A Legend On Film

It's rare to see documentaries being made about people who are still adding to their legacies, but one goaltender deserves the length of film that the producers of his documentary are committing to the project. Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story is all about the netminder who backstopped the Edmonton Oilers to four Stanley Cups during their dynasty years in the 1980s before stories of substance abuse came out in the early 1990s, a prolonged suspension as a result, and trade away from Edmonton to Toronto that ended the netminder's run in the Alberta capital. Produced by Score G Production Films, Adam Scorgie's company, and directed by Don Metz, Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story looks like one amazing documentary.

Here is the trailer for the film, and I'll discuss more below.

Having seen Adam Scorgie's other hockey film, Ice Guardians, and how powerful the message was in that film, I can already tell you that I'm excited to see this film when it is released. Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story not only looks highly-informative and entertaining, you can see the emotional side of the film coming out in the trailer with Grant Fuhr's eyes welled up with tears. All I can say is that if Making Coco is as good as Ice Guardians is, Adam Scorgie might be hockey's version of Ken Burns.

Grant Fuhr broke into the NHL on October 14, 1981 against the Winnipeg Jets, and he began an ascent to greatness that few have followed. Four Stanley Cups in five years is one heckuvan achievement, but Fuhr's lone Vezina Trophy during that time makes little sense based on how good he was in keeping Wayne Gretzky and the high-octane Oilers moving down the ice away from his net.

Regardless, from 1981-82 until 1988-89, Fuhr averaged 49 games played per season, posting an average of 26 wins, 13 losses, and 6 ties - a winning percentage of .711! There aren't many goaltenders who have posted that winning percentage in one season, let alone eight seasons in a row, but Grant Fuhr certainly did. If you want some additional numbers to marvel at, Fuhr posted 36 assists over those eight seasons including a career-high 14 helpers in 1983-84 in which he outscored teammate Pat Conacher and finished three points back of Dave Semenko! Not bad at all!

Why am I writing about this movie? Well, it was announced that the Calgary International Film Festival would show Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story on its closing weekend with the film's world premiere screening on September 29 at 7:30pm MT at Eau Claire Cinema #5 in Calgary on the final Saturday of the festival! Following the movie's showing, there will be extended Q&A session with Grant Fuhr, director Don Metz, and producer Adam Scorgie! How cool is that?

The only problem? Tickets to the premiere and the Q&A are already sold out!

Wow, Toronto sold out and now Calgary has sold out for the Premiere of #MakingCoco The Grant Fuhr Story. Wonder what’s going to happen when Edmonton dates get released! #WhoWouldHaveThought #MyMansTheMan https://t.co/nVHtB4Ov0v

— Lisa Fuhr (@fursiegirl) September 5, 2018

Congratulations to Adam Scorgie, Don Metz, Grant and Lisa Fuhr, and everyone who was involved with Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story on selling out the premiere! I'm excited to see the film when it finally hits a theatre near me, so find a theatre near you and grab a ticket to see Making Coco: The Grant Fuhr Story!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Two Decades

It's hard to believe that the place I call home on Thursday nights is turning twenty years-old today. CJUM-FM, 101.5 on your FM dial in Winnipeg, officially went on the air at 6pm CT on this very day two decades ago, so this year will be a pretty big year in terms of achieving a milestone. There have been many changes throughout the years, but one thing that has been constant since they allowed me to speak on the radio as the host of The Hockey Show is Pledge-O-Rama, and it's probably a good idea to start thinking about that event as we enter September.

As you can see, ther ehave been various logos used over the years since I've been a part of the radio station, and each one has a special meaning based on its year of usage. There's the 15th anniversary logo at the very right when the station celebrated the anniversary of its founding five years ago. The logo second from the left is the one used on the UMFM app (available in the App Store or the Google Play Store). The third logo from the left shows our Manitoba roots and our attachment to the province. Next to that one is our "Faculty of Sound" logo that we playfully use as recognition for our contributions at the University of Manitoba campus. Next to the Faculty of Sound was last year's Pledge-O-Rama logo, and that brings you back to the 15th anniversary logo.

