is A is a Bristol kid. You
• 1:52:38
  grew up in Bristol. He's done a great show. Yeah, yeah,
• 1:52:41
  yeah, and worked at the current. But yeah, I think you know,
• 1:52:45
  you have to give credit for whoever, whoever was first and accurate,
• 1:52:49
  and I think there's, yeah, there's a lot to be said about that,
• 1:52:51
  and they deserve the credit. But you know, you don't look for
• 1:52:57
  I don't know. I never looked for for credit. It's just I want
• 1:53:00
  to be Sometimes you put yourself in a good position. I was in the
• 1:53:02
  whaler's office one time talking to Jim Rutherford and he said, oh, you
• 1:53:06
  may have a scoop hero. I think we just reacquired Kevin Deneen. Okay,
• 1:53:13
  I got it from the horse's mouth. I reported that night could happen
• 1:53:15
  as early as tomorrow. Kevin Deneen, coming back to it. Sometimes you
• 1:53:19
  get lucky, but you try to put yourself into a good spot. And
• 1:53:24
  I would go to some whaler's practices, even without a camera, just to
• 1:53:27
  see what they were doing. Talk with guys, get them comfortable with me.
• 1:53:30
  They had a kid named Jim McKenzie, was a tough kid Kevin,
• 1:53:33
  and so I got a pretty good relationship with him. And I heard about
• 1:53:38
  a trade roomer and one time in the locker room, I said, hey,
• 1:53:41
  hey, Mac, I heard a rumor. If I'm right, just
• 1:53:45
  walk away, he said, would you hair so and so for so and
• 1:53:48
  so? Hey, Rich, good to see you. Shook my hand,
• 1:53:50
  walked away. That was his way of telling me without without telling you.
• 1:53:55
  But I had to show up and show them that I could, especially in
• 1:54:00
  sort like hockey that was fourth among the major sports, and in a state
• 1:54:03
  like Connecticut. Who at that time Yukon started to become and the guys couldn't
• 1:54:09
  understand why Yukon would get more, oftentimes more publicity than them. They are
• 1:54:13
  our only major league teams, and so it show It helps to show up
• 1:54:16
  and be accountable, right right, cav who is we know who? One
• 1:54:21
  of your least favorite writers was, do you have some guys that you've really
• 1:54:26
  relied on in New Haven or around that like you trusted and knew they wouldn't
• 1:54:30
  steer you wrong or write a false article about you even though you know they
• 1:54:34
  were probably maybe true hanging in the window, you know. Yeah, No,
• 1:54:42
  like we didn't have basically like even in a we had our own broadcaster
• 1:54:48
  that went on the road with us, and he never unless we were really
• 1:54:54
  stinking the place, Oh he would shot on us, but he backed us
• 1:54:58
  pretty well, and we appreciate it that, you know. So there's some
• 1:55:00
  night cycles said that nothing goes right, nothing works, and no matter the
• 1:55:05
  harder you try, the worse it gets. And so you get it out
• 1:55:09
  of your system and come back and try the next game, you know.
• 1:55:12
  And but we didn't have a lot of coverage like like from the Hockey News
• 1:55:17
  or anything like that for the w al for interviews and stuff like that,
• 1:55:20
  so we didn't have to worry that part about it. And yeah, the
• 1:55:25
  San Diego was a football baseball town when we got there, and we took
• 1:55:31
  a little chunk out of them, like ten or twelve people, thousands of
• 1:55:34
  the game we started averaging the first year and then the second year we're up
• 1:55:38
  to fifteen thousand. And I think what we had our inter squad game,
• 1:55:45
  introducing ourselves to the public because and only we gave out pretexts for the the
• 1:55:49
  inter squad game, and we had a bench. Fair Brow invited us to
• 1:55:55
  San Diego. You want to see the people there, they're nuts each other.
