RIP the Rangers greatest player

 

Rod Gilbert who was the greatest Ranger of all time has passed. There might be bigger stars who played for the Rangers like Mark Messier and Wayne Gretzky. But for a hockey fan of a certain age like me it was all about the great Rod Gilbert.

When I was kid in the sixties there were only a few hockey teams. So you could follow the sport in between watching football and baseball. The Rangers had a decent team. They had the great goalie Eddie Giacomin and his back up Gilles Villemure. The hard nosed Vic Hadfield. The always elegant Jean Ratelle. Glen Stather and Pete Stemkowski. The unpronounceable Walt Tkaczuk. All the flotsam and jetsom that Marv Albert would talk about when the Rangers played. I went to a couple dozen games in those days. Tickets were not hard to get. The Rangers were often out of contention. But they still were a lot of fun.

Rod lived to be 80. He had a good run. He was always a very classy guy. Never a scandal or a bad word. The kind of guy people would point to as a role model. I always really admired him and I thought of him as Mr. Ranger.

RIP Rod. You did good.

KLEM TV

linky

Mr. Hockey has slipped past the goalie.

Gordie Howe has passed away at the age of 88. A four time Stanley Cup Winner with the Red Wings he was one of the greatest hockey players I ever saw. I remember seeing him in 1968 when he was on line with Delvecchio and  Mahovlich. That was one of the best lines I ever saw up there with Gretzky and the one on the Islanders. Gordie must have been in his forties by then.

Crusoe & Oakley Dachshund Play Ball Hockey

Link to story

Via AllenS

Happiness

The gay mafia has gone too far this time.

They're now directing their hate toward Pavel Datsyuk, and they're apparently on a mission to destroy him.

For those of you not familiar with hockey, Datsyuk is universally recognized as the best two-way player in the game.  I'd go farther than that:  I've watched hockey for over 30 years, and I think he's the best player, period, in the history of the game.  That would certainly be debatable, but that's a debate for another time.

This is Pavel Datsyuk:

Datsyuk won 4 Lady Bing trophies in a row -- that's the NHL's award for sportsmanship. He's the cleanest player in the league.  And he's a remarkably modest, unassuming, self-effacing man -- the most humble professional athlete I've ever seen.  Part of that humility probably stems from his humble beginnings in Russia.  His family didn't have much money; his mother died when he was 16; he wasn't drafted at all in 1996 or 1997, and went in the seventh round in 1998, because he was considered too small.

And I'm sure part of that humility comes from his faith -- he's a quietly devout Orthodox Christian.

Because the Olympic hockey tournament will be played in Russia this year, and gay rights advocates have pushed the issue to the forefront all summer, it was inevitable that some reporter would ask Datsyuk his opinion of his country's laws regarding homosexuality.  Datsyuk responded about as I expected:

"I'm an orthodox and that says it all."

More after the break.