“The first couple of times, but you get used to it quick,” Steel said. Steel said that the first time a nickname so out of the box, like Sammy Sosa, gets going, it can take a little bit of time to learn to respond to it. “It’s Sam, Sammy, Steeler, Sosa, Sammy Sosa, Soss,” Steel said. Now, there’s a variety of options for Steel’s teammates in Dallas. Guys here were asking me what they were calling me in Minny.” He started calling me that and it kind of caught on. “It started last year (in Minnesota),” Steel said. For many North Americans, it’s more common to do that with European players, such as Miro for Miro Heiskanen, but not as flavorful with a basic name like Sam.Įnter, Sammy Sosa, after the former baseball star. As easy as Sam is, many players don’t really prefer to call any of their teammates just by their first name. A million different plays on that.” Sam SteelĪ newcomer to Dallas, Steel has a pretty short and simple name. His previous nicknames were played off of his last name, beginning with simply being referred to as “W.” That became a mouthful, though, especially on the ice when things are happening fast, so it got reduced to “Dub.” Johnston said he’s never been referred to as Henry before. “Chubbs was the first one to call me Henry,” Johnston said. Johnston disclosed his nickname and it caught on quickly. “That’s just the stereotypical nickname they give you whenever you go anywhere,” Johnston said.īut when Johnston was a 19-year-old rookie last year, he was asked by the team what his middle name was. Johnny is the easy nickname that Johnston commonly answers to. Given that Oettinger idolized Lundqvist growing up, he deserves the benefit of the doubt. Lundkvist recalls first hearing it from Benn and Seguin in his first week in Dallas, but somebody else claims to have come up with it. The point of dispute, though, is where the nickname originated from. As Wyatt Johnston remarked when he overheard the conversation: “You just got inducted into the Hall of Fame!” Obviously, the nickname comes from Lundkvist’s last name being similar his fellow Swede and New York Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist. I think it was my first week and I sat for breakfast with Chubbs ( Jamie Benn) and Seggy and they were like, ‘Yeah, we’re going to call you Hank,’ so, yeah, in here, I’m Hank.” “Here it’s Lundy, or they call me Hank,” Lundkvist said. Lundkvist’s nickname with the New York Rangers was pretty standard: Nilsy. The Athletic went around the Stars’ room to investigate some of the more interesting nicknames. “Sometimes there are names, like we had Jiří Hudler here one year and it’s a complicated name to say,” Tyler Seguin said. Sometimes nicknames don’t even have to be creative, as long as they’re convenient. But over time, the “Del” got lost in the shuffle and now the nickname has been reduced to just “Taco.” The main reason Dellandrea earned the nickname in Palm Springs was the “Del” in Del Taco being similar to the start of his last name. Even some of those go through an evolution. There are, however, some nicknames that are born out of creativity. Since Ryan Suter’s name already is short and ends with an “er,” his common nickname throughout his career has been “Sutes.” Adding an “es” or “s” at the end is another common tweak. They usually simply consist of tacking on something at the end of a name, whether it be a “y,” such as Dellandrea being commonly referred to as “Delly” or “er,” such as Oettinger being shortened to “Oetter,” although that one in particular has an inherent layer of creativity because of the animal, the otter. Often, nicknames in hockey tend to be quite uncreative. We just went because it said Del Taco and just loved it.” “We went to Del Taco because we were hungry. “We had a day off or something and we were coming back from golf,” Dellandrea said.
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