• 1:56:02
  Well, the old I went to a hockey game or a boxing match
• 1:56:06
  and the hockey game broke out. I called a game in the late eighties,
• 1:56:10
  I was working in Springfield, and there was a team Kevin in Fredericton,
• 1:56:16
  so the Frederickton Express I think they were, and they played Springfield and
• 1:56:20
  John Forceland, who has now become an excellent broadcaster. He's done national games,
• 1:56:27
  did Carolina for a long time and he's with Seattle now he's doing play
• 1:56:30
  by player. I was doing color and I mean this fight, this rivaled
• 1:56:35
  any of the Eastern League fights I saw where where Micvacota fought some guy and
• 1:56:41
  the coach was run the point I think of Fredericton. He was a French
• 1:56:46
  Canadian. I think I think it may have been anyway, he has some
• 1:56:49
  words for Vacoda as he's skating off Gordon Lane. The former Islanders defenseman was
• 1:56:56
  the coach of Springfield. Well, the benches were on the same side,
• 1:56:59
  and he here's this. He leaves the Springfield bench to go have words with
• 1:57:03
  the Fredericton coach and then all all help broke loose from there. This went
• 1:57:09
  on for about twenty twenty five minutes. If you search Springfield Fredericton brawl you'll
• 1:57:15
  find it, and he'll have a younger sounding John Foresland than myself. Nice
• 1:57:19
  and this thing went on for a while. It was it was pretty good.
• 1:57:21
  It was pretty good. Now you're doing Quinnipiac now, right, Yeah,
• 1:57:26
  I've done color on Quinnipiac games for about twenty years now, Oh you
• 1:57:29
  have, yeah, and I just kind of got I mean, it was
• 1:57:31
  I think it was twenty thirteen. It was them against Yale. Yes,
• 1:57:34
  yeah, it was Yale one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:57:36
  I was working at a separate bar and I wasn't a big college hockey follower.
• 1:57:42
  But my best friend is You'll watch anything hockey, and he's like,
• 1:57:45
  yo, you got to keep an eye on these two locals. So we
• 1:57:47
  kind of watched them, you know, on TV though, and what a
• 1:57:53
  great final. And then last year when you guys won the whole thing,
• 1:57:56
  it was awesome. Heartbreaking this year, but yeah, you know, it's
• 1:58:00
  it's tough, but that's especially especially in a one game elimination in hockey.
• 1:58:04
  So so Jim Armstrong, who was former Blades goaltender, was one of the
• 1:58:09
  original coaches of Quinnipiac hockey and they have a by the bench there there's a
• 1:58:15
  plate with his name on it. They that was nice. You know.
• 1:58:19
  Jim is another guy that unfortunately died too young. But a great guy.
• 1:58:24
  And uh, you know, I love the fact that these guys who stayed
• 1:58:27
  here in Connecticut, I got to know them after the after the fact.
• 1:58:31
  And you know, Gordie Smith coached at West Haven, coach to the high
• 1:58:34
  school team there for a while. And and uh so I love picking their
• 1:58:39
  brand. I you know, I tried to be I didn't when I first
• 1:58:43
  met Kevin. I didn't want to be a pest and stand there for half
• 1:58:45
  an hour. But you know a lot of questions going through my mind and
• 1:58:49
  and and uh you know, I said, how on the road, Kevin,
• 1:58:54
  you must have been like when you went in the Clinton or a Long
• 1:58:57
  Island, you know, to play the ducks. Because you were the policeman
• 1:59:00
  of the league. You really must have put up with a lot of stuff.
• 1:59:04
  Oh yeah, I was a target and if there was something wrong,
• 1:59:09
  it was thrown at me. And that the I was lucky. I didn't
• 1:59:15
  get hit with anything. One night in junior I got hit with a pint
• 1:59:18
  a pint of room and it was full O did it break? Didn't break?
• 1:59:25
  Oh? You took it then, right? Yeah? I said that
• 1:59:30
  the bus ride home, and you know Kevin was in sports illustrated. Oh,
• 1:59:38
  yeah. We were in Springfield one night, and now I got I
• 1:59:41
  jumped over the boards and down Cherry was the coach, and they jumped him.
