I’ve Got Your Number
I am extremely lucky and fortunate to, first of all, still be able to play Old-timers Hockey. Secondly, to be able to play with the great guys I play with. Our skills may be fading, but in our feeble little minds we are still faster than a pension cheque and more powerful than a shaken beer can. Even though we may be slightly delusional, our feeble little minds (and beer bellies) have put together a sizable beer fund that needs to be wisely spent. There were as many suggestions for how to sensibly spend the beer fund, as there were players on the team. After we discarded the obvious bad ideas like lottery tickets or more beer, we decided to buy ourselves new hockey jerseys.
We have called ourselves the Geri-Hat-tricks in a few tournaments and when we enter the arena and check to see which dressing room we are in, which are always the same rooms two & four, we are called the Geri’s so we officially adopted the name. We are lucky to have a retired Graphic Artist on the squad and he brilliantly designed a cool logo. Then we were off to the races, or at least off to the screen printers. After two or three weeks, the printer called and asked a question we had never even considered, “Did we want to have our names and numbers on our sweaters?”
We are not in an organized league and any tournaments we enter are not refereed so numbers have never been important. When our team organizer “Coach” asked if we would like numbers and names, it was generally given the ‘Okey-Dokey’, so long as we could afford it. The list was started. To put our names on the back of our jersey gave us the opportunity to either use our family names or our nicknames. Most of us went with our sir names, except “Stinky” Johnstone, the garlic farmer, who went with Lefty for some unknown reason. The choice of numbers was a far different story because of personal preference, superstition, tradition, seniority, and a few other logical arguments.
We have about 30 players, but there were only a few numbers that were requested. There were six players who wanted number 9, because of Gordie Howe, Bobby Hull, Maurice Richard, Johnny Bucyk, and Lanny MacDonald. Only four players wanted number 4 inspired by Bobby Orr, Jean Beliveau and when Stinky said he wanted to wear number 4 because it was Red Kelly’s number, we definitely knew Stinky was old.
In the old days of the Original Six NHL teams, number 13 used to be an unlucky number to wear. It wasn’t until there were more Europeans playing in the league that it became more acceptable to wear, but that did not stop three of our players from desiring that number. I must admit, I was one of the two players who wanted to wear number 3 (Pierre Pilote), but when my 78-year-old teammate was willing to wrestle me for that opportunity, I wisely bowed to his seniority.
The tradition of consecutive numbered team jerseys began to fade when the Original Six NHL teams started to retire numbers of players who distinguished themselves. For instance, the Toronto Maple Leafs are the only Original Six team that has not retired their number 9; but the new tradition is to be creative with number choices that are still double digits. Where will it go? In the end, our fat old guys all got the numbers we wanted and even if there are six number 9’s, four number 4’s and an assortment of favorite and lucky numbers, there is one thing for sure… we are having a blast!