The Hockey Show, in its infancy, was a mere 30-minute show. Beans and I would come on, blab about hockey, and it would seem that we were done before we had even made a point or introduced our main topic. Thanks to a few changes to the shows before us, we were able to negotiate another half-hour to be added to our show as we moved to a full hour, and we've done some pretty fun excursions that have seen us participate in Hockey Day in Canada in Kenora, Ontario, see the Bruins Alumni play in Shilo, Manitoba, spend a day at the Sami Jo Small Hockey School, and a few other crazy outings.

We've run some fantastic contests with our annual Survivor: NHL Playoffs contest being a major highlight for Beans and I. The exit interviews are the best part, and hearing some of the funny, witty, well thought-out exit interviews that entrants have delivered over the years is some of the best radio for which we could ever wish. It's unscripted, it's real, and it's fantastic. We'll do another run for this year's NHL Playoffs, so make sure you're listening for your chance to enter!

Perhaps what I've enjoyed the most are the interviews we've done and the relationships we've developed over the years. Brandon Reid and Jessica Scott-Reid are always a favorite interview in the summer, and it's been an honour to watch both Brandon's career and Jessica's career take them to places where new friends and adventures have been found and shared with us. Women's hockey players like Fielding Montgomery, Melissa Wronzberg, Jetta Rackleff, Candice Styles, Toni Ross, Krista Patronick, and Mikayla Ogrodniczuk have given us some amazing chats, and former NHL players such as Ted Irvine, Theoren Fleury, Adam Graves, Colton Teubert, Josh Green, and Brian McGrattan were interviews I cherish due to these guys being my idols growing up.

There have been the guys from Letterkenny who have been more than generous with their time, and I owe them an infinite amount of gratitude for the great interviews they brought to the show. Dylan Playfair, Tyler Johnston, Nathan Dales, and Jared Keeso have delivered some of the best moments on the show, and I will forever be in their debts for their contributions. Some of the other people involved in TV and film we've been privileged to speak with include Barry Melrose and Adam Scorgie. We've had local radio celebrities Tom McGouran, Brody Jackson, and Samantha Stevens on the show, and we've been honoured to welcome ESPN's Paul Lukas and renowned artist Rob Ullman to the program in terms of covering all our media!

We try to keep up with the local scene, and we're proud to feature a lot of Manitoba talent on our show. Among the many Manitobans we've been proud to feature, we're always going to give up time on our show for the Bisons women's hockey team, your reigning U SPORTS National Champions. We've also been proud to have Janelle Kohanchuk, Sami Jo Small, Taylor Woods, Mark Taraschuk, Delayne Brian, Kristen Campbell, and Halli Krzyzaniak on the show as we try to feature as many great Manitoban players as we can because this province produces some incredible talent!

I guess what I'm saying is that The Hockey Show is just one show on this amazing station that features over 80 shows like this every week that touches all people, all communities, and all music tastes. Not every show will appeal to every person, and that's ok. Diversity and inclusion are two founding principles for any community, and the UMFM community - its hosts, its staff, its volunteers, and its listeners - make up one heckuva community over the last two decades of being on Winnipeg's airwaves.

This is one of the many reasons why Pledge-O-Rama - UMFM's annual funding drive - is so important to the station. Without the continued support of the community both within Winnipeg and outside the city's borders, shows like ours wouldn't have the freedom to venture to places like Kenora, Shilo, or down the street to Wayne Fleming Arena. Donations to the station have allowed us to embark on exciting projects such as replacing and upgrading our transmission tower from analog to digital broadcasting, enabling the station to buy mobile broadcasting units that allow us to broadcast almost anywhere without the need for satellite trucks or SUVs full of radio transmission equipment, and making key repairs and upgrades to the audio equipment based at the station.

