Canadian Kids "Gone Wild"

Canada’s newest royal family, the Staal’s from Thunder Bay, Ontario, have gotten into a little trouble it seems. Eric from the Carolina Hurricanes and younger brother Jordan from the Pittsburgh Penguins were thrown in the clink for a “bachelor party gone awry”. In short, they were just acting on their inner Canadian impulses which is to drink enough beer to kill a mule and then assume that everyone they see wants to party as well, including motorists going by on the highway. When the cops showed up, half of them ran into the forest which is funny enough in itself. Even the cops were having a laugh over it, one of them saying that they were just “Canadian kids gone wild!” Fair enough. It’s not like they were engaging in a dog fighting ring or anything. They’ll get a soft kick in the ass from the authorities and everyone will have a good story to tell down the road. But the Staal brothers are not the only Canadian kids to have gone “wild” in the past. Let’s refresh our memories:

Koo Koo Bananas. That’s the name of the bar in Oshawa where a young Eric Lindros was arrested for pouring a beer over a womans head who resisted his advances in 1993. At the time, Eric was the golden boy (well not in Quebec) and the public was shocked that he was giving golden showers to their young women in sleazy dives. Eric survived this “wild” episode and went on to be the most dominant player of the 90’s until Canadian kid gone steamroller, Scott Stevens, relocated Lindros’ head in the 2000 playoffs. They’re still looking for Eric’s career.

When Chris Pronger was at the mature age of 19 and playing for the struggling Hartford Whalers, he quickly gained a reputation as a hell-cat by beating the living shit out of a few people in a full fledged barroom brawl and then getting charged with drunk driving not long afterwards. Then Mike Keenan brought him to the St. Louis Blues and beat the living shit out him until he was a star player. Only problem is, Keenan threw down a few golden pops himself and got into a moving tin can back in 1990 and got nailed by the fuzz.

I don’t even want to get into the antics of Theo Fleury.

Getting off the drunk topic and onto the just plain stupid, how about Alexandre Daigle. Now he was a beauty. Gifted, funny, charming and pleasant, he was a complete mess in Ottawa. He actually wasn’t too bad on the ice, better than people give him credit for, but off the ice he kept stepping in shit everywhere he turned. First mistake was going number one in the draft and then saying that no one will remember who goes number two. Unfortunately number two was Chris Pronger who was so mad at the slight that he destroyed a barroom and then went on to win the Hart Trophy and the Stanley Cup. Then Daigle posed in a nurses outfit for a trading card company. What’s the big deal right? For some reason, management was pissed. Then the coupe de grace: Daigle openly jokes in a full airplane about planting a bomb in his suitcase. Not funny Alex. He got yanked off the flight and into the headlines. Then he gloated about dating Pamela Anderson. She said they had a cup of coffee. Then he said that he didn’t enjoy hockey anymore. For a Canadian kid, that’s really going “wild”.