NHL power forwards as battleships?

Since officially launching this site last month, I’ve enjoyed all the emails I’ve received from readers, hailing anywhere from New York City to Duncan, British Columbia.

The most unusual one so far comes from a hockey fan in Ontario who’s also apparently well-versed in naval history. He suggested that I write an article comparing NHL power forwards to various historic battleships, and provided what he dubbed a working outline. I thanked him but said I prefer to come up with my own off-the-wall concepts as a rule; also, he’d done such a fine job in his outline that I really doubted I could improve on it much, unless I ditched this hockey thing and devoted myself to the History Channel and the works of Antony Preston for a few weeks.

However, I asked permission to reprint his email, which he kindly granted.

My idea draws analogies between the rise and fall of the power forward in the NHL in the 1990’s and 2000’s and the great naval buildup in the post-Dreadnought era.

We start with Mark Messier bursting onto the scene in the early 1980’s. He set a new standard, much like HMS Dreadnought revolutionized the battleship. A few years later, Mario Lemieux came along, a smooth and talented specimen, much like the massive but ill-fated HMS Hood. We saw numerous power forwards, like Messier, Rick Tocchet, Cam Neely and Joel Otto, battling in the playoffs during the late 1980’s, much like the Battle of Jutland. Like Admiral Fisher’s battlecruisers, speed proved not to be armour, as we saw with the early end of Cam Neely’s career.

As we move into the 1990’s, we see the coming of Eric Lindros, “The Next One,” with fear and trepidation not seen since the Bismarck entered the Atlantic. As he arrived on the scene, Mario Lemieux and the Pittsburgh Penguins were wrapping up an era of dominance, much like the Hood symbolized the Royal Navy’s dominance in the interwar period. However, like the Bismarck, Lindros’s career was disappointing and short, as the hunter became the hunted. The scuttling of the Graf Spee after the Battle of River Plate can be seen as mirroring the brief, sad career of his brother, Brett Lindros.

Aside from the glorious HMS Warspite, similar in many ways to the ageless Brendan Shanahan, the battleship became a sitting duck in the era of the aircraft carrier. The sinking of the Repulse and the Prince of Wales can be seen as analogous to the disappointments that were Jason Bonsignore and Radek Bonk. The end of Keith Primeau’s disappointing career was similar to the sinking of the Yamato. As World War Two ended, the Americans would continue to rely on such great battleships as the Iowa, Missouri and New Jersey, much like Vincent Lecavalier and Joe Thornton’s final rise to glory, but all in all, the era of the battleship was over.

Columbus Blue Jackets coach Ken Hitchcock is known to be a Civil War aficionado. He might get a charge out of this. Or, I suppose, the family of Albert “Battleship” LeDuc, a two-time Stanley Cup champion with the Montreal Canadiens, might enjoy it as well.