The battle for Lord Stanley’s Cup is well underway, and hockey fanatics everywhere are glued to the tube so as not to miss a minute of the fast-flyin’ action. Suffice it to say that The Old Coach thinks little of them snot-nosed little potty-wipes who have managed to take one of the North Country’s greatest games and run it straight into the ground, unlike the rugged and fearless ice warriors who sailed the ice back when me myself, The Old Coach, was skatin’ the left wing as enforcer for the Greater Featherstone Hoot’s Liquor Serial Axe Murderers back in the good old Muscatel County Knights Of Columbus League.

I mean, fer cryin’ out loud! These hockey players today are so pampered and babied these days it’s enough to make The Old Coach lose his lunch of pickled eggs and chicken gizzards from Flo & Earl’s Main Street Tap. These dainty-drawers got more padding on them than a king-size Sealy Posture-Pedic, they wear them sissy plastic helmets that make them look like a bunch of frostbitten motorcycle cops, and some of them even still have all their teeth! What in the name of Gordie Howe is going on here?  

Let me tell ya, folks, back in The Old Coach’s day, things were a helluva lot different! We flew out onto that rink in little more than a union suit and beat the living hell out of each other for three twenty-minute periods of non-stop, rip-roarin’, knuckle-bustin, shin-splittin’, rib-crackin’, all-out Arctic warfare! Bodies were strewn all over the freakin’ ice bleedin’ from various openings and you thought nothin’ of catchin’ a skate-blade to the kidneys or a stick across the chops. It was the nature of the game, nothing personal, and it didn’t matter who we was buttin’ heads with, be it the Gillburg Ice Crappies, the Lactose County Breast Kneaders or whoever, it was kill or be killed because that’s what sportsmanship was all about in those days, and The Old Coach is givin’ you the down-and-dirty here and now!  

The Old Coach weeps for the youth of today, who will never even begin to fathom the sensation of well-being that comes from standing in the parking lot after a hard-fought and well-earned victory on the ice, watching the parade of ambulances carting your opponents off to Our Lady of The Perpetually Decrepit Hospital Emergency Room and knowin’ that you done give it your all for the pride of Greater Featherstone. Lord, where is Thy light?  

You take it from The Old Coach when he tells ya that today’s hockey players are nothin’ more than a bunch of faggot figure-skatin’ twerps who couldn’t skate with the Greater Featherstone Hoot’s Liquor Serial Axe Murderers for more’n five minutes a’fore they’d be a-runnin’ and a-cryin’ for their mamas because we’d be beatin’ them to within an inch of their lives and showin’ them how the great game of hockey is really supposed to be played! If they want mercy, then go play a team of priests because that ain’t the way things are done around here, fella!  

And that’s the truth! Tell ‘em The Old Coach sent ya…  

© 2001 Bill Klein. All Rights Reserved.

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