• 1:59:45
  And I skated across the ice and I put my hand up and I
• 1:59:47
  went down and I put both feet right through the Do we tell the story
• 1:59:50
  earlier? No? No, And my feet went through the wooden seat and
• 1:59:56
  I grabbed I could. I could just reached Ottle Springfield, like dad halfway
• 2:00:00
  down yep. Like were walking around and I got the guy by the hair
• 2:00:04
  and I got a job on the on the bar and I'm cranking them and
• 2:00:11
  all of a sudden, I get whaft on the head with this purse with
• 2:00:13
  a bottle in it. So I turned around and I said, I said,
• 2:00:15
  oh, it's a woman. Don't hit me with that. That's my
• 2:00:18
  husband. I said, well, don't you hit me with that goddamn person
• 2:00:21
  again. Aren't going to wrap it around your bucking for it anyway? She
• 2:00:25
  hit me, hit me with the purse because I'm still hitting her husband anyway.
• 2:00:30
  The bottle didn't break, and then the boys got the holler, and
• 2:00:33
  then all of a sudden there's eighteen more guys coming over the boards and coming
• 2:00:36
  into the stands and she dropped a bottle and broke it. And I said,
• 2:00:41
  okay, just don't pick me up and hit me with the glass.
• 2:00:43
  I'm still stuck in the seat. She can't turn around, I can't leave.
• 2:00:47
  Take it back on the ice. And then anyway, they if you
• 2:00:53
  didn't see story or nothing. I never got her phone number. You were
• 2:00:58
  saying he was in sports ill. I didn't have to get my feet sharp
• 2:01:00
  and back over for the third period. Don walked across the ice with us
• 2:01:06
  and on the mansion, and after that he walked off the ice with across
• 2:01:11
  the ice. That happened a lot. He stirred up a lot of people
• 2:01:15
  and a lot of rings. Don Cherry, Yeah, including New Haven where
• 2:01:18
  they threw the armorests at the ten thousand armrests on the ice. When he
• 2:01:24
  was coaching Rochester, I was sitting about ten rows behind the Rochester bench.
• 2:01:28
  They had a goalie, Lynn Zimmerman, who tripped Alan Langley played for the
• 2:01:32
  Nighthawks, and for whatever reason, it all hell broke loose and if someone
• 2:01:36
  just discovered you could take the armress off the chair and throw and then it
• 2:01:41
  was just on. It was in Zimmerman's hiding in the net and so he
• 2:01:44
  wouldn't get hit with them. It was that was a crazy night, a
• 2:01:47
  crazy night there. But I started to say that Kevin, you were you
• 2:01:50
  were in Sports Illustrated a bunch of years ago and a big article right on
• 2:01:56
  on on all the tough guys. Yeah, I remember that. I got
• 2:02:00
  that book here. It sounds like a road to myself. Oh man,
• 2:02:11
  Rich this is a story completely out of the realm of hockey that has kind
• 2:02:15
  of fascinated the country and fascinated me. And I know you followed yukon basketball
• 2:02:20
  men's and women's not only followed it covered it. What was since when?
• 2:02:25
  Since well late they yeah, for sure. So I started following the men
• 2:02:30
  in what was Cliff Robinson eighty seven? So eighty eight was the big year
• 2:02:34
  when they kind of went on the national seam, Chris Smith and all those
• 2:02:39
  guys. But to the women's point, I mean, they obviously won what
• 2:02:44
  eleven national championships, had some of the greatest players ever, and it never
• 2:02:53
  it just passed the NCAA, It just never made it in the w NBA.
