No. 956 – Neurotica

Performer: Rush

Songwriters: Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, Neal Peart

Original Release: Roll The Bones

Year: 1991

Definitive Version: None

Flint was—and I suppose still is—an excellent hockey town. When the birth of the Colonial Hockey League was announced in 1991, it meant that hockey would return to Flint after a one-year absence, and no one was more geeked than Bill, who was by far the biggest hockey fan in the Journal sports department. He’d be on the beat when it started that fall. At the time the first puck dropped, I had Roll the Bones on heavy rotation at home.

I hope Bill saved his notes, because an accounting of the inaugural season of the Flint Bulldogs would make quite a book. I went to a number of games that year—both at home and on the road—and the entertainment level was as high as the quality of hockey was low. Think Slap Shot, minus the championship at the end, and you’d about have it. The team was as motley a collection of Land of the Misfit Toys rejects that ever were assembled, and the team owner and league founder, was the Skippy in the Box.

They couldn’t skate, couldn’t play, were poorly coached and loaded with goons—and we loved ‘em. I still have carefully preserved the team set of hockey cards that they released that season—with the players all looking painfully uncomfortable as if aware of their shortcomings in front of the camera.

The ringleader was Jacques Mailhot, whose hands weren’t made for stick-handling. Bill conducted a preseason interview where Jacques talked about fighting—his specialty—and he said something along the lines of when he and a guy from the other team were going to fight, Jacques would ask him, “Do you want to dance with me?” Except, he said it in such a thick French-Canadian accent that, as Bill said, it came out “Do you vahnt to DAHNCE wit me?”

Since that time, a hockey fight has forever come to be known as a “dahnce,” and there was much dahncing—and rejoicing—that first season. Needless to say, a few stories will be forthcoming.