If Memory Swerves™, 'twas on this day in sporting history — October 19, 1957 — that Maurice “The Rocketeer” Richards of the Montreal Something-Or-Others became the first NHL® player to score 500 goals in a single game. Now, I don’t know much about bloody hockey — other than that it’s popular among toothless men, is virtually unwatchable from any vantage point in-person or on the telly, and that it’s the national sport of cold places like North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota, Dakota — but I do know that the laws of time and space dictate that 500 goals in one 60-minute game are unlikely. For anyone other than Rocketeer Richards, that is! He was an imposing man, standing, like, 6 feet, 14 inches or something, and weighing nearly 375 pounds in full regalia, and with his rocket-fueled jet pack — designed by Apple® in California — he flew past opponents as though they were standing shakily atop steel-bladed shoes. He shoots, he scores! Shoots, scores! And so on and so forth, red goal light flashing like a traffic signal. Bloody hell, he scored more than a Cialis®-happy sixty-year-old with matching bathtubs outside the barnyard. He was the greatest to ever play the game, outside of Ted Williams, who played a different game, and when he retired, the sculptors got to work on memorializing him properly. Alas, the statue that stands outside of the BMO™ Harris Ice Center (pictured) is a bloody replica from the 1990 Hollywood biopic that portrayed Richards as more of a superhero than ice skater, though hockey fans would surely say he was both. Bravo, Rocket Man Maurice Richards!