• 2:02:58
  So now along comes Kate and Clark, excuse me, Caitlyn Clark and
• 2:03:03
  she's phenomenal. She's she reminds me of the Yukon players and of yesteryear and
• 2:03:08
  some of the Tennessee players, and and uh, I've always followed you know,
• 2:03:13
  NCAA Women's basketball. I just it's just me. It's it's you know,
• 2:03:17
  it's me in the room saying this. I just never got into w
• 2:03:19
  n b A. I just for whatever reason, even though Connecticut has a
• 2:03:23
  team. Uh, I just never did. And I'm just fascinated. How
• 2:03:29
  like why now? Why her? Why? Now? Like it's just great
• 2:03:33
  question, you know, like is it? Is it just the times we
• 2:03:35
  live in and it's a push for for the women's I mean, I I
• 2:03:41
  it's a whole other topic. But coming you know, you're you're the one
• 2:03:45
  that follows it and reports on it. It's yeah, that's it. It's
• 2:03:47
  she that chosen one all of us. Yeah. I mean, maybe maybe
• 2:03:50
  the timing is right when you look at the ratings for the last couple of
• 2:03:54
  games that they were involved in, and the and the draft ratings, because
• 2:03:59
  attendance and the league is pretty good. You know, people say it.
• 2:04:02
  I mean, it's crazy, the salary, the differential, and I'm all
• 2:04:06
  for women's sports, but you also have to look at the money that the
• 2:04:12
  NBA takes in as opposed to the w NBA. But if they're they're wrong.
• 2:04:16
  By the NBA teams there should be Listen, the players shouldn't have to
• 2:04:20
  go into it to another country and play in the off season. They're playing
• 2:04:26
  year round. The toll that takes on your body. They have to do
• 2:04:29
  it because of the money. They've got to at least make the money in
• 2:04:30
  the league where girls don't have to or young ladies women don't have to do
• 2:04:36
  that, because that's that's crazy. I mean, Diane Trusty got a million
• 2:04:40
  from a team in Russia not to play the w NBA season because you know
• 2:04:44
  they're worried about, you know, her playing year round. I think maybe
• 2:04:47
  it's the perfect storm in a lot of ways with Caitlin Clark, and it'll
• 2:04:50
  be interesting, you know, her first year in the league. What happens
• 2:04:54
  over these next couple of years. Can they kind of get over the hump?
• 2:04:58
  But I feel the women in the and currently playing, there's obviously tarazi
• 2:05:00
  comments are are being bitter when they should be like, Okay, we're waiting
• 2:05:08
  for this ticket. She's the ticket. Let's embrace her. Bring her in
• 2:05:13
  and let's let's like, why why not welcome her with open arms. You
• 2:05:17
  know, granted she's gonna make her a Nike deal and all that, which
• 2:05:19
  still isn't like an NBA deal, but still a lot of money for playing
• 2:05:24
  that sport that no one's made money at. I just, I just I
• 2:05:29
  feel like the women should drop the jealousy. I'm not saying they all have
• 2:05:31
  it, but like from what I've read, you know, some of the
• 2:05:34
  that maybe they're just taking quotes from the names, but like, this is
• 2:05:39
  your this is your golden opportunity to translate NCAA women into w n b A,
• 2:05:45
  and let's just embrace. I will watch Caitlin Clark's first games and and
• 2:05:50
  and and and just see how it goes. I have no I watched sports
• 2:05:55
  said because we didn't get that attention. We didn't have n I l right
• 2:05:59
  and get the money first. And so there's probably you know, there might
• 2:06:01
  be a little bit of a resentment or jealousy. You hope over time,
• 2:06:05
  if she's you know, if all of a sudden more people are watching and
• 2:06:10
  the league is is somehow is making more money, and then the players are
• 2:06:15
  making more money, maybe that's what it's going to take. But I mean
• 2:06:17
  she would have made more money staying in college for another year. It's true,
• 2:06:20
  that's very true. Like, so she's not being self. A top
• 2:06:24
  player in the league only makes a couple hundred thousand, right, two something.
