Boudreau hooks up with Great One
You could say Anaheim Ducks coach Bruce Boudreau had a great time Monday night in Vancouver.
It turns out The Great One Wayne Gretzky was also in town and wanted to meet up with him.
“It blew me away,” Boudreau told the Orange County Register. “I got a call from Sergey (Kocharov), who’s the PR guy in Washington (where Boudreau used to coach). And he said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, I gave Wayne your number. He was looking for it.’ And I was, ‘Whoa. What’s that all about?’ I’ve met him once. I’ve idolized him for 100 years.
“So he called and said, ‘Hey, it’s Wayne. I’m just across the street. You want to go for a drink?’ And I hemmed and hawed. He says, ‘C’mon, for a beer.’ And i’m like, i can’t dis wayne gretzky. I was like a kid in a candy store, just wide-eyed and listening to him.
“He’s everything as a person that I thought he would be when I envision stuff. It was very neat.”
It turns out Gretzky became a fan when Boudreau’s Toronto Marlboros played in Gretzky’s home town of Brantford, Ont.
OVERTIME: After being eliminated from playoff contention, the Dallas Stars can heap some blame on their power play. They went 0-for-4 in Thursday’s 2-0 loss to the Nashville Predators and have the worst power play in the league, sitting last in goals scored (33) . . . John Tavares has become the first New York Islander to reach the 80-point plateau since Ziggy Palffy in the 1997-98 season. Tavares had two assists in a 5-4 victory over the Winnipeg Jets on Thursday, giving him 31 goals and 50 assists.