Michael RussoVarmennettu tili @RussoHockey
Granlund’s fiancée is in labor right now, says Fenton, and he feels bad for disrupting their lives
#mnwild
Heh. Menee samaan sarjaan Eddie Olczykin kanssa. Laitetaan nyt poikkeuksellisesti pitkä sitaatti The Athleticista tänne:
"But it is the second time he was traded that is arguably the funniest in NHL history.
It is the tale of the Nov. 10, 1990, trade that sent Olczyk and Mark Osborne from the Maple Leafs to the Jets in exchange for Dave Ellett and Paul Fenton.
The scene is the maternity ward at Centenary Hospital in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, Ontario, on a Friday night when Olczyk was playing for the Maple Leafs. The players are Olczyk; his wife, Diana; and a team of doctors and nurses. Diana is about to give birth to her second son, Thomas.
“In that era, I didn’t have a cell phone. Most people if they had a cell phone it was in their car and it was the size of their shoe. … Anyway, I had called and left a message at the Maple Leafs office that night and said, ‘look, Diana is going into labor, I’m not going to be at the morning skate (on Saturday) but I will be at the game.’ It was an 8 o’clock game, Hockey Night in Canada, Hawks and Leafs,” Olczyk recalled.
After a night without much change in her labor, Diana starts progressing quickly around 3:30 or 4 p.m. on Saturday.
“I have the garb on, I’m getting the mask on, I’m getting everything on and I’m there next to Diana and she’s starting to breathe heavier, and the nurse comes into the delivering room and hands me a note. I open it up and all it says is, ‘the Maple Leafs are on the phone, they want to talk to you.’ I read it and I look at the nurse and I go, ‘tell them I can’t talk right now, Diana is having a baby. Just tell them I’ll be at the game tonight.’
“Diana doesn’t see this — I’m reading this note kind of away from the gurney — and the nurse leaves and I’m getting ready to go back and be there to support Diana, and the nurse comes back in and says, ‘no, no, no, they really want to talk to you.’ And I’m like, ‘what the —?’ So I leave the delivery room and I go to the nurses’ station.”
The conversation with Bob Stellick, the Maple Leafs’ head of our PR, goes like this:
“Hello?”
“Eddie, it’s Bob.”
“Hey, Bob, how you doing?”
“How’s Diana?”
“Bob, she’s in labor, she’s having the baby and then I’m coming to the game.”
“Well, call us before you come.’
“Bob, I’m not calling you. I’ll be there.”
“Hold on a second.”
Olczyk recalled: “I’m like, ‘hold on a second?’ What the hell is going on? I’m thinking, ‘I have to get back to the delivery room.’ The next thing I know, I hear the voice of Floyd Smith, our general manager.
“Eddie?”
“Floyd?”
“Yeah, I hate to do this to you right now but we just traded you to the Winnipeg Jets.”
“Are you kidding me? My wife is in the delivery room on her back, legs open and on a scale of 1-10 she’s about an 8 and you couldn’t wait a couple of hours?”
Olczyk is on a roll now.
Olczyk explained: “He said that it was out there and they had to tell me by league rule or some bullshit story. So I hang up the phone and I’m stunned. I’m shocked. Like, this is the most shocked I’ve ever been in my life.”
Olcyzk used a pay phone to call his father, Ed; his agent, Rick Curran; and Osborne. Olczyk figures he was gone for five or six minutes before he re-entered the delivery room where the doctor was standing at the head of the table and nurses had gathered around.
“Thomas was being quite stubborn and labor was a bit elongated,” Diana said. “My husband had been there pretty consistently until a nurse came in and handed him a note and he just left the room. He was gone for quite a period of time and I was kind of like, ‘expletive, where were you?’”
Not always fleet of foot on the ice, Olczyk tried it with his brain.
“He said he was on the phone with his mom and that his aunt was not well,” Diana said.
“I didn’t know what to say because I didn’t want to say anything,” Olczyk said. “I said, ‘my aunt is sick,’ and Diana looks at me, looks at the ceiling — again, she’s on her back, dressed up, ready to have a baby — and she looks back at me and says, ‘where are we going?’”
“I just looked at him and said, ‘we’ve been traded, I just know it. Where are we going?’” Diana said. “He just looked at me with a shocked look on his face.”
“I’m like, ‘where are we going?’ Holy shit, she’s psychic,” Olczyk said. “And as I’m walking closer I’m like, ‘what the hell do I say? How do I answer this?’ And then I thought, maybe it’s a game, maybe she wants to play a game, so all I say is, ‘guess.’
“So she looks at me, looks at the ceiling and says: ‘Winnipeg.’
“And I’m like, ‘holy shit, how in the hell does she know this?’”
“He just like almost fell on the floor,” Diana said. “He had no idea how I could possibly have known. Obviously, I didn’t know. It was just one of those throw a dart at the North American map things.”
“The next thing you know, I see the doctor pulling off the rubber gloves and he says, ‘OK, Diana, this is going to be a while,’” Olczyk said with a laugh. “She shut right down. She went from like an 8½ to a 2. So Tommy Olczyk wasn’t born for another 3½ hours.”
Added Diana: “Thomas really put on the brakes. We just assumed because he knew he heard Winnipeg. ‘No, mom and dad, it’s a bit too cold there and it’s a little bit warmer where I am.’ ”
https://theathletic.com/813090/2019...-have-the-greatest-nhl-trade-story-ever-told/
