Saturday, December 01, 2007

Goalies: Hello My Name Is...

If you've reviewed the list of NHL goaltenders, I'm sure you've noticed a pattern.

Kristin, the Ookies and I have commented on it among ourselves several times. Sherry, maybe it has occurred to you as well. Cat, I'm sure you've noticed it tonight.

  • Philadelphia goalie: Martin "Marty" Biron
  • New Jersey goalie: Martin "Marty" Brodeur
  • Ottawa goalie: Martin Gerber
  • Dallas goalie: Marty Turco

It's been especially hard for the Flyers-Devils rivalry. Consider the additional coincidences:

  • Both our Marty's last names start with "B."
  • They are both French Canadian.

All of this leads me to the following plea to Canadian parents (Swiss ones, too, in Gerber's case):

Please, for the love of heaven, if your son's name is Martin/Marty (or any other spelling variant of "Marty") and he is a goalie, have him use his middle name! Let's try for diversity, folks. :)

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Allright, the goalie on the England/Armstrong Homegrown Hockey Team will be Cheddar. You have my word. He will play goal whether he wants to or not.


(and who calls Turco Marty? I always just call him Turco. Or 'goddammit that goalie my car's named after')

Cat said...

Teka - we all call Turco "Marty" here in Dallas. When he does something particularly awesome, you can hear everyone chanting "MAR-TY! MAR-TY!"

It gets really confusing, because I'll be half-listening to the broadcast or something, or in my car listening to the game, and I hear "Marty blah blah blah" and I'm like "WHICH ONNNNNEEEEEE?!?" Especially these past few games, where my Stars have played Jersey and Philly.

Anonymous said...

So is it a rule your goalie's name has to end in "-y" at least?

Because here we've got Freddy and... okay, um, Cheezer.

(and man is it funny to listen to the crowd try to figure out how to yell 'Cheezer' all together.)

Kerri said...

And they're all pretty good, too.

It gets worse for the Devils. They have a defenseman Paul Martin, and considering Doc and Chico refuse to call Brodeur anything but "Martin" or "Marty" I get all confused. But someone has pointed out that Brodeur's "Martin" is more like "Mar-tan" which occasionally clears up the confusion for me.

Plus one's a goalie. That helps.