The donation is tax deductible if you want to score yourself a sweet tax return or you can opt for the station-branded gear that we'll be giving away for your generous contribution. There are amounts we look for, but I'll be very honest in saying that UMFM doesn't waste a lot of money due to budgetary reasons, and we can stretch a $5 donation farther than most would believe. If you like what we do on The Hockey Show, please keep us in your thoughts when Pledge-O-Rama kicks off in October. We can't do what we do without your support!

Happy 20th anniversary, UMFM! Thanks for letting us blab about hockey on your airwaves, and let's hope that you'll still be around in another 20 years!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Scorch Your Taste Buds

I'll be honest: my long weekend saw me out in the garden on Saturday as the vegetables were abundant. I decided to expand my hot pepper roster this year after some excellent success with jalapeno peppers last year, and I was out picking Tabasco peppers, Hungarian hot wax peppers, dragon's breath peppers, and dragon's claw peppers along with my standard jalapeno peppers. In amassing enough to fill two large freezer bags, I needed something to do with them. Yes, I know they can be frozen, but I wanted to use them as soon as I could in order to preserve their freshness and the crisp, harsh pain of that capsaicin.

It was a video on YouTube that I found that had three simple recipes for hot peppers in turning them into stuff I love to use around the kitchen. I decided to make my own hot sauce and my own chili flakes based on the steps in this video, and I have to credit Lee Kalpakis and A Little Help for these recipes. Here is Lee and her recipes for your use!

As I said above, I made my own hot sauce, and just two days into the hot sauce mixture I can tell you it's already liquid fire. I used nothing but jalapeno, Tabasco, and Huganrian hot wax peppers, and it's scorching. It's deliciously good, but I've decided to let it stand for the full seven days. My only complaint? I wish it were a little thicker, but perhaps that thickening will come as the mixture stands longer. I'll keep you posted on that.

The red pepper flakes are also incredibly good, and this mixture combines all of the hot peppers above plus a couple of yellow bell peppers and red bell peppers each. Again, I am very impressed by how hot this mixture turned out, and my pizza may set off fire alarms with these pepper flakes sprinkled on it.

I tip my cap to Lee Kalpakis because these recipes, as she demonstrated, are incredibly easy and the results are fantastic. There should be another harvesting of peppers in a week or so, and I may try doing the chili oil. I don't believe I have much use for it, though, so I may just do more hot sauce because I tend to use that stuff in all sorts of meals.

If you have any additional ideas for using these peppers, leave your ideas in the comments!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

Integrity Of The Game

There was some major news that came out of the NHL today as Vegas Golden Knights defenceman Nate Schmidt was suspended for 20 games for violating the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program. Based on the reaction from Nate Schmidt, I'd say that this finding wasn't expected as he is claiming innocence, and I'm starting to believe his claims that he didn't take any banned substances to his knowledge. That being said, the suspension must be upheld based on the findings for the integrity of the game, and I assume that Schmidt and the Golden Knights, while unhappy with this decision, understand that these values on the amount of any banned substance in the bloodstream aren't just a slippery slope that one can overlook due to "environmental contamination".

I understand and believe that Nate Schmidt was only taking supplements provided by the Vegas Golden Knights this summer. There is absolutely no doubt about this in my mind as Nate Schmidt seems like the kind of guy who wouldn't risk suspension due to his love of the game. This could possibly fall on the shoulders of the Golden Knights who were instructing Schmidt of the supplements he should be taking, but if Schmidt didn't receive his supplements directly from the team, the Golden Knights also come up innocent when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs. If Schmidt was going to a store to acquire his supplements, he has to know that he runs the risk of there being some possible contamination along the lines as drug manufacturers do their best to keep everything in line, but mishaps do occasionally happen.

