Songwriters: Tony Banks, Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford
Original Release: We Can’t Dance
Year: 1991
Definitive Version: None
The inaugural Flint Bulldogs
hockey team, as I’ve recounted, featured more characters than The Avengers and
far worse hockey. If you recall, there was no hockey in The Avengers.
The Flint Bulldogs of
1991-92 probably were not the worst pro hockey team in history, but there was
one weekend when they would’ve been on a very short list. They were Slap Shot
bad, and the laughs were purely unintentional.
The Bulldogs’ season started
bad and went quickly down the drain. Our favorite Dog, Jacques Mailhot, had
been released after a particularly crazy brawl. You know it’s bad when the
hired goon gets bounced from the team for overdoing it. And it turned out that
Jacques was the heart of the team, because the Bulldogs fell apart after his
expulsion, losing something like 11 games in a row. I had the misfortune to see
them at their nadir during that run.
Bill, who covered the team,
asked me if I wanted to go on another weekend road trip in February 1992—a
longer one where the team would hit St. Thomas, Brantford and finally Detroit.
Dave couldn’t go, but I was game. In retrospect, it was quite the tour of Canadian
card shops, mediocre restaurants and horrid hockey.
The first stop was St.
Thomas on Friday night, and it was always good to hit that beloved barn. I kept
my coat on, and the Bulldogs might as well have never left the team bus. They
lost, like, 8-3.
The next day, we drove to
Brantford, the birthplace of the Great One, which, of course, is on the
outskirts of the Toronto-Hamilton metroplex, but not before making a stop in
London, where Bill’s favorite card shop was located. The thing I remember most
about that store was it had almost all hockey cards, and the prices were way
more than I was willing to pay.
By the time we got to
Brantford, it was too close to game time to get anything substantial to eat for
dinner but plenty of time to hit a couple more stores close to the Brantford
Civic Centre (pronounced SAHN-tre) before game time. The Civic Centre is a much
higher class arena than the one in St. Thomas—or even Fraser for that matter.
Unfortunately, the Bulldogs also found the arena and soiled the ice with their
play.
By this time, all the
activity—and a lack of sleep from trying to adjust from the graveyard shift to
a normal schedule—caught up to me, and I nodded off near the end of the game.
It’s just as well when you consider that the Dogs were embarrassed 12-1. (If
you don’t know hockey, that would be like losing a baseball game 40-0.) About
the last thing I saw were two Bulldogs players skate into each other as the
hometown fans mocked the ice follies. One hoser taunted, “You guys are playing
like a bunch of sucks.” Even the opposing team’s fans wanted a better brand of
hockey than what they were getting.
But I soon was awakened by
an on-ice scrap right in front of me, or as Bill would later describe it: “I
look down to see Will blowing z’s in the corner when all of a sudden ... ‘Oh?
What’s this? A fight?’” Yes, a good cha-cha between two guys not hurting anyone
but themselves doth perk up one’s attention. I mean, it’s not as if there were
anything else worth watching aside from the inside of my eye lids.
I don’t remember much about
the Detroit game other than Dave joined us for that one, we had a pregame meal
at Frank’s Place next door and the Bulldogs—go figure—lost again. I seem to
recall that at least they showed up, unlike the debacle in Brantford, and the
score was close, and I don’t remember falling asleep this time.
No comments:
Post a Comment