"He instinctively can find the shining greatness of our American culture and does a good job of highlighting it (although he also does have those rare lapses when he writes about hockey, but that is something caused by impurities in the Eastern waters or something)." Erik Keilholtz
Under the patronage of St. Tammany
Mark C. N. Sullivan is an editor at a Massachusetts university. He is married and the father of three children. Email
Jeremy at Classic Canadian suggests that taking down the queen's picture jinxed the Maple Leafs, who haven't won a Stanley Cup since removing her portrait from their arena in the late '60s.
The queen is a puckhead, according to a TV sports producer who talked hockey with her at a Buckingham Palace reception:
When the queen approached Janssen's group, she asked one man what he did. Currency exchange. Yawn.
When she asked Janssen what he did, however, she became quite animated upon discovering that he broadcasted NHL games on Channel 5 in London.
"She said, 'Oh really,' and takes one stride forward toward me," Janssen recalled. "[Prince] Philip and I had to watch your show a few times," the Queen said to Janssen, explaining they had been honing up on hockey before a trip to Canada. During that trip Her Majesty was asked to drop the puck at a Vancouver Canucks game at GM Place.
"So, then she goes over and taps me on the wrist and says, 'but listen to this …,'" Janssen said. And the queen went on to explain to Janssen that after the puck was dropped, it was carried away by someone from the team. She inquired about the puck and was told that it would be put in a glass display case somewhere in GM Place.
"And she said, 'Surely I should be entitled to keep the puck. I came all this way to do this honor, surely I should be entitled to this souvenir,'" Janssen recalled the queen telling him.
"She turns to me and she says, 'I actually have two pucks here at the palace. Not bad for an old woman like me,'" Janssen said.
During the 1952-53 season, when Maurice "Rocket" Richard of the Canadiens scored his 325th career goal to become the NHL's all-time leading goal scorer, the puck was gold-plated and sent to the future Queen Elizabeth. She had expressed an interest in career after seeing play at the Montreal Forum the season before.
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