Here's where I draw the line. I will not label Schmidt a cheater or a drug user or any other name that implies he's using performance-enhancing drugs. What I will say is that Nate Schmidt, like any other athlete, has to know what he's putting into his body at all times, and the fact that he was caught with some contaminant in his supplements is no different than when Nicklas Backstrom tested positive for pseudoephedrine at the 2014 Sochi Olympics despite his using Zyrtec-D for several years for his allergies. There's a limit to the amount of certain drugs one can ingest, and Schmidt unknowingly had ingested one of the banned substances beyond a level deemed acceptable by the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program.

Case closed. No exceptions.

This isn't some arbitrary scale the moves based on the amounts found in one's system. It's a cut-and-dry system to prevent players who want to use performance-enhancing drugs to gain an edge from having an unfair advantage compared to the rest of the field. And while Schmidt's tested amount was equivalent to "a pinch of salt in an Olympic-sized swimming pool" over the limit, it's still over the limit set out in the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program.

If a driver blows 0.081% on a breath analysis test, that driver is still charged with impaired driving despite him or her legally being just 1/1000th of a percentage point over the limit or, measured more easily, 1 milligram of alcohol in 100 millilitres of blood as per the Canadian Criminal Code. It doesn't matter if one blows 0.081% or 0.100% or more, the result is the same charges are levied against the driver despite there being significant changes to the driver's behaviour and judgement as the number increases. It's a penalty no matter what amount over the driver is, though, and the NHL/NHLPA Performance Enhancing Substances Program views infractions over its limits the same way. And yes, I'm aware that drivers with anything above 0.000% can still be charged with a crime, but drivers at lower BACs are dealt with under provincial and territorial traffic acts. For the purpose of the illustration above in the paragraph, I simply needed the 0.080% limit.

Back on topic, if I'm Nate Schmidt and I had purchased these supplements on my own, I'd immediately be looking for a different brand who sells this specific supplement. Clearly, the cross-contamination with another supplement or drug has cost Schmidt 20 games this season and pile of money, and I'm pretty sure he's not looking to be victimized twice by the same mistake. If the supplements came from the Golden Knights, the team should be investigating its supply chain and figuring out how to proceed in the future so it's not keeping one of their best players off the ice for a quarter of the season.

In the end, Nate Schmidt was unlucky. He rolled the dice in taking supplements prescribed for him by the Golden Knights, and he got burned when the supplements came back dirty. That's the risk that one takes when looking for supplements, and the sheer number of supplement recalls in the United States alone should put supplement users on high alert for possible contamination. I suspect that Schmidt will be far more wary in the future when it comes to his supplements, but this is one of those "lesson learned" moments when it comes to being an elite athlete.

The integrity of the game is the most important part of this lesson. If the NHL let Nate Schmidt's findings slide due to the minute amount over the limit that he was, at what point is there a cutoff for an amount over the limit? The answer is emphatically zero amount over the limit, and that's what Nate Schmidt will sit for twenty games to start the season.

Lesson learned.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!

One-Sided Rematch

In what is one of the better traditions that the KHL has, the first regular season game of the new season sees one game played between the two Gagarin Cup finalists from the prior year. It's almost like the league takes a short pause for summer before throwing the teams back into the water at the same place they were a year ago in terms of the matches. Today marked the kickoff for the 2018-19 KHL season, so Ak Bars Kazan had the privilege of travelling to meet SKA St. Petersburg in Game One of the new season. If you recall, Ak Bars Kazan won the Gagarin Cup last season, but both teams have gone through some roster changes over the summer, so would the same result be found on this day?

Without giving too much away, it was not a good night for Emil Garipov.

Just 3:50 into the game, Patrick Hersley opened the scoring for SKA when he beat Garipov on what appeared to be a fairly routine one-timer from the point.

Hersley officially becomes the first goal-scorer of the season with Pavel Datsyuk and Nikita Gusev picking up the helpers on that marker. St. Petersburg was out in front 1-0. FYI, that won't be the last time you read the names Datsyuk or Gusev in this article.