• 2:06:27
  I think it's a top player. It's crazy. And then they probably
• 2:06:29
  and that's after their first four year contract, right, yeah, Yeah,
• 2:06:33
  you were still making more than them cav back in the day, I think
• 2:06:36
  than the women make now years at the end there, Yeah, I touched
• 2:06:45
  around one hundred grand and was that the what was what was that what you
• 2:06:47
  made in Colorado? I mean eighty five in Colorado? Yeah, and then
• 2:06:56
  the following year that I was want to and we went to hell eighty five
• 2:07:01
  ninety five? Uh no, ninety five, and then it was eighty five
• 2:07:05
  and then I forget the way. I know, I was backwards that one
• 2:07:12
  year and I want it should have been more. But it's actually I mean
• 2:07:16
  for for that year, you know, for back then, Sure I played
• 2:07:18
  in New Haven, I made two hundred bucks a week. So yeah,
• 2:07:24
  hey, since we're all like New Haven people, it looks you want to
• 2:07:27
  finish on who's our I mean, you guys were obviously you are still live
• 2:07:30
  here, but you ever hit up the they call it the Holy Trinity of
• 2:07:32
  Pizza and New Haven And what was modern around back then? Probably yeah,
• 2:07:38
  yeah, so Sally's, Peppy's Modern. I was a Peppies guy, Okay,
• 2:07:42
  I love Peppies, and then Modern and then there was I think in
• 2:07:45
  West Haven there was another. Yeah, Parties is still there. That's still
• 2:07:49
  one of my favorite original Yeah, I get I get my son if he's
• 2:07:55
  coming up for Christmas, I get him to bring me up. So parties
• 2:07:59
  you can get them delivered frozen. Yeah. Yeah, and they're actually not
• 2:08:03
  bad for frozen pizza. They're good. In fact, we have my wife
• 2:08:07
  and I and three other couples. We're doing the every month or so we
• 2:08:11
  go to a different pizza place. So we started at Peppe's, then we
• 2:08:15
  did we did so parties. One week we did a place in Meriden that
• 2:08:20
  I'd heard was really good. It was good, but not not Peppees,
• 2:08:26
  Sally's Parties good. So we went Peppies Parties, Salli's and then this place
• 2:08:33
  in Meriden. I'm not sure where where next is, but Roseland is really
• 2:08:39
  good. So yeah, there's no shortage of a little place a little different
• 2:08:41
  on was there. And I just discovered this personally, uh this past winter
• 2:08:48
  with Zanelli's which is across the street from uh Pepees Sally's right in between them.
• 2:08:54
  What's what's the one that was the head of fire that was next to
• 2:08:56
  it. They've got one in North Haven now about a box very good.
• 2:09:01
  I used to work at the Connecticut Financial Center, the big the tower building
• 2:09:07
  in New Haven in college. I was a security guard three to eleven,
• 2:09:11
  worked there for a whole year, and we would order from about days because
• 2:09:13
  they were the only one that would deliver from Worcester Street. It was like
• 2:09:16
  a guy in a bike, like a bike bike right like a dens Be
• 2:09:20
  with a basket and we get pizza delivered from there. But my number one.
• 2:09:24
  Sometimes it's weird, it'll it'll be like kind of recency biased. But
• 2:09:31
  modern. I think Modern cooks it the way I like it, like I
• 2:09:33
  don't ask for it. I'm not that like pretentious with pizza. But if
• 2:09:37
  it's like that little well done, Modern is like perfect for me. They're
• 2:09:43
  all fantastic, don't get me wrong, but Modern. The only my only
• 2:09:46
  criticism is that I find them somewhat inconsistent that well, and it'll be just
• 2:09:52
  as good as Peppy Sally's anyplace else. Yeah, next time, not as
• 2:09:56
  good. Time, after that, great again, then the next time not
• 2:10:01
  not quite as good. Yeah, he's probably playing hockey with keV the night
• 2:10:03
  before. There's a lot of There's so much good pizza in Connecticut though,
• 2:10:09
  like the outside of New Haven there is. Oh yeah, we have a
• 2:10:13
  Papa's Pizza in Milford and new Haven pizza place that's called in Milford that are
• 2:10:18
  Well, there's another old time. I can't believe I haven't been to it.
