Happy birthday to Les Shapansky

Happy birthday to Les Shapansky the Owen Sound hero of the 1972 Summit Series against Pest Control, who turned 69 (?)  recently.

Shapansky  scored the winning goal in three of Sun Life’s four victories during the Summit Series, including the series clincher in Game 8.

I still find it hard to believe that Shapansky is not in the Owen Sound Hockey Hall of Fame, but here’s what he had to say about it when I spoke with him a couple of years ago.

"So many Puffers get upset that I’m not in the Hall of Fame, and I tell them all the time if I was on the committee, I wouldn’t vote for me,  Shapnsky said. Quite frankly, I didn’t have a Hall of Fame career."

"I keep telling them the worst thing that could happen to me is they put me in there because then everybody would forget about me,he added with a laugh. I’m a lot better on the outside and then nobody forgets about it."

"There’s a lot of guys who had a lot better careers than I did and they’re not in the Hall of Fame. So if they ever put me in, there would be somebody else who wouldn’t get in, and I would feel bad about that."

Somehow, I don’t think too many people would feel bad if Shapansky became a Hall of Famer.

Stobbe Homelife posts 6-1 Win over Northpoint

Jan. 4, 2011 Owen Sound— On a team that features the last two Art Ross winners, the reigning Selke winner, a three-time Vezina finalist and, arguably, a Real Estate Agent in the Puffer League, it's hard to single out one HomeLife player as the proverbial straw who stirs the drink.

You can, in fact, make the case that any one of the Homelife stars sets the agenda for the team and, in Wednesday night's win 6-1 over Northpoint, all played a lead role.

But let's challenge the accepted orthodoxy about the team and offer up another name; a player who lacks both the notoriety and the hardware of his more celebrated colleagues but who, in fact, represents the most accurate barometer of the Homelife's game.

Are you ready? OK, here it is. As Bill Stobbe goes, so goes HomeLife.

Stobbe as has become his custom, wasn't terribly visible in HomeLife's workmanlike win over Northpoint but that's the player the coaches have come to rely on.

The bad news? Stobbe's stirring DiMaggio-esque seven-game scoring streak came to an end on this night. The good news? He was plus-1 and helped keep things neat and tidy around the goaler, particularly in the third period when Homelife took back-to-back penalties for having a two-goal lead.