Ak Bars would find the equalizer 7:24 into the second period when Albert Yarullin beat Magnus Hellberg on a big rebound after stopping Vladislav Kara on a nice feed from Rob Klinkhammer.

Rob Klinkhammer does it all to drag Hellberg to far corner, puck rebounds in front of an empty net and Albert Yarulin is there to tie the game. pic.twitter.com/B5DS7LEUkl

— Aivis Kalniņš (@A_Kalnins) September 1, 2018

However, the walls would start to cave in on Kazan minutes later when SKA went on the power-play and Garipov surrendered another goal that looked to be a fairly routine save.

Nikita Gusev's shot through the wickets of Garipov at 9:54 while on the power-play put SKA back in front by a 2-1 score. Datsyuk picked up his second helper of the game on that goal, and St. Petersburg was only getting started.

At 13:41, another former NHL player strikes for SKA off a face-off win in the offensive zone.

Viktor Tikhonov wired the one-timer home through traffic off the perfect face-off win from Ilya Kablukov, and it was 3-1 for St. Petersburg.

Tikhonov and Kablukov would combine forces on another goal at the 4:38 mark of the third period, and this one seemed like Garipov probably should have made the save, but even the referee missed the goal.

I don't know if the referee is wearing an earpiece that allows some control room to let him know that was a goal, but seeing him blow down the play during the middle of action and signal a goal was a little weird to me. In any case, it was Kablukov's shot that eluded Garipov and rang off the middle post for the goal, and Tikhonov picked up his second point of the night with the helper.

SKA would continue to pile on after Alexander Barabanov stripped Alexei Popatov of the puck in the corner, and his centering pass found Nikolai Prokhorkin at the face-off dot for another one-timer goal at 13:13.

If there's one thing that Winnipeg Jets and Boston Bruins fans know all too well, it's opposition goals going in off Paul Postma, and Postma was back to his old tricks here as Prokhorkin's shot appears to deflect in off the big defender's skate past Garipov. In Postma's defence, Garipov has to get the pads wider down on the ice, but the end result of this Prokhorkin goal was a 5-1 lead for SKA St. Petersburg.

Finally, the goal you've all been waiting for as Nail Yakupov, the former first-overall pick in the NHL, scored in his return to the KHL on what appears to be another routine save for Garipov.

Nail Yakupov put an end to the game scoring his first goal with SKA to clinch a 6-1 win for SKA. pic.twitter.com/hPmMbluG6Y

— Aivis Kalniņš (@A_Kalnins) September 1, 2018

Yakupov's goal with 2:57 to play was set up by Patrick Hersley, and it would round out the scoring as SKA St. Petersburg took the opening game of the season by a 6-1 score.

Let's be honest: Ak Bars Kazan needed a better effort from everyone, but Emil Garipov allowing six goals on 21 shots is rather embarrassing for the netminder, especially when you consider how some of those goals got through him and by him. His .714 save percentage won't cut it in a Russian beer league, let alone the best hockey league in Russia, so I'm sure that Kazan will demand more from him as the season progresses after seeing how great he was in last year's Gagarin Cup Playoffs. Newcomer Justin Azevedo was held off the scoresheet and limited to just two shots in the game by SKA while Jiri Sekac and Danis Zaripov were a combined -2 with zero shots recorded. Ouch.

SKA has to be happy as their big guns came to play tonight, and they made Magnus Hellberg's start an easy one in allowing just 13 Kazan shots. Datsyuk, Tikhonov, Kablukov, Hersley, and Gusev all had two-point nights, and last year's best team in the regular season are off to a flying start once more.

The rest of the league settles in this week as the KHL regular season has begun. Who will end up atop the standings and as favorites for the Gagarin Cup? We'll see how this season plays out in Russia, Finland, Latvia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Slovakia, and China as the KHL teams begin their quest for immortality!

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!