tennis, life and a few things in between

Golfer’s sticks …
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Fairytale happens all the time.

New York Islanders is a professional ice hockey team based on Long Island that was founded in 1972 and went on to win four consecutive Stanley Cup championships from 1980 to 1983. Clark Gillies and Bobby (Robert Glen) Bourne were teammates and won the four Cup, the holy grail of professional ice hockey together. As if it were not enough, his son Justin Bourne played professional ice hockey and married his daughter Brianna Gillies.

My maternal grandparents met through their fathers too. His father went to Shanghai for business in 1931 and met with her uncle – after publically disowned her father, she was living with her uncle instead. The two men were close business associates in Beijing, then called Peking. When he learnt the son was recently widowed, he sent his private tutor to the hotel to propose the marriage. And insisted to host the grand ceremony the following summer.

My parents met on the basketball court in the military in 1950s and married in 1959 in Beijing.

Chinese team is in red … Are they there to play or being the goons to fight?

Let’s go to the video tape.

He’s the third Swedish player being conducted into the ice hockey NHL Hall of Fame this year. Looking at him, like looking at a Viking – maybe he’s. Here is a video of him fooling around with the matures. Sweden issued stamps to honor him. USA has far to many ‘heroes’ to honor.

The Czech player Hasek also became the Hall of Famer this year. Pat LaFontaine who looked really old, lavished glorious at Hasek at length.
The best American player Mike Modano who cried a lot while giving the acceptance speech was also inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Hasek is from the Czechoslovakia. How he started ice hockey:

They held a tryout for 5-year-old boys and my father took me there. I didn’t even have real skates. I had those blades that you screwed onto the soles of your shoes, but I was tall, and the 9-year-olds didn’t have a goalie, so they put me in with them and thats where I fell in love with the game of hockey.

On tv tonight, he tells the female reporter, with Schwarzeneggerish accent and marble in his mouth,  that when he was drafted by NHL in 1983, he didn’t know until someone told him. He asked:
“What does that mean?”

He retired in 2012 and was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2014. He played his last season for the KHL.

In the 1980s, the majority of NHL players were Canadians, 80% or even higher. Then the league started recruiting from Sweden, Finland, Germany and Russia.
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Now Putin wants his own league to compete with the NHL. So he sets up KHL and begins to throw money at good players such as NJ Devils
Kovalchuk: he signed $77m over 12 years with Devils and was expected to be paid $15m a season with the SKA St. Petersburg of the KHL. Putin is from St. Petersburg.

• his little journey

Now, with the oil prices dropping, I’m wondering if the KHL can keep up it’s payroll.

The jerseys are all made in Canada (like the NHL) designed by Captain Gordo.  They’re really heavy. The yellow (Fussy Puckers) has just arrived. The (green Riptide) and the blue team had folded.

The licensing of the teams’ jersey is a pretty big business – fans do wear them: here is my outfit at Islander’s playoff game in 2021.

ice hockey team long island
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