from Jack Todd at the Montreal Gazette,

In the general decline of pretty much everything these days (please send your “old man yells at the clouds” GIFs now), nothing has fallen off more than the art of the nickname, as the TSN segment proved. Calling Mark Scheifele “Scheifs” or Blake Wheeler “Wheels” or Carey Price “Pricer” is both lazy and lame.

Stu “the Grim Reaper” Grimson? Now that’s a hockey nickname. “Knuckles” Nilan. “Rocket” Richard. “Pocket” Richard. The Russian Rocket. Le Gros Bill. The Great One. Mister Hockey. The Golden Jet. The Flower. The Chicoutimi Cucumber. “Boom Boom” Geoffrion. “Newsy” Lalonde. “Gump” Worsley. The Dominator. Big Bird. Terrible Ted Lindsay. Nikolai Khabibulin, a.k.a. the Bulin Wall. Ken “the Rat” Linseman (a nickname that could also apply to Brad Marchand or Nazem Kadri today).

“Grapes” might be a sour guy, but would Don Cherry have become famous without a great nickname? OK, “Super Mario” and “Number Four Bobby Orr” were pretty lame, but you get the idea.

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