• 2:10:20
  There's another one in New Haven. Why can't I think of the name,
• 2:10:22
  But he's been around forever more downtown and I can't think of the name.
• 2:10:26
  Not not oh bar, no b. Yeah, but there's another place
• 2:10:33
  that I don't know for some reason, I can't think of the name of
• 2:10:37
  it. But yeah, to your point, so much great. But now
• 2:10:39
  I'm gonna have to stop. I think on my way back down the shore.
• 2:10:43
  Right this pizza? You got any good pizza up in Canada? No
• 2:10:52
  got pizza that like the kids come up from to get there. Yeah,
• 2:10:58
  there's that. Then cardboard Pizzas again, you know like they're actually, I
• 2:11:05
  have pepies in the freezer downstairs. I'm gonna go get that up there.
• 2:11:07
  We go nice. What's uh? What's what's the food? Uh? What's
• 2:11:11
  the specialty where you guys are? Basically we have a few, like a
• 2:11:18
  Napoli pizza. They're probably no outside of pizza. Outside of pizza. I've
• 2:11:22
  been here since six, nineteen sixty. They came over from Italy. But
• 2:11:28
  they like a lot of seafood and yeah, like some steakhouses and poutineak bears
• 2:11:33
  with the steaks and the beer and and then it's there's lots of Like my
• 2:11:41
  mother was Lebanese, so we we eat. We ate a lot of Lebanese
• 2:11:43
  food. And my father was Scotch, so he ate. She cooked Scotch
• 2:11:46
  for him and Lebanese for all of us guys. You know, so it
• 2:11:50
  was like, what would you say Scotch like Scotland or No. I didn't
• 2:11:58
  hear what you said. You're your mother was Lebanies and your father was from
• 2:12:03
  there. He was one on every sin Scotch and mom was one under.
• 2:12:13
  So that's quite the mix. They Yeah, the phone was acting up,
• 2:12:16
  That's all right, I was I was on a Yeah, they were.
• 2:12:22
  They all get off the mother and my mother's family, they all get off
• 2:12:24
  the bug in Halifax, and they walked there to Sydney. That's right,
• 2:12:30
  wow. And they set up shops there and a couple of people were walking
• 2:12:35
  around. They said, you can tell a libty down because every every corner
• 2:12:39
  had a candy store. They all looking candy stores and barbers. That was
• 2:12:46
  it, and they were everywhere. Some pretty good players from antony Gish too,
• 2:12:54
  right. Antony Gish had some pretty good players too, right. Yeah,
• 2:13:01
  So I was. I was at a resort a few years ago and
• 2:13:05
  I had a whaler's t shirt on and there's a bunch of people from Canada
• 2:13:09
  there. So when I went to get a drink, we started talking,
• 2:13:13
  Hey Whalers, we started talking hockey, We started talking about Canada, and
• 2:13:16
  they were some of them were from Nova Scotia. And when I brought your
• 2:13:20
  name up, one of the guys, actually I think he used to go
• 2:13:24
  to the same bar I wish. I can't remember his name, but did
• 2:13:28
  you ever have anyone tell me they met some guy that at a resort that
• 2:13:33
  that saw you play in New Haven? No, this was a few years
• 2:13:37
  ago. As soon as I said your name. He was like, oh
• 2:13:39
  my god, I know, Kevin. You have a pretty big around town
• 2:13:43
  here. Yes, are they got the people that leave me alone and the
• 2:13:50
  police don't have me when I have a drink and drive and have a few
• 2:13:52
  beers. Good, that's good. So when's your hip surgeries is scheduled?
• 2:14:00
  No, not yet. We're not fighting the book. Which way she's gonna
• 2:14:03
  do it? Gotcha? My son says, uh, oh, that's right.
