Since the Screech Owls had only a four-day skills competition in Detroit between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, and because the show had promised to put the players up and feed them, it was hard for any of the parents to say no – even the ones who were a bit unsure about being in the spotlight as ...
Data said, after Dmitri skated over and asked how many seats there were. “Six … five … zero … five … zero!” Data sounded a little impatient, almost as if he couldn’t believe Dmitri had forgotten. But Travis understood why Dmitri had asked: he hadn’t forgotten at all, he just wanted to hear it out...
Talking with Batterinski in Finland this past spring, there was absolutely no hint of what was coming. We sat, measuring out his curious career in coffee spoons and flat beer, in a small restaurant in Lahti, a small city a hundred or so kilometres north of Helsinki. That evening Batterinski’s Tap...
IT COULD HAVE been worse. Flatulence might have been the image Canada presented to the world. And sexual confusion. And self-mutilation. Mercifully, The Economist passed on the beaver back in September 2003 when it threw a moose in sunglasses on its cover and declared Canada a “cool” country with...
Mr. D pulled up the old team bus outside the suburban rink. The bus burped and backfired in a cloud of black exhaust as the engine died. Mr. D grasped his nose and made a face as if the old bus had just passed wind. Travis caught his own reflection in the side mirror that the driver used for back...
Travis must have asked this same question a dozen times since they heard that Sarah was safe and a ransom had been demanded. Sam was philosophical. “I imagine they’re bargaining about the price,” she said. “Mr. Petrov said he’d pay, but even for him ten million rubles isn’t chicken feed.” “I bet ...
There are not many players you can say that about at age forty-five and five years removed from his skates, but the truth is Mario Lemieux never had much of a step to begin with. Never needed it—not when you could fire the puck over the net from centre ice at age eight, not when peewee goaltender...
We were told to go to some other movie by one of the kids—“You have to see it!”—and so, like obedient parents, we shuffled off to the local cinema with its twenty-four screens and ten-deep lineups. Perhaps the line went on too long. Whatever— when I finally got to the window I’d forgotten the tit...