Birthday's, anniversaries and truckers. A few memories and thoughts on all of the above. Liam style. :)

Anniversaries, birthday's, truckers, what more could you ask for.

I missed a couple of special dates recently. First of all a belated happy birthday to Grapes, Mr. Don Cherry! 88 years young on the 5th,(February 5, 1934) just a few days ago. Wishing you great health and happiness for 2022 and beyond Grapes. Hope you are well my friend. I love the pictures attached. For obvious reasons the one with Bobby at the bottom of this post. They are so close and that particular picture means a lot to me. The second one, the night I met Don ( and Brian McFarlane) with the Oliver brothers, Peter and Andy in Colborne, Ontario early 1980s and my cover shot. Love this one to. Don and I were in a deep dive on Canadian hockey in the summer of 2014 ahead of Sochi. I said we're going to be so strong we won't lose a game. He's in the process of emphatically, telling me we're going to be so strong we won't lose a period. lol. He was right. Best wishes my dear friend.

Yesterday ( Feb 7, 1976 ) marked 46 years since Darryl Sittler's remarkable contest where he broke and still holds the NHL record for most points in one game, ten. 6 goals, 4 assists in an 11-4 win for his Leafs over the Bruins on an incredible Saturday night in 1976. I remember it well.

The Leafs had HNIC to themselves that night. Montreal were not playing. They were home to the Seals the night before ( 7-1 win) and played in New York against the Rangers the next day, Sunday ( 3-0 win). Vancouver were not playing so it was all Toronto for that fateful night.

Some say the Bruins have been making the Leafs pay for that pounding ever since. That could be right but that night Darryl Sittler had a night for the ages.

The game started at 8:07pm, ended at 10:27pm. Darryl recorded his sixth point of the night, a goal, at 10:27 of the 2nd period and his record setting ninth point of the night, another goal at 9:27 of the 3rd period. His 6 goals gave him.....yep, you guessed it, 27 goals on the season and going into the game the Bruins were in 2nd place, the Leafs 7th on this the seventh day of the second month in 1976. Were the stars aligned for #27 on that night? I'd say so.

Couple of other things; the Bruin goalie was Dave Reece, left in for all eleven goals reason being Gerry Cheevers had just resigned with Boston from the WHA and the Bruins head coach, the aforementioned birthday boy, Don Cherry did not want to throw Cheevers to what clearly was a barrage that night.

With the Leafs scoring 11 goals and Sittler recording 10pts that means one Leaf scored a goal Darryl did not get a point on. That was scored by George Ferguson. And lastly, on the Boston side, they did have a couple of neat accomplishments that were lost in the onslaught; Jean Ratelle recorded 4pts including two goals to give him 350 in a career and Johnny Bucyk recorded 3pts including his 1,283 which at the time moved him into second spot all time in NHL history behind Gordie Howe. If it's any consolation for Bruin goaltending fans they did record their first ever shutout in franchise history also on February 7, 1925 when they went into the Montreal Forum and shutout the Montreal Maroons 1-0. So you got that going for you.

One more thing about Sittler's big night. I watched that game at home in our back kitchen on our little colour TV, our first one which we only got four years previous. I watched with my brother Sean, we had a big fire going in our old wood stove and even though I was never a Leaf fan it really was something special to witness - even on TV. I have worked many gigs with Darryl and he's a fantastic guy who has done a ton for cancer research especially since losing his fantastic wife Wendy to the dreaded big C....

-Honourable mention to Ian Turnbull's 5 goal game on February 2, 1977 vs Detroit and goaltenders Eddie Giacomin and current Vancouver Canuck President of Hockey Operations Jim Rutherford.

Lastly, I wrote on my previous missive that I supported the truckers and whomever else and their right to protest. What's really sad to see is it took a court injunction for them to stop with the horns and the amount of businesses that are still impacted ( closed ) for various reasons. I said I was going to go down and see this all for myself. I have not yet. So I'm going Thursday around noon.

It's such a contentious issue. I didn't have to block anybody when I posted last week but I did delete a few posts from people. I believe in the right to protest but not to disrupt other people's lives especially for this length of time. Maybe that's hypocritical, I don't know.

Please save any rhetoric if you're intention is to just spew. If you really have a problem with these few statements message me privately on FB here or email me, [email protected]

Anyway I'm going on Thursday and I sure as hell hope I don't see any nazi flags.......