• 2:14:05
  You might get it done down here. Yeah, well I got I
• 2:14:09
  still have an address down there, and I have a bank account down there,
• 2:14:11
  and uh all my mail goes to my son's house. Okay, so
• 2:14:16
  he's staying through that some care down there. Then I I I qualify that
• 2:14:20
  I can go down and get it done. And apparently they do it from
• 2:14:24
  the side. Yes, they do do it from the back, yep.
• 2:14:28
  And that's my biggest thing. If I can do it from the side,
• 2:14:30
  it's two weeks rehab and then and it's like a three inch incision. That's
• 2:14:33
  it. I was still working at it. I'm still arguing with the one
• 2:14:37
  here because she did such a good job on my knees. You know,
• 2:14:41
  I gotta I trust her like she says, I said, you're not explaining
• 2:14:45
  to me why you gotta do it from the back. You know, I
• 2:14:48
  said, show it to me on the x ray. You know, she
• 2:14:50
  shows me something I don't see nothing but all the crap that's in my joint.
• 2:14:54
  Right, we'll see what happens with it, and and well, good
• 2:15:00
  luck with that. Best luck. I'll give you a call in the hospital.
• 2:15:03
  We can do a podcast from the hospital. There you go. Absolutely,
• 2:15:09
  absolutely, keV. Thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it.
• 2:15:13
  Problem list. We got to do it again sometime, dude, whenever
• 2:15:16
  you want. Whenever you want, absolutely, and if you're down here,
• 2:15:18
  we'll do it with the three of us sitting here and have some beers and
• 2:15:22
  pizza and pizza. Yeah, I'll bring everything. You just show up.
• 2:15:26
  Thank you, Thanks keV. Hello to Jody. Yes, I will all
• 2:15:31
  rybody, Well, take care. We were losing that connection was getting bad.
• 2:15:37
  Uh. I was just I had something I want. Oh all right,
• 2:15:39
  So do you think we'll wrap up on this well, Connecticut ever get
• 2:15:45
  hockey team back? Anything? It's I mean, I know we have a
• 2:15:48
  good minor league every you know, we got the baseball team. See,
• 2:15:52
  I think you could get a lot of pushback from Boston and New York.
• 2:15:58
  I don't doubt that. I think Governor Lamont without getting political at all.
• 2:16:05
  I think his attempt to bring an NHL team and there was talk about trying
• 2:16:09
  to get the Coyotes to move here. That's one hundred percent true from a
• 2:16:13
  lot of sources of mine have told me. But to me, if you
• 2:16:20
  it starts with a building, and you have to have a new building,
• 2:16:24
  and I think if they put you know, one hundred and something million into
• 2:16:28
  the Excel Center, that's still only temporary. I've always said that a building,
• 2:16:33
  a new facility built around Meriden where the highways converge. I think if
• 2:16:41
  the governor was successful, it's probably because he has a lot of hedge fund
• 2:16:46
  guys that are interested in doing this. If they're involved, they're going to
• 2:16:50
  go maybe to a building in Meriden. They're not going to Hartford. They're
• 2:16:56
  not going to where the casinos are and stuff. So I think it's still
• 2:17:01
  a long shot at best. I'd love it to happen in my lifetime.
• 2:17:03
  I'm not getting it younger. But yeah, I think you have to have
• 2:17:09
  a new building to begin with it too. Would it be? Would would
• 2:17:11
  Connecticut support it enough. Well, I think you need the the you know,
• 2:17:18
  the the business community, you know, you need that support, the
• 2:17:22
  corporate support, and it just hasn't had corporate support. Did The Whalers didn't
• 2:17:26
  have great corporate support either. But what happened with them too, that was
• 2:17:31
  that helped their downfall is that building and and you know, you can't get
• 2:17:37
  anything under that building. They had no concessions, they didn't have parking.
