The Real French Connection Had Nothing to Do with Popeye Doyle

You have probably surmised by now, No Masians, that Large is not a big hockey guy. But that has not always been the case. When Large was a little Large, he was fiercely into hockey. There was a two-year period – ’77-’78 – when it may have been his favorite sport. I date the beginning of my hockey malaise back to the Darryl Sittler era of the Flyers. I just couldn’t get my head around that one.

I was really into hockey cards. My dad and I used to play this game, the rules of which were never entirely clear. It involved arranging hockey cards on the floor like actual teams and then making line changes and moving them around and calling out things that we decided had happened. My dad rarely let me win this game, and when it came to the makeups of our teams, he was ruthless, particularly in the trades he orchestrated. He knew my weak spots and he exploited them shamelessly. He knew that I would give up pretty much anything, including any money I had on me, to have Guy LaFleur’s All-Star card. He also knew that I had to have the French Connection on my team or I wouldn’t play. This trading philosophy frequently left me with one line, a right wing and precious little else on the ice. But my team was VERY French. I was a terrible GM.

Basically I loved the French Connection because all of their names were so cool, particularly Gilbert Perreault. Also that their line had such a cool name like “The French Connection.” They sounded like such a gang, so dark and sinister. I’d never even heard of Popeye Doyle.

What prompted this spate of hockey reminiscences is pretty weak – on October 9th, 1986, Gilbert Perreault scored his 500th goal, one of only 12 men at the time to have done so. Now there’s 34, to give you an idea of how scoring has gone in the past couple decades. Must be the roids.