Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

Memories Of Red Fisher

01/20/2018 at 6:38am EST

from Dave Stubbs of NHL.com,

One of the greatest and most respected observers of hockey the game has ever known died Friday at age 91. There isn't a player Red covered, an owner or general manager whose team he was around, or reader who absorbed his every typed or broadcast word who doesn't have a memory or a story to share.

For a few years at the Montreal Gazette, Red was my sports editor. For a few years, our roles would be reversed.

As crusty as he forever tried to make himself look, this is the Red Fisher I knew:

In many long talks, plumbing his reservoir of stories, I gained a great love of hockey history that I bring to many features about the game of yesterday.

read on

from Mark Spector of Sportsnet,

It was Nov. 22, 2003, and we were drinking on the job.

The occasion was the original Heritage Classic in Edmonton, and the Montreal Canadiens and Edmonton Oilers were playing football-field hockey on a minus-23 day.

Red Fisher sat front row and centre in the Commonwealth Stadium press box, his laptop closed in front of him, and a bottle of Chivas Regal flanked by his own styrofoam cup and a small stack for friends. Drinking is prohibited in NHL press boxes, and in all my years I have never seen a scribe arrive with a bottle of whiskey and cups.

But Red did exactly that on that frigid, Northern Alberta day, and I recall sipping on that Chivas and kibitzing about that faraway, first-of-the-outdoor-games thinking, “This is a story I’ll tell again one day.”

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About Kukla's Korner Hockey

Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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