The Toronto Maple Leafs are trying to land Swedish goalie Jonas Gustavsson, so much so that the Toronto Star actually reported a Gustavsson sighting on Friday.
Wow. I feel incomplete that I didn't see him. And just when did he become a household name?
Anyway, the fun thing is, his nickname is The Monster. Now, that's admittedly better than the usual hockey fare by which one would expect Gustavsson to be nicknamed, oh, something creative like "Gusty" or something.
He's nicknamed The Monster because he stands 6-foot-3. This is a monster, in modern sports? Heck, Ken Dryden came up with the Montreal Canadiens in 1971 and he's 6-foot-4. And Ron Hextall, Philadelphia Flyer goalie of more recent vintage, late 1980s into the 1990s, is 6-foot-3. Nobody ever called him Monster. Mister, maybe, given his propensity to be a bit, shall we say, truculent.
Sounds to me, at this point anyway, that good ol' Gusty could be the latest in a long line of what I call "Toronto superstars", i.e. run-of-the-mill players whose talents are blown out of all proportion simply because they play in the so-called centre of the universe that never sees a Stanley Cup.
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