• 2:17:41
  Everything was you know, off TV and ticket sales. And I called Amil
• 2:17:46
  Francis to confirm that when they signed a deal in her late eighties with Sports
• 2:17:50
  Channel, it brought them a million a year. And now at that time
• 2:17:54
  when it was signed, the Top Whaler was probably making two hundred thousand a
• 2:18:00
  million, paid fair amount of salaries. At the same time Sports Channel New
• 2:18:03
  York was paying the Islanders like eighteen million. And so that's one of the
• 2:18:09
  one of the things you're up against. And you're not getting parking, you're
• 2:18:13
  not getting the concessions inside, how are you supposed to you know, it
• 2:18:16
  got to a point where they couldn't raise there was no not enough revenue.
• 2:18:22
  Ticket sales were starting to go up. I have something from eighty six.
• 2:18:26
  I was just given this spice. There's a media marketing company, Elkinson Sloves
• 2:18:31
  just had their forty year anniversary Panoramic eighty six playoffs. They had Howard Baldwin,
• 2:18:39
  who brought the whalers Hare, signed for me, and it had a
• 2:18:41
  seating chart on it. The top seats were twenty dollars. You know now
• 2:18:46
  twenty dollars for a beer. Well, I mean that's yeah, That's how
• 2:18:50
  I used to wash the Bruins. I'd go to Hartford when they played.
• 2:18:52
  You know, when I was a kid, I couldn't go up the Boston.
• 2:18:54
  I can't now it was it was affordable. No Saretzki there. You
• 2:18:58
  know everyone. It's almost like it was a pseudo away game at every time.
• 2:19:03
  So when they left, like I got it, like like just from
• 2:19:05
  a fan standpoint, like you guys aren't going, you know, it's like
• 2:19:09
  you want to support, you got it. It reminds me like the WNBA,
• 2:19:13
  like you want to fight for the we'll go to the games. Yeah,
• 2:19:15
  like I know that the Tenants, like you said, is up now,
• 2:19:16
  but like I don't know. I think I think Connectic gets in a
• 2:19:20
  good spot. You know, New York's got ten teams or whatever Boston's got
• 2:19:22
  its for and you know, it's it'd be hard to squeeze one in.
• 2:19:26
  I think it would be tough. But you know what, but you could
• 2:19:28
  also get up, you know, you get New Hampshire Vermont mass to come
• 2:19:33
  down. Yeah, maybe, you know, I think more. Yeah,
• 2:19:37
  it's a it's a tough guy. I you know, I hate saying no.
• 2:19:41
  That would be my from my my head, not just my heart,
• 2:19:45
  but my heart would love to see there's so many great fans. Yeah,
• 2:19:48
  just like we had in new Haven, right, you know, Hartford had
• 2:19:50
  the same and just ultimately weren't enough of those types of fans in New Haven,
• 2:19:56
  those types of fans in Hartford and without. But having grown up in
• 2:20:00
  New Haven area, I never felt that the Whalers were our team. They
• 2:20:03
  needed to do a better job. And it wasn't until the end. They
• 2:20:05
  put a ticket tron in Milford, right in the last couple of years when
• 2:20:09
  they had their ticket drive. That should have been well before that, right,
• 2:20:13
  right, Well, who knows, maybe sometime again, but we'll talk
• 2:20:18
  about it. Yeah happens, yes, perfect, So I'll see you here
• 2:20:22
  in fifteen years hopefully. I'm all rich and Kevin who hung up. Thank
• 2:20:28
  you so much for coming on the show and driving down from Nyantic Pleasure Now.
• 2:20:33
  It was great. If you ever in the area, come and see
• 2:20:35
  me. Hey, when the hips better or the what you have done Herny
• 2:20:39
  is better, I'm thinking about keV. I'll take you out the Great River
• 2:20:43
  if you want to play some golf out there. That yeah, absolutely,
• 2:20:46
  yeah, absolutely, it'd be awesome. I got a couple of connections over
• 2:20:50
  so all right, we'll do that and tick up that absolutely. Thanks again
• 2:20:54
  and thanks for listening. Guys. This was officially my longest episode ever,
• 2:21:00
  so if you want to listen to it, to it in two phases,
• 2:21:03
  feel free. But thanks again and I'll see you guys next week.