While we’ve hinted at it before, it’s now official, the doldrums of the off-season are here. Yes, we may still be waiting for a blockbuster trade or two, but for the most part the bulk of the action is in the past and the only thing that lies between us and the opening of training camp in September are a handful of arbitration cases.
So, with the daily hockey news dwindling down to a barely perceivable trickle of information it’s time to find other ways to occupy our time. Instead of doomscrolling through whatever social media app is currently the least annoying (another reminder that, yes, we are on Threads) how about cracking open, or downloading, a book?
That’s right, an actual book,with more than 240 characters and longer than a 3-minute read time. They still exist, and from what I’m told, are quite popular. As much as I’d like to recommend whatever the current best-selling beach read, or whatever old-person historical that’s on my desk right now (it’s The Wright Brothers by David McCullough) I should probably stick to hockey.
Over the winter, a representative at Triumph Books reached out to me about promoting a new book from former NHLer, Bernie Nicholls (likely due to the fact that I had written some draft coverage for Jewels From the Crown the previous summer). The original plan was to read it in time for Christmas and promote it as something you could put under the tree for the hockey fan in your life, but things got in the way and I didn’t finish it until after the holidays. Then the whole mess with our previous network happened and other priorities superseded posting a book review.
Now, however, it’s summer and the time seemed right to dust off my digital copy and refresh myself on the biography written by the former Los Angeles King, New York Ranger, Edmonton Oiler, New Jersey Devil, Chicago Blackhawk, and San Jose Shark. Bernie Nicholls: From Flood Lights to Bright Lights was written by Nicholls, Kevin Allen, and Ross McKeon. Nicholls’ former teammate Wayne Gretzky pitched in with a forward as well.
Let me start by saying that my knowledge of pre-Tampa Bay Lightning hockey history is rudimentary at best. It’s not that I don’t care about what happened before the Lightning came into existence, it’s just that, okay, well I don’t really care that much. Maybe it’s a side effect of the constant whining about tradition from “Original Six” fans, who know? Besides there is plenty of more recent history to delve into to keep me entertained for the rest of my days.
So, I knew the name Bernie Nicholls, and I knew he had played for the Kings and the Sharks (mainly due to the copious amounts of hockey cards I was buying in the late 1990s). And I kind of knew he was a pretty good goal-scorer in his heyday. Other than that I was a pretty much a blank slate when it came to Nicholls knowledge. That ignorance led to a pretty entertaining read.
Lets face it, Nicholls had a pretty entertaining career that took him from coast to coast, from playing with Gretzky in LA to getting traded for Mark Messier, to hanging out with Chris Chelios in Chicago, to a rather anticlimactic end in San Jose. Not only did he play a lot of hockey (1,127 career games) and score more than his fair share of goals (475) he thoroughly enjoyed being a NHL player.
By page 11 he’s already met Muhammad Ali, been pulled over for excessive speeding twice, and hung out with Morgan Fairchild at the Forum Club in Los Angeles. As Nicholls describes it, his life was an “adult fairy tale”.
The book itself is a fun, fast read as he pretty much chronicles his career on the ice while mixing in stories about his life off of the ice. More so than a chronology of his life starting out as a small-town Canadian boy who made it big under the bright lights of the NHL, it’s really just a former player spinning yarns about the things he’s seen and done.
As you can imagine, some of the tales he tells probably wouldn’t be as well received now as they were in the 1980s and 90s. After all, Tiger Williams firing an arrow at him in the locker room following a prank gone sideways would likely be investigated by the league if it happened now.
Along the way he does delve into his childhood and the tremendous respect he had for his father, George. Nicholls also talks about how hard it was to be on one coast trying to play hockey while on the other coast, his infant son Jack, who had been born with Down syndrome, lay in a coma following a stroke.
For someone who doesn’t like talking about his feelings, it had to be one of the more difficult chapters to work on. As he says, “I’ve never talked to anyone about his passing. That’s not who I am. I don’t talk about my feelings…I hope people will respect that I don’t need to talk about how I felt about Jack and his death. As I like to say, I don’t let anyone in my kitchen.”
Based on the antics he describes throughout the book about his off-ice exploits (clubbing with Michael Jordan, going to the horsetrack on off days, or going to a Saturday Night Live taping with Tom Hanks), Nicholls is the antithesis of the staid, attention-phobic superstar of today’s game (cough, Connor McDavid, cough). However, no matter what his reputation was throughout the league about what he did when the game lights weren’t on, he was a completely dedicated player once those bright lights came on and he had to play. He earned his teammates respect with his talent and hustle on the ice.
The sense that I got from reading the book is that Bernie Nicholls not only enjoyed playing hockey, but he enjoys life. As his co-writer Kevin Allen acknowledges, “Bernie is honest, funny, caring, and full of energy. He lives the way he played: all in.”
Read below for an excerpt from Bernie Nicholls: From Flood Lights to Bright Lights.
Excerpted from Chapter 4 – Bernie and Wayne’s Excellent Adventure
My time with [Wayne] Gretzky in Los Angeles was the best period of my career. Every day there was a new story to tell about what was happening with our team. The number of celebrities visiting Gretzky was so high that it was sometimes difficult to keep track of who was in the room, particularly after games. Our dressing room was frequently chaotic.
When we were playing in Vancouver, Gretzky mentioned that
Canadian music legend Bryan Adams was coming to the game that
night and was going to stop by the dressing room.
“I’d really love to meet him,” I told Gretzky.
“No problem,” he said.
That night after the game, I kept an eye peeled for Adams. I was
near Wayne and there was a steady stream of visitors, some of whom
Wayne introduced me to. I couldn’t tell you who they were because I
was focused on meeting Adams. It didn’t happen. We were dressed and leaving when I said to Gretzky, “I f—g thought you were going to introduce me to Bryan Adams?”
“I f—g did introduce you to Bryan Adams,” Gretzky said. “I said,
‘Bernie, this is Bryan; Bryan this is Bernie Nicholls.’”
“You mean that little guy was Bryan Adams?” I asked.
I don’t know what I expected Bryan Adams to look like, but apparently
it wasn’t the guy Wayne introduced me to. Some nights we needed
a program to sort out the celebrities in our room.
Life with Wayne was always entertaining. One night, we were playing
in Pittsburgh and the Mario Lemieux versus Wayne Gretzky rivalry
was a made-for-media event. In the 1987–88 season, Lemieux posted
168 points and Wayne had 149. In 1988–89, Lemieux had his best
season with 199 points. The sports pages were full of the suggestion that
Lemieux was now the king.
When we took the ice for the pregame warmup, I noticed a sign in the crowd that read: “This is Mario Country: Wayne Who?”
I’m sure Wayne saw the sign as well.
In the first five minutes of the game, we were killing a penalty
together. Wayne scored a short-handed goal, after a pass from me. Exactly
one minute later, he scored another. Again, I drew the assist. He had
his hat trick by the 1:40 mark of the second period. By the time that
period was over, Wayne had set me up for a pair of goals, giving him
five points in the first 40 minutes.
When we came out for the start of the third period, I noticed the
Mario Country sign had disappeared.
This excerpt from Bernie Nicholls: From Flood Lights to Bright Lights by Bernie Nicholls with Kevin Allen and Ross McKeon is reprinted with the permission of Triumph Books. For more information and to order a copy, please visit Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, or TriumphBooks.com/BernieNicholls.com.
