Posted - 01/30/2012 : 10:06:04 With downtime between hockey games over the NHL All-Star break, my idle mind has to make a comment about the McDonald's ad which describes the attributes of their eggs.
In one part of the commercial, they show how kids learn to take a hockey pass with raw eggs. Really? I had some very innovative coaches over the years, but we never used (or wasted) raw eggs to help learn how to cradle a passed puck. If they did, I would have gone through dozens of eggs myself.
Eggs have been used in the folklore of hockey to describe a non-physical player who could have eggs in their pocket and never have one broken while playing.
I think it was Harold Ballard who commented about one of his own players (Swedish-born Inge Hammarstrom), that he could have eggs in his pocket, and go into a corner and not have one egg broken. This contributed to the myth that European-born players were soft, meanwhile, Borje Salming was one of the toughest Leaf players ever.
Hammarstrom got a few last laughs though, and one feather in his cap is that he was the Flyers scout who pushed for Philadelphia to pick Peter Forsberg with their 6th overall pick in the 1991 draft. Forsberg was not considered a top 10 pick. Hockey News had him rated to go around 25th stating that he was "a solid second rounder who could move into the first round."
Forsberg turned out to be a great player. He was a terrific passer, and great at taking passes! Maybe his coach used eggs?!?
